Nov. 26, 2020 November 26th, 2020 |
Question: What is treacle?
Yesterday’s question answered below: What is the difference between sweetbreads, and sweetmeats?
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History for 11/26/2020
Birthdays: John Harvard 1607(founder of Harvard University), Bat Masterson, Eugene Ionesco, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Marian Mercer, Charles Schulz, Cyril Cusak, Eric Severaid, Rich Little, Wendy Turnbull, Robert Goulet, Don Hahn.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING Since the earliest times societies have had harvest festivals to give thanks to the appropriate deities that they're not going to starve that winter. A letter written in 1621 by pilgrim Edward Winslow described how Pilgrim Gov. Bradford and Miles Standish invited Massasoit and 90 of his Wampanoag people to a feast to celebrate their first successful harvest. The Indians brought several deer they killed. Gov. Bradford, who wrote a detailed history of the colony, does not mention the event. The custom of Thanksgiving was a New England custom for decades thereafter.
In 1789 George Washington had called for a thanksgiving celebration in late November to celebrate the new Constitution. But Pres. Thomas Jefferson thought Thanksgiving was the most ridiculous idea he ever heard of. He considered it a violation of the separation of church and state, as did Andy Jackson and Zachary Taylor. So, the holiday didn’t really become an annual custom until the Civil War. Sarah Hale the editor of the Ladies Magazine, the Martha Stewart of her time, had been lobbying the US Government to make the New England tradition a national one.
In 1863 after the great union victory at Gettysburg, President Lincoln issued a decree that the last Thursday of November be set aside as a feast of national Thanksgiving. As blue clad troops chowed down on their turkey and chicken dinners, the Confederates withheld their fire in honor of the new Yankee holiday. Up until recently Thanksgiving was declared by Presidential decree, usually a notice buried in back of a newspaper.
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311A.D. Saint Peter of Alexandria, was the last saint to be martyred before Roman Emperor Constantine lifted the ban on Christianity in 312.
1539- Fountains Abbey, the largest and richest Cistercian abbey in England, was surrendered to the officers of King Henry VIII.
1716- In Boston, the first African lion ever seen in America was put on exhibit.
1804- Napoleon Bonaparte made public the results of a national referendum held to decide whether the French people wanted him to be crowned emperor. 3.5 million votes for yes, 2,500 for no. Since Napoleon was a dictator who was kicking the butts of most of the nation of Europe, most Frenchmen wouldn’t argue much, and he had been planning his coronation for months anyhow.
1825-Kappa Alpha of Union College NY is established. The first college Greek Letter fraternity house.
1832- In New York the first public transportation began, a streetcar pulled along iron rails by a team of horses. A ticket cost 12 pennies. The last horse car bus stopped in 1926.
1865- Lewis Carroll sent a copy of the completed manuscript of his fantasy Alice in Wonderland to his 12 year old friend and inspiration Alice Liddell. Carroll later published the book with his own money. This is one of the first books written solely to amuse children, and not to educate or discipline them.
1868- At first baseball games were played in a convenient cow pasture. Today the baseball game was played in an enclosed field. It was in San Francisco at Folsom & 25th St..
1896- AA. Stagg of The University of Chicago invented the football huddle.
1913- THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMBROSE BIERCE- Ambrose Bierce was one of the more popular U.S. writers of the late 19th century. A savage wit and social critic, he pioneered sardonic anti-war fiction long before Kurt Vonnegut. But by 1913 the 71-year-old curmudgeon found himself alone, ill, his creative powers failing and not looking forward to old age. So on November 6th he announced his intention to travel to Mexico at the height of the revolution there and hopefully get killed:
“Ah, to be an old gringo stood up before a Mexican firing squad, now that is Euthanasia!” This day he gave his last known newspaper interview in Laredo Texas, then disappeared forever. A niece claimed he sent her a letter from Chihuahua on Dec. 26th but that letter has never been found. The popular story is that he was executed by Pancho Villa. But Villa and his people never recalled meeting Bierce. Plus Villa was followed around by so many American news correspondents and newsreel cameras that a person as famous as Ambrose Bierce was sure to be noticed.
As he planned, Ambrose Bierce has the last laugh. “I want no one to find my bones!” And no one ever has.
1917- The National Hockey League-NHL, was founded in Montreal. The first teams The Quebec Bulldogs, Ottawa Senators, Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Arenas, and Montreal Maroons.
1926- Potato Chips, or Crisps in the UK, were invented in the 1880’s and served in restaurants and fairgrounds. This day Mrs. Laura Scudder was the first to put potato chips in a bag and sold them as a handy snack food. She sold them out of the back of her pickup truck until the business picked up. She ran her own company until 1959.
1940- Woody Woodpecker first appeared in an Andy Panda cartoon "Knock-Knock.’
1942- Rommel's "Dash to the Wire"- After months of inconclusive melee' in the Libyan desert, Gen. Rommel's German Afrika Korps broke through the British 8th Army and makes a beeline for the Egyptian border. His plan was to cut the Suez canal, overrun the Middle East oilfields and link up with Vichy troops in Lebanon and Syria, and Nazi units rolling down from southern Russia into Iraq. But the German army in Russia never got that far and on the road to Egypt, Rommel would finally be stopped at a railroad crossing called El Alamein.
1945- Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded KoKo, the first bebop Jazz single. Instead of big bands as was the fashion, they used a smaller quintet. The pianist at the session didn’t have his New York union card, so after his solo, Dizzy dropped his trumpet and did the piano backup to Birds’ solo. The term Bop came from an earlier Lionel Hampton hit “Hey-Bop-A-ReBop”. Jazz critic Ira Gitler picked up on the witty interplay between musicians, and began wrote of the new sound as BeBop.
1963- The day after John Kennedy’s funeral at a secret location in Lindenhurst New Jersey a meeting was held of Mafia under bosses to get a briefing on just what the heck happened in Dallas. Jack Ruby, who had killed JFK’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, was a known Mafia hitman used for “clean up jobs”.
Retired Mafia Don Bill Bonano, the son of Joe Bananas, claims he and other crime bosses were told by representatives of Tony Marcello and Santos Traficante that they were behind the JFK shooting and it was all “a local matter”. Both men were the targets of heavy government racketeering probes pursued by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. They explained that there were four shooters that day including the patsy.
Dallas officer Tibbet was supposed to take out Oswald the patsy right after the shooting but Oswald had killed him first, so Jimmy Roselli had arranged for Jack Ruby to go fix things. Believe it or not!
1965- France launched its first space rocket, the Dianant-1, into orbit.
1970- During a visit to Manila, Pope Paul VI was attacked by a lunatic wielding a knife. The Pope was unhurt and continued his journey.
1975- Former Charles Manson follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme is convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford with a starters pistol.
1976- Sex Pistols Punk single “Anarchy in the UK” released.
1990- Acting on the example of Sony’s purchase of MGM-Columbia studios, Matushita (Panasonic) bought MCA- Universal studios for $6.6 billion. After a few fruitless years they sold it to the Bronfman’s group, the distillers of Seagram’s Whiskey.
1998- Tony Blair became the first British Prime Minister to address the Irish Parliament.
He said: We can no longer afford to be the Prisoners of History.”
2001- Columnist William Kristol proclaimed:” The endgame in Afghanistan is in sight!”
2008- Terrorists attacked several top hotels in Mumbai (Bombay). They focused on trying to capture or kill American and British citizens and they shot up an Orthodox Jewish Chabad charity house, killing a rabbi and his wife. After four days of battle with Indian forces, they were all killed.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the difference between sweetbreads, and sweetmeats?
Answer: Sweetbreads are offal food taken from the thymus gland, pancreas or genitalia of young animals, most often calves, pigs or lambs. They are roundish in shape and are a favorite ingredient in many European dishes. Sweetmeats are an archaic term for confectionery. The Elizabethans loved their sugared treats, and it could be fruit, fruit skins, nuts, ginger, or other spice roots, etc.