Quiz: Who was Zoroaster?

Yesterday’s Answer below: What is a wassel bowl?
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History for 12/24/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Servius Galba, English King John Lackland, Revolutionary Patriot Dr. Benjamin Rush, Kit Carson, Howard Hughes, Ava Gardner, Michael Curtiz, I.F. Stone, Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet, Mean Joe Green, John Matusak, Susan Lucci, Nicholas Meyer, Ricky Martin, Pixar animator Glen McQueen, Ryan Seacrest, Dr. Anthony Fauci is 84.

The religion that was a close runner up to Christianity in the ancient world was the Persian Sun God Mithras. Today was celebrated as the birth of Mithras, who was conceived of a virgin, born in the wilderness to be adored by shepherds. Hmmm…?

In the Middle Ages this was the Feast of Saints Adam and Eve. The western theatrical tradition survived in the form of Mystery Plays, acting out stories from the Bible. So this day they would do a play about the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. A tree was brought into the church and decorated to represent the Tree of Life, glass balls representing the forbidden fruit. This is one of the origins of the Christmas Tree. The Feast of Adam and Eve was discontinued during the Reformation.

1247- Sir Robin of Loxley, called Robin Hood, died. Legend has it that he fired an arrow out his window with instructions to bury him where it fell.

1294- Benedict Gaetani elected Pope Boniface VIII. Boniface felt the Roman pontiff was above any other earthly crown so much that he made the triple tiara the Popes are crowned with. The hat that looks like a big gold hairdryer. Dante hatred Boniface so much in his poem Inferno he has two devils stirring a cauldron of boiling lead and calling up:"Hey Boniface? When are you coming down? It’s just about ready!"

1652- In England the Puritan Parliament of Oliver Cromwell forbade any celebration of Christmas. Their brethren the Puritans of Massachusetts would arrest anyone found making merry and fine them three shillings. But after the restoration of King Charles II ten years later, the partying came back.

1740- In Pope’s Creek Va, a fire burned down the home of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington, with their little 8 year old son, George Washington.

1783 - the American Revolution concluded; General George Washington arrived home at Mt. Vernon. It was the first time he had seen his home in eight years. In those years he had won battles, lost battles, seen his army dwindle to a handful, disarmed a mutiny, and constantly faced the possibility of being hanged as a rebel chieftain like William Wallace. Now it was all over and done." The scene is at last closed. I feel myself eased of the load of public care."

1799- After seizing power in France in a military coup, 31 year old General Napoleon Bonaparte invented an executive system for the French republic based on an interpretation of the ancient Roman Republic. Nostalgia for classical art and themes were all the rage then. Napoleon made himself First Consul. He promised to share power with two other consuls in a rotation, Sieyes and Carnot. He never did. He became Emperor of France in 1804.

1800 – THE CARBONIS PLOT- Going to the theater Napoleon was almost blown up by a bomb planted in a wagon near his carriage. The terrorist was a royalist named Jean Carbonis. In a sick twist Carbonis gave the reins of the booby-trapped horse & wagon to a little peasant girl to allay suspicions of the police. Napoleon was safe but 22 others including the little girl were killed. Carbonis was quickly arrested and shot.

1801- Richard Trevithick created a three wheeled vehicle powered by a big steam boiler and drove 7 people down a road in Cornwall England. He couldn’t steer it very well and it hit a wall at barely two miles an hour.

1814- U.S. and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. John Quincy Adams headed the American negotiation team. The British had demanded a independent Indian buffer state in the Great Lakes between the US and Canada, and the US demanded the Pacific Northwest, but all they got was the status quo before the war started. The news wouldn't get across the Atlantic for two months and in the meantime Americans and Englishmen would fight each other one last time at The Battle of New Orleans (Jan 8th).

1818- the song Silent Night first sung at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Obernsdorf, Austria. Its lyrics were written by the minister named Josef Mohr set to music by a teacher named Franz Gruber. Their little church could not afford an organ, so this first singing of Silent Night was accompanied on a guitar.

1862- Near Mufreesboro Tennessee Confederate guerrilla Col. John Hunt Morgan took advantage of the Christmas truce to get married. The ceremony was conducted by Confederate General Leonidas Polk, who was an ordained Methodist Bishop. Both men would not survive the Civil War.

1865- THE KU KLUX KLAN. Before the Civil War, white plantation owners rode together at night to chase down runaway slaves. They were called Night Riders. After the South’s defeat and Emancipation, in Pulaski Tennessee in the law offices of Thomas M. Jones, some disaffected Confederate veterans formed a secret society of night riders.
They named it based on the Greek letter fraternities just gaining popularity in universities- Kappa-Alpha or Kuklos Adelphon.- Kuklos meaning Circle. There was also a theory that it came from an Indian tribe called the Kawklats. It corrupted into the Ku Klux Klan.
They donned white sheets and hoods to portray themselves as the avenging ghosts of dead rebel soldiers. They played up the mystical images to terrify the superstitious-Grand Wizards, Cyclops. Ghouls. The first Grand Wizard was General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but he resigned after he felt their violence had become counterproductive. There is a hotly disputed story that the Klan first offered their leadership to Robert E. Lee. He declined in a letter, but suggested they should be an "Invisible Empire". After Congress outlawed them in 1871 the Invisible Empire went underground to thwart reconstruction and Black Civil Rights.

1888- Vincent Van Gogh cut off most of his left ear after a drunken argument with fellow artist Paul Gaugin over the affection of a prostitute named Rachel. He sent his ear to the prostitute. She fainted. In 2009 historians theorized his ear was sliced off by Gaugin drunkenly waving an antique sword. The two men agreed to keep the secret to not get Gaugin in trouble.

1889- Daniel Stover & W. Hance of Freeport Ill. invented the bicycle backpedal brake.

1922- The BBC presented it’s first radio play:" The truth about Father Christmas."

1925- The London Evening News published a story “In which we are introduced to Winnie the Pooh, and some Bees.” By A.A. Milne. The first book of stories came out the following year.

1934- GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR DUMPED HIS GIRLFRIEND- For two years the divorced general had kept a beautiful young Philippine mistress he met in Manila named Isabella Rosario “Elizabeth” Cooper. But when he accepted the posting back in Washington she insisted on coming with him. Today he sent an aide to intercept her in the lobby of the Willard Hotel and buy her off with a newly minted sheet of 100 dollar bills. His chief reason for giving her the boot was the 54 year old four star general was afraid his mother would find out.

1937- Disney short Lonesome Ghosts premiered.

1941- General Homma and the advancing Japanese Army captured the Philippine capitol Manila. General MacArthur withdrew to the island fortress of Corregidor, while his exhausted Philippine-American troops set up a last line of defense on the Bataan Peninsula.

1941- Operation Drumroll. German Admiral Doenitz dispatched advanced 5 long range U-Boats to the US Eastern coast.

1942- Admiral Darlan assassinated. Darlan was a Vichy-Nazi collaborator who the Allies had to cut a deal with so the Vichy French wouldn't resist the Allied landings in North Africa at Casablanca. Having to be nice to this turncoat disgusted Free-French like Charles DeGaulle, and apparently disgusted somebody even more...

1944- In some of the last big V-1 attacks on London the Nazis added a sick twist- they filled the buzz bombs with letters home from British POWs. As the bombs exploded in Oldham and Gravesend killing women and children, the letters blew out like confetti.

1944- The MOSQUITO BOWL- The Marine 6th Division was stationed on Guadalcanal preparing for the attack on Okinawa, one of the last big battles of the Pacific War. During the long stretches of dull, endless training, the 6th Marine Division discovered they had a number of college football stars in their ranks. This day in the jungle, the men of the 6th Regiment, took on the 29th Regiment in an epic football game. Participants described it as “ Three Hours of Pure Joy.” Many of these men would be dead in battle a few weeks.

1949- The Bugs Bunny cartoon “Rabbit Hood” opened. directed by Chuck Jones.

1950- This night young Scottish nationalists broke into Westminster Abbey and stole the Stone of Scone from under the English throne. It was the traditional seat upon which kings of Scotland were crowned, it was brought to London by King Edward I Longshanks. After three months it was given back, left wrapped in a Scottish flag.

1951- Gina Carlo Menotti’s opera "Amal and the Night Visitors" premiered on NBC TV..

1952- The conservative Republican 80th congress overturned Pres. Harry Truman’s veto of the McCarren /Walters Immigration Act. It called for more strenuous screening of immigrants for Communist sympathies, but it also redistributed the quota system along more racist lines. Two thirds of the slots allowed for new immigrants to America went to England, Ireland and Germany, with the rest of the world getting one third.
The objectionable parts of the act were changed in 1965,…. they said.

1952- First draft script completed on the MGM film Terror Planet, changed to “ Forbidden Planet.”

1964- First day shooting on the “Cage” a pilot for a new TV show called Star Trek. Jeffrey Hunter was the first captain, later replaced by William Shatner when Hunter’s wife advised him to skip the series. She was worried he’d be typecast.

1966- Local New York City TV station WPIX premiered The Yule Log. They ran a loop of 6 minutes of a closeup of a log burning in a fireplace in Gracie Mansion, the NY Mayors official residence. The loop ran from 11:00PM to 1:00AM with Christmas carols playing. It made the TV the symbolic family hearth. New Yorkers loved their kitschy Yule Log tradition, and when WPIX tried to replace it in 1989 hundreds of complaints forced them to put it back. The log was videotaped once more in 1970, and that’s been the film ever since. Other places have picked playing a Yule Log like You Tube.

1968- Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders become the first men to reach the moon and win the Space Race. They orbited but did not land, that was for Apollo 11 next year. This Christmas night Frank Borman sent a message to Earth, by reading from Genesis, as they sent back the very first images of the Earthrise, our planet seen from another world. A little blue gem in a black cosmos. Borman read: " Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep… And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.…”
To a world exhausted by the riots, wars, political polarization and assassinations, Apollo 8’s message ended the year on a positive note. That humans could still dream to be better than they were.

1968- Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the story of the Pearl Harbor attack told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer stepped in. Japanese sections were directed by Kinji Fukusaku and Toshio Masuda, whose previous credit was The Green Slime.

1985- Fidel Castro gives up smoking cigars, on doctors’ orders.

1990- Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman. They divorced a few years later.

1992- Outgoing President George H. W. Bush announced presidential pardons for all the former Reagan Whitehouse staff implicated in the Iran Contra Scandal. Caspar Weinberger, Bud McFarlane and probably himself.

1993- Tombstone premiered. Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton do the OK Corral, finally with accurate facial hair of the period.

1997- The first Hanukkah menorah lit in Vatican City.

1997- 62 year old Film director Woody Allen married 27 year old Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow. When asked to explain himself the director said: " The Heart wants what it Wants.." His 3rd or 4th partner, they have lived happily together ever since.

2005- Movie star Burt Reynolds grew so tired of the National Enquirer publishing scandalous stories about him that he gathered 300lbs of horseshit from his ranch, then hired a helicopter. At 3:00AM he flew over the Enquirers’ headquarters in Boca Raton Florida, and dumped it all on the building. Much of it hit their large Xmas tree.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a wassel bowl?

Answer: In early Medieval Germany, for Christmas they brewed a Christmas ale that was served warm and brought out in a big wooden bowl. It had toasted bread floating in it. You dipped your cup in the beer and “toasted” each other “ Was-Heil!” or Here’s to you! In Old England it became garbled as Wassel.

Merry Christmas!—t.s.