Quiz: Which American leaders were given these Indian names? A- Son of the Morning Star. B-Sharp Knife, C-Dark Eagle, D- Burner of Villages.

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Italian writer Umberto Eco once said:” English is a confusing language. If a He is a Him, why isn’t a She a Shim? Why is it Her? So, how do we answer Signore Eco?
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History for 7/7/2008
Birthdays: Gustav Mahler, Satchel Page, Ringo Starr is 68, Doc Severinsen, Robert Heinlein, William Kuntsler, Gian Carlo Menotti, Ken Harris, Shelley Duva is 58, Ted Cassidy-Lurch in the Adams Family, Michelle Kwan, David McCullough, Pierre Cardin, and according to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle this is the birthday of Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick Dr. John Watson

750 BC -? This was the Roman Feast of Quirinus, then day when Romulus the founder of Rome was taken up to heaven in a cloud and assumed his place beside the Gods as the deified god Quirinus.

1569- Sir Francis Drake boldly sailed into the harbor of Cartagena, the largest port on the Spanish Main, and carried off a treasure galleon.

1607- The English anthem God Save the King first sung in honor of King James Ist.

1666- King Charles II and his court quit London in the wake of the Great Plague.

1814- Sir Walter Scott published his first novel Waverly. He wrote it under a pseudonym because he worried it would damage his reputation as a poet.

1865- Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators were all hanged Lewis Payne, George Atzenrodt and David Herold. Even weeping old Mary Surrat, who's involvement is still debatable. She may have known of some kind of plot but all they could prove was she the landlady of the boardinghouse where the plotters met. Everyone expected that a last minute amnesty would come from President Johnson but the President stayed silent and she was hanged with the others. Mary Surrat was the first woman executed in the U.S. Large Lewis Payne’s neck didn’t break at first and he kicked and danced in the air for five minutes before he choked. General Dan Sickles said afterwards "We do not want to know their names anymore." The large gallows was then broken up and the splinters sold off as souvenirs to tourists.

1895-THE FIRST SUNDAY COMICS - The first modern comic strip Hogan’s Alley featuring "The Yellow Kid" by Richard Felton Outcault, debuts in the Sunday edition of Pulitzer's New York World. The strip was so popular it gave the name "Yellow Journalism" to the sensationalist tabloid press. Comic strips at this time became the mass media of the day. For people who couldn’t afford a theater ticket and couldn’t yet speak English, the little characters in the penny papers were extremely popular and made celebrities out of cartoonists like Outcault, Bud Selig George McManus and Winsor McCay. Richard Outcault later inventing the backend deal when he asked for a percentage of all sales from his new comic strip "Buster Brown and his dog Tige"

1943-BANZAI- Climax of the Battle of Saipan- 4,300 Japanese troops stream out of the jungle in a massed Banzai charge on U.S. Marine positions. Fighting devolved into insane hand to hand combat with Samurai swords and rifle-bayonets, more reminiscent of the Civil War than World War Two. One of the Marines wounded in the attack was future movie star Lee Marvin, nicknamed Captain Marvel by his buddies for his gung-ho attitude. Almost all the Japanese were killed. Later in a cave the Marines found the bodies of General Saito and Admiral Nagumo, the fleet commander at the Pearl Harbor attack. They had committed hari kari when the attack had failed.

1947-THE ROSSWELL INCIDENT- An official news report from the U.S. Airforce 509th bomber command -the same unit that dropped the Hiroshima bomb- stated they had recovered the wreckage of a UFO in the New Mexico desert near Rosswell and were examining it. The next day the commanding general of the 8th Air Force flew to Rosswell and stated to the press that the earlier report was in error and it was only a downed weather balloon. The wreckage was removed under heavy-armed guard and complete secrecy was then imposed and maintained to this day. The communications officer Major Jesse Marcey who posed for an official photo showing him with the balloon wreckage later told his son it was faked. Marcey, who died in 1967 and his adjutant Lt. Haut still stick to the original version of their story. Lt. Haut also claimed the base commander Col. William Blanchard thought it was UFO debris. This report coming only two weeks after the first modern sighting of "flying saucers" over Mt. Reynier in Oregon sparked the Flying Saucer craze that gripped America throughout the 1950’s. In 1994 and 1997 the Pentagon tried to explain away the story by saying at Rosswell and the base Area 51 they were experimenting with high altitude balloons carrying sniffer devices to detect Russian nuclear tests and the rumored alien remains recovered were test dummies. But then the military just added to the mystery when they still refused any access to the mysterious Area 51. When asked now that the Cold War was over what is done there the Army spokesman said : "Uh, Secret Stuff...."

1949-"I’m Friday"- The program Dragnet first debuted on radio. Jack Webb conceived, wrote, directed and starred in the show. His hardest job was urging actors "not to act" but to speak the lines normally like the average person does.

1960- First demonstration of a practical laser beam. In Russia it had been theorized since 1951. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER.

1967- Vivien Leigh, the actress who played Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, died in a mental institution at age 53.

1967 - Beatles' "All You Need is Love" is released. In 2002 for her Jubilee Queen Elizabeth II requested it because it was one of her favorite songs.

1967 – The Doors' "Light My Fire" hits #1.

1981- Judge Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1982- A drunken lunatic named Michael Fagin with a bleeding left hand broke into Buckingham Palace, got past all the security and startled Queen Elizabeth in her bed. Her personal bodyguard was out walking the royal dogs. The Queen kept the man engaged in conversation at the foot of her bed until guards dragged him away.

2005- Four Al Qaeda terrorist bombs exploded in the London subway Tube and a doubledecker bus, killing 50 and injuring one thousand..

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Italian writer Umberto Eco once said:” English is a confusing language. If a He is a Him, why isn’t a She a Shim? Why is it Her? So, how do we answer Signore Eco?

Answer: The discrepancy is because of the conflux of Danish and Saxon in English.
The Old Norse- Dutch ( Frisan) word for female is zij or sio, in Old Saxon hjo or heo. They all got mixed up in the Northumbrian stew and this problem is the result.