Nov 17, 2020 November 17th, 2020 |
Question: Pittsburgh, Plattsburg, Gettysburg. What is a burg?
Question: Which one is NOT born in England? Stan Laurel, Gustav Holst, Joseph Conrad, Joan Collins, Bob Hope
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History for 11/17/2020
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Vespasian 9 A.D, Il Bronzino, August Ferdinand Moebius-1790 the inventor of the Moebius Strip. Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Rock Hudson- real name Roy Sherer, Peter Cook, Lorne Michaels is 76, Isamu Noguchi, Lauren Hutton, Tom Seaver, Gordon Lightfoot, Les Clark, Lee Strassberg, Shelby Foote, Sophie Marceau, Martin Scorcese is 78, Danny deVito is 76
395- Death of the Roman Emperor Valentinian.
1796- Russian Czarina Catherine the Great died at 67 years old of a stroke on the toilet, not crushed by trying to have sex with a horse, as some scandalous rumors alleged.
1800- Following President Adams from their cozy homes in Philadelphia, Congress sulkily convened for the first time in the half-finished capitol city. It was already being called Washington City D.C. It was still mostly a damp, muddy Virginia swamp. Wooden pegs in the mud showed where streets would be one day. The only buildings up in operation were Congress, the Presidents Mansion, and Conrad’s Tavern.
Many complained that city planners Pierre L’Enfant and Benjamin Banocker had made the main avenues too big, that there will never be enough carriages and wagons to fill these roads. This first Congressional session couldn’t accomplish much, because there were not enough members present to make a quorum.
1839- Oberto premiered, an opera written by a new composer named Guisseppi Verdi. ( Joe Green). The great composer would go on to write Rigoletto, Aida and La Traviata.
1853- San Francisco passed a law to put up street signs at the intersections of major streets.
1858- A Pennsylvania businessman named William Larimer founded a new town at the foot of the Rockies called Denver.
1869- The Suez Canal opened. The opera "Aida" was commissioned to be premiered for this occasion but Verdi missed his deadline by ten years.
1875- Russian psychic Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott found the American Theosophical Society.
1876- Peter Tchaikovsky’s musical rhapsody the Marche Slav premiered.
1882- The Chinese Exclusion Treaty signed in Peking between the United States and the Chinese Empress Zhaou Zhi. This was the first of a series of pacts attempting to limit Asian immigration to the U.S. In cities on the Pacific coast during the depression of the 1870’s violence against Chinese workers was sadly common. So many died building the Southern Pacific Railroad that the term “You Don’t Have a Chinaman’s Chance” was coined to mean the odds were against you. San Francisco writer Ambrose Bierce acerbically observed: A Chinese woman was recently found murdered on a street in San Francisco. She had done no crime but was merely the victim of Galloping Christianity. Barbaric acts like these mar the fine American tradition of Religious Intolerance.”
1891- Polish pianist Ignaz Paderewski made his American debut at Carnegie Hall. Paderewski created the cliché image of the temperamental classical musician with long flowing hair combed straight back. Classical music became known as longhair music.
1926- The Chicago Black Hawks played their first game,
beating the Toronto St. Pats 4-1.
1933- The Marx Bros classic Duck Soup premiered.
1934- LBJ marries LadyBird. For you born after the 60's, President Lyndon Baines Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor whom he nicknamed LadyBird Johnson. Their daughters were LucyBird and LindaBird, so everyone in the family had the initials LBJ.
1941- Ernst Udet was a top World War I flying ace who was persuaded by Goring to build the Nazi Luftwaffe. Udet was responsible for developing the Stuka dive bomber and it’s screaming vertical attack. But his conscience was troubled. One of the WWI Knights of the Air, he became depressed by the terror bombing of civilians and genocide his inventions were being used for. Sinking into drink and drugs. This night at dinner, he spoke of his adventures as a young ace with Von Richtofen the Red Baron, interspersing it with “Ahh, but we were decent men then…” He then went up to his bedroom and shot himself.
1941- US ambassador to Tokyo, Joseph Grew, cabled Washington DC that he had heard disturbing rumors that the Japanese military was planning to attack Pearl Harbor.
1959- The DeBeers mining company of South Africa announced the invention of synthetic diamonds.
1965- Battle of Ia Drang ends. The first large battle fought between North Vietnamese regulars and U.S. combat troops. The first battle fought with helicopters. Although the Vietnamese forces were defeated, it told their generals that their system was working of moving down the Ho Chi Minh trail through neutral Laos and Cambodia then crossing into South Vietnam.
1968- THE HEIDI GAME- NBC was broadcasting a football game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. The game was running late and would interfere with the broadcast of the movie "Heidi". The network heads felt with the Jets leading 32-29 with 65 seconds left, why disappoint the kiddies? So they pre-empted the rest of the game to start the movie. Oakland won 43-32 in a miracle comeback scoring the final touchdown in the final nine seconds. The embarrassed programmers had to answer nationwide firestorm of complaints from outraged football fans. So to this day on television, no matter how dull a football game is, it is seen to its very end.
1973- In a televised press conference about the expanding Watergate Scandal held at Walt Disney World, President Richard Nixon uttered the famous phrase:” People want to know if their president is a crook, well, I am not a crook!”
1978- This night, our world was rocked by a disturbance in The Force more powerful than the destruction of Alderon, It was "The Star Wars Holiday Special", a two-hour comedy variety show on CBS, with Harrison Ford, Beatrice Arthur and Nelvana’s animated cartoon.
1988- Benazir Bhutto elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.
1989- Don Bluth's animated film All Dogs Go to Heaven premiered.
1993- US Congress voted for the free trade, bill called NAFTA.
1994- The Sony Corporation posted a $2.7 billion dollar loss from its first year owning a Hollywood movie studio. Yet despite a lot of industry jokes ( “What’s the difference between Sony Pictures and the Titanic?-answer: The Titanic had entertainment.”) By 1996 the studio was on top with blockbusters like “Men in Black”
2002- Premiere of Disney’s Treasure Planet.
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Question: Which one is NOT born in England? Stan Laurel, Gustav Holst, Joseph Conrad, Joan Collins, Bob Hope
Answer: Joseph Conrad was born in Poland as Josef Korzeniowski.