Quiz: What is bilge?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: We hear of Zion, The Last Zion, the Children of Zion and Zionists. So, just what is Zion, anyway?
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History for 6/30/2008
Birthdays: Buddy Rich, Lena Horne is 91, Czeslaw Milosz, Susan Hayward, Mike Tyson is 42, Deanna Durbin, Howard Hawks, William Goldman, Martin Landau, Essa-Pekka Salonen, David Alan Grier, Vincent D’Onofrio, Monica Potter, Rupert Graves

1520- " La Noche Triste- THE NIGHT OF SORROWS" at Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs finally realize that Cortez and his conquistadors aren’t visiting gods and drive them from the capitol with great slaughter. Almost half of his men were killed this one night. Some Spaniards attempted to escape by diving into the lake and swimming but were dragged down by the weight of their stolen gold and drowned. Cortez forced his hostage the Emperor Montezuma to go out and quiet the multitudes, but the crowd killed him with a shower of stones. During the fighting, captured Spaniards were dragged up the steps of the great pyramid of Huitzilopochtli and sacrificed while their comrades could only watch in horror. The temple towered over the city so everyone could see. After the ritual sacrifice the Aztecs would eat barbecued strips cut from the man’s thighs. Remember this the next time you order fajitas. Diarist Bernal Diaz de Castillo remembered that during a lull in the fighting the Aztecs would call out :'You Spaniards better go home. I'm stuffed!" Cortez would regroup his forces and with the aid of allied Indian tribes and a terrible smallpox epidemic eventually reconquer the city.

1559- King Henry II of France is warned by a weirdo named Michel de Nostre Dame or Nostradamus, to beware of lances. Henry laughed it off because nobody fought that way anymore. However to celebrate a dynastic marriage and peace treaty with Spain part of the Rue Saint Antoine in Paris was closed off for a joust with blunt lances–kind of a Renaissance version of a "Medieval Times" party. Forty year old King Henry jousted with the Dukes of Guise and Savoy and knocked them down. He complained they let him win and ordered his Scottish body guard Montgomery to lay on for real. In a freak accident, on impact Montgomery’s lance splintered and shot through the king’s gold helmet visor and through his brain, killing him. Nostradamus was quickly put on the royal payroll.

1643- In Paris the son of an upholsterer named Jean Coquelin signed a contract to establish the Ilustre Theatre. Jean also took on a stage name- Moliere .

1832- The Great Pierce Island Rendezvous- In the Old West the end of June marked the one time of the year the solitary Mountain Men would come down out of the Rockies and meet together. At the rendezvous they contacted fur company representatives to turn in their furs and pelts for gunpowder, blankets, trade trinkets and whiskey. There were several rendezvous sites including Bent's Fort and Papoagia but Pierce Island was one of the more celebrated

1856- Charles Dickens does his first public reading from his works in London.

1859- Daredevil Emile Blondin crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

1870- The dictator of the Dominican Republic had offered to sell his entire nation to the United States.

1882- Charles Guiteau, assassin of President Garfield and major league fruitcake, was hanged. He had acted as his own lawyer on a defense that God had ordered him to kill the president. One prison guard hated Guiteau so much he took a shot at him but missed, prompting a Congressman to order an investigation of the marksmanship of government officers. Tickets to the execution went for as much as $300 Each. Guiteau’s last words as the gallows trapdoor dropped was "Glory Halelieuyah!"

1894 - London Tower Bridge opened.

1908-A mysterious explosion occurs in remote Tunguska Siberia with the estimated strength of several atom bombs. No meteorite remains was ever discovered. Soil at the epicenter had been turned to glass. It was speculated as a comet impact or a UFO crash. But it has never been completely explained.

1914 – A young English trained Indian lawyer named Mohandas K. Ghandi was arrested for the first time, trying to win equal rights for non-European citizens in South Africa. Years later in India he would earned the name the Mahatma, or the Great Soul.

1933- A group of actors meet in secret at Frank (the Wizard of Oz) Morgan and form the Screen Actors Guild. The secrecy was because studios threatened to blacklist anyone who so much as breathed the word union. Among the founding members that night are James Cagney, Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Frederic March, Robert Montgomery and Boris Karloff.

1934-"NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES"- Chancellor Adolf Hitler arrested his own stormtroopers during their convention and had them all shot. Hitler was placating the top industrial and military powers to consolidate his hold on Germany.

1936- Margaret Mitchell's bestseller 'Gone With the Wind" first published.

1936- the 40 hour work week made a federal law. But nobody in animation found out about it until 1941.

1937- Congress voted to shut down the Federal Theater Program, the division of the government funded WPA that produced plays for Depression wracked poor people. The FTP produced cutting edge works of Orson Welles, Clifford Odets and Eugene O’Neill and at it’s height reached 25 million people. But conservative senators thought it had become too radicalized by lefties for a government program. Theater actors working in L.A. on a hit production of Pinocchio held a mock funeral for the puppet. Over it’s casket was the headstone FTP: Born 1934, Killed by an Act of Congress, June 30th 1937.

1940- Cartoonist Dale Messick takes over the Brenda Star comic strip and adds the trademark sparkles.

1948- Bell Laboratories announced the Transistor, a possible substitute for radio-vacuum tubes.

1953- The first Chevy Corvette rolled off the assembly line. Only three thousand were made, all white with red interior selling for $3500.

1975 - Cher, just 4 days after divorcing Sonny Bono married rocker Gregg Allman.

1996 - Margaux Hemingway, considered the first modern Supermodel, committed suicide at 41. Her grandfather Ernest Hemingway committed suicide, and his father before him.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: We hear of Zion, The Last Zion, the Children of Zion and Zionists. So, just what is Zion, anyway?

Answer: Several times in the Old Testament, the promised land of Israel is called in Hebrew Tsiyon or Sion. Zion has grown to become a metaphor for a promised land of peace, in the real or spiritual sense. To the Rastafarians of Jamaica Zion is the land of Africa. To Mormons at first Jackson County Missouri was called Zion, then the Salt Lake area, as well as a metaphor for a state of spiritual utopia. The Back to Zion movement among European Jews began in the 1880s, and followers were called Zionists. The Mount Zion near Jerusalem today is a name given in modern times.