Quiz: Sometimes you’ll notice your coffee comes from the Kona coast. Where is the Kona coast located?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who coined the catchphrase “ By Any Means Necessary”?
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History for 12/30/2023
Birthdays: Rudyard Kipling, Gen. Hideki Tojo, W. Eugene Smith, Luther Burbank, Anna Magnani, Bo Diddley, Sir Carol Reed, Sandy Koufax, Solomon Guggenheim, Jeanette Nolan, Jack Lord, Franco Harris, Joseph Bologna, Fred Ward, Tracey Ullman, Russ Tamblyn, Tiger Woods is 47, Heidi Fleiss, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary, Douglas Engelbart the inventor of the computer mouse, Lebron James is 39, Eliza Dushku is 43

1370- Pope Gregory XI is an example of the rather unconventional path one could take to the Papacy in the Middle Ages. His genial uncle Pope Clement VI had made him a cardinal at age 18. Upon his election as Pope at age 39 someone noticed that he had never taken Holy Orders to become a Priest! So yesterday he was ordained a priest and today became Pope.

1672- Violinist John Bannister and his orchestra held a concert at Whitefriars chapel in London. It’s the oldest known music concert given not to royalty, or a rich patron, but to the general public.

1689- The opera Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell premiered in London.

1816- Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary wrote Frankenstein two years later.

1817- Coffee beans first planted on the Kona coast of Hawaii.

1853- The Gadsen Purchase- After the Mexican-American War the U.S. bought an additional 45,000 square miles from Mexico and finally settled the US border at the Rio Grande. The deal was brokered by U.S. Secretary of War and later President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis.

1862- During the Civil War, the day before the Battle of Stone's River Tennessee, Union and Confederate armies spent the day quietly facing each other across a creek under an icy rain. A battle of the bands started up. Blue and gray musicians serenaded each other across no-mans land with patriotic songs like Dixie and John Brown's Body, while the men sang along. Finally both bands synched up with a spontaneous rendition of " Be It Ever so Humble, There's No Place Like Home..." Thousands of throats from both sides took up the chorus.

1884- Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony premiered in Leipzig.

1894- Suffragette Amelia Jenks Bloomer died; she had gained notoriety for inventing "bloomers" a way for women to ride horses and do other physical actions without cumbersome hoops skirts.

1903 - A fire broke out in the crowded Iroquois Theater in Chicago killing 571. After the tragedy building codes were enforced that public buildings have exit doors that always open outwards, and some form of fire fighting equipment always be on the premises. The Iroquois had a sign over the door that read “Absolutely Fireproof”.

1905- Idaho governor Frank Steunberg killed by a bomb set by union supporters.

1916- RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK KILLED- Several Russian noblemen resolve to rid their country of this Siberian peasant mystic who held such power over the Czar and his family that he could dismiss government ministers at will. He once had an entire Russian army offensive redirected because he was negotiating to buy the real estate they planned to fight over.
A first cousin of the Czar, Count Felix Yusupov invited Rasputin to a late night party. He had a record player with Yankee Doodle playing in another room to convince the monk that a party indeed was in progress. Yusupov gave Rasputin a glass of cyanide laced vodka. Rasputin drank it and finished the bottle. Then the conspirators rushed out, emptied a revolver into him, beat him with chains and heavy silver candlesticks, rolled him up in a rug and stuffed him into the ice clogged Neva River.
The official coroner's report said he had drowned. Shortly before his death, Rasputin wrote a letter to the Czar saying that 'if the peasants, my brothers, kill me, then you, Czar of Russia, have nothing to fear. But if your relatives kill me, not you nor any one of your family will remain alive longer than two years." Rasputin's prediction was off by just four months. Nicholas II, and his 400 year old dynasty fell ten weeks later. The Czar and his family were murdered in July 1918.
In 1965 CBS produced a TV movie The Murder of Rasputin, where they theorized that Yusupov murdered the monk because he seduced his wife. Imagine their surprise when elderly Count Yusupov showed up in NY and sued them. He won $800,000 and died in 1967.

1933- In Romania liberal premier Ion Duca was assassinated by the pro-fascist Iron Guard. In 1940 the Iron Guards leader General Ion Antonescu deposed King Carol II and established a dictatorship allied to Hitler.

1936- The Great General Motors Strike. The strike was violent and tied up steel, rubber tires and other manufactures for months. United Auto Workers invent the first "sit-down" strike at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Mich. "When they tie a can to the Union man-Sit Down, Sit Down! When the Boss won't talk, don't take a walk- Sit Down, Sit Down !"

1940- The Arroyo-Seco, the first L.A. Freeway, opened by Mayor Fletchor Bowron, connecting downtown and Pasadena. Today called the Pasadena Freeway 110. (interstate U.S. route 66 was in 1932, and The Imperial Highway opened in 1936.)

1944- Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie Groves had a secret meeting with FDR at the White House. Groves told the President the two "cosmic super bombs" (Atom Bombs) they were building would end the war. The reason they were making two was one was uranium based, and the other was plutonium based, and they weren’t sure which one would work.
Franklin Roosevelt asked Groves that one immediately be dropped on Berlin to stop the Battle of the Bulge and kill Hitler. But Groves argued these A-bombs hadn’t been tested yet. He worried that if the bomb was a dud, the Germans were smart enough to take it apart and build their own from the fissionable material, which they might shoot in a V-2 at London. The atomic bomb wasn’t tested until July 1945. By then, Hitler was dead, and the war in Europe was over.

1941- “I Vant to be Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion pictures and all public appearances. "When I was just a little child, as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I detest crowds … don't like many people." She made her disappearing act complete and was only seen fleeting on the streets of her New York neighborhood until her death in 1990. Friends said she watched a lot of television and loved The Flintstones, and Hollywood Squares.

1947- Under the eye of the occupying Soviet Army, King Michael of Romania abdicated and a Communist government was voted into power.

1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with Monty Hall premieres.

1965- Ferdinand Marcos became president of the Philippines.

1971- Daniel Ellsberg was indicted for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press.

1988- Col. Oliver North, on trial for the Iran Contra Scandal, subpoenaed former President Ronald Reagan and President-elect George H. W. Bush. President Bush declined and Reagan testified on videotape.

1988- the Pixar short Tin Toy released in theaters. The first CG short to win an Oscar. (Luxo Jr. was nominated but did not win.) Pixar’s first feature film Toy Story initially began as an attempt to capitalize on the success of Tin Toy, as a TV special. Tinny’s Xmas.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who coined the catchphrase “By Any Means Necessary”?

Answer: Malcolm X.