Quiz: What is meant by something being Ersatz? Like ersatz coffee?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What are the modern names of these countries? Formosa, IndoChina, New France, New Spain, Mauritania?
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History for 4/30/2008
Birthdays: Franz Lehar,Max Skladanowsky German cinema pioneer, Czech novelist Jaroslav Hasek, Eve Arden, Jill Clayburgh, Alice B. Toklas, Willie Nelson, Isaiah Thomas, Cloris Leachman, Jane Campion, Lars von Trier, Burt Young,, Kirsten Dunst is 26

Happy Birthday Bill Plympton!

Walpurgisnacht- In the Hartz Mountains of Germany the eve the Feast Day of St. Walpurga the demon chaser is a Halloween kind of party, when the Devil can romp for a night. It's part of the inspiration for Mussogorsky's "Night on Bald Mountain".

1598-Conquistador Don Juan de Onate claimed for Spain all of "New Mexico", a province comprising Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and California. He began an aggressive colonization policy among the Pueblo Indians.

1789-FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES-wearing a suit of Connecticut homespun and a sword on his hip, George Washington was inaugurated on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York as the first President. John Hancock and John Adams were always annoyed that they weren't made first president before him. Thomas Jefferson originally thought the position of elected ruler ridiculous "So they've saddled us with a Polish King." (The Kings of Poland at the time were elected figureheads with no power). Jefferson was made first Secretary of State and felt the position was so useless since we had no foreign policy he asked to also be made attorney general so he could do something to pass the time. Alexander Hamilton wanted to be first Secretary of the Treasury so he could manipulate it into something resembling a Prime Minister. This was the way the Exchequer had evolved in England. At the same time Vice President Adams was hoping for the same kind of power. But Washington had his own ideas. His animosity with Adams may explain why the Vice Presidency evolved into the useless position it is. And Congress set up the Ways and Means Committee to curb the autocratic methods of Hamilton's Treasury Department. It's amazing that despite all this intrigue the system worked out the way it did....

1803- THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE - Spain had governed Louisiana since the French defeat in the Seven Years War. At first Napoleon dreamed of rebuilding France’s colonial empire, but after his naval defeats and the long war against rebels in Haiti he soured on the project. He had duped the King of Spain into giving him back Louisiana in exchange for the Italian Duchy of Parma. The King of Spain’s only stipulation was that should France ever wish to unload Louisiana it must come back to Spain. Napoleon said:"Trust Me!" then figured he could do the British most damage by giving it to the Yankees. Spain never did get Parma either. The US wanted to buy New Orleans from France the way they bought Alabama from Spain and Maine from England. America's nightmare was England taking Louisiana from France the way they took away Canada in 1759. Then American expansion would be permanently confined to the east coast and the U.S. would be a one time zone country. Napoleon decided not jut to sell them The Big Easy but the entire Deep South and Midwest up to Montana ! At the stroke of a pen the land mass of the United States doubled. Such a deal! Napoleon later wrote: "I have confirmed the might of the United States and in her raised a Rival to England, that will one day Humble her Pride !"

1859- CAMARONE DAY- National Holiday of the French Foreign Legion.
It commemorates a battle during the French Empire in Mexico. 175 legionaries were attacked at a little ranchero called Camarone by thousands of Juaristas. The legionaries fought until only 12 were left alive with no more bullets. When the Mexican commander called upon them to surrender Capt. Danjou ordered "Fix bayonets and Charge!"
Today the wooden hand of Capt. Danjou is a relic at the Legions headquarters outside Marseilles. Since then to do an insanely gutsy action, in Legion parlance, is a Camarone. In 1951 in Korea, when the Foreign Legion rose from their trenches to fight hand to hand with human wave attacks of Red Chinese, their war cry was "Camarone! Camarone!"

1897- The Discovery of the Electron. English Professor J.J Thompson discovered a subatomic particle 100 times smaller than a proton. He called it a 'corpusle' but later changed it to 'electron'.

1900- John Luther Jones , called CASEY JONES died in a spectacular train crash near Vaughn Mississippi. Jones' freight train was running 75 minutes late so he stoked up his engine to 100 mph. Suddenly a switching error put a passenger train in his path. Jones stayed at the controls, trying to stop the train while his crew jumped to safety. There was a head on collision, but because of Casey Jone’s bravery, his was the only death. A brakeman later wrote the famous folksong. Union activists prefer to remember that Jones was a strikebreaker running his train recklessly, in defiance of a strike, just to impress his employers. The union still paid his widow his $3000 dollar life insurance. Folksinger Joe Hill in his song "Casey Jones the Union Scab." told how when he went to heaven, the Angel’s Union Local #23 "fired Casey down the Golden Stair.."

1905- At Evansville Illinois, future baseball umpire Cy Rigler began the practice of raising his right arm to indicate strikes, so that friends in the outfield could distinguish calls.

1934- In Berlin hotel Chancellor Hitler met Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, who showed him the plans for a cheap inexpensive car the average German could afford. A people’s car or VolksWagen. It would become the VW beetle.

1939- The 1939 World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows, NY. The Trylon & Perisphere presided over the gleaming Art-Deco paean to optimism, even as the world waited nervously for Hitler’s next move. With President Franklin D. Roosevelt in attendance the NBC network began regular television broadcasting. It only went to a few homes. Experts were not optimistic about the public taking to watching TV." It requires a darkened room and constant attention." one said.

1943- The body of an American Major named Martin washed up on shore in Italy. On the intelligence officer’s body was found sensitive documents outline the coming Allied Invasion of Italy through Sardinia. It was all an elaborate hoax set up by the OSS to fool Nazi strategists on Allied intentions. The body used was an unidentified corpse, which, during World War Two was not that hard to procure. It worked. In July when the Anglo-American forces invaded Sicily many of the German heavy forces were waiting in Sardinia.

1945- BERLIN FALLS. Sergeants Yegorov and Kantariya raise the red flag over the Reichstag as the last Nazi resistance in the capitol was stamped out. After a late supper of spaghetti and a tossed salad Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun bit down on cyanide capsules and Hitler put a revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Dr. Josef Goebbels and his family took poison but secretary Martin Bormann decided to take his chances making a run for it. For years it was thought he had made it to Latin America but in the late 1980's excavations in Berlin found his skeleton under a collapsed building crouching behind a tank. Hitler even left instructions to have his Alsatian dog Blondi poisoned. The bodies were taken out to a ditch and burned with gasoline. A famous photo of a dead man with a Hitler mustache, was in reality a body double shown to the Russians to throw them off the track. Today, Adolf Hitlers’ skull is sitting in a filing cabinet in Moscow somewhere.
When Marshal Zhukov informed Soviet leader Josef Stalin by telephone of Hitler's death, Uncle Joe said:" Doigralsya, podlets!" So, that's the end of the bastard!" Soviet troops found in Hitler’s office that he did possess a large world globe like Charlie Chaplin’s film the Great Dictator. The globe had arrows drawn in red pen pointed at England and the United States with Hitler’s handwritten scribbles "Look out! Here I come!". Russians covered the Reich Chancellery building with graffiti- the most popular being "Svenia went to Berlin" a version of the American "Kilroy was Here".

1945- "Arthur Godfrey Time" debuts on CBS radio. Godfrey was a local Washington D.C.deejay who gained nationwide fame for his emotional coverage of the funeral of FDR. He then went from radio to television, hosting the first regularly successful television entertainment program. Godfrey in later life got increasingly hard on his employees and in an infamous incident actually fired singer Julius LaRosa live on the air.

1948- The first civilian Land Rover automobiles produced.

1948- David Ben-Gurion read the declaration of independence of the State of Israel to a cheering crowd in Tel Aviv.

1952 - Mr Potato Head is 1st toy advertised on television. In 2000 Rhode Island declared itself the Mr Potato Head State. the Hasbro Toy Company is headquartered in Pawtucket, a city just outside of Providence.

1973- As the Watergate Scandal accelerates, President Nixon tells all his senior White House Staff- H.R.Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Nicholas Katzenbach and attorney general John Mitchell that they were all fired.

1975 -SAIGON FELL. As Huey helicopters lifted the last panic stricken evacuees off of the US embassy roof, the South Vietnamese capitol city Saigon was taken by the Communist North Vietnamese army. Over 7000 people were lifted out by helicopter to the U.S. fleet, the largest helicopter evacuation ever. One of the last out was US ambassador William Martin, with the Stars & Stripes folded under his jacket. As North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Thin accepted the surrender of the city he told acting South Vietnamese President Big Minh “ Do not be sad. Only the Americans are defeated. Consider this a moment of Joy.” The Vietnam War ends. Vietnamese call it the War of Unification. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

1980- Bert Lance, White House budget director for President Jimmy Carter was cleared of nine charges of fraud. Lance had once explained the economy thus: " Think of the Inflationary Spiral as a giant Corkscrew, and think of yourselves as the Cork."

1988- Tom Hanks married actress Rita Wilson.

1993- In Hamburg, young tennis star Monica Seles had just completed a match when lunatic fan named Gunter Parche jumped out of the crowd and stabbed her in the back with a knife. He didn’t want Monica to overtake Stephy Graff, whom he was stalking . Monica Seles recovered and resumed competition but never again regained her world championship poise. Parche spent a little time in prison but was soon released. And Stephy Graff did stay the number one seed.

1992- BERN, the Geneva particle lab where the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berner, declared that WWW. aka the Web would be open and free to all with no restrictions or royalties to be paid to them.

1993- The Walt Disney Company announced it’s purchase of the independent film producer Miramax. A few years later the Weinstein Brothers, who had made Miramax an independent power in Hollywood, left to built the Weinstein Company.

1997- In the last show of the season comedian Ellen Degenere’s character admits to Laura Dern that she’s gay. Disney cancelled the Ellen Show soon after. Ellen soon came back with a hit daytime show.
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Yesterday’s Question: What are the modern names of these countries? Formosa, IndoChina, New France, New Spain, Mauritania?

Answer: Taiwan ( Republic of China), Vietnam, Canada ( Quebec), Mexico, Morocco.