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April 21, 2023
April 21st, 2023

Quiz: What is a pom-pom gun?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was the first digitally projected movie to win the Best Picture Oscar?
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History for 4/21/2023
Birthdays: Queen Elizabeth II, Edwin S. Porter, Charlotte Bronte', John Muir, Freiderich Froebel the inventor of kindergarten-1782, Anthony Quinn, Patti Lupone, Charles Grodin, Anna Magnani, Andie MacDowell is 64, Tony Danza, Elaine May, Iggy Pop is 76, James McAvoy is 44, Rob Riggle is 53

Happy Palilia- Roman festival of the rustic god "Pales" for whom the Palatine Hill in Rome was named.

43BC- Battle of Mutina (Modena), One year after the assassination of Julius Caesar, his heirs’ squabbled. Legions sent by Octavian defeated Mark Anthony and drove him into the mountains. Ten years later, Octavian defeated Anthony for good at Actium.

1526- The First Battle of Panipat. Mogul Emperor Baibur defeated the Indian army of Ibrahim Lodi and captured Delhi. This established the Moghul Empire in India. Babur’s army fought with Mongol bows, elephants, and cannon.

1831- NAT TURNER'S REBELLION- The most serious slave revolt in the South before the Civil War. Using an eclipse as a sign from heaven, Turner and 75 other slaves turned on their masters, and went on a rampage through Virginia. It took 3,000 troops to crush them. Turner was taken and hanged, defiant to the end. Nat Turner’s Rebellion hardened opinions of both pro and anti-slavery groups in the U.S. and accelerated the slide towards civil war.

1836- BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO-. After chasing Sam Houston’s men across Texas almost to the Louisiana border, General Santa Anna thought so little of these rag-tag gringo rebels that he no longer bothered to post sentries. When the Texans attacked at 1:00PM, most of the Mexican army was having an afternoon siesta. General Santa Anna was bedded down with his mistress he called his Yellow Rose, the origin of the song Yellow Rose of Texas.
Suddenly Houston's wild frontiersmen, filled with rage over the massacres of the Alamo and Goliad, rushed into the Mexican camp and routed them. After the battle Houston couldn't restrain the Texans from killing running fugitives, and even scalping some. Santa Anna was captured and forced to sign a peace.

1847- The 4th rescue team removed the last survivors of the Donner Party wagon train from their snowed in camp on Lake Truckee in the Sierras down to the settlement on the Sacramento River. A furious winter trapped the Donners in the mountains last Oct 31st with almost no food. Of 86 pioneers 41 died and the others ate their corpses to survive. Louis Kesesburg, the only settler who spoke openly of eating human flesh and was called a ghoul, moved to Sacramento and opened a restaurant.

1865- UNCLE BILLY’S POLITICAL LESSON. In North Carolina, General William T. Sherman had offered Confederate Joe Johnston’s army the same terms for surrender that Grant had given Robert E Lee. But Johnston handed Sherman new terms rewritten by crafty Confederate President Jefferson Davis. It asked for political and property amnesty for all Confederate leaders; that the US Government would leave all Southern state officials at their posts.
This went much further than one army surrendering to another, it was in effect a deal that no one would be punished for the Civil War. But Sherman didn’t seem to see the fine print. He thought that was what Abe Lincoln had wanted before he was killed. So, he signed it and passed it on to Washington.
When new President Andrew Johnson and General Grant read the terms, they were thunderstruck. They ordered Sherman to tear that treaty up and offer nothing but unconditional surrender. Hotheaded Secretary of War Stanton denounced Sherman in the newspapers as a traitor. Sherman the Hero of Atlanta was furious at being made a fool of. He resolved the rest of his life to have nothing more to do with politics, which is probably why we never had a President William T. Sherman.

1865- President Lincoln’s funeral train left Washington DC for the long trip back to Springfield Ill.

1911- LENIN WANTS A LIBRARY CARD. Russian communist revolutionary Nikolai Lenin was living secretly in exile in London. In a letter dated this day he applied to the British Museum Library collection to study its documents. His letter was in perfect English and he signed his name as Jacob Richter.

1910- Mark Twain died of congenital heart failure at 75 as Haley's comet appeared overhead. He once wrote: " When arriving in Heaven feel free to ask all the questions you want of Saint Peter. You may ask for his autograph, however don’t take any Kodak photos or bring your dog. Admittance to Heaven is based on favor, not merit, else the dog would be allowed to go in and you kept out."

1918- THE RED BARON SHOT DOWN- In the air duels above the World War I trenches, Baron Manfred Von Richthofen was the best. The Red Baron had shot down more planes than anyone -80 confirmed kills. (two more claimed but unconfirmed)
On this day, von Richthofen got onto the tail of a plane and was about to add #81, when Canadian Roy Brown got behind him and filled the back of his plane with machine gun bullets. Other experts claim The Red Baron was hit by Australian ground fire. Mortally wounded, von Richthofen still managed to land his red Fokker triplane before slumping over dead. Manfred von Richthofen was 26. Soldiers tore the plane to pieces for souvenirs.
Capt. Roy Brown later wrote of seeing the body of his enemy.
. “…the sight of Richthofen as I walked closer gave me a start. He appeared so small to me, so delicate. He looked so friendly. Blond, silk-soft hair, like that of a child, Suddenly I felt miserable, desperately unhappy, as if I had committed an injustice. I could no longer look him in the face. I went away. I did not feel like a victor. There was a lump in my throat. If he had been my dearest friend, I could not have felt greater sorrow.”
Roy Brown left the service after the war and became an accountant. He died of a heart attack in 1944.

1921- The Coconut Grove nightclub opened in Hollywood.

1933- The Nazis ban kosher meat processing in Germany.

1938- Disney animator Bill Tytla married artists model Adrienne LeClerc.

1944- During WWII, the French Committee of National Liberation (in exile in London) voted to give the women of France the right to vote. The first election French women could vote in would be the following Spring, after the liberation.

1948- HAIFA- As the British occupying troops were being withdrawn from Palestine’s second largest city, they had given up trying to keep Arabs and Jews from fighting. This day the British commander of Haifa informed city leaders that he was withdrawing his garrison. The British commander wagered a friend a bottle of whisky that neither side would have control of Haifa for weeks. The Jewish militia the Hagannah secured control of the city in 48 hours. The Arab population began a mass evacuation of the city,

1960- Brazil moved its capital from Rio De Janiero to Brasilia, a modern architects fantasy built in the middle of the jungle.

1961- Two British teenage rock bands meet each other for the first time- The Beatles met the Rolling Stones. They partied together often, and wrote songs for each other.

1964- British TV viewers double their pleasure- BBC 2 goes on the air. Their first program is Play School.

1973- The pop song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn became a number one hit on the US, Canadian and UK pop charts. The song spawned the custom of a yellow ribbon as a symbol of remembering a soldier overseas, which reached its’ peak during the Iran Hostage Crisis. That in turn spawned variations like the red AIDS ribbon, the pink breast cancer ribbon, and so on.

1975- As North Vietnamese armies roll towards his capitol, South Vietnamese President Nygun Van Thieu resigned and went into exile. The Roman Catholic French-educated Thieu tearfully blamed America for the defeat. Vice President Nygun Kao Key moved to Orange County Cal with much of the exile community.

1986- Reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted a live primetime TV special in an old Chicago Hotel that was once a headquarters for gangster Al Capone. Called THE MYSTERY OF AL CAPONE’S SECRET VAULT. After wasting two hours speculating on discovering buried treasure or mobster skeletons, they broke into a room, sealed since 1932. All they found were some old dusty bottles, trash and a few dollar bills.

1989- Oil executive George W. Bush became part of an ownership consortium that bought the last place baseball team the Texas Rangers." As soon as I knew they were for sale I went after them like a pit bull on a pants leg…. It doesn’t get much better than this…"

1997-The first Intergalactic Funeral. The ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960's LSD guru Dr. Timothy Leary were shot into space.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was the first digitally projected movie to win the Best Picture Oscar?

Answer: Slumdog Millionaire 2007. George Lucas had advocating digital replace celluloid as early as 1997. He shot Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace digitally in 1999. But many theaters resisted the expensive retooling cots. Slumdog’s success helped accelerate the change. By 2013, 93% of movie theaters had converted to digital projection.


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