Quiz: What do these things have in common? Pete & Gladys, Bachelor Father, My Mother the Car, The Life of Riley, Dobie Gillis

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In Greek Mythology, who was Hecuba?
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History 3/13/2024
Birthdays: Hugh Walpole, Charles 2nd Earl Grey 1764- English Prime Minister whom the tea blend 'Earl Grey Tea " is named for, Pope Innocent XII (1615), Abigail Powers Filmore- First Lady of Millard Filmore, Hugo Wolf, Ted Sears, Sammy Kaye, Danny Kaye, Neil Sedaka, L. Ron Hubbard, Dick Katz, Annabell Gish, Joe Ranft, Al Jaffee, William Macy is 73

27BC- AUGUSTUS BECAME THE FIRST ROMAN EMPEROR- For several decades the Roman Republic had become a football contested for by powerful rich politicians- Marius & Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony and more. Julius Caesar said that Rome was now a Republic in name only. Since vanquishing Anthony & Cleopatra, Caesar Octavian had been the first man in Rome (Princeps), yet he needed to solidify his hold on power. But Romans hated the title of King.
So this day in a carefully staged bit of political theater, Octavian told the Senate he was tired of responsibility. He would resign all his offices and retire. Senators shouted for him to reconsider. They voted him the title GAIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS, IMPERATOR- PRINCEPS. Imperator used to be the name for a general’s military authority, and we get the word Emperor from it. Augustus meant Father of His Country- with all the absolute power a father had in his family. Princeps meant first citizen. Rome had emperors until 476AD and continued on at Constantinople until 1453.

4 B.C.- King Herod the Great died in Jericho. The dynamic king who guided Israel through Rome’s Civil Wars, and rebuilt the temple of Solomon and Caesarea, had aged badly. He became increasingly paranoid. When a bastard son convinced him his legitimate offspring was trying to kill him, he had them executed. This may explain why he could order the infamous Massacre of the Innocents. Herod died slowly of a putrefying disease known only as Herod’s Evil. On his deathbed Herod ordered village elders across Israel rounded up and killed when he died. " I know I am hated, so I want all Israel to mourn". After his death, his family ignored the order and released everyone.

1639- Richard Burbage died. Burbage was the famed Elizabethan actor and friend of William Shakespeare. On his tombstone was a simple epitaph- EXIT BURBAGE.

1757- BATTLE ON THE SNOWSHOES-Col. Robert Rogers with "Roger's Rangers" American colonial frontiersmen in British service, was ambushed by a large French allied Huron Indian war party. The leathershirts scattered, and Rogers eluded his pursuers by walking with his snowshoes turned backwards from the edge of a cliff. When the Indians saw his tracks ending into thin air, they decided the Hipi-Manitou Spirit was with him, so they gave up the pursuit.

1778- The French ambassador informed the British Government that France had recognized the independence of the United States and had made an alliance with them.

1781- The discovery of the planet Uranus by British astronomer William Herschel. The first planet discovered since prehistoric times. Galileo and Kepler used their early telescopes to spot the rings and Saturn and moons of Jupiter, but no other planets. Herschel wanted to call his discovery Georgium Sidus after King George III, but other astronomers convinced him to keep to the pattern of naming planets after Roman gods. Hershel emigrated from Germany and played violin in several symphony orchestras before becoming interested in astronomy. He brought his sister over, and she became an opera singer, as well as observing and naming 5 comets.

1848- The working-class poor of Vienna rose up in rebellion against their Kaiser. After weeks of street fighting the rebellion was put down.

1865- With the South overrun by Yankee armies, at the request of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Confederate Congress finally authorized the enlistment of black soldiers to fight for Old Dixie. They got 367 volunteers. On the Yankee side, 180,000 enlisted, almost 80% of the eligible population of free black men.

1881- Czar Alexander II assassinated. -He was the Czar-Liberator that freed the Russian serfs but he was still seen by patriotic movements as a symbol of oppression.
On this day young revolutionaries of the People’s Will movement had already hurled one bomb at the Czar's armored carriage but it harmed no one. The Czar was getting out when another revolutionary (this one was Polish) stepped forward shouting "It's too early to thank God!" And threw a bomb which blew Alexander to bits. Later in the spring thaw St. Petersburg housewives were finding little bits of Alexander on their rooftops when they cleaned.

1884- Chester Greenwood of Maine invented ear-muffs.

1920-THE KAPP PUTSCH - In postwar Berlin after the Kaiser fled anarchy reigned as Bolshevik and right-wing paramilitary groups fought in the streets for control. On this day the Kaiser's former army officers marched on Berlin and tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic and restore the monarchy. They failed, but the weak government could do no more than let them march away scot free. They even paused to fire into a jeering crowd of civilians. After this rebuff the old Prussian aristocratically-led German Army would remain aloof from politics until getting behind Hitler's Nazi Reich in the late 1930’s.
One of the central conspirators of the Putsch was a bizarre figure named Ignaz Trebitsch Lincoln, a Hungarian Jew who moved to England, ran for Parliament and won, was a German spy during the World War I, and finished his life as a Lama in Tibet named Chao-Kung.

1921- Mongolia declared its independence from China.

1928- In New York City, Walt Disney sent a telegram to his brother Roy back in California, informing him of his disastrous meeting with producer Charles Mintz. That Mintz had exercised a clause in their contract to take the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit away from them. He cabled “ Leaving Tonight, stopping over KC. Arrive Sunday Morning. Don’t Worry. All Will be Well.” Later on the train home, Walt with Ub Iwerks and his wife Lillian came up with a new character named Mickey Mouse.

1929- The White House never had much security. When you rang the bell, President Thomas Jefferson himself answered the door in his robe and slippers. Abe Lincoln had one bodyguard, and after the Civil War the one soldier guarding the front door was removed. Presidents like Grant & McKinley would take a stroll at night down by the Potomac with no guards. Children played baseball and sheep grazed on the White House lawn.
This night President Herbert Hoover was having dinner with Hollywood producer David O, Selznick when a homeless man wandered into the room and asked the president for a job. He just walked right through the front door, while the butler was preoccupied. The next day by Executive Order, the Secret Service took over direct control of the White House security and could command the D.C. Metro police.

1938- At the height of Stalin’s purges top Bolshevik Nicholai Bukharin was shot.

1939- Hollywood recognized the Screen Director’s Guild, later called he DGA. After a nasty battle lasting several years Guild President Frank Capra signed the contracts representing 80% of movie directors. They also contractually ensured the custom of the director’s credit being the last one seen at the opening title sequence of a film.

1943- Radio station WNYC goes on the air.

1944- Abbot & Costello copyrighted their baseball routine ‘Who’s on First?"

1945- After systematically destroying the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Nagoya, this day the hundreds of massed B-29 bombers reduced the city of Osaka to burning rubble.

1946- The UAW struck General Motors. In 1936 businessmen had asked the Rand Corporation to come up with a solution to workers labor unions. The Rand Group came up with a pamphlet called the Mohawk Valley Rules. It said the way to defeat unions was not in the streets with vigilantes and tear gas but in the press. Make their union arguments seem unAmerican and subversive. All sides took a hiatus to win World War II so this was the first major strike where the Mohawk Rules were put into practice. So even though the union won concessions in the settlement they lost popular support. People blamed unions for the higher car prices and Communistic activity while the heads of GM and other defense corporations made 400%+ profits from the war. Today people still think unions are not important even though wages have not risen in 20 years, and CEO salaries have jumped 1,400 %.

1947- MGM Tom & Jerry’s Cat Concerto won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

1957- The F.B.I. arrested Teamster’s Union President Jimmy Hoffa on bribery charges.

1964- The Kitty Genovese murder. A sad moment in urban history when a New York cocktail waitress was jumped and murdered in front of her Queens apartment complex. 38 of her neighbors heard her screams "He's stabbing me! He's killing me!" They watched from their windows but no one bothered to come down to her aid.

1969- Disney’s comedy about a Volkswagen beetle, "The Love Bug" premiered. The reason the Volkswagen has the race car number 53 painted on it was because producer Bill Walsh was a big fan of LA Dodger hitter Don Drysdale. His player number was 53.

1970- Under pressure from U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger, Cambodian Prince Siahnnouk asked the Vietcong and Khmer Rouge to please get out of his country. The civil war in Cambodia immediately grew from a lukewarm insurgency to a full-scale holocaust, resulting in the government’s defeat, and the Killing Fields of 1975.

1983- The Larry King Show debuted on HBO, later moving to CNN. King retired that show in 2010, but kept doing cable shows until his death from covid in 2020.

1986- Microsoft made its first public stock offering. A share went for $21.

1987- Raising Arizona, directed by the Cohen Bros opened.

1988- Overly endowed porn star John Holmes, also called Johnny Wad, died of HIV/AIDS. He claimed to have had sex with 14,000 women and a few men in his career, but that he contracted the disease through intravenous drug use. He also got involved with some drug dealers and was implicated in a murder. The film Boogie Nights was based on his career.

1997- In Malaysia, a man named Hassan Abdallah had his penis cut off by his wife in his sleep. She claimed she was sleep walking, and dreamed she was only strangling him.

2002- After building up 9-11 terrorist leader Osama bin Laden to be the most dangerous supervillain since Lex Luthor, this day in a national press conference President George W. Bush casually mentioned he did not know where Bin Laden was, and that he no longer cared much about him.

2013- Pope Francis I elected, aka Pope Frank. The first Argentine Pope. The first pope from the New World.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Greek Mythology, who was Hecuba?

Answer: She was the wife of Priam and Queen of Troy during the Trojan War. She saw her city destroyed, her family killed and was made a captive to Greek King Agamemnon. To “Weep the tears of Hecuba” is to experience the extreme grief of a mother in time of war.