Nov. 25, 2020 November 25th, 2020 |
Question: What is the difference between sweetbreads, and sweetmeats?
Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Turkey gizzards. What are they?
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History for 11/25/2020
Birthdays: Lope de Vega, St. Pope John XXIII, Andrew Carnegie, Tina Turner, Joe Dimaggio, Carl Benz of Mercedes Benz, Virgil Thompson, Jeffrey Hunter, John Kennedy,Jr., Percy Sledge, Ben Stein, Ricardo Montalban, Bob Matheson, John Larroquette, Gloria Steinem, General Augusto Pinochet, Christina Applegate, Bucky Dent, Bill Kroyer
1177-Battle of Montgisard- 19 year old Baldwin the Leper-King and his Crusader knights defeated Saladin.
1758- In the Pennsylvania wilderness, a British force including frontier scout Daniel Boone and militia Captain George Washington captured Fort Duquesne from the French. They renamed it for their current Prime Minister William Pitt, hence the name Pittsburgh.
1783- EVACUATION DAY- Treaties ending the American Revolution signed, the last British troops left U.S. soil, sailing out of New York Harbor for Nova Scotia. This also marks the beginning of the exodus to Canada of Americans who sided with England, maybe as many as 130,000. United Empire Loyalists, or Tories, as you prefer. About 3,000 slaves liberated by the British requested to return to Africa and were sent to Sierra Leone. Among their number was the personal cook of George Washington’s, who bolted through the lines the moment he heard about the offer. Washington demanded his return, and the British refused.
The last shot fired of the American Revolution was as the British fleet passed by Staten Island, so many people were at the shoreline jeering, a British warship fired a cannon at them. The shot landed harmlessly in the water. One British officer wrote “ I wish Columbus had never discovered this cursed place.” Washington led American forces into the city at around 1:00PM. Evacuation Day was a holiday in New York for years afterwards.
1795- English architect Henry Latrobe left Europe for a life in the U.S.
Latrobe was the architect who built the U.S. Capitol building.
1817- First sword swallower performed in the US.
1864- In a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at New York’s Winter garden Theater the three Booth brothers- John Wilkes, Edwin and Junius Booth appeared together for the only time. Other famous acting families of the time included the Powers, whose descendant was the movie star Tyrone Power, and the Barrymores, who’s line continues down today from John to John Drew to Drew Barrymore.
1867- Alfred Nobel patented dynamite. The riches he accumulated from this and Nitro-Glycerine he used to fund the Nobel Prize.
1869- Ned Buntline was a hack dime novelist who understood that selling stories about gunfighters of the west would be easier if you could occasionally produce one in the flesh. So on a trip to Nebraska he found among the cavalry scouts an accommodatingly colorful rogue named William Cody, who everybody called Buffalo Bill. This day Ned Buntline announced in the New York Weekly the first installment of a serial series “Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen”. Buntline and Cody collaborated to make Buffalo Bill the first true American media star, entertaining millions, from crowned heads to street kids, until his retirement in 1916.
1915- In a rally at Stone Mountain Georgia, a group of white southerners inspired by D.W. Griffith’s film ‘The Birth of a Nation” declared the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. The original Klan had been formed in 1865 by disaffected Confederate veterans as a resistance to the Yankee occupation. But by 1867 most had been rounded up by the authorities. It died out in part because all their goals of denying black Americans their civil rights had been achieved by political means anyway. This new Klan in 1915 broadened their appeal to hatred of not only black Americans but also immigrants, Jews and Catholics. Instead of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, the modern KKK appealed to strict U.S. patriotism and the Protestant Religion. Many areas other than the Old South invited in the Klan, like in 1921 the governor and most of the state legislature of Indiana were Klansmen. In the 60s there were Klan in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles.
1929- Alfred Hitchcock’s film Blackmail opened in London. It was the first full length talkie in Britain.
1932- At Sam Houston High School in rural Texas, a young teacher got a phone call. It was from Congressman Richard Clayburgh. He said he needed an executive aide in Washington, and he heard this guy was a go-getter. The teacher said yes, and packed his one suit and a few shirts in a cardboard suitcase. Lyndon B. Johnson’s career in politics began.
1944- A German V-2 missile hit a Woolworth’s store in Deptford England while people were shopping. 160 killed. German generals wanted the V-2’s aimed at the Allied beachheads where all their supplies were being unloaded. But Hitler had them fired generally at London, and wherever they came down they did.
1949- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer sung by Gene Autry hit number one on the musical charts.
1952- The stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s mystery the Mousetrap opened in London’s West End and became one of the longest running plays in history.
1956- Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 88 followers departed Mexico in a ramshackle boat called the Granma to start the revolution in Cuba.
1960- CBS canceled its remaining five radio soap operas, most of them now on television.
1963- THE FUNERAL OF JOHN F. KENNEDY. The massed muffled drums, bagpipes, bands blaring Chopin’s Funeral March, the riderless horse named BlackJack with the boots in the stirrups turned inward, a tradition that went back to Genghis Khan, the black horse drawn artillery caisson modeled on Abraham Lincoln's.
This day was also John Kennedy, Jr.'s birthday, and a big party had been planned with lots of little tots. Jackie knew that John-john didn't understand the gravity of what had transpired, so after the funeral she changed out of her widow’s weeds and ran a kiddie party.
1963- In his family home in Queens NY, young songwriter Paul Simon was deeply depressed by the assassination of President Kennedy. He locked himself in his bathroom and kicked around chords on his guitar. That night, he wrote “ Hello darkness, my old friend….”
1970- Japan's greatest modern poet-playwright Yukio Mishima committed suicide(seppuku) after attempting a coup at a military base. He had it all filmed as it happened. He felt Japan was losing her spiritual soul to crass materialism and the ancient Bushido warrior code was the only way back. The Japanese Defense Force soldiers he appealed to join his cause, just laughed at him.
In a poll conducted in a magazine at the time, about 75% of Japanese women said they would rather commit suicide than sleep with Yukio Mishima.
1971- Con man D.B. Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient passenger plane after stealing $ 200,000. He parachuted out of the 727 airliner with the money during a thunderstorm over Washington State and disappeared forever. Searchers found rotting bits of money in the forest but never a body. D.B. Cooper became a folk legend.
In 1999 a man in South Carolina named Dwayne Weber was dying of liver cancer. Before he died he turned to his wife Jo and said “Before I go, I gotta tell ya something. I’m Dan Cooper” His wife said he loved singing at piano bars, and his favorite song was “You’ll never know…”
1975- According to the movie Rocky, this was the date of the first prizefight portrayed in the film where we first meet Rocky Balboa.
1975- Happy Surinam Independence Day.
1986- President Reagan announced the firing of National Security adviser Admiral Poindexter and his assistant Marine colonel Oliver North. That night North’s secretary Fawn Hall smuggled incriminating documents out of her office stuffed in her brassiere and under her skirt. The NSC was engaged in an illegal scheme of selling weapons to Iran through middlemen then funneling the money made to the Nicaraguan Contras rebels in defiance of Congress.
A 40 million dollar Congressional investigation could never definitively tie Reagan to the scheme, even though North openly admitted he was only the designated fall guy. Admiral Poindexter served in the GW Bush administration and Ollie North became a radio talk show host.
1992- Walt Disney’s Aladdin opened wide in theaters.
1995- Legendary Corporate CEO Akio Morita resigned as the leader of Sony. Under his guidance Sony went from a little postwar maker of electric rice cookers to the largest electronics giant in the world. His official reason was he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while playing tennis. Some insiders said he was dealing with the stress of managing Sony's Hollywood studios -MGM, Columbia, TriStar losing $2 billion. By the time Morita died in 1999, the Sony movie studios had pulled out of their slump and were on top with movies like Titanic and Men in Black.
1997- Pixar’s A Bugs Life and the short Geri’s Game premiered.
2009- Disney’s Princess and the Frog released.
2015- In a speech in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Candidate Donald Trump did a mocking impression of a NY Times reporter who was handicapped with MS. In his speech, Trump shook violently: “Now the poor guy — you ought to see the guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. I don’t remember!’ To the derisive laughter of his audience. For any decent candidate, this would have destroyed their chances, like Howard Dean’s scream. But Trump was only getting started…
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Yesterday’s Question: Turkey gizzards. What are they?
Answer: They are the stomach and guts of a bird, usually ground up for other purposes than your dinner table.