Question: Did Beethoven have any children?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Did Mozart have any children? Were they composers like Bach’s?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/30/2013
Birthdays: Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Gordon Parks, G. Gordon Liddy, Alan Sherman, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Mayo, Ephram Zimbalist Jr, Richard Crenna, Robert Guiliame, Rex Reason, Mandy Patinkin, Luther Ingram, Ridley Scott is 76, David Mamet, Shuggie Otis, Billy Idol, Joan Ganz Cooney the creator of Sesame Street, Dick Clark, Ben Stiller is 48, Henry Selleck

1731-An earthquake kills 100,000 in Peking.

1750- Marshal Saxe died. An illegitimate son of Polish King Augustus the Strong, the one –eyed old general spent the summer nights camping out Cossack style and letting wild steppe ponies gallop the grounds of his Chateau Chambord. A ladies man, he died after an all night "interview" with eight actresses. The king's physician wrote as the cause of death on the Death Certificate; "Une surfeit des femmes."- an overdose of women.

1776- As George Washington’s minuteman army retreated across New Jersey to escape the pursuing British Army, a third of his troop’s enlistment’s were up. In a cold rain 2,000 New Jersey and Maryland militiamen quit the army and walked home. Writer Thomas Paine was serving Gen. Nathaniel Greene as a secretary. He was moved by this pitiful sight to write the pamphlet: “The Crisis”: ”These are times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink in this crisis from the service of his country. But he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of both man and woman. “ Washington called his downcast soldiers together and had the pamphlet read aloud to them.

1782- On a dark snowy day in an upstairs room on the Rue Bonaparte on Paris’ Left Bank, The United States and Britain signed the first of several protocols leading up to the full peace treaty ending the American Revolution. John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and Richard Lawrence signed for America, a parliamentary delegation led by Lord Oswald signed for the Crown. On British diplomat said:” The Americans are the greatest quibblers I have ever dealt with, and I pray never to again in the future!”

1809- Napoleon told Josephine he wanted a divorce. She was the love of his life, but at 46 she could no longer bear children and he needed a son and heir to establish his dynasty. Even though she suspected something like this would happen, eyewitnesses said when she heard the news she screamed and swooned. The French Army called Josephine Our Lady of Victories and marked the end of their luck from this moment. Although his second wife Marie Louise gave him a son, Napoleon never forgot her. On his deathbed in 1821 one of his last words was “Josephine.”

1864- THE BATTLE OF FRANKLIN. Confederate General John Bell Hood had lost Atlanta to Sherman, failed to lure him out of Georgia. Now his subordinate officers missed an opportunity to entrap a different Yankee army outside of Nashville. That army now was facing them in an impregnable position across open country. Cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest urged a maneuver around the enemy, but Hood had had enough of his insubordinate officers. He ordered a full frontal attack.

General Patrick Cleburne, the blue-eyed Irish immigrant called the Stonewall of the West, thought the order stupid but couldn't send his men out without himself leading them.” Oh well lads, if we are to die today, let us do it like men.” After the battle he was found on the Yankee breastworks with 49 bullets in his body. Writer Ambrose Bierce was serving on the Union army staff. He was amazed at such a ‘ghastly carnival of death’ was being enacted in such a beautiful Autumn day. The attack was a complete Confederate disaster.

1886- Paris’ famed naughty nightclub the Follies Bergere opened. The home of the Can-Can, Toulouse Lautrec, Josephine Baker, and Maurice Chevalier.

1900- Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a hotel in Paris. His last words; "This wallpaper is appalling! Either it goes or I do."

1922- The great actress Sarah Bernhardt made her last performance in Turin Italy. She was still considered sexy despite advanced age and a wooden leg.

1924- The first fax message sent. A photo of the Prince of Wales was wired across the Atlantic by radio transmission.

1935-Hitler’s government passed a law that non-belief in Nazi doctrine could be grounds for legal divorce in Germany.

1939- Soviet Russia invaded Finland. The gallant Finns fought back fiercely with skiing hit and run attacks, and gasoline bottle bombs nicknamed for Stalin's Foreign Minister, Vachyeschav Molotov, the "Molotov Cocktail".

1940-Actress Lucille Ball married Cuban band leader Dezi Arnez. Together they pioneered the new art of Television. They divorced in 1960.

1941- President Franklin Roosevelt left Warm Springs Georgia and traveled by special train to meet that evening with Japanese ambassadors Hamada and Kurusu at the White House in a last effort to prevent war.

Meanwhile the main Japanese carrier fleet weighed anchor and left Yokohama for the North Pacific. It’s code name was Kido Butai. It was officially scheduled for military exercises but once out at sea Admiral Nagumo ordered radio silence and following his instructions from Admiral Yamamoto turned his ships south-southeast towards Pearl Harbor Hawaii.

1944- The Red Army moved into Nazi held Austria.

1954- Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges of Sylacauga Alabama was hit by a meteorite. It shot through her roof, bounced off a radio and hit her on the hip. It gave her a nasty bruise and one heck of a story to tell. Broke her radio too.

1961- President John F. Kennedy signed a secret memorandum creating Operation Mongoose. It ordered the CIA under the direction of Attorney General Robert Kennedy to eliminate Cuban leader Fidel Castro by any means necessary. The CIA tried everything from Mafia assassins, to poison cigars, to chemicals to make his beard fall out. Nothing worked and Mongoose was discontinued after Kennedy’s assassination.

1966- Barbados gets its independence from Britain.

1968- “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes hit #1 in the pop charts.

1970- First day shooting on William Freidkin’s film The French Connection.

1974- In a dry gully in Ethiopia Dr Dennis Johannsen discovered the perfect skeletal remains of one of the earliest human ancestors, an ape that walked upright named- Australiopithicus Afrancenis. She called it Lucy. Johannsen liked the Beatles tune Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

1976- After doing such a fine job lowering the journalistic standards of the London press, Australian tabloid king Rupert Murdoch turned his attention to America. Today he bought the New York Post. The Post, a newspaper originally started in 1794 by Alexander Hamilton, quickly gains notoriety as the trashiest newspaper in the U.S. In an interview Murdoch said the only reason he didn’t put in the Post his “Page Three Girls” -nude photo spreads so successful in the London Daily Sun, was because his wife objected...He replaced her. Rupert then bought New York Magazine and the Village Voice, whereupon half their staff immediately quit.

1979- ESPN, the 24 hour sports channel began broadcasting.

1982- Nova Pictures is founded, but due to conflict with a PBS TV show of the same name they change theirs to TriStar Pictures. In 1994 TriStar was merged into SONY Pictures.

1985-Punk band The Dead Kennedys released their album Frankenchrist.

1991- Battered wife Mrs Omeima Nelson killed her abusive husband, dismembered his body and ate him. “I did his ribs just like in a restaurant.” she said.

1993- President Clinton signed the Brady Handgun bill into law. The bill was named for Ronald Reagan press secretary James Brady, who received a debilitating head wound in the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. In 2001, President George W. Bush let it expire without renewing it.

1999- THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE protesters trying to disrupt the World Trade Organization battle riot police and turn the downtown area into a retro-sixties battle zone. For the next several years wherever the WTO met they were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of protestors, although the mainstream media tends to pooh-pooh their message.

2003- Roy Disney Jr, the last serving member of the Disney family, was forced to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the mandatory retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he hired to run the company in 1984- Michael Eisner. So Roy built a successful grass roots stockholders campaign SaveDisney.com. In 2005 Eisner was compelled to retire. Roy Disney kept an emeritus board position until his death in 2009.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUESTION: Did Mozart have any children? Were they composers like Bach’s?

Answer: Mozart and Constanze had six children, of which only two lived to adulthood. One of them Franz Xavier Mozart tried to be a composer like his dad and granddad, but he was mediocre.

It's time to think of a cool gift to give that certain someone close to you. Now what could it be…? Hmmm…..

QUESTION: Did Mozart have any children? Were they composers like Bach’s?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In live action movie shoots, what are sides?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/29/2013
Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Vin Scully, Gary Shandling is 64, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen is 59, Jacques Chirac, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee, Anna Faris is 37

1830- The November Uprising. Polish nationalists rise up against the Russian occupiers in one of their many romantic but hopeless efforts. In America literary figures like Hawthorne, Poe, and Longfellow were romantically moved to write lots of epic poems, but not much else was done to help.
Edgar Allen Poe in his opium induced delirium would run out of his Bronx cottage and march up and down the street with a musket in his hand shouting: "To Warsaw! To Warsaw!" Luckily the local constable was well aware of Mr. Poe's eccentricities and sent him home to bed.

1864- Colorado militia killed over 150 Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre. Col. John Chivington was depressed that he was not back east winning glory in the Civil War. So he attacked a peaceful Cheyenne village. He later held a victory parade in Denver displaying the scalps of the Indians, mostly women, old men and children. His actions sparked a needless Indian war that raged for years afterwards.

1887- The US Navy received permission from the Hawaiian King David IV Kalakaou to lease land for a base at Pearl Harbor.

1890- The first Army-Navy football game held at West Point. Midshipmen beat the cadets 24-0.

1915- In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything. This day John Randolph Bray's "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" cartoon debuted. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, creating the job positions of layout, background painter, inkers, cel painters, checkers and camera. After 1919 Bray shifted his studio’s focus from entertainment to technical and training films. Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer and Shamus Culhane all got their start at Bray's.

1929- Commander Richard Byrd radioed he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. Commander Byrd had flown over the North Pole in 1926 with his friend Floyd Bennett but Bennett had since died and when Byrd made it over the South Pole he dropped a small American flag weighted with a stone from Bennett’s grave.

1941-In occupied Russia, Nazi troops first raped and then hanged Zoia Kosmodemianskaya. She was a top guerrilla leader at 18 years old. Before she died she cried defiance at the Nazis:” You cannot hang all 190 million of us!”

1942- U.S. declared coffee would be rationed along with sugar, gasoline and rubber. And lots more. People put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". Gas Ration cards were listed as C, B & A. The C card meant essential defense worker, police & fire, so they had unlimited access to gasoline. A cards were the least important.

1944- A Detroit man named Malcolm Little was busted for larceny. He later reformed his life around the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Malcolm X.

1947- THE UN DECIDES. Since 1897 European Jewry had focused on buying land and relocating to Palestine. In 1936 the Egyptian Parliament issued an open letter to all Jews to come live amongst them, but rising Arab nationalism since 1919 tended to resist Jewish immigration. Since World War One the British held Palestine as a mandate but after World War Two they dumped the whole problem in the United Nations hands. The Peel Report, a Foreign Office paper published in 1937 said maybe creating two new states was the solution.
This day The United Nations voted 33-13 to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab independent states with Jerusalem under international supervision. On May 14th 1948 British forces completed their withdrawal and Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel.

1959-The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darins’ rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.

1961- NASA sent Enos the Chimp into orbit.

1963-THE WARREN COMMISSION announced- President Lyndon Johnson set up the Warren Commission to investigate the murder of John F. Kennedy. He had originally thought the Dallas Homicide Squad was sufficient, but public outrage demanded more.
The Commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and participants included future president Gerald Ford, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State Alan Foster Dulles and future Senator Arlen Spector, then a young attorney who argued the validity of the "magic bullet" theory”. That one bullet went through Kennedy, bounced, went through Kennedy, ricocheted, went through Connolly, zinged, and wound up sitting in Gov. Connolly's bedsheets in the hospital with no surface dents or marks on it -or something like that.
After ten months the Warren Commission concluded that President Kennedy was killed by a lone nut and there was no conspiracy. In 1975 the House Committee on Assassinations concluded the contrary view, that Kennedy probably was the victim of a conspiracy but what it was is unknown. To this date there are still two million documents pertaining to the case kept classified,

Theories abound –that Attorney General Robert Kennedy squelched evidence that might have tarnished his brother’s record by proving his links to mobsters, to the CIA, Castro or space aliens pulling the trigger. No matter, in the end the Warren Commission’s unsatisfying conclusions spawned a generation of conspiracy buffs.

1963- After the Kennedy assassination, comic Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the dead president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies in 1962, but now it wasn’t funny anymore and Meaders career collapsed. He died of emphysema in 2004. When Lenny Bruce first took the stage after the Kennedy assassination, he opened with a long drag on his cigarette and sighed:” ….Man…. Vaughn Meader is really screwed!”

1967- Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, stepped down to become president of the World Bank.

1972- Atari announced Pong, the first mass-marketed interactive game.

2001- former Beatle guitarist and composer George Harrison died of cancer.
-------------------------------------------------------
Question: In live action movie shoots, what are sides?

Answer: Sides is the name for just the few pages of script to be filmed on a given day. This way everyone didn’t have to drag the entire script around the set.

Question: In live action movie shoots, what are sides?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the most common typeface used in the world today?
----------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/28/2013
Birthdays: Jean Baptiste Lully, William Blake, Frederich Engels, Stefan Zweig, Ernst Roehm, Brooks Atkinson, Berry Gordy the founder of Motown Records, Anton Rubinstein, Gary Hart, Vern Den Herder, Paul Warfield, Hope Lange, Ed Harris is 63, Paul Schaefer, Joe Dante, Michael Ritchie, Anna Nicole-Smith, Randy Newman, John Stewart is 51

HAPPY THANKSGIVING !- Since the earliest recorded times societies have had harvest festivals to give thanks to the appropriate deities that they're not going to starve come winter. Whether or not you believe in 1626 Pilgrim Gov. Winthrop invited Massacoit and his Wampanoag Indians to dinner, the custom of Thanksgiving was a New England holiday for decades thereafter. A few years later the New Englanders exterminated these same Indians and stuck the head of Massacoits son King Phillip on a post. In 1789 George Washington had called for a thanksgiving celebration in late November to celebrate the new Constitution but the holiday didn’t really become an annual custom until the Civil War. Sarah Hale the editor of the Ladies Magazine, the Martha Stewart of her time, had been lobbying the US Government to make the New England custom a national one.

In 1864 after the capture of Atlanta and Mobile Bay it looked obvious that the Union was finally going to win the Civil War. President Lincoln issued a decree that the last Thursday of November be set aside as a feast of national Thanksgiving –Old Abe had just won his re-election so he had lots to be thankful for as well. As blue clad troops chowed down on their turkey and chicken dinners the Confederates withheld their fire in honor of the new Yankee holiday. To this day Thanksgiving is still declared by Presidential decree, probably buried somewhere in the back of today’s newspaper.

HAPPY HANUKKAH ! - The Hebrew Festival of Lights commemorating the victories in 164BCE of the priest-general Judas Maccabeus (Maccabeus means the Hammer) against the Syrian Greeks when the re-lit lamp in the purified Temple of Solomon burned for nine days on one day’s oil . Hanukah of Chanukah means Rededication. The ancient state of Israel had been conquered by Babylon then Persia and finally by Alexander the Great. After Alexander's death his Greek generals divided up his empire and Israel found itself on the border between the Kingdom of Seleucus and Ptolomey's Egypt. This power struggle enabled the Jewish state to reassert it's independence by playing one side against the other until the Romans kicked everyone's butt. The Greek descendant of Seleucus, Antiochus IV Theos Epiphanes- “God Made Manifest” thought this one-God stuff weird and Jews should be praying to Hercules and Apollo like every other self respecting ancient citizen. He plundered the Temple of Solomon for gold and even tried to command Jews to eat Pork on pain of death. The Jews reasserted their faith with such vigor that even when they fell under Roman rule Julius Caesar left specific instructions that Jewish customs and Sabbath be protected. So spin a dradle, light the candle, have some Hanukah gelt and enjoy!
----------------------------------------------
885 A.D. est. date that the VIKINGS ATTACKED PARIS-Viking warchief Ragnar Lothbrocks, or Ragnar Hairy-Legs, decided the Parisians would get a big surprise if he rowed his dragonships down the Meuse, pulled them out on rollers and lowered them back into the Seine to attack Paris. The Parisians under Duke Bernard put up a stout resistance from the city walls until French King Charles the Fat sent help.

1493- Christopher Columbus returned to San Salvador, to discover his first colony La Natividad, wiped out by angry local Indians.

1520- Having recovered and refitted from navigating the Straights of Magellan around the tip of South America, Fernan Magellan began his trip across the Pacific.

1812- COMPLETION OF THE CROSSING OF THE BEREZINA- Napoleon' army on it's frozen Retreat from Moscow had to get across two rickety spans over an ice swollen river while Russian armies fire down on them from all sides. Napoleon said to his chief of staff Berthier” Well, how do we get out of this?”

He ordered the Imperial battle flags burned to save them being captured by the enemy, as the army shuffled numbly past. The bridges broke down frequently and the span of a wooden board was the difference between life and death.

Engineer General Eble, the artillery chief who called his cannon “my children” oversaw the maintaining of the bridges. He constantly waded into waist deep frigid water and with his men worked feverishly to keep patching up the rickety span. General Eble made it out of Russia but later died of pneumonia and exhaustion.

1815- After Waterloo and a prisoner on the island of St. Helena, Napoleon Bonaparte for the first time put away his uniform, and appeared in civilian clothes. It was his admission that after more than twenty-five years of politics and war, his career was indeed over.

1870- Painter Jean Bazille was shot and killed while serving in the French Army fighting the Prussians. He was only 29. He had been one of the leaders of the new Impressionists painters. Had he lived he might have produced many masterpieces and would’ve been as famous as Degas, Monet or Cezanne.

1895- The GREAT CHICAGO RACE- first American auto race. Two electric and four gas powered cars raced from Chicago to Evanston and back 54 miles despite several inches of snow on the ground. The winner Number 5 driven by inventor Charles Duryea reached a top speed of 7 miles an hour! Only one other car finished, the rest broke down. Duryea won $2000 and a cold.

1905- The Sinn Fein political party founded in Dublin by Arthur Griffiths. Sinn Fein –pronounced “shinn-fain”is gaelic for “We ourselves alone”. Griffiths signed the Anglo-Irish treaty with Michael Collins the IRA chief. The subsequent outcry over giving up the six counties of Ulster hounded him into an early grave, Griffiths died of a heart attack and Collins was assassinated.

1907- Boston scrap metal dealer Louis B. Mayer bought an old theater to show the new moving picture shows. Mayer grew into the film business and at the time of his death in 1950 was the imperious head of MGM pictures and the most powerful figure in Hollywood. The Motion Picture Academy was his idea.

1911- The Chevrolet Automobile Company founded by the brothers Chevrolet.

1919- Lady Astor became the first woman elected to the British Parliament. She was the political as well as verbal nemesis of Winston Churchill. She once said to him "Mr. Churchill, if I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee!" To which Churchill replied:" Madame if I were your husband I would drink it !"

1922- The first Skywriting display. Former RAF pilot Cyril Turner wrote HELLO USA , CALL VANDERBILT 7-200 in the skies above New York City. 47,000 people immediately telephoned the number.

1925- First radio broadcast from the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville.

1926- California oil tycoon Edward Doheny went on trial for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal. That he and Harry Sinclair bribed the Secretary of the Interior to lease them U.S. strategic oil reserves. And like most millionaires, he was acquitted.

1942- THE COCOANUT GROVE FIRE-The U.S. public was distracted for awhile from war news by reports of a terrible disaster in Boston. A fire broke out at a popular nightclub called the Cocoanut Grove and killed 492 people in only twelve minutes. The clubs decorations caught fire and created carbon monoxide gas and there were only two exits. Among the dead was western movie star Buck Jones. The tragedy created the first mandatory laws requiring public buildings to have fire exits opening outwards and safety testing of decorative materials.

1947- Disney's cartoon "Chip and Dale".

1948- Hopalong Cassidy premiered on television.

1951-Truman held a crisis cabinet meeting over the War in Korea.
U.S and United Nations forces had been attacked by 180,000 Communist Chinese, lost the capitol Seoul and were being driven back down the Korean peninsula. Gen. Douglas MacArthur recommended a limited dropping of at least ten atomic bombs on Chinese cities, spreading a belt of nuclear waste across the Sino-Korean border and inviting Chaing Kai Shek's Nationalist Chinese forces to attack China and restart the Chinese Civil War. This would mean Russia would step in with it's nuclear weapons and World War III would result.
Truman made the decision to keep the Korean War a "limited war" and not let it expand, no matter how dire allied losses became.
Gen. MacArthur was horrified. He was told we are not at war with Communist China, even though thousands of Chinese soldiers were even now locked in deadly battle with his troops. At first his calls for nuclear weapons sounds crazy, but his argument was it was crazy to fight wars to preserve a status-quo. If you go to the extreme of risking men's lives, do it to win or don’t go to war at all. In 1964 from his deathbed MacArthur sent a note to Pres. Johnson warning him not to go into Vietnam.

1953- Frank Olson, a US government employee, jumped out a window of the New York Statler Hotel. In 1975 it was revealed Olson was given LSD by Dr Sidney Gottleib, as part of a government “mind-control” experiment.

1953- Cartoonist & writer Milt Gross died.

1981 - Actress Natalie Wood drunkenly toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and
drowned. Her husband Robert Wagner friend Christopher Walken, were onboard having an argument and unaware of her predicament. Wood had once confessed to a friend that she had a horror of drowning.

1994 –At the Columbia State Penitentiary in Portage Wisconsin, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer while cleaning the prison bathroom ,was attacked and beaten to death with a broomstick by inmate Christopher Scarver. He told prosecutors God told him kill him. Dahmer’s brain was preserved in formaldehyde, but his mother ordered its destruction a year later.
=======================================================
Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the most common typeface used in the world today?

Answer: Helvetica. Since Helvetica was invented in 1957 it has become the standard typeface for road traffic signs and airports around the world. It's variation -Geneva, became the standard font for Apple Computers in 1984.

Question: What is the most common typeface used in the world today?

Yesterday’s answer below: Who was Alastair Crowley? A playwright, a cook, a leader of a cult, an English Prime Minister?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/27/2013
Birthdays: Cornelius Vanderbuilt, Jimi Hendrix would have been 73, Bruce Lee-original name Lee Jun Fan would have been 73, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is 57, James Agee, Chaim Weizmann, Mafia Don Vito Genovese, Alexander Dubcheck, David Merrick, Marshal Thompson, Robin Givens, Judd Nelson, Buffalo Bob Smith, William Fichtner is 58, Katherine Bigelow is 62

43BC-THE SECOND TRIUMVERATE- Marc Anthony, Octavian Caesar and Marcus Lepidus compel the Roman Senate to declare them The Board of Three with Consular Powers for the Organizing of the State. This legitimized what they were in fact anyway, the rulers of the Roman Empire. They used this new pact to hunt down the killers of Julius Caesar and they published a list of "Proscribed Persons" who were declared enemies of the state. An estimated 4,000 Roman politicians and noblemen were executed, including the philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero.

176 AD- Marcus Aurelius named his son Commodus as co ruler and heir to the Roman Empire. This ended Rome’s second Golden Age of Peace and prosperity called the Augustan Age. The Augustan Age was successful because the Emperors, who were mostly gay or bi-sexual, would adopt the best man for the job instead of a family member to rule Rome. So Rome enjoyed a series of excellent leaders- Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. But Marcus Aurelius spoiled the whole system by letting his natural son Commodus succeed him. Commodus turned into another sicko-tyrant like Nero and Caligula. It was rumored Commodus wasn’t even Marcus’ son but the Empress Faustina sired him with a gladiator, thus his fondness for the profession.

221AD- Today is the Feast Day of Saint James Intercisus, or Saint James 'Cut up into tiny pieces", which leave little speculation about the method of his martyrdom.

1519- Martin Luther squared off with Catholic scholar Dr. Johann Eck in a grand public debate in Liepzig. Audiences sat in bleachers and cheered like a sports match. The debate about Luther’s new Protestant views would go on until July 8th. Luther won the audience with his superior eloquence and logic but Eck succeeded in getting Luther to publicly speak heresy against Rome. The Reformation now moved from a small local argument about indulgences to a major challenge to the authority of the Vatican to rule the Christian Faith.

1582- William Shakespeare 18, married Ann Hathaway 25. They married rather quickly, and their first child was born after only six months. They had a son who died and two daughters. In 1585 Shakespeare left his wife in Stratford on Avon, and by 1591 was known as an actor in London. He invested in land in Stratford and in 1616 retired to the country to spend time with his daughters and grandchildren but he never went back to Ann. It’s been speculated that she was a Puritan while Shakespeare enjoyed making fun of Puritans in comedies like "Twelfth Night"."

1868- THE GREAT BATTLE ON THE WASHITA -as it was called in those days. Generals Sherman and Sheridan had had enough of chasing small bands of Indian warriors all over the prairie. They now ordered George Armstrong Custer to introduce to the plains their style of "Hard War"- that burned Atlanta and brought the Confederacy to it’s knees. With the sound of a band playing " Gary Owen" shattering the pre-dawn quiet Custer and his 7th Cavalry surprise attacked the village of Chief Black Kettle. The warriors were out foraging so they mostly killed women and children. They even shot the Indian’s ponies.
Chief Black Kettle had recently signed a peace treaty with the white-eyes and felt so safe he flew a U.S. flag over his teepee. Black Kettle had survived a similar attack in 1864 called the Sand Creek Massacre. The excuse for the attack was that a white woman homesteader kidnapped by renegade Cheyenne may have been deposited for awhile at Black Kettle's encampment. The Victorian horror over inferred sexual outrages committed on Christian maidens goaded the troopers to ruthless fury, however after the battle Custer freely encouraged his officers to divide up the prettiest squaws for themselves.
One legend says Custer took a mistress named Meotzsi who bore him a child. So when Custer died at the Little Big Horn the reason his body was not scalped and mutilated like the others was the Cheyenne considered him family.

1910- New York’s Penn Station opened.

1921- English writer Alastair Crowley proclaimed himself Outer Head of the Order Templeis Orientalis- or Order of the Temple of the East. Alastair Crowley had spent years studying and mastering various occult devotions- Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Gnosticism, Iluminati in order to fuse them into his own form of black magick devotion- Thelema he called it based on the satires of the 1500’s French poet Rabelais. He boasted often that he wanted Crowleyism to eventually replace Christianity. His own mother called him: "The Wickedest Man in the World".

1924- The First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The marvel of the parade were large displays that moved down the street thanks to small automobiles concealed under them. They seemed to "float", so they are called parade floats today. The huge balloons were added in 1927. Originally after the parade the balloons were let go to float away into the sky. Macy’s offered a bounty to people who found them after they landed, sometimes in rural New Jersey.

1933- Former Terrytoons animator Art Babbitt, now at Walt Disney's, writes to fellow animator Bill Tytla encouraging him to move to California. "Terry owes you a lot and Disney has plans for a full length color cartoon!"

1936- Max Fleischer's cartoon featurette, "Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor".

1941-While Admiral Yamamoto’s carrier fleet was getting it’s final orders to put to sea, at Pearl Harbor the U.S. army commander General Short got a top secret coded message from Washington: " Negotiations with Japan seem at an end for all practical purposes...future moves unpredictable but hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act...Measures should be carried out so as not to alarm the civilian population or disclose intent."

1942- Admiral Laborde had received orders from Vichy to put the French fleet at the Nazis disposal so they attack the Allied beachheads in North Africa. Instead Laborde scuttled the French fleet in Toulon Harbor.

1950- THE CHOSIN RESEVOIR- In Korea this day the US First Marine Division and British Commando 411 was cut off and attacked on all sides by massed Red Chinese armies. Commander Chesty Puller, a veteran of Guadalcanal, when told he was surrounded replied: "That just simplifies our problems of finding these people and killing them." The Marines slowly fought their way the trap in subzero cold across the frozen ice bringing out most of their wounded and some POWs. Survivors of the epic march refuse to call their campaign a retreat, they said they merely attacked in another direction. They called themselves "The Chosin Few" and the "Frozen-Chosin".

1953- Playwright Eugene O'Neill died of pneumonia and Parkinson's Disease at 65. He had been writing on cardboard laundry shirt boards because he needed something large to write on because his hands trembled so violently. When O’Neill realize his end was near he tore up six plays he was writing because he wanted no one else to complete them. He was staying at the Shelton Hotel in Boston. As his father was an actor his family traveled frequently. O'Neill's last words were : "I knew it! Born in a hotel room, and G-ddammit I'm dying in a hotel room! "

1960 – Gordie Howe becomes the first NHL player to score 1000 goals.

1967- The Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour.

1973- According to the X-Files this was the night Fox Mulder’s sister Samantha was abducted by aliens.

1975- Ross McWhirter, publisher of the Guinness Book of World Records, was killed by the IRA.

1978- Angry former city councilman Dan White, sneaked into City Hall San Francisco and shot to death Mayor William Moscone, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the U.S.. Their bodies were discovered by Diane Feinstein. White later pleaded the “ Twinkie Defense”, that eating too much junk food made him crazy.

1985- Steven Speilberg married Amy Irving. They divorced a few years later.

2002- Disney’s animated feature Treasure Planet opened in theaters.

2009-Tiger Woods was the greatest golfer of his time and potentially the greatest in history. While other sports tainted with drugs and scandal, he had a squeaky clean image. This night at 2:30AM Tiger Woods crashed his SUV into a tree as a result of an argument with his Swedish bikini model wife. This incident revealed Woods as a big-time skirt chaser. More than a dozen women- cocktail waitresses, bimbos and porn stars came forward.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: Who was Alastair Crowley? A playwright, a cook, a leader of a cult, an English Prime Minister?

Answer: Cult leader. See above, 1921.