My entry is below- check 1945...
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Quiz: What is a full-bird colonel?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is bilge?
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History for 7/1/2008
Birthdays: Louis Bleriot, Tommy Dorsey, George Sand, Charles Laughton, James Cagney, Princess Diana, Twyla Tharp, Carl Lewis, Jamie Farr, Sidney Pollack, Wally "Famous"Amos, Olivia DeHavilland is 92, Estee Lauder, Debbie Harry is 63, Genevieve Bujold, Karen Black, Leslie Caron is 77, Dan Ackroyd is 56. Andre Braugher is 46, Pamela Anderson is 41, Liv Tyler is 31

Welcome to July named for Julius Caesar. Before that the Romans called it month number five- "Quintilicus". They had a ten month calendar and ran out of names after Juno (June). So thank Julius Caesar that you don't have to celebrate the Fourth of Quintilicus.

1851-Painter James MacNeil Whistler applied to West Point Military Academy. After failing entrance exams he washes out and concentrates on becoming one of the most celebrated artists of the century. He later joked:" If silicon was a gas I’d be a major general by now!"

1858- Charles Darwin does a public reading of his theories on Evolution to the Linean Club in London.

1863- GETTYSBURG- the most famous battle ever fought on U.S. soil.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee decided to invade north into Pennsylvania and hopefully by threatening Philadelphia and Washington force peace talks. Union General Meade shadowed his movements. With all their cavalry away chasing each other the two large armies groped around blindly through the backwoods of Lancaster County. Rebel General Henry Heath stopped in the little crossroads town of Gettysburg to get shoes for his men. While there he ran into some blue uniforms up the street. "Go on boys, that's jes some Pennsylvania militia." Heath said. Actually it turned out to be the Yankee's elite "Iron Brigade". A nasty firefight brewed up and both armies started to boil into each other like a slow motion trainwreck. Union General Winfield Scott Hancock drew up his cannon in a hilltop cemetery for defense. The battle would last three days and Lee's defeat would be the turning point of the Civil War.
Through the screams and gunsmoke one could read a little sign on the Gettysburg Cemetery gate: " The Carrying or Discharge of Firearms on these Premises are strictly Prohibited".

1867-HAPPY CANADA DAY- By treaty Her Majesties North American Colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, Maritimes, Prince Rupert Land and diverse other holdings are incorporated as the Autonomous Dominion of Canada. This master plan to consolidate the British Empire's colonial administration was invented by Lord Caernarvon, who Queen Victoria nicknamed "Twitters."

1898- THE CHARGE UP SAN JUAN HILL. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders take the Spanish fortifications on the two hilltops above the harbor of Cuba's second city, Santiago. His main attack was actually up Kettle Hill and the Rough Riders were on foot, and Teddy was not in charge, but it made great hardcopy. Roosevelt"s superior was elderly former Confederate General Fightin' Joe Wheeler, who occasionally mixed up calling the Spaniards-"Yankees". Teddy was so excited about being under fire that at one point he stopped before a trooper dying of a terrible abdominal wound, shook his hand and said: " Isn't this just a splendid day ?!" Equally engaged in the fighting was the U.S. Ninth Cavalry, the famed Buffalo Soldiers led by Lt. John Pershing, who because of his affinity for his black troops was already referred to as Blackjack Pershing. Artist Frederick Remington was there as a news correspondent as was author Stephen Crane and William Randolph Hearst. On the Spanish side was a young soldier named Pablo Castro, who’s son would be Fidel Castro.

1933- Scarface Al Capone got his start in the crime from New York mobster Frankie Yale. But when Yale started to get inconvenient for Big Al, he didn’t have any problem with having him killed this day.

1941- Animation director Tex Avery stormed out of the Looney Tunes Studio when Jack Warner ordered cuts in the first Bugs Bunny cartoon, A Wild Hare. Boss Leon Schlesinger put him on a four week suspension without pay, but Avery had already lined up a gig at MGM.

1941- THE FIRST TV COMMERICAL -During the live coverage of a Brooklyn Dodgers-Philadelphia Phillies baseball game the first FCC sanctioned television commercial aired. It was for the Bulova Watch Company.

1945- Bill Mauldin's wartime comic strip "Willie & Joe' ends it's run along with the European front line edition of Stars and Stripes magazine. Mauldin wanted to draw the foibles of the American fighting man as he really saw them. He was once chewed out by General Blood & Guts Patton for making his GIs so slovenly and cynical. He felt it was a negative image of the American Fighting Man. Patton threatened to "throw your ass in jail!" But Willie & Joe stayed as is. Mauldin said "the quickest way to become a pacifist is to serve in the infantry."



Here is one of my favorites" Hello Artillery? I have a target for you, but you are going to have to be patient..." Mauldin had an great black & white technique. Look at the complexity of his brushwork and realize he did a lot of his work away from an office, in the field with his subject, the soldiers. He is the only cartoonist I can think of who worked even while under enemy fire. He was wounded during the invasion of Anzio and was awarded a Purple Heart. He was given a jeep and roamed the front line, turning out six cartoons a week. He had the most rudimentary of tools, a pencil, a brush, a little bottle of ink, at times using the dashboard of his jeep as a drawing table, yet did such so much with them.



Charles Schulz said no one could draw mud like Bill Mauldin. I always wanted to meet this cartoonist who so influenced Schulz, Mort Walker and Pat Oliphant. But when I finally met him at a NCS party in San Antonio, he was not very well. His age and hard living had caught up with him, he was developing Alzheimers and he listless and sullen. Schulz and his wife Jean had to complete his sentences. He died a year later. I wish I had known him in his prime, I heard he was quite something.

1945- NY Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the Sunday comics section over the radio because of a newspaper strike.

1946- The first peacetime A-Bomb detonated in the Bikini Islands. The army wanted to study the effects of the bomb so they parked old German warships, buildings and dummys around it, as well as chained down animals. They soldiers nicknamed the bomb 'Gilda' after the Rita Hayworth movie. When Ms. Hayworth heard her name was being used to incinerate 1,500 innocent sheep, horses and elephants she collapsed in shock. The inhabitants of the island were removed and to this day the islands are uninhabitable. A cloud of radiation also killed the crew of a Japanese fishing boat in the area. But the island's name gave a neat idea to French designer Jacques Clauzel what to call his daring new ladies’ two-piece swimsuit.

1963-U.S. POST OFFICE introduced Zip Codes. Remember Mr Zip?

1970- Hanna & Barbera’s primetime animated series "Where’s Huddles?"

1981- The Wonderland Murders. Notoriously over-endowed porn star Johnny Holmes was implicated in a gangland murder. In a Los Angeles home known to be involved in drug dealing. four people were found beaten to death with a steel pipe. Holmes was picked up and tried as an accomplice but was acquitted. Hung jury. -I’m sorry, I just had to say it! His fate hung in the balance! Okay, I’ll stop.

1996- the movie Dinosaur Valley Girls premiered.

1998- Barbara Streisand married James Brolin.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is bilge?

Answer: The lowest part of the bottom of the ship, where the two sides meet at the keel. In the old days leaking water, fuel oil, waste and other indescribable liquids would gather at the bottom- Bilge Water, and have to be pumped out- A Bilge Pump.