There was some news of a break in the WGA Strike today when the all the media talked about managements new offer.

But take it from an old negotiator, shipmates; when management immediately goes public with their offer, it means they know it won't be accepted so they want to loudly declare that they are trying to settle the strike and be reasonable and it's those stubborn union people who won't bend. It's part of the public relations war.

When the real bargain is struck, it will be behind closed doors and we won't hear anything about it until the deal is done. I wish everyone good luck and hope for the sake of all that the day does come soon.
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Quiz: How did the tradition of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree first get started?

Answer to yesterday’s quiz below: Why was Sam Clemens called Mark Twain?
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History for 12/1/2007
Welcome to Decembrius, month number 10 to the Romans who only had ten months in their original calendar. It’s the same Latin root as Decimate, Dime, Decimal and Dixie.

Birthdays: Woody Allen is 72, Richard Pryor, Mary Martin, Cyril Ritchard, Dick Shawn, Bette Midler is 62, Lee Trevino, Charlene Tilton, Lou Rawls, Marshal Gyorgi Zhukov, Rex Stout the creator of Nero Wolfe Mysteries, Colombian Drug Lord Pablo Escobar, Treat Williams, Carol Alt, Sarah Silverman.

Today is WORLD AIDS DAY- established by the UN in 1987. The lights on Broadway and in Washington D.C.will be dimmed tonight to mark the occasion.

1521- Pope Leo X died after getting overheated attending celebrations of the Papal defeat of French forces in Milan. He was 45. Some thought he was poisoned, but he probably caught the malarial fever prevalent in Rome at the time. Leo was one of the great art patrons of the Renaissance and spent lavishly. As soon as the Pontiff stopped breathing, Cardinals and bankers looted the Vatican treasury for all the money he borrowed from them, sending the Church into one of the worst financial crises in its’ history.

1641- THE GREAT REMONSTRANCE- Parliament sent English King Charles 1st a long list of everything that annoyed them about being his subjects. They demanded Parliament to be the supreme authority in the realm, to sit in permanent session, the right to select and dismiss royal ministers and to reform the Protestant Church of England to a more Calvinist purity. 'God's Blood ! You ask of me things one would never ask of a king !"-sayeth King Charles. This little spat would become the English Civil War by next June.

1805-THE MIDNIGHT CAMP AT AUSTERLITZ- The night before the big battle between French, Austrian and Russian armies on a cold little field in what would be the Czech Republic. Napoleon went on a midnight inspection of his troops. His tour turned into something akin to a football homecoming rally. His soldiers cheered, lit torches, sang and partied around bonfires all night. Across the hills, the enemy generals mistakenly thought all the activity meant Napoleon was breaking his camp to run away.
The secret to Napoleons’ leadership was a special bond between him and his soldiers that was unique to his time. In an world of kings and aristocrats who considered the common people scum, Napoleon walked casually among his soldiers campfire’s like an equal, stopping to share a roast potato and a dirty joke in rough soldiers language. His men considered the Little Corporal one of them, like the title Emperor was just some other military rank. He called them “My Children”. Even George Washington refused that kind of familiarity with his Minutemen. After the victory of Austerlitz the next day Napoleon personally adopted all the children of the soldiers killed in the battle and had them raised in private schools. The boys learned a trade, and the girls were provided with doweries for good marriages.

1835- Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales.

1869- A Sir William MacDougal was sent by Ottawa to take over the administration of Prince Rupertland, now called the new Canadian province of Manitoba. His problem was the whole population of French trappers, Indians and half-breeds had already declared themselves the independent Metiz Republic under their leader Louis Riel. MacDougal had to sneak across the border from the U.S. at midnight. Avoiding Metiz patrols his party stopped at an abandoned Hudson's Bay trading post where they raised the Union Jack in the darkness and MacDougal read his Royal Proclamation to an audience of seven aides and two hunting dogs. Then they crept back over the border to the U.S. to a healthy dose of razzing from Yankee cowboys. The British Army arrived next spring and established order but by then MacDougal had been recalled.

1879-Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera HMS Pinafore opened. Sullivan conducted the orchestra while Gilbert was a chorister. “So Stick to your desk and never go to sea, and you will be the leader of the Queen’s Navy..”

1887- The first Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan-Doyle "A Study in Scarlet" first published in Beatty’s Christmas Gazette.

1909- The Pennsylvania Trust Company invented the Christmas Club account.

1917- Father Flanaghan opened Boys Town west of Omaha Nebraska. A retreat for wayward boys and in 1979 girls as well.

1934- Josef Stalin's close confidant Sergei Kirov is assassinated in a Kremlin hallway by Lenoid Nikolayev. Stalin orders the GREAT PURGES of the thirties to begin. Later it came out that Stalin had ordered Kirov assassinated as an excuse. Exact figures are debatable but it is estimated millions were arrested and died. Stalin even had the wandering poor blind storytellers of the Ukraine rounded up and shot for fomenting anti-revolutionary ethnicity. Recently declassified private papers of Stalin revealed he admired Czar Ivan the Terrible and tried to learn from his example.

1938- Legendary filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein released in Moscow his film of Russian patriotism ALEXANDER NEVSKY, with soundtrack provided by Sergei Prokoviev. The ultra-nationalist film was a thinly veiled warning to Hitler's Germany not to think about invading Mother Russia.



1953- Ex- Esquire Magazine art director and frustrated cartoonist Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy Magazine. It featured a nude centerfold of actress Marilyn Monroe. She joked to the press “ I had nothing on but the radio!” Hefner assembled the layout of the magazine on his kitchen table and borrowed money from his mother-in-law to pay for the printing. The first Playboy had no number or date, because Hef was certain he couldn’t afford to make an issue number two.



1955- ROSA PARKS, a black seamstress in Montgomery Alabama, refuses to give up her seat on a crowded bus and is arrested for violating the segregation laws. She was fined $10. At the time she said she was unaware that she was breaking the law, she was actually seated in the first row reserved for Colored passengers, but since the bus was crowded the driver insisted she give up her seat for a white man. This incident and the subsequent boycott is the spark of the great Black Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's.

1963- The NASA space facility at Cape Canaveral Florida was changed to Cape Kennedy in honor of slain president John F. Kennedy. The same day the Kennedy Family moved out of the White House so Lyndon Johnson could move in. Jackie Kennedy only returned to the White House once more in her life in 1971 and on the condition that it be in secret and no press be present. She even would tell D.C. taxicabs to avoid streets where she might accidentally get a glimpse of it.

1982- Dr. Barney Clark receives the first Artificial Heart. Part of the research development was credited to Paul Winchell, puppeteer and cartoon voice who created Jerry Mahoney, Knucklehead Smith, Dick Dastardly and a plastic heart valve. At first it was hoped these plastic valves could take the place of real hearts, but today they are mostly used for temporary relief until a human donor heart can be found and will now be replaced by the newer technologies.

1990- The tunnelers digging below the English Channel from France and England break through to meet in the middle and shake hands. A tunnel under the English Channel had been a dream since Napoleon in 1802.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why was Sam Clemens called Mark Twain?

ANSWER: It was the norm in the XIX Century for writers to use pseudonyms like Artemus Ward and George Elliot. Sam Clemens took the name from his years as on the Mississippi. It was the call used to let riverboat pilots know how much water was drafting under their boats while steering through dangerous shallows. "By the mark, twain" meant there was enough water under the hull (about two fathoms) for safe passage.
There are a lot of Twain fans in our audience because I got a lot of responses. Chuck (Jones) would have been proud.