Hi Shipmates.

I hope you are having a pleasant Labor Day. In case you are curious "where does Sito get all this stuff?" I thought I'd tell you my current reading habits.

I am working on a new book project on CGI History, so I am reading THE PIXAR TOUCH by David A. Price, SOLDIERS OF REASON: THE RAND CORPORATION AND THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE and the late Bill Moritz' bio of Oscar Fischinger. I also relax with my Sunday New York Times and Kevin Starr's excellent anecdotal history THE DREAM ENDURES: California enters the 1940s.

Where else could you get a personal anecdote about C. Aubrey Smith returning to his old Cricket Club back home in Old Blighty? ( C. Aubrey Smith was the deep voiced, walrus-mustachioed old English actor, who did roles in many Hollywood films in the 1930s, and unofficially presided over the British ex-patriate commune in Tinseltown.

Okay, okay....So it's not Harry Potter, but I enjoy it!

The Hollywood Cricket Club in 1936. C. Aubrey Smith is the big man in the striped jacket and pipe seated down front. Seated on the far left with pipe is Errol Flynn, and seated next to him is Nigel Bruce. Courtesy of ReidFleming.com
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Quiz: Considering Sarah Palin’s husband is of Alaskan Innuit (Eskimo) ancestry. Has there ever been a US President that was Native American?

Yesterday's Question Answered below: What is a Stoic?
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History for 9/1/2008
Welcome to Septembrius, After August the Romans ran out of names for the months. Septembrius is from the Roman number 7, March being the first month.

Birthdays: Joachim Pachebel, Gentleman Jim Corbet, Sir Roger Casement, Seiji Ozawa, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Walter Reuther founder of the United Auto Workers, Englebert Humperdinck- the 19th century composer, Conway Twitty, Jack Hawkins, Leonard Slatkin, Seiji Ozawa, Yvonne DeCarlo, Gloria Estefan, Mike Lah, Boxcar Willie, Richard Farnsworth, Lily Tomlin,

338B.C. -BATTLE OF CHAERONEA- Phillip of Macedon, with his son Alexander the Great, defeated the combined armies of the independent Greek city states. . The Macedonian victory united Greece for the first time under one rule but ended the citystates individual rule. By this time Athens and Sparta had fallen from their once powerful positions and the Greek states that fought King Phillip were led by Thebes ( the Greek city of Theseus is often confused with the similarly named Egyptian city Thebes) Even among the hard drinking Macedonian warriors King Phillip was considered a partyguy. It was said that night he went out on the battlefield and danced on the bodies of the slain. The elite corps of the Greek Theban army was the Sacred Band, a unit where every warrior was married to the man next to him. This way you are less likely to run away from a battle if your lover is next to you rather than a stranger. The system worked, no one ran, the Sacred Band fought and died to the last man. Gays in the Military.

1159- Pope Adrian IV died. The only English Pope, his original name was Hildebrand.

1642- THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR BEGINS- Charles I of England, tired of arguing with his Parliament over money, religion and legislative power, set up his standard at Nottingham and called for the nobles of the Realm to bring troops to put down his saucy subjects. Charles once said “Democracy is a Greek drollery purporting the foolish notion that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.” The Royal flag was raised in a summer rainstorm and was soon blown down. This date is kind of a symbolic beginning of the conflict. Civil War was not a new thing in England- The War of the Roses, The Wars of Stephen and Matilda, Harry Hotspur, Simon de Monfort, Thomas Wyatt, Monmouths Rebellion, etc. But this is considered by historians the biggest English conflict.

1661- King Charles II introduced England to a sport he picked up in Holland, Yacht racing. Yacght is Dutch for little ship. This day in front of the court the King and his brother James raced each other down the Thames.

1715- French King Louis XIV, the Sun King, died at 76. He said:"Idiots! Did you think I would live forever?" later " Hmmm, I thought dying would be harder." His mistress Madame DeMaintenon once complained to the Archbishop that the king still insisted on sex every day and at 68 she was tired. He replied :"It is all our duty to obey the king."

1730- Benjamin Franklin marries Deborah Regan, the supposed mother of his illegitimate son William. William nursed a lasting hatred of his father for his shoddy treatment of him. When the revolution broke out William Franklin was the Royalist Governor of New Jersey. When Ben Franklin died he left nothing in his will to his son: " It is as much as he would have left me were the roles reversed."

1775- British King George III asks Czarina Catherine the Great for 20,000 Russian troops to put down the American rebellion . She declines but later said:"If I were my cousin George, rather than give up my American colonies I would sooner put a pistol to my head."The British crown did buy mercenaries from the Elector of Hess, the famous Hessians for ten pounds ten penny a man. The elector became very rich exporting his subjects, he received an extra charge whenever one was killed or wounded. Frederick the Great of Prussia charged cattle tax when they were transported over his territory. The Rothschild Bank was founded to handle the expenses. Of the 15,000 Hessians sent to America, only 5,000 returned. The rest weren't all killed, most decided to stay and become Americans.

1785 - Mozart publishes 6 string quartet opus 10 in Vienna

1799 - The Manhattan Company chartered. This was a clever bit of maneuvering by Aaron Burr to move in on the banking trade dominated by Alexander Hamilton’s rival The Bank of New York. The Manhattan Company was proposed as a concern to finance the building of new sources of fresh water. New York City’s mushrooming population was constantly beset by diseases of poor sanitation- yellow fever, typhus. Hamilton ruled the New York State Legislature but saw nothing wrong in building aqueducts. So the company was granted a charter. Deep in the companies boiler plate text was an amendment allowing it to open a bank as well. Much to Hamilton’s chagrin the Manhattan Bank opened. The Manhattan Bank in 1840 dropped it’s water projects and united with the Chase Bank to form the Chase Manhattan Bank. Burr and Hamilton would settle their rivalry with pistols in 1804 but Chase Manhattan is still around today.

1802 – The Aurora, a scandalous newspaper, first accused President Thomas Jefferson of having an 'improper relationship' with his slave Sally Hemmings. “Dusky Sally” was the child of Jefferson’s own father in law and his slave that Jefferson had inherited. When they met in 1786 he was in his late forties and she around fourteen. Friends said they lived together like man and wife for 38 years. The Aurora editor James Callander had also accused Alexander Hamilton of affairs, he called John Adams a “pernicious hermaphrodite” and even made fun of George Washington- calling him “the Dalai Lama of America.”. In August 1803 Callanders body was found floating face down in the Potomac. No murder enquiry was ever made. In 1998 DNA testing of descendants proved Jefferson indeed created offspring with his servant Ms. Hemmings, although outraged Jefferson apologists are still trying to blame it on another relative.

1836- In Jerusalem Rabbi Judah Hasid began to build his synagogue and his reform movement- Hasidim.

1852-The Hot Dog or Frankfurter was invented by a group of butchers in Frankfurt, Germany. It didn't catch on in the U.S until it was served at the opening the Coney Island Exhibition in 1894 where it was billed as a Vienna Sausage. Dog was one newspaper's speculation upon the origins of the meat. It was first served at a baseball game in 1910.

1859- The first Pullman sleeping car train went into service.

1864- After Sherman threatened his last escape route at Decatur rebel General John Bell Hood finally abandoned the City of Atlanta to the Yankees. By now the 34 year old Texas born General Hood had his arm amputated at Gettysburg and a leg blown off a Chickamagua. He required straps to hold him up in his saddle. Yet he survived the Civil War, became a US senator and fathered nine children. Eyewitnesses at this time said while on horseback his prosthetic leg stuck out at an odd angle and you had to duck to avoid being struck in the face by it as Hood rode by.

1870- THE BATTLE OF SEDAN. French Emperor Napoleon III lost his entire Empire losing to the Prussians and gets captured to boot. He had allowed himself to be bottled up in a fortress and pounded on all sides by new long distance German steel cannon. French general LaCroix wrote: " We are caught in a chamberpot and here comes la merde." When it came time to surrender the generals couldn't bear the humiliation so they sent LaCroix out to do the honors.

1885- Mrs. Emma Nutt became the first telephone switchboard operator. At first telephone companies used telegraph errand boys to connect calls, but switched to women after customers complained of the boys saucy wisecracks and rude attitude on the phone.

1897- The Boston T-train opened. First subway line in the U.S.

1901 - Construction began on the modern NY Stock Exchange.

1905-The Canadian territories of Prince Rupertland become the Provinces of Alberta and Sashkatchuan.

1913 - George Bernard Shaw’s play "Androcles & the Lion," premieres in London.

1916- The Keating-Owen act banned child labor from interstate commerce.

1919- Pat Sullivan's 'Feline Follies" cartoon staring Felix the Cat. Felix is the first true animated star, not depended on a previous newspaper comic strip. His body prototype, a black peanut shape with four fingers, will be the standard for years to come and copied for characters like Oswald and Mickey Mouse. By 1926 he was the most popular star in Hollywood after Chaplin and Valentino. Lindbergh had a Felix doll in his plane and it has been speculated that Groucho Marx copied his famous strut. The first television image broadcast by scientists in 1926 was of a Felix doll.

1923- Tokyo and Yokohama are destroyed by the largest earthquake recorded in the twentieth century. 100,000 died.

1928- Paul Terry premiered his sound cartoon RCA Photophone system for a short called "Dinner Time". Young studio head Walt Disney came by train out from Los Angeles to see it. He telephoned his studio back in L.A." My Gosh, Terrible! A Lot of Racket and Nothing Else!" He said they could continue to complete their first sound cartoon "Steamboat Willie".

1932-Mayor Jimmy Walker resigned as Mayor of New York. The corrupt but colorful Walker was a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote a hit song "Will you love me in September like you do in May.?" and flouted his chorus girl mistress at social functions. The man who served out Walker’s term was John P.”Boo-Boo” O’Brian, another Tamany machine politician who was so inept that when a reporter asked who he planned to name as the new Sewer Commissioner O’Brian said “A decision hasn’t been given me yet..”

1939- FIRST CANNES FILM FESTIVAL- The premiere film event in Europe had been the Venice Film Festival but western democracies tired of the bias of the judges for Fascist and Nazi films. For example Walt Disney was annoyed his Snow White, the box office and critical champ of 1938, lost out to Leni Reifenstahl's Olympia. So the little French Riviera city was chosen as the site for a new festival. Two days after opening World War Two was declared and the festival shut down until 1946.

1939- WORLD WAR TWO BEGAN. The Nazi Army blitzkreigs into Poland. Britain and France declared war two days later. Blitzkreig meant Lightning War- heavy motorized tanks and troops moving at full speed into an enemies interior while the airforce destroyed most of the Polish airforce still on the ground. The outdated Polish Army still fought with cavalry. The Nazis propaganda Ministry rigged up a border incident to claim Polish troops had fired first. They put dead concentration camp victims in German uniforms in a plan called Operation Canned Goods. So all through the massive invasion the operation was referred to in the German media as the “Counter Offensive”

1939- Hitler ordered the mentally ill sent to concentration camps.

1939 – The Physical Review published the 1st paper on a celestial phenomena called "black holes".

1941- Hitler passed a law ordering Jews in Nazis occupied countries to wear yellow stars on their clothing for identification. The King of Denmark reacted by wearing a yellow star.

1955- Phillip Loeb was a TV star, playing Papa on the show The Goldbergs on radio and television. But the book Red Channels listed him as a Communist. He was blacklisted and the show dropped by CBS and NBC. This day Loeb checked into the Hotel Taft and swallowed a bottle full of sleeping pills..

1956- Elvis Presley bought his momma a pink cadillac.

1969- Col. Mohammar el Khaddafi seized power in Libya after deposing King Idris.

1972 - Bobby Fischer (US) defeats Boris Spassky (USSR) for the world chess title.
The young eccentric genius Fischer was the Tiger Woods of chess and for a time a pop icon. He would after a few years of fame drop out of competition at the height of his powers and go into seclusion.

1978 - Last broadcast of "Columbo" on NBC TV

1979 - LA Court orders retired TV star Clayton Moore to stop wearing his Lone Ranger mask in public appearances. Paramount was pushing a bad remake the Legend of the Lone Ranger starring Klinton Spillsbury and so wanted the old man to stop competing for the spotlight. But today that movie is forgotten while everyone remembers the TV show,

1982 - Max US speedometer reading mandated at 85 MPH.

1995 – The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opens in Cleveland Ohio

1998- THE STARR REPORT- The full text of independent Special Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation into the sexual wrongdoings of President Bill Clinton with his intern Monica Lewinsky was released on-line. It was the first major news story reported on the Internet first, a full day before the other media could get it. Twenty million log on’s occurred in one days time. It caused huge internet user jams and sparked a furious response from millions of Americans, all on electronic mail. Americans learned of their Presidents many uses for his cigar and Monica snapping her thong underwear at him. Many felt the salacious details ranked as soft-core pornography but it was sent out without any child-proof guards anyway, championed by conservative politicians who normally cry for media censorship. Pornography publishing tycoon Larry Flynt jokingly offered Kenneth Starr a job.”Heck, any man who could get that much porn into 50 million homes so quickly should be working for me!”
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Yesterday's Question: What is a Stoic?

Answer: Ancient Greek Philosophy developed by Zeno. It was so called because he taught his lessons outside on the Painted Porch (Stoa) of the Athenian Agora. Stoics taught that customs and superstitions are unnecessary; Virtue and Morality are an end in themselves, because they harmonized with Nature. That a person could be poor but rich in goodness, or locked in prison, but if your mind was free, you were free. Your self-control can never be disappointed, since things occur as destiny would have it and so it too is part of nature.
Marcus Aurelius and Seneca were Stoics, and it’s been theorized that Saint Paul admired its moral precepts, perhaps he worked some of them into his letters.
Today to be called Stoic, it means strong willed and resolute in the face of adversity.