Question: What is a swashbuckler? A pirate?

Answer to yesterday’s question below:
What is the origin of the phrase:’ Keep the Ball Rolling.”
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History for 12/13/2007
Birthdays: Heinrich Heine, Mary Todd Lincoln, Dick Van Dyke, Mike Mosley, Darryl Zanuck Jr.,Tim Conway, Ted Nugent, Christopher Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Jamie Fox is 40, Wendy Malick

Today is the Feast of Saint Lucy, who was ordered by the Romans to be violated in a brothel, set on fire, stabbed to death and to stop men saying how beautiful her eyes were she ripped them out and handed them over on a plate. But they miraculously grew back. So Lucy is the patron saint of opticians.
St. Lucy with her extra set of eyeballs

1264-THE CREATION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS- Victorious rebel English Earl Simon de Monfort calls for a meeting in Westminster of a Parliament of all nobles, clergy and - common folk of the realm. It's probably the first time since the ancient Roman republic anybody had asked the people their opinion about anything. King Henry III and Prince Edward Longshanks couldn't argue because Simon had them locked up in the Tower. To make final sure Earl Simon ordered bishops to pronounce the most fearful oaths of excommunication and anathema on the head of anyone who dared to undo his creation. So even after Longshanks escaped and had Earl Simon chopped into mincemeat, the House of Commons remained.

1543-THE COUNCIL OF TRENT convenes- Officially called the XIX Ecunemical Council this conference launched the Catholic Counter-Reformation against the Protestant reformers. Among it's doctrinal pronouncements was to declare that the only Good Art is Realism, all attempts at stylization or mannerism was heresy. Michel Caravaggio master painter and wiseguy decided to test this law by painting a Death of the Virgin. This is a terribly touchy subject because in Catholic tradition she's always portrayed as 16 years old even though she lived to 64 and four other children by Joseph. You can imagine the furor when he did her realistically as a chubby dead old lady with a double chin and white hair, and the accompanying apostles as balding old vagrants.


1642- Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in the Pacific discovered a big island near Australia and named it for the Dutch province of Zeeland, so New Zealand. He also found another island and called it Van Deimans Land, but it was later named in his honor as Tasmania.
No devils to be seen yet.

1862-BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG- Union General Ambrose Burnside (who created the men’s fashion-"sideburns") made his men frontal attack uphill an impregnable Confederate position of concentrated fire that :" a chicken couldn't live through."
The massed regiments of bluecoats were mowed down wave after wave in one of the worst disasters in U.S. Army history. The New York Fighting 69th, the all Irish brigade, fell dead in even rows shielding their eyes from the bullets as though they were rain. They shouted “Faugh au Ballagh !” Gaelic for “Clear the Way!” They left half of their men dead on the field. In all 13,000 Yankees died to a mere handful of rebels. One rebel general, sickened by the stupidity of it all, said: "This ain't war, it's just plain murder." After the defeat, Burnside rode past some of his men, a kissass major tried shouting :"Three cheers for the General!" and was met with stony silence. When the Yankees defeated the rebels at Gettysburg a year later they shouted "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!' in revenge at the retreating greybacks.

1872- Wild Bill Hickok was fired as sheriff of Abilene Kansas because he was more violent and out of control than most of the men he arrested.

1895- Gustav Mahlers 2nd Symphony “Resurrection” premiered.

1928- Leopold Damrosch conducted the premiere of George Gershwin's -"An American in Paris."

1936- At the urging of New Yorker editor Harold Ross to find a better line of work, actor Dave Chasen opened Chasen's restaurant in Beverly Hills, which catered to Hollywood stars for 60 years. It is the restaurant where Leopold Stokowski was introduced to Walt Disney and as a result they conceived "Fantasia". Humphrey Bogart, John Huston and Lauren Bacall met upstairs to discuss the Blacklist of 1947. Elizabeth Taylor ordered Chasen’s chili flown out to Rome so she could eat it on the set of Cleopatra. The restaurant closed in 1995 because the Chasen family wanted to cash in on the real estate. Today it’s a supermarket.

1937- THE RAPE OF NANKING- The Japanese army captured the then Nationalist capitol of China. The Japanese generals let their soldiers run amok for three weeks, raping and murdering civilians by the thousands. .Japanese who refused to kill the innocent were punished by their officers. Typical was two officers who held a contest to see who could behead more Chinese with their samurai swords. The winner killed 106 and the contest was reported in newspapers as a sporting event. They also executed most of the Chinese soldiers who had surrendered. When the commanding General Matsui returned from convalescent leave he was horrified and ordered a stop. That got him recalled home in disgrace. The unprecedented brutality shocked the world, remember the full horrors of World War Two were still years in the future. Even today an lack of official Japanese apology for this event remains a major sore point in relations between Japan and her Asian neighbors.

1937-THE GOOD NAZI- During the Rape of Nanking, in an ironic twist, the women and children of the foreign delegations were protected from the rampaging Japanese soldiers by German businessman Johann Robbe, who guarded the door in his Nazi party uniform and swastika armband. He took in desperate Chinese and saved thousands. Robbe had lived his entire life in China so when it was suggested to him, he joined the Nazi party not knowing anything about it. Robbe went home to Berlin and tried lodge a complaint with Adolf Hitler. The Gestapo visited him and threatened him with arrest if he didn’t shut up. Then after World War Two Johan Robbe was arrested by Allied authorities for being a Nazi! By 1947 he and his family were reduced to eating soup from nettles and grass to survive. Then a huge package was delivered of food and money. It was a subscription from the People of Nanking, to express their thanks for his humanity.

1940- Fleischer Popeye cartoon "Eugene the Jeep" .The Thimble Theater character would give its name to the new army General Purpose vehicle- G.P. or "Jeep".

1942- In the rubble choked streets of Stalingrad Russian sniper Tanya Chernova was making her way near Nazi headquarters with instructions to kill the German commander Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus. But on the way a comrade stepped on a mine and the explosion tore through her abdomen. She survived but her participation in the war was over. An attractive blonde former ballerina, she began the war as a guerrilla in the Ukraine and was trained by supersniper Vasily Zaistzev. She called the Germans she had killed “broken sticks” because she refused to acknowledge their humanity. By the time this explosion ended her military career Tanya Chernova had 80 broken sticks to her record. She was 20 years old.

1951- One of the legendary Hollywood producers was Walter Wanger- starting in 1921 his films included The Sheik, Stagecoach, Queen Christina, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Silk Stockings and Cleopatra. His wife was beautiful starlet Joan Bennett, but at this time she had taken a lover. On this day Wanger surprised Hollywood by pulling out a gun and shooting his wife's lover in the nuts right in the MCA studio parking lot. In true Hollywood fashion Wanger got off, sentenced to just a few months in an honor ranchero compound and was soon back to work. Contributors to pay his legal fees included the Jack Warner, Walt Disney and Sam Goldwyn. The boyfriend, Jennings Lang, recovered and later became an executive producer of comedies like House Calls. After all, who needs balls to be a producer?

1961- Jimmy Dean’s folk ballad Big Bad John went to #1 of the country charts. Later Dean had his own TV variety show with the Muppets and started Jimmy Dean’s Pure Pork Sausage Company.

1968- Arlo Guthrie’s hit song Alice’s Restaurant released.

2002-Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in digrace. The Primate of Boston, the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States. Cardinal Law had spent years covering for priests who molested children given them by trusting parents. He even protected a priest who’s name was openly registered in the Man-Boy Love Society. Law was the highest ranking Catholic to step down from popular pressure. Modern republics regard power as coming from the people. Historically the Catholic Church regards itself above the complaints of the flock, that they are answerable to God alone. So this was pretty unusual. In the past the traditional way to get rid of Cardinals was to drag them out of their castles and chop their heads off like the Archbishop Laud of England in 1641.

2003-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was pulled out of a hiding hole and captured by U.S. forces near his hometown of Tikrit.
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Yesterday’s question: What is the origin of the phrase:’ Keep the Ball Rolling.”

Answer: In early American political campaigns like the one in 1840 between Martin Van Beuren and William Henry Harrison, one gimmick in a rally was to create a large ten foot tall tin and leather ball covered with the candidates images and slogans. As it was rolled from small town to town sometimes hundreds of miles, local party partisans were exhorted to run up and help“ keep the ball rolling!”