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April 3, 2022
April 3rd, 2022

Quiz: Who coined the term- to start from scratch?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is the person who carries your golf clubs called a caddie?
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History for 4/3/2022
Birthdays: King Henry IV of England (1361), Washington Irving, William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, Sally Rand the Fan Dancer, Ma Rainey, Iron Eyes Cody, Wayne Newton, Doris Day, Robert Sherwood, Virgil Grissom, Marsha Mason, Melissa Etheridge, Marlon Brando, Amanda Byrnes, David Hyde Pierce is 64, Alec Baldwin is 64, Eddie Murphy is 61

In Ancient Greece the beginning of April was the Aphrodisia- the Festival of Aphrodite. Greeks would offer sacrifices to the Goddess of Love, and some would visit the sacred prostitutes in the great temple in Corinth. Rich old matrons would put aside in their wills some money to purchase slaves to work in the sacred brothels.

127AD- Today is the day Pope Sixtus I was martyred under the Emperor Trajan. Sixtus is remembered as the pope during the Mass when the priests chanted Holy, Holy, Holy -Hosanna in the Highest, etc. he insisted it be sung by everyone in the congregation.

628AD-After being defeated by Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, Persian King Chosroes II was murdered by his own son’s followers, and his body chucked down a well.

1043- Edward the Confessor crowned King of England.

1312-The Vatican, under the influence of the French King Phillip the Fair, abolished the Holy Order of the Knights Templar. The order was rich in international finance and none of it taxable and because they were monks there were no relatives to sponge off. They invented the personal check, so a Templar didn’t have to ride from castle to castle with those heavy bags of gold. Just write out a note (or have your scribe do it if you were illiterate) and affix your seal to it. I wonder if they had pretty sunsets printed on them...

1367-The Battle of Navarette- during a lull in the Hundred Year War, Edward the Black Prince of England goes to Spain to help King of Aragon Pedro the Cruel press his claims against Navarre. He defeats a Franco-Navarrese force of knights and captures the great French knight Bertrand DeGuesclin (De-Gue-Klan). But when Edward refused to turn over his prisoners to Pedro so he could behead them (why else have a nickname like Cruel ?), even refusing to hand over DeGuesclin for his weight in pure silver, Pedro refused to pay the Englishmen's wages and Edward went home broke and annoyed.

1657- Oliver Cromwell formally refused the title King of England and preferred to remain the Lord Protector of the English Republic.

1714-THE FIRST BRITISH PRIME MINISTER-Before this time men who ran the government of England at the king’s pleasure held a variety of titles: Lord High Admiral, Chancellor, Mayor of the Palace, etc. As the complicated checks & balances of democratic government evolved more dependable positions were needed.
When The British Crown was offered to the German George I of Hanover, he was bewildered by how complicated English parliamentary democracy was! He also refused to learn English, switching to French or Latin when no one responded to him in German.
Couldn't I just work with one man who could get what I wanted done? So Minister of the Exchequer (treasury) Sir Robert Walpole (father of writer Horace Walpole), who's party was in the majority in Parliament became First Minister, later Prime Minister. The reason the job evolved out of the Treasury is that minister could grease the rights palms to get things done.
King George wanted Walpole in close touch so he gave him a house near Whitehall Palace. He had just foreclosed on a modest row house called #10 Downing Street. Walpole said he didn't want it seen as a royal bribe. He would vacate it when he left office for his successor.

1730 -EMPEROR MOYTOY OF AMERICA- An Scottish conman, Sir Alexander Cummings, had ingratiated himself into the council of the Cherokee Nation, then occupying most of Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee. In a scam to make himself look like the representative of all native Americans, Cummings convinced one Cherokee chief named Amatoya Moytoy of Tellico (Tennessee) to travel to England and do ritual submission to King George II. He dubbed him Moytoy, Emperor of America! The Indians were confused but went along with the silliness if it meant good trading relations with the redcoat white men. Cummings disappeared shortly after the truth came out, undoubtedly a much wealthier man.

1764- Aging Empress Maria Theresa of Austria raised her son Joseph II to be co-emperor. He was the Emperor in the movie Amadeus. His sister was Marie Antoinette. This day he was crowned at Frankfurt. He later wrote his mother about his coronation“...a lot of elegant people mouthing idiocies.”

1791- The French Revolution Assembly National decided to convert the Church of Saint Genevieve to a secular temple to contain the remains of the great leaders of the French Nation. It was renamed the Pantheon after the ancient Roman name. The bones of Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau and more were soon moved there.

1814- THE MARSHALS STRIKE. Napoleon’s top generals, the Marshals, gathered around him at Fontainbleau Palace to try to convince him to step down. These men had their fortunes made in his service. They had fought and bled for him on a hundred battlefields. But after twenty years, France was overrun by five foreign armies, Paris had fallen, the French were down to drafting fifteen-year olds. The war was obviously lost.
The discussion soon grew ugly. Marshals Ney, Oudinot, Moncey and Lefebvre told him if ordered they would not follow him to try to retake Paris. Napoleon shouted:” You just want to protect your titles and estates! I can replace you all with sergeants!”

Finally he was made to accept the inevitable. He had tried first to resign in favor of his three year old son and save his dynasty. The Allies were amenable to this if it represented what the French people really wanted. However certain French government officials scheming for the return of the Bourbon Kings staged street demonstrations for the old monarchy, and convinced one of Napoleon's closest friends, Marshal Marmont the Duke of Ragusa, to defect to the enemy with his entire army.

This gesture decided the allies that the French people would rather have King Louis return rather than the boy Napoleon II. Napoleon was forced to abdicate completely, and the name "Raguser" became a word for traitor like Benedict Arnold.

1860-The Pony Express system starts. Relay riders from Saint Louis across the prairies and deserts all the way to Sacramento, California. Ten days to get a letter from St. Jo to Denver. For all it's romance, it failed after just 1-1/2 years. Stagecoaches and telegraph wires soon covered the same message business much more easily.

1861- Seven days before the Civil War would begin, tensions between North and South built to the point of explosion. At Fort Sumter South Carolina a Boston ship, the R. H. Shannon, with a cargo of ice bound for Savannah put in a stop at Charleston, South Carolina. She sailed past Ft. Sumter, right in between the itchy fingered Yankee and Rebel cannons. The captain rarely read newspapers so he was completely unaware of the political situation. When he heard a warning shot, he ran up the Stars and Stripes. Suddenly cannons started to boom out all around him. Mystified, he lowered the flag, the gunfire stopped and the Shannon sailed on...

1869- First performance of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor.

1882- JESSE JAMES SHOT-The famous outlaw had been living quietly with his family under the alias Mr. Howard when he was murdered by his own gang members, his cousins Bob and William Ford. Jesse was shot in the back of the head while he was standing on a chair straightening a picture frame. His last words were: ”My, it’s awfully hot today...” He was 34. Jesse’s older brother Frank took the hint and went straight. Bob Ford went on tour giving lectures, re-enacting how he had killed Jesse. Finally in a mining camp someone blew him away with a shotgun. The last thing he heard was,” …oh, Bob….”

1897-composer Johannes Brahms died.

1920- Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald got married.

1922- JOSEF STALIN made General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In the scramble for power after the death of Lenin this move allowed him to consolidate his his hold on the top job and push out Leon Trotsky and the other top Bolsheviks like Zioniev, Kamieniev and Krupskaya. He made sure Lenin's last will and political testament was never made public.

1936-Bruno Richard Hauptmann was electrocuted for the murder of the Lindbergh baby.

1948 -THE MARSHAL PLAN signed into law by President Truman. It called for 5 billion U.S. dollars to be spent to help 16 European countries rebuild their shattered economies after World War II.

1968- In Memphis, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was supposed to give a sermon at the Temple Baptist Church, but excused himself because of his workload. Since he had openly come out against the Vietnam War, the death threats had increased and it all weighed heavily on his mind. Rev. Ralph Abernathy telephoned from the church that the crowd was disappointed Dr. King had not showed up. "Martin, they don't want to hear me. They're all here to hear you."
So Dr. King went to the church, and delivered off-the-cuff the last great speech of his life: "I have been to the Mountaintop and have Seen the Promised Land. And though I may not get there with you, it is alright…..". At one point he was startled when the wind outside caused a shutter to bang. Then he returned to the Lorraine Motel.

1968- Stanley Kubrick's epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered. The N.Y. Times review said it was: " Somewhere between hypnotic and boring". Pauline Kael called it "monumentally unimaginative!" Writer Arthur C. Clarke always said HAL the computer was not a coded reference to IBM. At the Oscars, Clarke and Kubrick lost the best screenplay award to Mel Brooks for The Producers. 2001 won only one Oscar, for visual effects. It was the only Oscar a Stanley Kubrick film ever won.

1973- Standing on the corner of 6th Ave in Manhattan, Motorola scientist Marty Cooper made the first cell phone call. He called his competitor Joel Engel at Bell Labs to tell him he had lost the race to invent the cell phone. He said that first phone, “It was the size of a leg of lamb.”

1974- Even while the Watergate Scandal continued, this day the IRS reported President Richard Nixon had been paying taxes based on an income of only $15,000 a year, when he was making at least $200,000 a year.

1975- Eccentric chess champion Bobby Fischer was stripped of his World Chess Championship for refusing to play any more matches to defend his title.

1984-THE COFFEE SHOP CONVERSION. Future President George W. Bush was a cocaine-snorting alcoholic who had been busted for drunk driving. This day he became Born-Again Christian after a meeting with an evangelist in a coffee shop.

1994-Disney chief executive Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter crash on a skiing trip. It’s been speculated that blowing snow off some high peaks caused an ice ball to be sucked into the copter’s air intake manifold. Clint Eastwood was supposed to be on that trip but couldn't make it. Billie Joel and Christie Brinkley had a similar scare with their helicopter on the same day. The death of the Disney CEO set in motion the events that would lead to Jeffrey Katzenberg leaving Disney and forming Dreamworks, as well as Michael Ovitz’s brief tenure as a mouseketeer and Michael Eisner’s eventual fall in 2006. In 1999 the Hollywood Reporter estimated that the little iceball cost the Walt Disney Company over one billion dollars.

1996- Ron Brown, the first African American to be Chairman of the Democratic Party, was killed in a plane crash near Dubrovnik, Croatia.

1999- Egypt repealed a 1904 law that said a rapist could escape prison for his crime if he married his victim!

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is the person who carries your golf clubs called a caddie?

Answer: When Mary, Queen of Scots lived in France she played the Scottish game golf and had a military cadet (pronounced ca-day) to carry her clubs. when she moved to Scotland, she apparently continued...(Thanks CS)


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