Quiz: Who was Ferd Grofe’?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean to “gin up the crowd”?
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History for 1/6/2023
Birthdays: St. Joan of Arc, Khalil Gibran, mountain man Jedediah Smith, Tom Mix, Alexander Scriabin, Gustav Dore', Loretta Young, Earl Skruggs. Carl Sandburg, Danny Thomas, Nancy Lopez, Alan Watts, John Singleton, Anthony Minghella, Rowan Atkinson is 68

Happy Feast of Epiphany or Twelfth Night. Today is the end of the twelve days of Christmas when the Magi, the Three Wise Men, or the three kings- Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, visited the Holy Family. In some countries the Three Kings, not Christmas, is when children get their presents, because that’s when Jesus got his.
The Magi were the priestly caste of ancient Persia. They were believed to predate the Persians and come from the Chaldeans, the people who invented the western branch of the science of astronomy. A lot of the Magi ritual concerned observation of the stars.

1066- After the death of Edward the Confessor, Saxon Earl Harold Godwinsson crowned himself King of England, which made Duke William of Normandy reach for his sword.

1522- The Augustinian Monastery of Wittenburg had been the home of reformer Martin Luther. Today, inspired by Luther’s preaching against the Vatican, the monks and nuns voted to disband themselves, move in together and start humping like bunnies. Martin Luther had go back to order them to calm down and get married.

1558- English Queen Mary Tudor had been talked by her proxy husband Phillip II into declaring war on France. The war went well for Spain, but this day the French recaptured Calais, the last English stronghold on the continent, which had been English for 211 years. Over the main gate of Calais was a stone relief of a donkey that bore the inscription “Calais shall be English until this Donkey eats straw!”

1759- George Washington and Martha Custis married. Washington first loved another woman named Sally Fairfax, who refused him. She married a prominent English loyalist plantation owner. They fled to Europe when the Revolution began and never returned. When George married Martha she was a very rich widow, but beyond childbearing years.
This might have been a factor in Washington's decision later not to be King of America, for he would have no direct heirs. Imagine the complications in the young democracy trying to establish this concept of an elective President if there was a George Washington Jr. to contend with? In later years when Washington wanted to be alone, he would ride over to the ruins of the Fairfax Mansion to think.

1842- THE RETREAT FROM KABUL - This day, 15,000 British troops and their dependants march out of Kabul, Afghanistan on the road to Jalalabad. They were attacked by Afghan Ghilzais tribesmen all along the route through the Khyber Pass. Only one man survived, surgeon William Brydon, only because he got lost along the way.

1849- the first cartoon cover of Punch Magazine.

1853- President-elect Franklin Pierce and his family are involved in a train wreck in Concord Mass. Pierce and the first lady survived, but their last surviving child Ben was killed. First Lady Jean Pierce took this as a sign that God was punishing them for wanting the Presidency, and she morosely withdrew from society. Franklin Pierce himself spent most of his administration drunk, or on his knees singing psalms.

1872- Millionaire robber-baron Big Jim Fisk was shot dead by Ned Stokes, his rival for the affections of beautiful actress Josie Mansfield. Fisk once conned President Grant into a business partnership while he tried to corner the gold bullion market.

1912- New Mexico became a state.

1912- Scientist Alfred Wegener presented his paper to the German Geological Society in Frankfurt. In it he theorized that the Earth’s continents are not fixed in place but moving. He named it Continental Drift. Wegener’s theories were all dismissed as cuckoo until after WWII, when submarines charting the ocean floor discovered the tectonic plates. Today it is understood that the continents move at the speed with which you grow a fingernail. About 6 feet a century.

1919- Teddy Roosevelt died peacefully in his sleep at Oyster Bay N.Y. at 60. He was never expected to survive childhood asthma, was wounded in Spanish American War, thrown 40 feet in a streetcar wreck, got a dangerous leg abscess while on safari, almost died of malaria in the Amazon, and was shot by an assassin while giving a political speech, which he finished anyway. His daughter Alice said: " The problem with father is at every wedding he wants to be the bride and at every funeral the corpse."

1919- In the social anarchy after the defeat in World War I, German Communists storm the Chancellery in Berlin and try to set up a Bolshevik style Revolution. They are driven out by right wing mobs and more chaos reigns in the streets.

1945- First Pepe Le Pew cartoon, "Odorable Kitty". When Eddie Selzer, the Warners producer who replaced Leon Schlesinger, heard the plans to do a short about a skunk he thundered: "Absolutely Not! Nobody will go see a cartoon skunk!" Chuck Jones recalled: "As soon as he said no, I knew we just had to do it." Selzer's final opinion:" Nobody'll laugh at that sh*t!" Pepe went on to become one of Warners most beloved characters.

1945- Navy Lt. George H. W. Bush married Barbara Pierce. Despite Barbara’s mother’s opinion of Bush “Singularly Unimpressive”, Poppy Bush made Barbara First Lady, and the mother of another president.

1949- Composer Leonard Bernstein noted in his diary that “JR (Jerome Robbins) called today with a novel idea- a modern version of Romeo and Juliet set in the slums.” At first the musical was going to be called East Side Story, then GangWay, finally West Side Story.

1956- Prince Rainier of Monaco announced his engagement to movie star Grace Kelly.

1962- Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent. This was the animated version of his popular puppet show.“So Long Kids, Wind Up Your Lids, We’ll look for You Real Soooooon.”

1975-“Ease on Down the Road.-“ The musical The Wiz premiered on Broadway.

1993- Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev, the most famous male dancer since Nijinsky, died of HIV/AIDS.

1994- “WHY ME, WHY ME?” Shortly after a practice in a Detroit skating rink, Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by a man trying to break her knees with a steel pipe. The man Derrick Smith later confessed to the FBI that he was paid $6,500 to do the deed by Jeff Gilhooly, the manager and ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival Tonya Harding. After all the intense media coverage Nancy Kerrigan won one Silver medal, Tonya Harding nothing and the Olympic Gold went to Ukrainian Oksana Baiul, who was later busted for drunk driving.

1995- In another great step for low journalism, CBS anchor Connie Chung gets Kathleen Gingrich, the mother of Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, to call First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton a “bitch”. In an earlier time such gutter utterances would have been politely edited, but this was given national prominence.

1996- In Gaza, Hamas leader Yahya Ayyash, called the Engineer, dialed his cellphone and it blew his head off. It was a remote control bomb set by the Israeli Mossad. 100,000 Palestinians attended Ayyash’s funeral.

2017- In a meeting with the FBI, President-elect Donald Trump was shown top secret evidence that the 2016 US elections were compromised by Russian intelligence. He ignored it and spent the next few years lying about ever knowing anything about it.

2021-THE CRYBABY COUP. Donald Trump knew he lost re-election, but he refused to concede. Using rightwing social media, he organized and unleashed a mob of 126,000 fanatical supporters ginned up on unfounded lies about voter fraud. This day they attacked the U.S. Capitol. Pipe bombs were planted in key positions around Washington and similar smaller violent demonstrations broke out in several state capitols. Trump was prevented by the Secret Service from joining the rioters himself. He wanted metal detectors removed because his knew his fans were bringing weapons like guns and grenades. Protection for the national capitol was deliberately kept to just a few capitol police. Despite pleas for help, the National Guard was withheld for four hours, no reason given. Congressmen, many senior citizens, and Vice President Pence had to run for their lives. Capitol Policeman Eugene Goodman successfully distracted the mob just 30 feet from fleeing senators. 6 people were killed, 80 injured, and millions wasted in the worse destruction to the U.S. Capitol since the British invasion over 200 year ago. It took President Trump over three hours to issue a statement. Even his daughter Ivanka begged him to call them off. He finally told his followers to “Go home. We love you. You are Beautiful.” Vice President Pence and Congresspeople reconvened at 2:00AM and certified the election anyway.

2022- On the one year anniversary of the Capitol Hill Insurrection, a federal judge turned down the request of convicted rioter Anthony Williams for ten days off to meet his fiancé’s family vacationing in Jamaica.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to “gin up the crowd”?

Answer: In the XIX Century the British Army would pass out cups of gin to their troops just before a battle. It was to calm their nerves and get them “up” for the conflict. Since then to gin up someone is to artificially fill them with false passions.