General Washington's change of uniform 2007. Click to Enlarge

Pat and I are in Boston recording Click & Clack for the CarTalk Show. Boston is currently going crazy over their BoSox. Unlike Rudy, I will openly admit I am a NY Yankee fan, but I can still say congrats to the Sox for a great series.

QUIZ- What is meant by three square meals a day?
Answer to yesterdays’ quiz below.
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Birthdays: James Boswell, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Keats, Sir Edmund Halley, Louis Blanc, Fanny Brice, Joseph Goebbels, Richard Dreyfuss, Zoot Sims, Winona Ryder, Jesse Barfield, Kate Jackson, Bill Maudlin, Akim Tamiroff, Ralph Bakshi, Denis Potvin Neal Hefti-composer of theme songs for the TV shows Batman and the Odd Couple.

1618- Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded on his birthday. Raleigh was once Queen Elizabeths favorite, but by now he was getting on King James nerves by opposing the Kings peace overtures to Spain. Also Raleigh was implicated in a plot to keep James from attaining the throne. The king had him dangling on a commuted death sentence for treason for 15 years. Finally when Raleigh attacked Spanish settlements in Brazil against his direct orders, that was enough. Off with his head! On the scaffold Raleigh thumbed the axemans blade. He joked:" This is sharp medicine, but it cures all ills." The man credited with introducing tobacco to Northern Europe, he puffed his pipe for one last time before putting his head on the block. His wife kept the severed head in her cabinet for the rest of her life.

1787- Wolfgang Amadeus’s opera DON GIOVANNI premiered in Prague. Mozart had partied the night before and after midnight sat down and wrote the overture. As the musicians were sitting down he ran from stand to stand handing out the music. Goethe and Schiller loved it. Giacomo Rossini called it “the Greatest of All Operas”. After Don Giovanni his lyricist Lorenzo da Ponte left Europe for America and settled down in New Jersey. His niece had an affair with the son of Francis Scott Key and married a general who was wounded at Gettysburg.

1795- NAPOLEON MET JOSEPHINE- After quelling anti-government riots in Paris Napoleon ordered the citizens to turn in all weapons. Beautiful socialite Josephine de Beauharnais came this day to thank the young General for allowing her son to keep his slain fathers sword. Napoleon was at once twitterpated and their love became a legend. He would write her letters from the battlefield like “Don’t send your kisses, they burn my blood!” And “ I shall be home in a week, please don’t bathe until then, I want to smell you!”

1796- The SS Otter out of Boston under Captain Ebeneezer Dorr entered Monterrey Bay, the first American visitor to Spanish Alta-California.

1825- In Dublin British Marquis de Wellesley married American socialite Miss Margaret Patterson. What makes this society wedding memorable was Miss Patterson's sister Betsy was married to Napoleon's younger brother Lucien Bonaparte. The Marquis of Wellesley was the older brother of the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon had died in 1821 but had he still been alive he would have had his Waterloo nemesis Wellington for a brother-in-law ! It would have made for some interesting family gatherings.....

1836- The young nephew of Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, tries again to overthrow the French Government the way his famous uncle did. Instead of cheering, people chased him through the streets of Strasbourg yelling :"Shut Up you Blockhead!" He will eventually become Emperor Napoleon III.

1904--Mayor MacClellan opens the New York City Subway System. For 5 cents you could go 722 miles of tunnel under 30 square miles, the largest system in the world. The Mayor was given a solid silver ceremonial throttle, took controls of the first train and drove it around himself. When asked to hand the controls back he refused “Go away, I’m running this train now.”He went full throttle from Bleecker St to 146th. Later that day after the VIP’s concluded the party the subway was opened for the first commuters.

1923-General Mustapha Kemal abolishes the Ottoman Sultanate and declared Turkey a secular Republic. For this he is named Ataturk, or "Father of the Turks". To this day Islamic fundamentalism has had a hard time in Turkey, where the example of Ataturk is respected as much as George Washington here. It is a federal crime to even criticize Ataturk.

1923- The musical Running Wild opened on Broadway, introducing the dance craze the Charleston.

1929-BLACK TUESDAY-THE STOCK MARKET CRASH AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS. The falling stock market, which had been gaining momentum since early September, finally culminated in the greatest one day collapse in U.S. history. Millions of people who weren't ruined by last Thursday’s crash were ruined today. One third of all U. S. banks failed- 2,500. Eyewitnesses to that day all remember the strange low roar echoing through the glass canyons of Wall street, it was the continuous moans of thousands of investors being simultaneously ruined. Businessmen jumped to their deaths from windows. Two executives held hands as they jumped because they had a joint account. The chairman of General Motors William Durant finished his life managing a bowling alley in Chicago.
The Union Club wallpapered it's bar with worthless stock certificates. Venerable firms like Morgan and Leahman Brothers allowed 'apple-breaks' for their brokers to go out on the street and supplement their incomes by selling apples. By years end all U.S. industry was working at 17% of capacity and unemployment would soon soar to 55% in many major cities. The newly built Empire State Building was nicknamed the "Empty State Building".
The Hoover Administration, which espoused the traditional Republican hands-off attitude towards Wall Street, watched in horror as every trick known to financial wizards like Rockefeller and Lamont failed to stop the slide. People questioned whether capitalism itself was now a failure. Then Great Depression would afflict America until 1941, when the buildup to a war economy stimulated the economy. Hoover's Vice President Charles Curtis, (for whom the nickname "Goodtime Charlie" was invented) continued to party while things collapsed. He responded to hungry, unemployed people protesting during his speech that they were all "Too damn dumb" to understand economics. His sister socialite Dolly Curtis said that she felt that the Depression, such as it was, maybe was already ending . This prompted one newspaper to run the headline:' DOLLY CALLS IT OFF!"

1957- Louis B. Mayer dies. His last words were: "Nothing Matters..." The head of MGM Studios lorded over Hollywood like a monarch, made and broke moviestars, ordered Judy Garland fed a steady stream of narcotics and had his office redesigned all white to resemble Mussolini’s, whom he admired. Humphrey Bogart was at his funeral. When asked if he was close to Mayer, Bogie replied:" Nah, I'm just here to make sure he's dead !"

1975- Years of bad management had brought New York City close to bankruptcy. This day President Gerald Ford announced that the United States Treasury would not help New York City out of it’s fiscal problems with any special loans. Although he reversed his position soon afterwards New Yorkers remembered his attitude. The New York DAILY NEWS paper’s headline “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD!” remained in people’s minds as they voted overwhelmingly for Jimmy Carter.

1992- An examination of Soviet KGB Archives reveal that State Dept. official Alger Hiss never was a spy after all. The revelation in 1947 that top government biggies like Hiss may have been pawns of Moscow drove the nation Commie-paranoid and launched the careers of Joe MacCarthy, Robert Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Even today conservative writers like Anne Coulter continue to try and prove the McCarthy Red Scare was a good thing.

1994- A emotionally disturbed Colorado upholsterer named Francisco Duran fired a Chinese AK-47 machine gun at the White House. He told authorities a multi-colored Alien told him to kill President Clinton in order to disperse a cosmic mist that had been over the White House for a thousand years. Pretty amazing mist, since the White House is only 200 years old. Bill Clinton –The First Bubba, was watching football on TV.

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Yesterdays Quiz-

Question: In old Hollywood, what was meant when 35mm film reels were marked M.O.S. ?

Answer: In moviemaking, many times the soundtrack needed to be rerecorded for clarity.
Some film directors wanted to focus on the visual pantomime without the track. In the 1930’s a European director, it was either Michael Curtiz (Mikaili Kertesz from Hungary), or Josef Von Sternberg from Germany, thundered at his crew : show me ze next reel mit out sound!” So the sound engineers jokingly labled the reels M.O.S. – Mit Out Sound, and so it has remained to this day.