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May 28, 2022
May 28th, 2022

Quiz: In the Middle Ages, what is another word for a GardeRobe?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What do these actresses have in common? Elizabeth Montgomery, Melanie Griffith, Gwynneth Paltrow, Carrie Fisher?
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History for 5/28/2022
Birthdays: Solomon 970 BC, Noah Webster, Dr. Joseph Guillotine, William Pitt the Younger, General Pierre Beauregard, Ian Fleming, Jim Thorpe, The Dion Identical Quintuplets 1930, Gladys Knight, Jerry West, Dietrich Fisher-Deiskau, Sandra Locke, T-Bone Walker, Taffy Abel (one of the first professional hockey stars), John Fogarty is 77, Carey Mulligan is 37, Carol Baker.

585 BC- An early recorded Solar Eclipse. It struck blind people who dared to look at it, and it scared away the armies of King Cyaxerxes of Media and King Alyattes of Lydia who were about to fight a battle. Not wishing to anger the Gods any further, they immediately made peace.

20AD- Tiberius’ general Drusus celebrated a triumph over the Pannonians (Hungary).

1358- THE JACQUERIE- In the Middle Ages the oppression of the peasantry coupled with the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War reached their breaking point. Major peasant revolts began to break out all over Europe. In Italy they’re called the Ciompi, in England, Wat the Tyner’s revolt, and outbreak today in France was called the JACQUERIE (after "poor Jacques" or peasant). The outraged peasants burned manor homes and castles and massacred nobility without any real plan. To English and French knights class meant more than national feuds, so they took time out from their Hundred Years’ War to join together to chop up their uppity peasants.

1453- The night before his final assault on Constantinople, Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, addressed his troops:" I give you the capitol of the ancient Romans, the greatest city in the world! I give you her women and children, her silks and jewels. All I ask is that you leave me her buildings and monuments. I want the city for myself!" Then battalions of belly dancers danced for the men, but no sex was permitted until the battle ended.

1494- The official "birth" of Scotch - though it probably had been around much earlier, on this date, the Scottish Exchequer recorded a purchase of malt by a friar to make "aqua vitae", the first written reference to spirits in Scotland. Scottish King James IV particularly liked the stuff. Called in Gaelic “Uisge beatha”, this got corrupted by English speakers into “Whisky”

1742 - 1st public indoor swimming pool opens at Goodman's Fields, London.

1786- French explorer the Comte de Perouse became the first European to set foot on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. "The climate of Mowhee is quite delightful." He wrote. Then spending only three days there he hurried his ship on to the Northwest coast of America.

1853- THE CRIMEAN WAR BEGAN- England and the French Empire declared War on Russia over Russia’s trying to beat up Turkey and annex the Bosporus. England and Russia spent the nineteenth century in a tactical struggle for supremacy in Central Asia not unlike the Cold War the Soviet Union fought with America after World War II. The name for the Anglo-Russian duel was "the Great Game". It only heated up once, producing such artifacts as the Charge of the Light Brigade, Balaclava Helmets and Florence Nightingale. Roger Fenton also followed the army to the Crimea as the first war-photographer.

1871- THE COMMUNE OF PARIS CRUSHED- As the occupying Prussian Army looked on, the regular French army loyal to the conservative government of President Alphonse Thiers recaptured Paris from the workers-revolutionary government called the Paris Commune. In the fierce house to house fighting the Hotel Du Ville -city hall was completely destroyed, as well as the Royal Palace of the Tuileries (the open area of the Louvre in front of there the glass Pyramid is.) and the Palace of Saint Cloud.

One hundred and fifty revolutionaries were lined up against the wall in Pere Lachaise Cemetery and shot. Today the Wall of the Communards is still there, and you can see the bullet holes. In Russia young Nikolai Lenin studied the Commune and when he formed his Bolshevik Party he took as his flag the red banner of the Commune.

1892- The Sierra Club formed.

1905- Second day of the Battle of Tsushima Straights- Japanese Admiral Togo, having shot up the first half of the Russian Navy waits for the other half.... They were slowly chugging their way around the world being sent from the Black and Baltic seas to the Sea of Japan.

1928 - Dodge Brothers Automobile Inc & Chrysler Corp merged.

1929 - 1st all color talking picture, "On With the Show" exhibited (NYC).

1935- Tortilla Flat published. The first novel by John Steinbeck.

1940- Throughout World War I the tiny Belgian Army held out heroically against huge German forces. In World War II the story was different. As the Allied frontlines crumbled before the relentless Nazis armored Blitzkrieg, this day the Belgian Army surrendered unconditionally. The surrender left retreating British and French forces dangerously exposed, were it not for quick thinking divisional commander who plugged the line and enabled the escape to Dunkirk. General Bernard Law Montgomery first caught the notice of Churchill and the English high command.

1941- THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE- Labor pressures had been building in the Magic Kingdom since promises made to artists over the success of Snow White were reneged on, and Walt Disney’s lawyer Gunther Lessing encouraged a hard line with his employees. The union claimed they had a majority of employee rep-cards signed, which Walt Refused to acknowledge. On this day, in defiance of the federal Wagner Act, Walt Disney fired animator Art Babbitt, the creator of Goofy, and thirteen other cartoonists for demanding a union. Babbitt had emerged as the union movements’ leader. Studio security officers escorted him off the lot. “Would you mind if I collect my pencils?”
That night in an emergency meeting of the Cartoonists Guild at Hollywood Legion Hall, Art’s assistant Bill Hurtz, made a motion to strike, and it was unanimously accepted. Bill Hurtz will later go on to direct award-winning cartoons like UPA’s "Unicorn in the Garden". Picket lines go up next day in Hollywood animation’s own version of the Civil War.

Walt Disney nearly had a nervous breakdown over the strike, and a federal mediator was sent by Washington to arbitrate. In later years, Uncle Walt blamed the studio’s labor ills on Communists. The studio unionized completely, but the hard feelings remained for their rest of their lives.

1948- During the Israeli War of Independence the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem surrendered after a long siege by the Arab Legion. The Legion was a force organized and led by a British soldier of fortune Sir John Bagot-Glubb or Glub-Pasha. The main Jewish community was in west Jerusalem but the Holy places of the Old City were in the eastern part. Jews lost the Wailing Wall until retaken in the Six-Day War of 1967.

1954- Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 3D premiered.

1957- The National League Baseball owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants to move west to California.

1960- George Zucco 74, a character actor who specialized in horror movies like Blood from the Mummies Hand, died. One version says he died of fright in a mental hospital in San Gabriel California. He was convinced that H.P. Lovecraft's Great God Cthulu was after him. He actually died of natural causes in a nursing home.

1961- Amnesty International, a human rights organization, is founded. It was the result of an Appeal for Amnesty, written in the London Daily Observer by Peter Benennson, who read of several Portuguese students who were arrested because they were overheard in a cafe making a toast to Freedom.

1966- the It’s a Small World exhibit, which had been created for the 1964 NY Worlds Fair, reopened at Disneyland, California.

1977- George Lucas film Star Wars opened in wide release across the country.

1981- The Bambi Murders- Police hunt Playboy Bunny Bambi Bembenek for shooting her husband’s ex-wife in Milwaukee. She was captured but escaped prison in 1990.
Just follow the little stiletto high heel footprints.

1983- “What a Feeling” the theme from the film Flashdance by Irene Cara and Giorgio Moroder reached the top of the pop charts. Everyone began dancing with leg warmers and baggy sweaters torn at the neck.

1987- A young German student named Matthias Rust rented a Cessna airplane in Helsinki, and flying low to avoid radar flew right into the heart of the Soviet Union. Evading a forest of missiles, radar and anti-aircraft weapons, he landed his little plane right in the middle of Red Square at the Kremlin. The ensuing furor and humiliation cost many Russian generals their jobs.

1998- Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman was shot to death by his wife Brynne as he slept. She was a heavy drinker and pill user. At 6:00am as the LAPD were knocking Brynne turned the gun on herself. Hartman’s last role was doing the English dub of Gigi the cat in Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.

2005- The great London clock Big Ben mysteriously stopped for 45 minutes.

2005- Actress Lindsay Lohan was photographed passed out drunk in her car shortly after a court hearing for a DUI.
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Yesterday’s Question: What do these actresses have in common? Elizabeth Montgomery, Melanie Griffith, Gwynneth Paltrow, Carrie Fisher?

Answer: They are all the daughters of movie stars as well. George Montgomery, Tipi Hedren, Blythe Danner, Debbie Reynolds.


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