Quiz: In literature, who was Rodion Raskolnikov?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What was Beetlejuice before it was a popular Tim Burton movie?
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History for 12/17/2023
Birthdays: Paracelsus (otherwise known as Nicholas Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim) the father of modern medical diagnosis, Antonio Cimmarosa, William Lyon Mackensie-King, Arthur Fiedler, Bob Guccione, William Safire, Cal Ripken Sr., Ford Maddox-Ford, Erskine Caldwell, Tommy Steele, Pope Francis I, Bill Pullman is 70, Eugene Levy is 77, Giovanni Ribisi is 49, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Wes Studi is 76, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mila Jovovich is 49, Bart Simpson is 34.

ROMAN FESTIVAL OF SATURNALIA- Today was the first day of the festival of Saturn, the biggest holiday to the ancient Romans, one of the roots of Christmas. On this holiday no business was conducted, Roman families ate together, masters served their slaves, and gave them a day off. People gave each other gifts in pretty colored wrappings. Romans also decorated the outsides of their houses with wreaths and lights (oil lamps). Christians began using the Saturnalia as the birth festival of Jesus as early as 335AD. It was made official by the Pope in 885 AD. So, at sunset, face towards the setting sun and shout "Io, Io, Saturnalia!", for Hail Saturn!

1596- In a warning of what his son Charles I would face in England, this day Scottish King James VI was chased out of Edinburgh by his pushy Presbyterian Parliament. James responded with an economic blockade of his capitol by withholding royal grants and contracts until by New Years the populace was clamoring for his return.

1777- VALLEY FORGE- When Lord Howe’s British Army called the Christmas Truce and beds down in Philadelphia, George Washington’s army made camp not too far away at Valley Forge. The severe winter and poor conditions made Washington’s Army lose as many men as if there had been a battle. 2,500 out of 10,000 minutemen did not survive to see Spring. Meanwhile the local farmers sold their harvest to the British, who paid better.

1793 -Battle of Toulon begins. The French Revolutionary army tried to retake the Mediterranean seaport whose royalist population had invited in an occupation fleet of English, Spanish and Piedmontese. The commanding French generals were nervous about failure, because to first magistrate Robespierre failure meant the guillotine. So they yielded the initiative to a pushy 23-year-old artillery major with a funny Italian name- Napoleon Bonaparte.

1843- Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story for Christmas" first published. In the 18th century and earlier the Christmas celebration was a more rowdy affair with public drinking, marching around in costumes “mummery” and mayhem more resembling Mardi Gras.
The popularity of Dickens story of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim did much to help Victorians change the nature of the Christmas celebration to a more intimate observance centered on the family. Charles Dickens said he wrote the book to make money. He had two flops and wanted to capitalize on the new fashion for family Christmas celebrations set by the example of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

1862- GRANT'S GENERAL ORDER #11- When Union army troops occupied large parts of Confederate Tennessee, southerners wondered what kind of retribution the angry U.S. government would wreak upon their heads. They were amazed when the new commander of the Union troops, Ulysses Grant, issued an order expelling all Jews from East Tennessee! His reasoning was that drygoods salesmen and were cheating his men. Abe Lincoln was shocked. "Isn't our country divided enough?!" The order was countermanded by the White House and Grant was ordered to apologize. Grant later admitted the criticism of his hasty order was justified, and he “should not have legislated against any one particular sect.” During the eight years of Grant’s presidency, memories of General Orders No. 11 surfaced repeatedly. Eager to prove that he was above prejudice, Grant appointed more Jews to public office than any of his predecessors. Jewish leader Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise noted at the time, that Grant had “often repented” of his order, and “that even the wise also fail.” ‘

1865- Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (#8) received its world premiere. In 1822 Schubert wrote the first two movements and 8 measures for the 3rd (Scherzo), then forgot about it when he died in 1828. A friend kept the manuscript in a trunk for 43 years.

1892- Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. One child dancer playing a candy cane in that first performance was a Georgian boy named Gyorgi Balavadajze- later American choreographer George Balanchine.

1902- THE VENEZUELA CRISIS- Kaiser Wilhelm threatened Venezuela with naval blockade and invasion if she did not pay her international debts. US President Teddy Roosevelt sent Admiral Dewey with 23 battleships to the Caribbean and threatened war. Der Kaiser backed down and war was avoided. This incident was kept secret for seventy years. It’s when Teddy first said:” Speak softly and carry a big stick!”

1903- THE AIRPLANE- Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. For one minute a powered aircraft flew. Orville finished the day with a telegram to their father minding the bicycle shop back in Dayton Ohio: “ Success. Four Flights Thursday Morning against twenty-one mile an hour wind. Inform press home for Christmas.” The news failed to get into most national newspapers.
The Wrights themselves maintained a strict secrecy because they knew rivals like Glen Curtis, the French, and Smithsonian professor William Langley were all close to inventing an airplane as well. The sensation of the airplane didn’t really become widespread until the Wrights demonstrated their plane in France in 1908 and in New York Harbor in 1909. In 1913 Curtis took Langley’s flying machine the Aerodrome out of storage and flew it to prove to the Smithsonian that the Wright Brothers were not the first. The bitter disputes lasted the length of their lives.

1917- Lenin created the first Communist Secret Police, the Cheka, led by Iron Felix Derszhinsky:” My thoughts induce me to be without pity.” In a few months the Cheka executed more people than the Czars’ police the Okrana did in all of the XIX Century. The Cheka in Stalin’s time was called the OGPU, then NKVD, his executioners in the Great Purges. After Stalin, their name was changed to the KGB, the great spy and Secret Police operation set to bedevil their counterparts in the west- the CIA and MI5. The KGB was disbanded in 1991, and today is called the FSB. Russian Premier Vladimir Putin began his career as a KGB agent.

1928- Under orders from Josef Stalin, the Central Committee of the Soviet Union first declared that all rural land belonged to the community. All landowners were enemies of the state. This began The War on the Kulaks- the name for middle class peasants who owned some farmland. The purges of Kulaks, and famine from forced collectivization killed millions.

1934- First test flight of the Donald Douglas' DC-3, the most widely used airplane in aviation history. Unchanged for almost 60 years, the two engine DC-3 was the backbone of most of the world's first passenger airlines and with the military name C-47 (the Gooney Bird) it became the workhorse cargo plane of from World War II until Vietnam. There are still some DC-3's in service in some small countries.

1939- THE GRAF SPEE- The world media in the opening weeks of World War II were dominated by news of an epic sea duel between the British Navy and a German battleship. The British pursued the Graf Spee across the Atlantic into Montevideo Harbor in neutral Uruguay. This day while the sun was setting, radio broadcasters stayed on the air live and 250,000 spectators lined the shoreline to see if the Graf Spee would come out and fight. Instead, the tropical quiet was rent by a huge explosion. Kapitan Zur See Langersdorf had scuttled his own ship.
British intelligence had done a masterful job of fooling Kapitan Langersdorf into believing heavy naval reinforcements including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal were closing in on him, while in actual fact they were nowhere in the vicinity. All there was to try and stop the German battleship were three badly damaged light cruisers. After sinking the Graf Spee, Langersdorf wrapped himself in a German flag and shot himself. Interestingly he didn't use a Nazis swastika flag but wrapped himself in the old German Imperial Navy ensign. He also refused to give the stiff arm Nazis party salute.

1941- As if he hadn’t put his foot in his mouth badly enough already, Charles Lindbergh does it again today. After earlier in the year railing on about the “International Jewish Conspiracy pushing America into war” today in a speech Lucky Lindy denounced the war with Germany:” The only real threat to America is the threat of the Yellow Race. Japan and China are united against the white race. And our only natural ally is Germany”. This even after the public was enraged over Pearl Harbor. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Morgenthau told President Roosevelt: “I am convinced this guy is a Nazi”. Charles Lindbergh lived a long life, but never apologized or recanted his views.

1944- The MALMEDY MASSACRE- The largest documented atrocity committed on U.S. troops in Europe in World War II. During the Battle of the Bulge Nazi Waffen S.S. troops rounded up a large group of U.S. prisoners and machined gunned them all. 87 men of Battery B, 285th Field Artillery died. The atrocity stiffened U.S. resistance to the Nazis advance. The furor over President Reagan's laying a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery in 1985 was that some of the guilty SS of Malmedy were buried there.
One of the leaders of the massacre, Major Otto Wolf, did some prison time after the war and lived quietly until 1967, when he was found shot to death in his burning house, a smoking rifle in his hands like he was defending himself. Obviously, someone had not forgotten.

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge, near Krinkelt Belgium, Sgt. José Mendoza López picked up a heavy machine gun and held off a massed German assault all by himself. An orphan from Oaxaca, Mexico who moved to Texas, he stood up in a snowy foxhole offering no cover and mowed down waves of attacking soldiers, covering the retreat of his buddies. Sgt. Lopez was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and lived to be 94, dying in 2005. He credited his success to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

1944- As the extent of the German offensive in the Ardennes became clear, General Eisenhower declared the Belgian town of Bastogne would be the key. He ordered the 82nd and 101st Airborne to go there and hold the town at all costs.

1944- The U.S. War Department issued Public Proclamation 21, stating that all Americans of Japanese ancestry could leave their internment camps and finally go home.

1955- Carl Perkins awoke in the middle of a bad nights sleep and wrote Blue Suede Shoes, the first song to be a hit in Country, R&B and Rock n’ Roll charts simultaneously, especially when sung by Elvis Presley” Well you can knock me down, step on ma face, etc.”

1963- Americans began to hear on their transistor radios a new sound from a band from England named the Beatles. “I wanna hold your hand” becomes a big hit and heralds the British rock invasion in 1964.

1969- Tiny Tim, the campy, ukulele strumming crooner, married his Miss Vicky, or Victoria Budinger live on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

1969- The US Air Force terminated Operation Blue Book, the investigation of UFO phenomena.

1969- The Walt Disney Studio re-released Fantasia, and it was embraced by hippy stoners who liked to get high during screenings, Disney did a black-lite poster for it. It was the first time the 1940 film had ever made a profit.

1971- After the last Pakistani forces surrendered East Pakistan to invading Indian armies, East Pakistan was declared the independent nation of Bangladesh.

1989- Communist dictator Nicholas Cercescu ordered the Romanian Army to open fire on democratic protesters in Timisoara. Two thousand were killed. This incident pushed elements of the Army to turn their guns on the government. The Romanian Revolution was the most violent of the Communist regime changes of Eastern Europe.

1989- After appearing in interstitial shorts on the variety Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons first premiered as a regular TV series. Season 1, Episode 1, Simpsons roasting on an open fire. “

1999- The film Stuart Little premiered. Directed by Rob Minkoff.

2001- Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Haliburton Corporation, was awarded a ten-year no-bid contract to provide the U.S. Army with everything from firefighting to building bases to serving meals. Soldiers won’t dig latrines, because KBR port-o-pottys will be there. A soldier couldn’t wipe his face with a towel that didn’t have a KBR logo on it. Haliburton made $39 billion in the Iraq War. Vice President Cheney was a senior stockholder of Haliburton.

2010- The Arab Spring- Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26 year old peddler in Tunisia, had his pushcart confiscated for being unable to pay a fine. It was his only source of income to feed his family. He protested by standing in front of a police station and setting himself on fire. As Bouazizi died, Tunisians rose in massive protests and overthrew their longtime President Ben Ali. The pro-democracy protests quickly spread to Egypt, then Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and all over the strongman one party states of the Middle East.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was Beetlejuice before it was a popular Tim Burton movie?

Answer: Betelgeus is a red-giant star in our neighboring system Orion. Large enough to be visible to the named eye at night. The dying star is expected to disappear in about 10,000 years. Set your timer!