Question: Where is Tuvalu?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who coined the phrase, “ Tell it to the Marines!”
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History for 12/10/2023
Birthdays: English King Edward VII, Emile Dickinson, Ada Lovelace, E. H. Shepard the illustrator of Winnie the Pooh. Chet Huntley, Morton Gould, Victor McLaughlin, Dan Blocker, Tommy Kirk, Fionnula Flanagan, Kenneth Branaugh is 62, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey is 70, Michael Clarke Duncan

Happy World Freedom Day.

969AD- Byzantine Emperor Nicephorous II Phocas had no better administrator than John Tzimisces. But John was also the lover of Nicephorous’s wife Empress Theophano. This day she had Nicephorous assassinated. Theophano had earlier poisoned her own father-in-law Emperor Romanus II to help Nicephorous seize the throne. But now she was bored with him. To please the angry Greek Patriarch, John Tzmisces exiled Theophano to a convent and reigned as a pretty good emperor. But then he too was poisoned, by Basil II the Bulgar Slayer. Believe it or not, this was a happy period in Byzantine history.

1041- Byzantine Michael IV the Paphlagonian died. Before his death he had his sickbed moved to the Monastery of Saint Demetrios and changed his golden robes for monks rags.

1198-The death of the Moorish philosopher Averroes.

1508- Pope Julius II formed a grand alliance to crush the Republic of Venice. Called the League of Cambrai, the Vatican, France, The German Emperor, Spain and Naples all pledged to destroy the Most Surene Republic. The Venetians fought back valiantly, noblewomen patriotically pawning their jewels to pay the troops. After being attacked on all sides for 4 years, the League of Cambrai finally broke up when Pope Julius decided he’s rather have fellow Italians for neighbors rather than foreigners after all. The Republic of Venice survived, but her status as a world power was broken. She lapsed into an elegant, pleasure-loving decline until absorbed into Italy by Napoleon in 1796. They pioneered a new idea called tourism. That people would visit a place not to conquer it, or pray at shrines, but just to relax.

1513- Former Florentine politician Niccolo Machiavelli was living in a small town after being kicked out of government. He was even twisted a bit on a torture rack. Still missing his life in power, he declared this day to a friend he was writing a book on political theory to give to the Medici duke of Florence. He hoped by doing so he’d be called back to office. He also tried to dedicate it to Cesare Borgia. It didn’t get him a job, but his book THE PRINCE became one of the great works of political philosophy, the handbook of unscrupulous politicians ever since.

1518- Ulrich Zwingli was chosen to be the Gross Munster or chief vicar of the Swiss city of Zurich. Zwingli became a top leader of the Protestant Reformation like Martin Luther and John Calvin.

1520- Protestant reformer Martin Luther shows the Pope what he thinks of his Bull of Excommunication on him by burning it in public. Pope Leo’s command Exurge Domine went up in smoke along with the Canons of Roman Church Law to the cheers of students.

1577- The Union of Brussels- The 17 provinces of the Netherlands and Belgium formalized their union. This is why Holland is also known as the United Provinces.

1607- Captain John Smith left the Jamestown camp with two men to find food. They were captured by the Indians who killed the other men and dragged Smith before chief Powhatan. He ordered Smith’s head to be placed on a flat stone and bashed in with a war club. But Powhatan’s favorite daughter Pocahontas threw herself over Smith and protected him. Smith could speak no Algonquin and the Indians no English and neither could sing any Broadway tunes. Was this an execution prevented or a ritual of admission into the tribe? Powhatan was known to extend his rule through dynastic alliances with other tribal leaders, and he was well aware of the white strangers, wiping out a Spanish attempt to land on his beach in 1600. Maybe this was his way of wanting to bring the white man’s powers to his side.
No one knows for sure. John Smith is the only source for the story, and he didn’t write of this incident until back in England 14 years later.

1641- King Charles I issued a Royal Declaration ordering all Britons to conform to the practices of the Church of England, or else! The Declaration was King Charles’ defiant answer to a list of demands called the Great Remonstrance given him ten days earlier that accused him of undermining the Protestant faith. This was a poke at all the Puritans, Pilgrims, Levellers, Anabaptists who were complaining that the Anglican Church had gotten too Catholic-looking in its rituals.
Indeed, at the insistence of monarchs since Elizabeth, the reformed English service had re-introduced crucifixes, communion plate and surplice aprons for the priests. The declaration was one more provocation building the conflict that would soon break out as the English Civil War. When violence broke out the Puritans dragged out the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Laud and chopped his head off. Laud was seen as the instigator of this declaration and the Kings policy on religion and was branded as Laudism.

1672- New York colonies Royal Governor Sir Thomas Lovelace announced the establishment of a regular monthly mail delivery between New York and Boston.

1800- Congress debated a bill to build a mausoleum for George Washington to be placed in the center of the Congress. But Martha Washington cut off such efforts by citing George’s specific instructions that his remains are not turned into some kind of national shrine. He insisted on and still sleeps in his simple family tomb at Mt. Vernon.

1710-Battle of Villaviciosa- Phillip V of Spain defeated an Anglo-Portuguese invasion and assured the throne for the Bourbon family. His descendants are still on the throne today.

1817- Mississippi statehood.

1839- THE GREAT GAME- A large British army left India to invade Afghanistan. The 15,000 troops carried with them 38,000 camp followers, including camels laden with raspberry jam, cigars, cricket bats and fox hunting dogs. One British officer alone brought sixty servants. The British claimed they were invading to contain Russian expansionism. The duel between Britain and Russia for the Indian Northwest that lasted until 1947 was nicknamed The Great Game. By 1841 this army would all die in the terrible Retreat from Kabul and its sole survivor would be a doctor who got lost. The British officer who coined the term the Great Game was beheaded by the Emir of Bokhara and thrown into a pit of reptiles.

1864- Sherman’s army reached the sea at the Georgia coast near Savannah.

1877- Siege of Plevna ends. Russia and Austria force Turkey to grant independence to Serbia and Bosnia. Austria’s later efforts to swallow up Bosnia became the issue that sparked World War I.

1869- Wyoming Territory granted women the vote. The nation follows 58 years later (California in 1911).

1898- Spain and the U.S. make peace ending the Spanish American War. Secretary of State John Hay who was once Abe Lincoln’s secretary called it “A Splendid Little War.” Critics Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce called it the Yanko-Spanko War. The United States became a global power player with colonies in Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, Midway, Wake, and the Philippines.
The Filipinos, who were fighting for independence under their leaders like Aquinaldo, suddenly discover they were now American property. The U.S. declared they fought for their freedom from Spain yet never officially recognized their national independence movements. The Philippines gained its full independence in 1946 and the last American base, Subic Bay, wasn’t removed until the 1990s.

1899- Battle of Magersfontein (more Boer-Woer). Our post-Apartheid opinion of white South Africans was not very high, but in 1899 most of Europe and America sympathized with their fight against the awesome might of the British Empire. The Queen of Holland begged the German Kaiser to help them (the Boers were ethnically Dutch-German). Crowds in Paris and Brussels would jeer and boo at the visiting Prince of Wales with the cry "Vive les Boers!"

1901- The First Nobel Prize is given. Alfred Nobel made millions by inventing dynamite and nitroglycerine. But as much as his discoveries were used for constructive purposes, they also made it possible for armies to kill each other much more efficiently. He felt guilty and after an accident with the stuff killed his own brother, He resolved to create something positive from his fortune. Hence the Nobel Prize. Alfred Nobel died on Dec 10th, 1896, and the awards are given each year on the anniversary. President Teddy Roosevelt won the first Peace Prize in 1910 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. President Obama was the third U.S. President to receive the Peace Prize.

1905- O. Henry’s short story “A gift from the Magi” first published.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt in a ceremony in the White House.

1938- To make the film "Gone With the Wind" Producer David Selznick and director Victor Fleming shot the massive "Burning of Atlanta" in Culver City, California. The sequence was storyboarded and designed by William Cameron-Menzies, who designed the sets for Intolerance for D.W. Griffith. Selznick used the opportunity to clean the studios backlot storage, burning sets from King Kong, Little Lord Fauntleroy and Last of the Mohicans in the inferno. They shot the scenes with three Rhett Butler stand-ins.

1941-The Hollywood Victory Committee formed. Top Hollywood agents like Abe Lastfogel, Lou Wasserman and Myron Selznick (David's brother) start signing up movie stars for bond drives and touring shows for the troops.
The committee later created the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen on Ivar near Sunset. A soldier or sailor could come in for a free meal served by Tyrone Power or Red Skelton and have a dance with celebrities like Rita Hayworth or Dina Shore. Walt Disney cartoonists painted the murals decorating the walls. The Hollywood Canteen was also the only completely integrated night club in LA then.
One animation painter who worked in the kitchen told me the only celebrity who would stay until closing, even mopping up, and washing dishes was Marlena Dietrich. While Janey Gaynor and Rhonda Fleming were working in the kitchen, Bette Davis would burst in and announce, “ Okay you Haus-Fraus! We need some glamour out front!”

1941-Japanese planes sank the battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in just 90 minutes. The prized British battleships had participated in the sinking of the German dreadnought Bismarck in the Atlantic a year earlier but had been transferred to the Pacific to boost the defenses of Singapore. The next day a lone Japanese plane dropped a wreath at the site of the sinking in tribute to the 884 British sailors who died there.

1941- A Japanese Army of 4,000 under General Homma landed on the Philippine Islands at Luzon and Vigan while a third force overran the U.S. outpost on Guam.

1941- The New York Metropolitan Opera announced that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack they were suspending any further performances of Madame Butterfly for the duration. Other opera companies also stopped doing Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

1942- OPERATION WINTERSTORM- General Von Manstein was ordered by Hitler to swing his panzers north and attempt to break through the Russian forces encircling the trapped German 6th Army at Stalingrad. But Von Manstein’s rescue mission was halted by Russian resistance and wintery conditions just 30 miles short of their goal. The 6th Army surrendered in February.

1948- The United Nations adopts Article XIX, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The committee, spending months drafting the resolution, was chaired by the Eleanor Roosevelt. By this act she debuted not just as a former first lady and widow of FDR but as a stateswoman and diplomat in her own right.

1949- After being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces, Kuomintang (KMT) Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek flew to Taiwan. Two and a half million ethnic Han Chinese evacuated to the island of Formosa-Taiwan, which continues today to call itself the ROC- The Republic of China. This ended the Chinese Civil War. Since 1924 China suffered 2 million deaths in its first civil war, 20 million in the Japanese invasion and World War II, and 5 million more killed in the final civil war.

1962- Happy Birthday Iron Man. The character Iron Man first appeared in the Marvel comic Tales of Suspense.

1966- The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” hit #1 in pop charts.

1967- R&B star Otis Redding and four of his band the Bar Kays were killed in a small plane crash near Madison Wisconsin. He was 26. Redding had recorded his hit “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” just three days earlier.

1969- Disney’s It’s Tough to be a Bird opened in theaters. Directed by Ward Kimball.

1974- Powerful Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Congressman Wilbur Mills resigned in disgrace after being busted by the DC police for getting drunk with a stripper named Fannie Fox and taking her for a 2:00 AM skinny dip in the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial. Fannie was later christened the “Tidal Basin Bombshell.”

1978- The world premiere of Richard Donner’s Superman, The Movie. The incomparable Christopher Reeve with Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman.

1994- The Unabomber sent an explosive device that killed Thomas J. Mosser, an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam who handled the public relations spin for Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster.

2013- Richard Williams unfinished epic animated film the Thief and the Cobbler: A moment in Time, received its premiere at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. It was begun 40 years earlier in 1972 and never completed.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who coined the phrase, “Tell it to the Marines!”

Answer: President Franklin Roosevelt said it in a speech shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack. “ Axis radio has declared that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight…. we have been described as a nation of weaklings... Well, tell that to General MacArthur and his men. Let them tell that to the sailors who today are hitting hard in the far waters of the Pacific….Tell that to the Marines!"[12]He may have got it from an humorous 1824 English novel, but after he said it, “Tell it to the Marines” became a popular slogan.