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Question: What is meant by " being hoisted on my own petard?"

Yesterdays’ question answered below: What do Roscoe Conkling, James G. Blaine, Harold Stassen, John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Pat Buchanan and Mitt Romney’s father George Romney have in common?
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History for 3/23/2008
Birthdays: US Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Akira Kurosawa, Joan Crawford, Dr Werner Von Braun, Juan Gris, Chaka Khan, Paul Grimault, Sidney Hillman Jack Ruby, Joan Collins, Eric Fromm, Fanny Farmer, Lora Petty, Katherine Keener


HAPPY EASTER, Commemorating the time when Jesus Christ was crucified and after three days rose from the dead. For those of you who always wondered why Easter moves around so much when the other holidays stay put, the Medieval Church wanted the festival of Jesus moved from any connection with the Jewish Passover. So Church doctors decided the Easter feast would be the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox-Spring. Makes sense to me..? Today is the earliest you will ever see Easter in our lifetimes. The next time it will be this early it will be the year 2204!

The Resurrection story has roots in other cultures- Horus in Egypt, Dionysius and Orpheus in Greece and Odin in Scandinavia all had death and resurrection myths about them. In the early Church a major heresy arose called Gnosticism or Arian Christians. A Bishop Arrius speculated “If Christ was God on Earth how could you kill God? He must have been only pretending to be dead” Orthodox Christians led by Bishop Athanasius argued that the central truth is Jesus suffered death and resurrection. A late pagan philosopher named Plotinus at this time said wearily: “ You can’t buy a loaf of bread at the market without getting a discourse on the transubstantiation of the body. Every beggar and slave is an accomplished theologian!”

Easter is named for Oster or Aster, German goddess of the East Wind, who’s sacrifice was painted eggs laid at her alter. In 63AD. Baodicea, The British warrior queen who battled the Roman legions of Nero had on her flags the Great Moon-Hare, who was the servant of Oster. In 1680 a German writer named Georg Franck published a story of a fantastic rabbit who laid magic eggs and hid them for lucky children to find. How this all got mixed up with the Passion of Jesus, you gotta ask Mel Gibson.

1721- Johann Sebastian Bach sent the first copy of his Brandenburg Concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg. When the Margrave died and an inventory was made of his holdings in Berlin the value placed on each concerto was six groschen, or about $5 each.

1775- During the debate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry said the only way to deal with England was :"I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY FOLLOW, BUT FOR ME -GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH !" Henry became Gov. of Virginia, but later he was forgotten in the formation of the new nation, especially after he declared publicly that the Constitution was a big mistake and Tom Jefferson was an incompetent coward.

1877- the first telephones installed in the White House.

1894- Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan-Doyle was in Davo Switzerland helping his wife recover from tuberculosis at a spa in the Alps. While there the Swiss introduced him to a new sport that he wrote to London about enthusiastically- Ski-Running, or Skiing. Conan-Doyle predicted in the Strand Magazine “Within a generation thousands of English people will be coming to the Alps to ski.” Today there are no statues to Conan-Doyle in England, but there is one of him in Davo, Switzerland.

1918- In a last ditch attempt to break French morale during World War One, the Germans begin firing giant "Big Bertha" cannons at Paris. The monster shells fly 77 miles and took three minutes to reach their targets. The first shell hit Place De La Republique. A German gunner said the discharge of the cannon sounded like an "enormous vomiting dachshund'.

1919-Benito Mussolini founds the Parti Fasci di Combatimento or Fascist Party in Italy. He started his career as a socialist union leader but swung to the other side later (better benefits?) . He named his ultra-right group after the wrapped bundle of sticks with an axe sticking out that was carried before ancient Roman consuls, the fasces, it symbolized Roman power. In a previous generation Garabaldi's men were called Red-Shirts so Mussolini adopted the Black-Shirts. Later Hitler made his storm troopers Brown-Shirts

1945- THE FIRST JET FIGHTER ATTACK- In a last ditch attempt to stop the allied armies entering Germany, the Luftwaffe mounts an attack on two captured Rhine river bridges by fifty jet fighters. The Messerschmidt ME-262 Schwalbe (Swallows).
Half never get off the ground, others get lost and the rest don't accomplish anything. The Luftwaffe aces like Adolph Galland thought the jets were ideal for shooting down big B-17 bombers, but Hitler insisted they carried bomb loads, which slowed them down enough for propeller planes to hit them. The experimental jet fuel was so unstable that it had to be mixed by a chemist as it was being poured into the gas tank. If the mixing was done improperly the whole thing could explode on the runway.

1945- Later that day General George Patton led a group of journalists and photographers out to the center of the Rhine bridgehead. One journalist asked his thoughts now that he was breaching Hitler’s vaunted Seigfried Line and daring to go where no foreign soldier had stepped since Napoleon. As cameras clicked the General undid his fly and took a long healthy piss in the Rhine River. “I waited all morning to do that! Yessir, the pause that refreshes!” My father remembered signal corps photo lab assistants made a brisk business selling copies of the famous incident on left over scraps of enlargement paper. That photo was taken by Tech Sgt. Paul Dougherty of the 737 Tank Battalion.

1957- Art Clokey's "Gumby" Show.

1971- US Congress lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

1989-COLD FUSION Two physicists named Reynolds & Fleischman make incredible claims that they had discovered a way to make electric power from Cold Fusion. This would mean limitless cheap power that left little waste. It could use nuclear waste as a fuel. After a lot of excitement upon closer scrutiny the formula didn’t work. Oh well.

1990- President George Bush Sr. banned Broccoli from the White House. He joked; "Read My Lips ! I hate Broccoli !"
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Yesterday’s Question: What do Roscoe Conkling, James G. Blaine, Harold Stassen, John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Pat Buchanan and Mitt Romney’s father George Romney have in common?

Answer: They were all men who ran for the job of U.S. president and lost. All but James G. Blaine never became their parties’ nominee.


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