Quiz: The Greek God Zeus was supposed to wield an awesome weapon called the Aegis. Today the US has a missile system called Aegis. Just what was the Aegis?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What was Julius Caesar’s first name?
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History for 1/26/2021
Birthdays: First Lady Julia Dent Grant, General Douglas MacArthur, Stephan Grappelli, Angela Davis, Maria Von Trapp, Wayne Gretsky, Eartha Kitt, Paul Newman, Charles Lane, Roger Vadim, Jules Feiffer is 92, Henry Jaglom, Anita Baker, Edward Abbey, Scott Glenn, David Straitharn, Randy Rhodes, Ellen DeGeneres is 63

404 A.D. Today is the Feast of Saint Paula, who built the first abbey and monastery where all the monks and nuns wore identical uniform sackcloth, demonstrating that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

1500- Captain Vincente Pinzon, who had once commanded the Nina for Columbus, discovered the coast of Brazil while serving the Portuguese navy.

1536- English King Henry VIII was a very active and virile 44 years old. This day he was participating in a joust, when his opponent knocked him off his horse. Not only did he hit the ground in full armor, but his horse rolled on top of him. He sustained a deep gash in his leg that never fully healed. It marked the end of his active life. He became sedentary and very fat. His leg gave him pain for the remaining 11 years of his life. Many noted the king became more moody and irascible after the accident. Off with his head!

1758 - French troops burn at the stake the Haitian rebel slave leader Mackandal. A practitioner of Voodoo, his followers believed that at the moment of death he transformed himself into a mosquito and brought the Yellow Fever sickness to kill all the Europeans. Haitian Independence was achieved a generation later under Toussaint l'Overture and Dessalines. Mackandal's dance, done at all his rallies and voodoo religious ceremonies was the 'marenga".

1787- SHAY’S REBELLION- Just four years after the Revolutionary War ended, New England farmers rebelled again, against unfairly heavy taxes and a confused local government. Daniel Shays led 1,200 Massachusetts farmers in an attack on an armory that quickly fell apart, but the shock of the incident scared the Founding Fathers to convene a special Constitutional Convention to create a stronger central government.

1788- AUSTRALIA DAY, The First Fleet, a small group of ships carrying 700 convicts and 200 soldiers and families, landed at Port Jackson, New South Wales. Governor Arthur Phillip raised the Union Jack over Sydney Cove. The aboriginal people met them on the beach with cries of "Warra-warra!" which meant "Go Away!" Eventually 50,000 convicts were sent there. After a century Australians began to form their special character. The Aussie nickname name for British people is Poms or Pommies. This was for the initials printed on British prison shirts POM- or Prisoner Of his Majesty. Another version has it that British sailors regularly picked the pomegranate trees clean of fruit to ward off scurvy. The quest for citrus is also the root of Americans calling British people “Limeys”

1799- Thomas Jefferson wrote to Elbridge Gerry “I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.”

1815- Congress votes to purchase Thomas Jefferson's book collection to replace the fledgling Library of Congress that was burnt by the British in the War of 1812.

1837- Michigan became a state.

1865- Despite his Civil War victories, General William T Sherman had been criticized for having a biased attitude towards black slaves. This day he answered his critics by issuing his General Order # 15, stating that every freed African-American had the right to "40 acres and a mule". Many former slaves took this to mean they would take ownership of the lands they tended, parceled from the great plantations where they lived. Alas, corruption and racism of local white authorities during Reconstruction ensured this became an empty promise.

1875- Late at night, Pinkerton detectives on the trail of Jesse James threw a bomb into the window of the James family home. The explosion killed Jesses’ younger, mentally slow stepbrother, who had nothing to do with the outlaws, and blew the right arm off his mother. The James Gang were nowhere near the farm that night.

1884- The Sundanese capitol Khartoum fell to the forces of messianic leader the Mahdi. The Liberal Government of William Gladstone had sent the famous Victorian general Charles 'Chinese' Gordon to oversee the British evacuation of the Sudan. Gordon was a courageous eccentric who instead of evacuating the Sudan barricaded himself into Khartoum and resolved to fight it out to the end. "We are all pianos" he once said:" And events play upon us".

1911- Richard Strauss’ Opera, Der Rosenkavalier Premiered at the Koniglisch Operahaus in Dresden. Kaiser Wilhelm was offended by the Hugo Hoffmanstahl story about aristocrats sleeping around with their servants. He called it "A dirty little play".

1924- The Russian city of Saint Petersburg was also called Petrograd. This day the Bolshevik Government changed its name in honor of Lenin to Leningrad. In 1991 they changed the name back to Saint Petersburg.

1934- Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn secured the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz to develop into a movie. Walt Disney and Hal Roach were trying to get it also.

1939- Generalissimo Franco’s Fascist troops capture Barcelona, winning the Spanish Civil War.

1939- the first day of shooting on the film Gone With the Wind.

1950- In India today is Constitution Day, when the Indian Constitution went into effect.

1962- Mob boss Charles Lucky Lucciano dropped dead of a heart attack at Naples airport as he was about to shake hands with an author who had arrived from the U.S. to write his biography. Lucky Lucciano was the criminal genius that converted gangsters from storefront street gangs to corporate syndicates with ties to legitimate business and government. He also imported the Sicilian system of La Mafia- family clan allegiance and code of honor, to supplant the Irish-Jewish gangsters. Lucky was deported to Italy in the 1950’s and retired when his appeals to return were all denied.

1967- THE BIG SNOW- The people of Chicago pride themselves on their ability to handle the toughest winters. But this day was one of the worst- 23 inches of snow in 27 hours, driven by 50 mile an hour cyclonic winds brought the city to a total standstill.

1979- Former Vice President of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller, was found dead in his office" en flagrante delicto" with Meghan Marshak, his young director of the Rockefeller Foundation. His second wife Happy Rockefeller had also been one of his office staff once. The method of the 70-year-old billionaire’s death was an open secret in New York City. The legend was fueled by the fact that Ms. Marshak's first call was not to 911 or the cops, but to her friend, local TV newswoman, Ponchitta Pierce. Pierce made the call to summon help nearly an hour after Rocky was cold.
I had a friend at art school at the time who was a receptionist for a Park Ave. doctor who was Rocky's physician. She said the paramedics found him with his pants down but his tie still in place. His will left $50,000 and a Manhattan townhouse to Ms Marshak.

1979- The Dukes of Hazard TV show premiered. Catharine Bach’s cutoff jeans became thereafter known for her character- Daisy Dukes.

1983- The software LOTUS 1-2-3 premiered that helped make IBM’s PC into the most popular business computers in the US.

1988- Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera premiered.

1996- First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies to a grand jury, the first "first lady" to do so. The only earlier incident that comes to mind was in 1862 when a senate committee convened to investigate whether Mary Todd Lincoln was a Confederate spy.
Mrs Clinton was Secretary of State in the Obama administration, and so was the frequent target of vengeful Republican investigations. Before the last Republican House adjourned at New Years 2018, their last order of business was to bring in former FBI director James Comey and question him about….what else? Hillary Clinton.

1998- The Japanese town of Ito was attacked by berserk monkeys, injuring 26.

2003- After the Super Bowl, ABC premiered a new late night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live

2020- Basketball star Kobe Bryant and 8 others including his daughter were killed in a helicopter crash in heavy fog in Calabasas, California. He was 41.
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Yesterday’s question: What was Julius Caesar’s first name?

Answer: His first name was Gaius. Julius was the family clan name.