Question: From my old comrade Dave Brain : Where did the phrase " beyond the pale " come from? As in " Sir, You have gone beyond the Pale ! "

Question Answered below: Did Julius Caesar ever say “ Et Tu Brute? Answer-See 44BC.
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History for 3/15/2007
Birthdays: Andrew Jackson*, Lee Schubert-one of Broadways Shubert Brothers, Ry Cooder, Sly Stone, Harry James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Judd Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Sabu, Fabio, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, Reni Harlin, David Cronenburg, Eva Longoria, Animator Chris Sanders is 48.

* For many years in America Andy Jackson’s birthday was a public holiday.

508BC-525AD- In the Roman Republic this was the traditional day the newly elected Consuls and Senate assumed their offices and began governing.

44 B.C. -BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH- While attending the first day of the new Senate Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by radical senators beneath the statue of his old enemy Pompey Magnus. Two of the murderers, Brutus and Cassius were former officers of Pompey to whom Caesar granted amnesty. Marcus Brutus was a descendant of Junius Brutus the founder of the Roman democracy. He was even rumored to have been Caesar's illegitimate son. Even though he was stabbed 35 times, it still took him several hours to die, lying alone on the floor. Unlike Shakespeare, Julius Caesar never said "Et Tu Brute'" Even you, Brutus? In Latin. His last words were the equivalent in Greek-"Touto kai teknon mou" which translates, "Even this my child?". Greek was to the Romans like French is to us. Proving you can suffer multiple stab wounds, yet still be chic’.

-ouch!

1493- Columbus returned to Palo, Spain from his first voyage to America. The Santa Maria had broke up on reefs in America and Captain Pinzon had taken the Pinta on ahead to take credit for himself, or Columbus so worried. He himself got home in the little bark the Nina and at one point had to put in at a Portuguese port where he and his men were impounded for a few days. Captain Pinzon did reach home first but fortunately King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella refused to listen to him. When Pinzon got his own voyage to the New World the credit then went to his navigator- Amerigo Vespucci.

1865- Cross-dressing rebel guerrilla Sue Mundy was hanged in Kentucky. Long hared soldier Jerome Clark once got drunk and his buddies for a gag put him in a dress and declared him Queen of the May. Instead of being insulted Clark liked being in drag and ravaged the countryside as the partisan leader Sue Mundy. Until the Yankees caught him no one was quite sure whether Sue was a man or woman.



1869-The Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team. Players had been taking payments under the table for years to concentrate on their skills, now it was out in the open. Still some newspapers accused them of being "Shiftless young men debasing the game with their greed."

1892- The first voting machines in the US went into service. After 1972 metal voting machines were phased out in favor of the cheaper punch card system but the controversy over presidential elections fraud continues to cause new change.

1913- President Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential news conference.

1915-Universal Studios formed. Carl Laemmele bought a huge track of Burbank farmland and set up his studio. Laemmele had wooden bleachers built next to the movie sets where he charged people a nickel to come watch the filming. He used so many of his relatives in production that Ogden Nash quipped: "Carl Laemmele has a very large Fammele." Universal actually had been operating as a film company since 1912 but the company counts today as it’s birthday.

1929- Scarface Al Capone was called before a Chicago grand jury to explain his involvement in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Big Al’s alibi was he was in Key Biscayne Florida at the time having lunch with the Dade County prosecutor. They couldn’t pin nothing on him and no one was ever charged with the massacre.

1933- Young animator Chuck Jones first hired at Leon Schlesingers Looney Tunes cartoon studio.

1941- The daughter of Cecil B.DeMille Katherine DeMille had married actor Anthony Quinn. This day tragedy struck the family. On a visit to Cecil B.’s estate the couple’s three year old son Christopher walked off into neighbor W.C. Fields yard where he fell into Fields unsupervised swimming pool and drowned. The parents were so shattered they divorced afterwards. Anthony Quinn refused to talk about the rest of his long life. Fields was so depressed he had the pool filled in and landscaped so no sign of the tragedy would remain.

1944- The DeHAVILAND CASE- A judge rules actress Olivia DeHaviland free of her exclusive seven year personal contract to Warner Bros. For years movie stars like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney had been fighting in court the system of exclusive contracts the studios used to keep them under control. They had no choice in the type of films they did, no residuals and studios could rent them out to other studios for higher fees and keep the money. If the actor complained they were put on disciplinary leave by the studio without pay and the penalty time added onto the end of their contract. Garbo called it the closest thing to White Slavery. Some contracts even ordered some stars not to get married for fear it would erode their sex appeal. After the DeHaviland Case movie stars got more freedom to choose roles.

1950- Disney’s "Cinderella" opens. Their first animated fairy tale story since 1942.

1956- Lerner & Lowe’s musical "My Fair Lady" premiered.

1962- The discovery of anti-matter.

1964- Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton, for the first time round.

1969- Worst clashes between Soviet Russia and Red China across their long mutual border. While the free world feared a monolithic Global Communist conspiracy the fact was the animosity between Russia and China got so bad it threatened to go nuclear. During a lighter incident the Chinese People’s Army showed what they thought of their Russian comrades by lining up along a river bank, dropping their trousers, bending over and giving them a mass-mooning. The next time the Chinese did it the Russians were ready. As their butts went up the Russians held up portraits of Mao ZseDong, the Chinese leader. The moonings stopped.

1969- Two young heirs to the Polident false Teeth Company and two hippy promoters announced a rock festival would be held that summer in the farm community of Woodstock New York.

1977- Television sitcom Threes Company debuted.

1979- Strange lights danced in the night skies over Phoenix Arizona from 8:30 pm until 11:00 pm. The military dismissed them as experimental flares but the duration and patterns seemed unusually long for mere flares. Was it a UFO light show?

1985- THE SAVINGS & LOAN SCANDALS- The Reagan White House’s policy of removing all business regulation played havoc with the savings & loan system. The problem became a public issue when this day Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio suspended business in thrift banks in his state to stop the collapse of the system. One of the most underreported and little understood stories of the 1980’s the cost to clean up the Savings & Loan mess came out to be near $28 billion dollars, double the total cost to win World War Two. Scores of crooked Savings & Loan execs like Charles Keating accumulated vast fortunes, leaving you and I to pay the bills.

1985- Symbolic.com is assigned the first registered domain site on the Internet.

2004- Cal Tech Scientists announce the discovery of Planet Xenia the tenth planet orbiting our Sun, beyond Pluto. Some want to call it Sedna, an Inuit goddess who lived under the ice.

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Yesterday's question: Did Julius Caesar really say “ Et Tu Brute?

Answer: See 44BC.