BACK to Blog Posts

May 19, 2022
May 19th, 2022

Question: What is the story of The Prodigal Son?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is the Indian city of Bombay called today?

-------------------------------------------------------------
History for May 19, 2022
Birthdays: Malcolm X- born Malcolm Little, Ho Chi Minh- born Ngyun Tat Tanth- Ho Chi Minh means the Enlightener, Giovanni Della Robbia, John Hopkins, Lord Waldorf Astor, Dame Nelly Melba, Frank Capra, Wilson Mizner, Elena Poniatowska, Jim Lehrer, Nora Ephron, Grace Jones, Peter Mahew, Nancy Kwan, Pete Townshend, Joey Ramone, Andre the Giant, Polly Walker, Tom Sito, aka me, your author.

639, Turkic nobleman Ashina Jieshesuai led an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Chinese Emperor. This led to a campaign to resettle Turkic people north of the great wall and south of the Gobi desert. It was intended as a buffer from the northern threat of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate.

988- Today is the Feast of Saint Dunstan, who pulled the Devil’s nose with hot tongs.

1535- Explorer Jacques Cartier sails from France for the New World.

1536- Anne Boleyn-King Henry VIII's second queen, was beheaded not by axe but by a French swordsman with a sort of golf-swing. The king was playing tennis at Hampton Court. He had a relay signal of cannons fired from the Tower of London so he would know the minute he was single again.

1586- Fleeing her rebellious nobles, Mary Queen of Scots crossed the border into England and threw herself upon the mercy of Queen Elizabeth, who promptly locked her up.

1635- Cardinal Richelieu confuses the religious nature of the Thirty Years War by putting Catholic France on the Protestant side. His eminence the Cardinal didn’t care a fig about religious issues, he just wanted to break the power of Catholic Spain.

1643- The separate Anglo-American colonies of Plymouth, Connecticut, New Harbor and Massachusetts Bay form an association called New England.

1649- Oliver Cromwell’s victorious Puritan Parliament declared the British Monarchy extinct. England was to be a Commonwealth. They also ordered that all families who had been for the King in the just-completed Civil War would now be taxed, assessed to one-half the value of their property, no matter how much money they earned or lost that year. This tax drove many cash poor noble families to America -The Washingtons, Lees, Randolphs, Livingstons and Madisons. Most settled in Virginia and the Carolinas, because New England had too many Puritans.
In the US Civil War many southerners called themselves the descendants of the cavaliers, and the Yankees of New England the heirs of the Puritan roundheads.

1652- An English fleet led by Blake attacked the Dutch under Admiral Van Tromp- The First Anglo-Dutch War began.

1749- King George II chartered the Ohio Company to explore the territories west of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. This act would bring English settlers into direct conflict with French settlers moving down from Canada and help bring on the French & Indian, or the Seven Years War.

1780- In New England the sky turned to total darkness at noon. No explanation.

1798- Napoleon embarks to invade Egypt, trying to cut off England's easy access to India and if possible conquering his way across Turkey and Persia to join forces with Tippoo Sahib, the Indian Sultan fighting against British rule.

1804- Napoleon designates 14 of his top generals MARSHALS of the EMPIRE. King Louis XVI had a rule that no one could become an officer in the Royal French Army without first proving nobility of birth going back at least four generations. In the British army it was perfectly natural to buy your officer commissions until the World Wars. The French Revolution changed all that. Napoleon's army functioned on the radical new principle of promoting people on merit instead of noble birth or connections. A slogan in the French army was "every drummer boy carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack."

1812- The USA declared War on Great Britain, the War of 1812- The U.S. government tired of having it's shipping harassed by the British and having ambitions of conquering Canada sent off a declaration of war.
Two weeks after their declaration of war sailed away to London, a Royal Navy vessel landed in Baltimore with concessions to most U.S. demands. Doh! John Jacob Astor, the fur exporter, warned all his Canadian subcontractors that We were about to invade them. His message got there before the American general’s orders to invade.
Napoleon, retreating from Moscow when he received the news, calculated that because the American Navy had had success against the British Navy during their Revolution they were the perfect ones to ferry his army across the Channel so he could get at England!
He didn't know that after the Revolution most of the American Navy was scrapped, and the Yankees weren't that thrilled with him anyway.

1857 -William Francis Channing & Moses G Farmer patents electric fire alarm.

1859- Sir John Franklin led a British Navy expedition to find the sea route across the top of Canada, the NorthWest Passage. Not only didn't he make it, but the National Geographic Society is still thawing out his sailors today. The route they looked for was not achieved until a Canadian ice cutter did it in 1958.

1864- The Cherry Creek Flood- wipes out what there is of a little boomtown in silver mining country called Denver.

1864- President Abe Lincoln wrote that the widows and orphans of black union soldiers should get the same death benefits that white soldiers got.

1884 - Ringling Brothers circus premiered.

1886- First performance of Camille Saint Saen's Organ Symphony #3. Saint Saen's had actually written 6 such works but hated them all but three. He liked the third symphony so much he never wrote another. Composer Charles Gounod heard the symphony and exclaimed:" There is now a French Beethoven!"

1891- Rice University founded.

1892 - Charles Brady King invented the pneumatic jackhammer- sleeping city dwellers rejoice.

1895- Patriot leader Jose Martin killed fighting for Cuban independence.

1897- Writer Oscar Wilde was released from prison after doing two years of hard labor. The experience broke his health and he never completely recovered. He did use his experiences to write his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898.

1898 - Post Office authorizes the use of postcards.

1900- The British Empire annexed the islands of Tonga- once called the Cannibal Isles. The King of Tonga realized the futility of trying to resist the European Imperialists, so he mailed his war club as a symbol of submission to Queen Victoria.

1903- In San Francisco’s exclusive University Club, Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson overheard some gentlemen discussing how the new invention the automobile was just a passing fad, and only good for short distances. On the spot Jackson wagered $50 he could drive a motorcar across the entire USA to New York City in 90 days. He set out on May 23 and despite frequent breakdowns, made it to Manhattan in 63 days. For this he was hailed as The Great Automobilist.

1921- The U.S. Congress ended the system of unchecked immigration and sets up a quota system based on nationalities. The act was heavily influenced by experts in the pseudo-science of Eugenics, then very popular. Even today the system heavily favors Europeans.

1929 - General Feng Yu-Xiang, last of the great Chinese warlords, declared war on Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang Nationalist government. After the Manchu Empire collapsed in 1912, China broke up into small states run by generals with private armies, European protectorates and Communist guerrillas. The Nationalists under Chiang slowly reunified China piece by piece until the Japanese Invasion in 1937.

1934- Mickey Mouse short cartoon Gulliver Mickey.

1935- The National Football League adopts the college draft system.

1935- T.E. Lawrence "Lawrence of Arabia" died of injuries after a high-speed motorcycle crash. The motorcycle was a gift from George Bernard Shaw. Some thought he crashed deliberately.

1940- In a closed meeting of the war cabinet, Winston Churchill said it looked like the French were losing the war to Hitler’s Nazis, so he would send no more RAF squadrons across the Channel to help. He said they needed to keep them home for the coming attacks on Britain.

1941- Battle of Amba Alagi. Britain defeated Fascist Italy in Abyssinia.

1945- Two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe, the German U-boat U-234 surfaced in the harbor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They had been sent on a long-distance trip to Japan carrying military secrets, a disassembled jet fighter, and a store of fission quality uranium.
In the mid-Atlantic, the crew heard the announcement of Hitler’s death and Germany’s surrender. An argument broke out among the crew, the captain, and two Japanese liaison officers about what to do. Barring being able to reach Tokyo, the back up plan was to go to a friendly Latin American country. But the crew had enough. Their war was over.
Their final decision was to sail to the first American port and surrender.
When docked, it was discovered the two Japanese officers were missing.
The crew shrugged, “ uh…they decided to walk home".

1956- Cecil B. de Milles film " The Ten Commandments" premiered. Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter and Edward G, Robinson.

1956- The Disney film Pollyana debuted, making a star of Haley Mills.

1958- The film,” The Attack of the 50 Ft Woman” premiered. A drive-in favorite.

1960 - DJ Alan Freed is accused of bribery in the radio payola scandal, the first scandal to hit the new world of Rock & Roll.

1962- Giant birthday party and rally held for President John F. Kennedy in New York's Madison Square Garden -his birthday was actually the following week. What made it memorable was Marilyn Monroe in a dress so tight she had to be sewn into it, singing her sexy version of the Happy Birthday song. 'Happy (exhale) Burth- Day, Mister - Prezz- a -dent (sigh), Happy, etc. "

1967- US B-52’s bomb Hanoi for the first time.

1970- Al Gore married Tipper Gore.

1987- Charles Fleming got a patent for plans for a device that can keep a severed human head alive.

1990- Amy Fisher 16, the "Long Island Lolita" shot the wife of her lover, muffler salesman Joseph Buttafuco. Mary Jo Buttafuco survived the attack and Amy went to jail. This case titillates the sensationalist media of New York City for the next three years, to the amazement of the rest of the U.S.

1991- Willy T. Ribbs became the first African American racecar driver to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.

1992- The completion bond company seized Richard Williams unfinished masterpiece Cobbler and the Thief. They had the film’s remaining sequences completed by another studio (Fred Calvert, and one sequence subcontracted to Don Bluth) and released as Arabian Nights.
A year later I asked Dick how he was doing? He replied, “Well, contrary to everyone’s best wishes, I am NOT suicidal.”

1997- Matthew Broderick married Sarah Jessica Parker.

1999- George Lucas’ much anticipated film Star Wars Episode One the Phantom Menace premiered, the first Star Wars sequel in over a decade. It was the first major film premiere to be projected digitally. Only two theaters in New York and two in Hollywood could do digital projection then. It featured Jarr Jarr Binks, a character so annoying, that web sites like www. I Want Jarr-Jarr to Die-Die.com soon racked up tens of thousands of hits.

2000- Walt Disney film Dinosaur opened.

2005- Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith premiered.

2006- Dreamwork’s animated film ‘Over the Hedge’ premiered.
============================================================
Yesterday’s question: What is the Indian city of Bombay called today?

Answer: Mumbai.


RSS