Question: What is a Pom-Pom Gun?

Yesterdays Quiz answered below: Who is the current Prime Minister of Great Britain?
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History for 6/19/2007
Birthdays: Euclid, Blaise Pascal, King James Ist Stuart, Wallis Simpson Duchess of Windsor, Moe Howard, Kathleen Turner, Spanky McFarland, Lou Gehrig, Guy Lombardo, Gena Rowlands, Mildred Natwick, Charles Coburn, Louis Jourdan, Pauline Kael, Salman Rushdie, Dame Mae Whitty, Lucie Sloane, Ang Sung Soo Chi, Paula Abdul.

240 BC- Greek mathematician, Erastosthenes, measuring the cast shadows made by sticks placed in the ground, first calculated the total circumference of the Earth. He was off by only a few miles.

1312- Piers Gaveston- royal courtier and openly gay paramour of English king Edward II, was executed by angry lords of the realm. Thoroughly-Out Eddie then went on to another boy-toy named Hugh Despenser. The memory of Piers Gaveston is preserved as the name of a mens’ fraternity at Oxford University.

1619- THE OLD GLOBE THEATER FIRE. During a performance of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, a prop cannon fired a salute that set afire the straw thatch on the roof. Soon the blaze consumed the old theater. Shakespeare, as a partner in the company that owned the Globe, paid to rebuild it. He soon retired home to Stratford. Fifty years later, during Cromwell’s Puritan rule, the Globe was pulled down because the Puritans frowned on theatrical entertainment as unGodly.

1803- Captain Meriwether Lewis sent a letter inviting Captain William Clark to come join him and explore the route from the Mississippi to the Pacific Coast. Lewis had a backup in mind in case Clark said no, a Lt. Moses Hook. But Clark said yes so today we remember Lewis & Clark, not Lewis & Hook.

1846-THE EARLIEST RECORDED BASEBALL GAME- The famous legend is that Abner Doubleday invented the game but that's been mostly disproved. No one is sure of the exact date the game was invented, but, on this day, a New York newspaper ran a notice of a "base-ball" game played by the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club and the New York Nines Cricket Club at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. The cricketeers won 23-1. This was the first game played under Cartwright’s Rules. Alexander Cartwright created a finite system of three outs and nine innings. Baseball spread nationwide because of the Civil War. When men of all the states would spend leisure time in army camps they learned to play the "Boston-New York Game”. After the conflict, they went to their homes in the various states and took the game with them. In Virginia, old general Robert E. Lee, until 1870 President of Washington College, would sit on his famous white war horse Traveller still wearing his gray uniform but without braid or insignia, and watch the freshmen play baseball, as though he was still directing a battle.

1863- In one of the most famous ship-to-ship duels of the American Civil War, the USS Kearsarge fought and sunk the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama in the harbor of Cherbourg, France. Young Impressionist painter Claude Manet was in the area and made a painting of the event. Confederate raiders hunted US shipping around the sea-lanes of the world, which is why today you can find Confederate grave markers in Capetown, South Africa and Alaska.



1865- Happy Juneteenth- Abe Lincoln’s emissaries finally reached Texas with news of the Emancipation of the slaves. Black Texans celebrate this day thereafter as Juneteenth-Independence Day, although Texas refused to officially acknowledge the holiday until 1979.

1867- The first Belmont Stakes horse race. The winner was Ruthless.

1889- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes adventure, the Man with the Twisted Lip.

1893 - Lizzie Bordon acquitted of the axe murders of her abusive parents. The murderers were never found. She lived alone peaceably and when she died she left all her money to the ASPCA.

1917- Still in the depths of World War One, King George V ordered members of the British royal family to dispense with German titles & surnames. Before that the official name of Queen Victoria’s family was the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. It now became the House of Windsor. Prince Louis Von Battenberg became Lord Louis Mountbatten.

1921- Distributer AmadeeVan Beuren announced production of a new series of "Aesop’s Fables" cartoons to be done by former Bray director Paul Terry. Terrytoons studio is born.

1923 - "Moon Mullins," a Comic Strip, debuts.

1934-The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, created.

1941 - Cheerios Cereal invented. The name Cheerios comes from a town in Italy called Cheerigalia, where grain and cereals had been grown since Roman times.

1953- THE ROSENBERGS GO TO THE CHAIR- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, "The Atomic Spies", were electrocuted at Sing Sing for spying for the Soviet Union. When the Russians detonated their first nuclear weapon no one in America thought they could do it without spies giving them our secrets. We now know, in 1945, Manhattan project physicists Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall had given Stalin the plans to the Nagasaki bomb. According to KGB archives from 1989, Julius Rosenberg was on their payroll, but just what and how much he did is controversial. Dr. Fuchs gave away much more vital information yet he only got a moderate prison term. Ted Hall was never discovered until he wrote a book in 1997. Housewife Ethel Rosenberg probably didn’t do anything and died horribly, screaming when the current was turned on. It took three tries for two full minutes. Only hours before the execution, a young lawyer had found a clause in the law statutes that execution of spies could not take place except in time of war, but the judge who could have stopped it refused because he was Jewish and he feared an even greater anti-Semitic backlash if he saved them. To conservatives the Rosenbergs were dangerous traitors; to progressives they were innocent martyrs of the red hysteria of the times and of anti-Semitism, even though their prosecutor Roy Cohn was also Jewish. The executions were moved up a day so they would not be killed on a Friday, the Jewish Sabbath. The final record still is not clear. Roy Cohn became one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS.

1952 - "I've Got A Secret" debuts on CBS-TV with Garry Moore as host.

1956- The comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis announce their breakup.

1964- THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT. African Americans finally get the basic rights promised them by Abe Lincoln 100 years earlier. A Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas would not have been possible without this legislation. In the South blacks were routinely disqualified from voting and forced to take humiliating tests, like guessing how many bubbles were on a bar of wet soap. Several Civil Rights bills had been proposed by FDR, Truman and Kennedy but they were all blocked by the Southern Caucus in Congress. Those who remember Lyndon Johnson only as the warmonger of Vietnam should also recall that his arm twisting was the main reason this act was approved. Chief Justice William Reinquist, Senator Strom Thurmond, Billy Graham and Claire Booth Luce the owner of Time Magazine begged LBJ not to sign it. The Civil Rights Act started the shift of Southern white conservatives from the Democratic Party to the Republicans. This ended the image of the Southern Dixiecrat.

1964- The Condor Club of San Francisco becomes the first to offer Topless Dancers. Carol Doda became the first topless waitress and a mainstay of San Francisco’s nightclub scene. She expanded her already ample bosom to 44 inches with silicon. She joked: "I dunno, I guess I just expand in the heat!"

1973 – Do not hurt her…Frank-Furter…The Rocky Horror Picture Show stage show opened in London. The film version became a midnight cult classic. Writer Richard O’Brien himself plays the bald doorman.

1978 – Garfield the Cat, created by Jim Davis, 1st appears as a comic strip

1987 - Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream & Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia announce new Ice Cream flavor, Cherry Garcia.

1987 –David Geffen Records sign their 1st artist -Disco queen Donna Summer.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who is the current Prime Minister of Great Britain?

Answer: Gordon Brown.