Quiz: The comedy act The Three Stooges were brothers, except for one. Who was that?

Answer to Yesterday’s Quiz Below: What are jerrycans? (hint: a holdover from WW2)
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History for 5/31/2023
Birthdays: King Manuel I of Portugal 1495, Walt Whitman, Fred Allen, Don Ameche, Prince Ranier, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Ranier Fassbinder, Brooke Shields, Joe Namath, Richie Valens, John Kemeny-the co-creator of the computer language BASIC, Tom Berenger, Denholm Elliot, Peter Yarrow, Lea Thompson, John Bonzo Bonham of Led Zepplin, Colin Ferrell is 47, Clint Eastwood is 93

1578- A farmer plowing a vineyard near Rome caused the ground to collapse beneath him revealing the long buried Ancient Roman catacombs. Antonio Bosio studied them and in 1632 published his study, "Underground Rome".

1669 -Samuel Pepys was forced to discontinue the diary he had kept from 1660 due to failing eyesight.

1759- Under pressure from religious groups, the Royal Colony of Pennsylvania banned theatrical plays. You could be fined 500 pounds for trotting the boards.

1790- The U.S. Congress passed its first laws protecting the copyright of written works. This law was lobbied for by Noah Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary.

1793- LA TERREUR- THE REIGN OF TERROR BEGAN- French extremists the Jacobins named for their meeting place, near the monastery of St.Jacob, Danton, Robespierre and Marat took over the French Government. They declared anybody who didn't agree with them to be counterrevolutionary dead meat. Robsepierre said: “Virtue without Terror is Impotence, Terror without Virtue is Criminal.”
Until 1794 their Committee of Public Safety guillotined 17,000 people, including Madame DuBarry, the great scientist Lavoisier, poet Andre Chenier and finally even fellow revolutionaries Danton and Camille Desmoulins. They also drowned hundreds in barges. One method of execution was the Republican Marriage- that meant tying up a man and woman face to face then throwing them into the sea to drown.
Napoleon, Josephine, Roget Du Lisle -who wrote Le Marseillaise, even American Thomas Paine barely escaped with their heads. Marat said: "If we cut off 10,000 heads today, it saves us having to cut off 100,000 tomorrow!" Robespierre kept a servant playing a little accordion in his office so he wouldn't have to listen to the screams and pleas of the condemned dragged off to execution. To their credit they enacted much needed social reforms, For the first time the public could enjoy the Royal art collections like the Louvre and the royal parks like the Luxembourg Gardens.
The modern concept of the restaurant also arises at this time. The name comes from a place to Restore-Your Health- Restaurant. In previous ages you could get a meal at an inn or public house, but it was never very good. The former chefs of great estates, now unemployed because their employer’s heads were in baskets, opened shops and cooked their grand cuisine for the average Jacques & Jill.

1837 - Joseph Grimaldi, England’s greatest clown (king of pantomime), died at 57. On stage since the age of 3 at Sadler-Wells, he never appeared in a circus ring. Instead, his
act was stage pantomime. In tribute to him, all English circus clowns are known as “Joey’.

1859- The famous clock in the Elizabeth Tower of Parliament called after its bell, Big Ben, began running, and its chimes sounded out across London for the first time.

1862- During the Civil War Battle of Fair Oaks, Professor Thaddeus Lowe first took an observation balloon aloft to study the defensive works of the enemy. He proved the military value of arial observation. Lowe created a balloon corps for the union army, and once gave a ride to General Custer. One of the military diplomatic observers who was very interested was the Prussian Count von Zeppelin. After the war Thaddeus Lowe moved to Pasadena California where he built a vacation resort, Mt. Lowe. His granddaughter Florence, “Pancho” Barnes was an aviator who raced Amelia Earhart, and was friends with Astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

1866- The FENIAN BROTHERHOOD, 1,500 Irish Union Army veterans decided the way to free Ireland from Britain was to invade Canada from New York State.

1870- President Ulysses Grant called for the U.S. purchase and annexation of Santo Domingo (The Dominican Republic). Congress defeated the measure as being too costly. Grant was disgusted, hadn't the gov't wasted millions already to purchase the frozen wastes of Alaska in 1868? Other times in American history we've made moves on Cuba and Nicaragua, and occupied Haiti in the 1920s, and the Dominican Republic in the 1960s.

1873- SCHLEIMANN FOUND TROY. Archaeologist Heinrich Schleimann unearthed the horde of gold known as Priam's Treasure in a mound near Hysarlik Turkey. This site was the Troy of Homer, proving the Trojan War was not a myth but a real historical event. There were actually 9 Troys on the site- from a Bronze Age village to a Late Roman Empire city. The Troy of the Trojan War was Troy number 4. It showed signs of destruction by fire.

1879- New York’s Madison Square Garden opened. Designed by Stanford White to resemble a Venetian Palazzo. The modern sports complex was opened in the 1960s.

1889-The Johnstown Flood. The South Fork Dam swollen by heavy rains burst and sent a 35-foot wall of water and debris over the town. 2,295 were killed.

1894- Happy Birthday Kellogg’s Corn Flakes! Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek Michigan patents "flaked cereal and the process for making same." He felt whole foods like Corn Flakes could help Victorian people curb their sexual urges.

1902-THE BOER WAR ENDED. After English troops entered Pretoria, Boer survivors signed the Treaty of Vereeniging. Transvaal President Kruger "Oom Paul"-Uncle Paul- fled to Holland. When the Queen of Holland appealed for help for the Boers, who were ethnically Dutch-German. The Kaiser was noncommittal. The leader of the second largest population of Germans, President Teddy Roosevelt of the United States, said, "It is right and natural that the larger nations should dominate the smaller."
On a troopship returning from South Africa, volunteer doctor Arthur Conan-Doyle was told by a Welsh doctor of a legend of a big ghostly dog that attacked people on the moors of his home estate. Conan-Doyle thought this would be a great story for his character Sherlock Holmes to solve. The Hound of the Baskervilles was the result.

1904- On the first day of a new Parliament the right honorable Tory member Mr. Winston Churchill entered the House of Commons, bowed to the Speaker, then took a seat with the Liberal Benches, publicly abandoning his Tory Party. In 1924 he changed his mind again and rejoined the Tories. This was why he was so shunned in the 1930’s. He was seen as a shameless opportunist, and not trusted by many of his peers.

1910- Not even ten years after the Boer independent state was defeated in the Boer War, the British formed it into the self-governing commonwealth known as The Union of South Africa, with former Boer General Jan Christian Smuts as its head.

1911- RMS Titanic launched from the Belfast shipyards. In a strange premonition of her eventual fate, she was never christened at launch time.

1913- The 17th Amendment was ratified. It called for senators to be elected by popular vote instead of nominated by the various state legislatures.

1916-The BATTLE OF JUTLAND. German and British battleships boom away
at each other in the only major fleet engagement of World War I. Giant battleships called Dreadnoughts were the nukes of the turn of the century power game. Yet when the first and third largest fleets in the world finally clashed, it was a tie. British Admiral Beatty was annoyed with the performance of his fleet: "Blast! Why are all me bloody battlecruisers sinking?” But the German High Seas fleet went back into Kiel harbor and didn't emerge again for the rest of the war.

1921-In Tulsa, after the news report came out about a black man grabbing a lady by the arm, angry white mobs began to gather at town hall at sunset. After midnight they began to move on the black neighborhood of Greenwood.

1928- The song “Old Man River “sung by Pail Robeson came out as a single.

1929- Steamboat Willie was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, but Mickey didn’t speak much. He just whistled, yelped and laughed. In the cartoon released this day “the Carnival Kid” Mickey spoke his first words “Hot Dogs!” The voice was musician Carl Stalling. Later Walt Disney decided to voice the mouse himself.

1935- Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Pictures merged to become Twentieth Century Fox. In 2017 Walt Disney Company purchased 20th Cent Fox and in the Summer of 2020 phased out the brand.

1948- The various guerrilla groups fighting for the new state of Israel, the Palmach, Haganna and Irgun, combine to officially become the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force,

1957- Malaya received its independence from Britain.

1958 - Dick Dale invents "surf music" with "Let's Go Trippin".

1962- Israel hanged Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered in the sea.

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded "Give Peace a Chance." at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal. It became the theme song of the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Because of this song and Lennon’s support of the Hippie protesters the Nixon White House kept a file on him. Lennon spent most of 1972-73 under a constant threat of 60-day deportation from the US.

1979- The nation of Rhodesia reformed as the Republic of Zimbabwe under rebel leader Robert Mugabe. But unlike his contemporary Nelson Mandela, Mugabe made himself president for life and crushed all opposition. He was only forced to retire in 2017.

1984- Martial arts movie star Steven Segal married soap opera star Adrienne LaRussa. But what Adrienne didn’t know was he already had a wife named Miyako Fujetani and two kids waiting for him in Japan. A few months after this he fell for another actress named Kelly LeBrock.

1985- John Sculley was a former exec from Pepsi brought in by Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to help run the company. This day his solution to help the company run better was to fire Steve Jobs. Wozniak retired and Sculley eventually moved on. Before his death, Steve Jobs came back to Apple and make it the worlds most profitable company, as well as run Pixar, and be on the board of the Walt Disney Company.

1989- "Skinhead Day at the Magic Kingdom" Disneyland refused to admit a rally of skinheads, Nazis and Klansmen.

1990- Television sitcom Seinfeld premiered based on a TV special about the standup comedian called the Seinfeld Chronicles. No Soup for You!

1995- A young Mexican-American Tejana singer named Selena was gaining a growing crossover appeal in pop music and there seemed no limit. This day her career was cut short when she was shot and killed by the Yolanda Saldivia, the president of the Selena Fan club.

1996- Despite grief over the assassination of Labor Prime Minister Ytshak Rabin, the Israeli public voted for the right wing Likud anyway, making Benjamin “Bibi” Netnayahu Prime Minister. He was turned out in 1999 over corruption, but re-elected in 2009. After 12 years, he is still being investigated.

2000- The first Survivor show premiered, shepherding in the era in America of TV Reality shows.

2003- A wild dove got into the Pentagon and flapped around the Air Force Secretary's office on the 4th floor. Can we say- symbolism?

2004- Peppa Pig created by Astley Baker-Davies debuted on British TV.
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Yesterday’s Question: What are jerrycans? (hint: a holdover from WW2)

Answer: A portable can to carry gasoline. During WW2, the Germans were nicknamed the Jerries. In the North African desert where saving and using petrol was vital, the Anglo-American soldiers realized the German version of gas cans were far superior to their own. They held more and leaked less. They began using captured German gas cans in preference to their own. After the war the name Jerrycans stuck.

Quiz: What are jerrycans? (hint: a holdover from WW2)

Yesterday’s Quiz: Which president had the first Air Force One?
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History for 5/30/2023
Birthdays: Czar Peter the Great, Benny Goodman, Mel Blanc, Stepin Fetchit, Boris Pasternak, Irving Thalberg, Milt Neil, Howard Hawks, Gale Sayers, Agnes Varda, Michael J. Pollard, Wynonna, Keir Dullea is 86, Ceelo Green is 47, Idina Menzel is 51

1431- At Place de Vieux-Marche’ in English controlled Rouen, St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. She was only 19. Her last request was for a priest to hold up high a crucifix, so she could pray aloud above the flames. When an English knight watched the maid call out to Christ as she died, he exclaimed in grief: "Brothers, we are lost, because I think we have just killed a Saint! " She was made a saint in 1920. Tradition says even after her death, her remains were incinerated a second time to break them down further. Then the ashes scattered in a river to ensure no one with preserve any “heretical” relics of her.

1593- English playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in an argument over a restaurant check at the Bulls Tavern in Depford. Marlowe, whose plays included “Tamburlane” and “Dr Faustus", was one of Shakespeare's competitors, and found time for some espionage on the side. Writer Sir Anthony Burgess theorized there may have been more spy-stuff to this case than not wanting to pay for ale & kippers. The murderer, Ingram Frizer, was quickly pardoned by Queen Elizabeth I, and Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave.
The recent theory was it wasn’t Marlowe whose body was buried. That he was smuggled to Italy to act as a special agent for Lord Walsingham. His plays continued to some out under the name William Shakespeare. Many of Will’s best plays date from after Marlowe’s “death”. Romeo and Juliet the following year. Many were set in cities in Italy like Verona, a place Will had no knowledge of, but Marlowe had visited extensively.

1630- King Gustavus Adolphus gave an emotional farewell speech to the Swedish Diet as he prepared to leave with his army for Germany. He had pledged to take up the Protestant cause in the brutal Thirty Years War then raging across Europe. Gustavus won many victories but he never saw Sweden again, because he was killed in battle at Lutzen in 1632.

1787- THE CRUCIAL VOTE creating the U.S. Constitution. The delegates of the thirteen states (actually twelve, Rhode Island refused to participate) had originally come to Philadelphia to iron out some bugs in the system called the Articles of Confederation.
On this day they were convinced to accept “the Virginia Plan” authored by James Madison and strongly backed by NY’s Alexander Hamilton. This was to scrap the entire U.S. government used up till then, and create a new central government with a two chamber Congress based on the Roman Senate. Also an elected chief magistrate called, at first, 'The Executive" and later The President. Some politicians not attending the meeting, like Patrick Henry and Sam Adams, were outraged. Thomas Jefferson, then ambassador in Paris, was dubious about the elected-president idea. “So they’ve decided to saddle us with a Polish King” he quipped, meaning an elected figurehead monarch with no real power. Aaron Burr wrote:” Same old pork, different sauce.”

1788- French philosopher Francois Voltaire died of uremic illness at age 84. He breathed his last cradled in the arms of Benjamin Franklin. He had been trying to write a chapter of a new dictionary, trying to keep himself going by drinking 20 cups of coffee a day. A great critic of the Catholic Church, he refused the Sacrament up to the last but was still smuggled away after death to be buried in sacred ground. In 1793 his remains and Rousseau’s were moved to the Pantheon.
In 1814 a Royalist ghoul broke into Voltaire and Rousseau’s tombs, stuffed their bones into a sack and threw them into a garbage dump. The whereabouts of his remains are unknown to this day.

1806- ANDREW JACKSON KILLED CHARLES DICKINSON IN A DUEL. -the hotheaded Jackson challenged Dickinson after he welched on horse racing bet. After Jackson accused him, he made insulting remarks about Jackson’s wife Rachel, calling her a scarlet lady. In Long County Kentucky they faced off with pistols at ten paces.
Dickinson got off a shot first. Eyewitnesses said you could see the puff of dust from Jackson's jacket where the bullet entered his ribs. Amazingly, instead of falling, Jackson just coldly stood there, staring. He then lifted his gun and shot Dickinson dead. 
Jackson would carry the lead ball in his chest for the rest of his life, alongside two others earned in Indian wars.
When asked why he didn’t forgive Dickinson and shoot wide, He replied: "I'd have killed Dickinson, even if he had put a bullet in my brain!"

1821 - James Boyd patents the Rubber Fire Hose.

1848- William Young patents the ice cream freezer.

1883- A rumor among the strollers on the Brooklyn Bridge that the bridge was falling caused a panic and 12 people were trampled. Young street kid Al Smith recalled being under the bridge and seeing a rain of bowler hats and parasols as the crowd pushed and shoved. To prove the bridge was absolutely safe, the mayor asked P.T. Barnum to parade his circus elephants over the bridge to Brooklyn.

1899- Female outlaw Pearl Hart robbed the Globe, Arizona stagecoach.

1913- It’s Albanian Independence Day! The Treaty of London signed, ending the First Balkan War and acknowledging the independence of Albania. The Second Balkan War started thirty days later.

1919- Hollywood entrepreneur Charles Tolman bought a natural declivity north of Hollywood Blvd called Daisy Dell. People had been picnicking in the grass there for years. Now Tolman wanted to build a concert amphitheater. Conductor Hugo Kirchhofer remarked “ It looks like a big bowl!” So it became the Hollywood Bowl thereafter.

1921-In Tulsa Oklahoma, a 19 year old black man named Dick Rowland got into an elevator operated by a white girl named Sarah Page. We’ll never know what actually transpired, but Rowland was later arrested for allegedly assaulting Page. Page claimed he grabbed her arm but nothing more. This incident led to the massing of mobs that resulted in the Great Tulsa Race Massacre. Thousands were killed, businesses torched, and the black neighborhoods were actually bombed from the air.

1922- The Lincoln Memorial dedicated. The huge statue of Lincoln seated was carved by an Italian immigrant family in the Bronx. While President Harding talked, a guest of honor was elderly 86 year old Robert Todd Lincoln, Abe Lincolns only surviving child. He was a former Secretary of War. It was his last public appearance.

1927- In one of the more disturbing Memorial Day parades in New York City history, one thousand Ku Klux Klansmen and blackshirted Italian Fascists tried to march down Broadway, and got into fistfights with bystanders.

1930- The Lockheed Terminal was rededicated as Burbank Airport.

1935 - Babe Ruth's last game. He went hitless for the Boston Braves against Phillies.

1942- The British RAF launch the first of their 1000 plane bombing raids on Germany, this one flattened the city of Cologne.

1955- The New York chapter of the Catholic League of Decency pressured Loews Theater on Broadway to take down a giant 30-foot billboard of Marilyn Monroe trying to push her skirt down.

1961- Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo was ambushed in his Chevrolet. Shot five times, he was left dead in the street.

1962- Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem had its first performance.

1972- Director choreographer Bob Fosse filmed a live performance of Liza Minelli’s one-woman show Liza with a Z. It was telecast in Sept. and became a sensation.

1994 - Death of Baron Marcel Bich, Italian-born French engineer and industrialist who created an empire of disposable BIC pens, lighters and razors.

2003- Pixar’s Finding Nemo opened in general release.

2020- Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the Dragon Rocket with two astronauts into orbit. The first private company space launch, and the first time American astronauts blasted off into orbit from America since the space shuttle program was retired ten years ago.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which president had the first Air Force One?

Answer: Franklin Roosevelt was given a DC-3 as the first presidential flying office. But FDR disliked flying and preferred to go by train. So First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt used it for her appearances. In 1945 Harry Truman used his own plane exclusively, named the Spirit of Independence. President Eisenhower’s plane was the first to officially be given the designation Air Force One.

Quiz: Which president had the first Air Force One?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Why is an American soldier called a G.I. ?
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History for 5/29/2022
Birthdays: John F. Kennedy, King Charles II (the "Merry Monarch"), Bob Hope, G. K. Chesterton, Patrick Henry, Oswald Spengler, T.H. White, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Josef Von Sternberg, LaToya Jackson, John Hinckley Jr., Al Unser Jr., Beatrice Lilly, Danny Elfman, Annette Benning is 65, Melissa Etheridge is 62, Rupert Everett is 65

For those who are curious why America celebrates Memorial Day in May instead of November 11th like most of Europe, it is because of our Civil War.
The main Confederate field armies surrendered in early April; it took this long to quiet the entire countryside, the last fighting on May 27th. Once the countryside was finally at peace, the U.S. government declared a Day of Remembrance of the fallen. Abolitionist named James Redpath reported back to Washington that newly freed black families in Charleston South Carolina would decorate the graves of fallen union soldiers with flowers. The locals were only decorating their own Confederate graves. Later in 1868, Mary Cunningham Logan, wife of General John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union Army Veterans Organization, went to Petersburg, where she mentioned to her husband the Southerners were decorating the graves of their soldiers.
The holiday was first called Decoration Day, and the first formal one was held May 28, 1868. By the end of WWI in 1918, Americans had gotten used to honoring all their war dead at the end of May, and the holiday’s name changed to Memorial Day.

526 AD -An earthquake destroyed the city of Antioch. Another major quake two years later caused much rebuilding efforts to be abandoned. Once one of the largest cities in the ancient world, on a par with Rome and Athens, today it is a forgotten little Turkish border town.

1415- The Grand Council of churchmen at Constance trying to heal the Great Schism ordered the deposition of Pope John XXIII. John ran the Vatican like a mercenary captain, taxing everything including gambling and prostitution. It was said he had slept with 200 women including maids, matrons and nuns. He fled Constance disguised as a groom and was given sanctuary by Cosimo de Medici of Florence. Today he is counted an AntiPope, an illegal one, so Salvatore Roncalli in 1958 was given his number John XXIII.

1453- CONSTANTINOPLE CONQUERED BY THE TURKS- Sultan Mehmed II the "Scourge of Christendom" stormed the capitol of the old Byzantine Empire. His great cherry wood cannons firing giant stone balls blew great holes in the city walls, proving the end of castles as serious defenses.
When he knew the battle was lost, the last Eastern Emperor of the Romans, Constantine XI Paleologus, sallied out sword in hand and went down fighting. His body was identified out of a pile of corpses only by the bejeweled purple shoes. As Mehmed II rode into the city in triumph he recited a Persian poem:" A spider weaves it's web in the palace of the Caesars, a shadow falls over the House of Amonhasarib.”
Except for Spain, Christian Europe hadn’t given much thought to expansionist Islam since the Crusades. Now Turkey became Europe’s number one rival for the next 300 years. The Byzantine Empire’s loss did have one beneficial effect on Western Civilization. All the fleeing Greek scholars, with their arms full of the works of Plato and Aristotle, would settle in European capitols and help spark the Renaissance.

1606- Michel Caravaggio the artist shot a man over a tennis match. Caravaggio was a mad-artist before the term was invented. The police records of Rome show the master painter constantly in trouble, seducing man, woman and child, throwing rocks at soldiers, stabbing waiters, etc.

1660- RESTORATION DAY- After Oliver Cromwell executed King Charles I, he declared the British Monarchy abolished, and ruled England as The Lord Protector. The Commonwealth never became a true representative government. It just replaced a king with a dictator. When Cromwell died in 1659 he tried to leave his son Richard Cromwell in his place. But the son is not the father. The rickety system didn’t work, and Richard got the nickname “Tumbledown-Dick”. A junta of generals led by General Monck had no choice but to recall King Charles’ son Charles II from exile in Holland to come ascend the throne. This day King Charles II entered London. For many years after Restoration Day was a holiday in the UK. In the rural counties today is also called Happy Oak/Apple Day commemorating when Charles was on the run from Cromwells troops he hid in an oak tree.

1692- The Battle of La Hogue- Great naval battle when the French fleet of Admiral de Tourville was ordered by Louis XIV to attack an Anglo-Dutch navy despite being heavily outnumbered. The French admiral did a brilliant job but lost anyway, and the French monarch turned his back on the navy, abandoning supremacy of the seas to England.
Once considered the most important naval engagement until Trafalgar, La Hogue is now mostly remembered on cheap, framed prints of naval battle paintings you see hanging in doctor’s waiting rooms.

1765 - Patrick Henry gave a defiant speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses against the English Stamp Act. Someone in the crowd yelled "Treason!" Henry smiled: "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

1780- THE WAXSAWS or TARELTON’S QUARTER- In the later part of the American Revolution the British Army tried encouraging Loyal Americans to fight their Rebel brothers. A British officer named Banastre Tarleton raised a hard riding company of American Loyalist dragoons to subdue unruly South Carolina. But Tarleton had a sadistic streak that made him go beyond the gentlemanly war of the era.
At the Waxsaws in North Carolina, Tarleton rode down a company of Virginia militia and slaughtered them as they tried to surrender. After the battle ended he ordered his men to comb the battlefield and bayonet the wounded. So he won the tactical victory but Butcher Tarleton’s tactics made more enemies than friends for his side. Many North Carolina hill country folk who had been sitting out the war lost kin at the Waxsaws and so joined the American side in droves. Knowing they may get “Tarleton’s Quarter” made many Minutemen fight harder rather than surrender.

1790- Two years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, Rhode Island had still not ratified the document. Rhode Island refused to send delegates to the convention drafting it, and only after the other twelve states threatened to completely sever all commercial ties with it did they knuckle under and vote to join the union, but only by a majority of only two votes.

1814- Napoleon’s Empress Josephine died of a cold contracted while entertaining Czar Alexander of Russia. She was 50. A woman’s fashion of the time was to wear a flimsy muslin dress dampened with water to make it see-through, the equivalent of the modern wet T-shirt. Dressed this way she went for an evening stroll through the gardens of Malmaison with the Russian emperor, caught a chill and soon expired. Napoleon learned of her death while he was in exile on Elba. He locked himself in his room for two days grief stricken. He admitted, “ I loved her, but I did not respect her..”

1843- John C. Freemont began his second surveying expedition mapping out vast areas of California and Oregon and studying its geography. For this he was nicknamed the Pathfinder and later became the first presidential candidate of the new Republican Party.

1848- Wisconsin became a state.

1856- THE LOST SPEECH- Former Congressman Abraham Lincoln was called upon to deliver the adjournment speech to the convention inaugurating the new Illinois Republican Party. He had decided to abandon his strategy of mincing words about slavery and “hit it hard.” Lincoln delivered what many regarded as the best speech of his life, a speech better than the Gettysburg Address or “With Malice Towards None” the Second Inaugural.
And maddeningly for history we have no record of what he said. The newspapermen jotting it down shorthand were so amazed by what they heard that they stopped writing, confident they would share the notes of a colleague later. Even Abe’s close friend Herndon, who was a prodigious note taker, gave up after fifteen minutes, admitting he “threw pen and paper away and was swept up in the inspiration of the hour”. The speech made Lincoln one of the rising stars of the party, yet we don’t know anything he said that night.

1859 –Illinois Congressman Abe Lincoln says in a better documented occasion "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of time, but you can't fool all of the people all of time"

1905- Third Day of the Battle of Tsushima Straights. Japanese Admiral Togo catches up to the second half of the Russian Navy and sinks it. In 1985 Japanese salvage crews brought up a huge hoard of gold bullion meant for the payroll for the Tsarist sailors. A Japanese venture capitalist tried to use it to buy back the Kurile Islands- the few small islands in the north that Soviet Russia invaded in the closing days of World War II and have never given back. Russia said 'No Deal."

1908- Teddy Roosevelt signed the first ban on child labor in the U.S.

1911 -The first Indianapolis 500

1912- In Philadelphia, 15 young women were fired by the Curtis Publishing Company for dancing "Turkey Trot" during their lunch break.

1914- THE COLONEL REDL AFFAIR- In the years before World War I, the Great Powers of Europe spent vast sums on spies and agents to discover each other's future war plans. The period was known as the “soft war” not unlike the Cold War of a later generation. Coloneloberst Redl was on the Austro-Hungarian General Staff but was passing information on to Russian Intelligence. He was exposed by an Italian double agent who was also his male lover. According to the Austrian military code of honor, Redl was forced by his fellow officers to shoot himself. An eccentric man, his apartment was filled with life-size mannequins in chairs. Hungarian director Istvan Szabo made an award-winning film in 1986 about Redl with Klaus Maria Brandauer. There were earlier films made of the story in 1931 and 55.

1932- The BONUS MARCHERS reached Washington D.C. Men who joined the army during the Great War were promised an extra bonus to be received in 1945. Similar bonuses were given by the Gov’t to Civil War Veterans in the 1890s. But by 1932 the Great Depression had so ruined people's lives a movement was started by a Portland veteran named Captain William Waters to pass a bill in Congress to get their bonus early. Veterans would lobby congress by mounting a poor people's march on Washington. People's marches of this sort had happened before, like "Coxey's Army" in 1896, the Civil Right's march in 1964, and the Million-Man March in 1995. Veteran's groups came from all over the nation and by the time they got to Capitol Hill they numbered around 80,000. The set up shantytowns on the Mall nicknamed “Hoovervilles”.

Everyday Senators going to work had to slip through a huge line of homeless men shuffling silently around the Capitol Building. The Hoover government panicked and believed Soviet-style revolution was imminent. The opposition to the bonus bill was led by Senator Howard Vidal, father of writer-activist Gore Vidal and uncle to Al Gore.

1941-THE GREAT WALT DISNEY CARTOONISTS STRIKE.. The picket line and campsite went up across the street where St. Joseph's Hospital is today. Chef's from nearby Toluca Lake restaurants would cook for the strikers on their off time and the aircraft mechanics of Lockheed promised muscle if any ruff stuff was threatened.
Picketers included Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace), Walt Kelly and Margaret Selby (later Kelly) (Pogo), Bill Melendez (A Charlie Brown Christmas), Steve Bosustow and John Hubley (Mr. Magoo), Maurice Noble and Chuck Jones (What's Opera Doc?), George Baker (Sad Sack), Dick Swift ("the Parent Trap") Frank Tashlin (Cinderfella) Ade Woolery (Playhouse), and four hundred others. Animators from Warner Bros. MGM and Walter Lantz marched with their Disney brothers and sisters, because they knew this was where the fate of their entire industry would be settled. Celebrities like Dorothy Parker, Frank Morgan, and John Garfield gave speeches. The studio claimed no one of importance was on strike.

The strike was eventually settled by Federal arbitration and a little arm twisting by the Bank of America. Many of the artists who left the studio afterwards set up U.P.A. and pioneered the modern 1950's style.

1942- JOHN BARRYMORE- The great dramatic actor, the first American to dare to play Hamlet in England, died of cirrhosis and kidney failure at age 60. Whether the infamous prank actually happened where Raoul Walsh, Bertholdt Brecht, Peter Lorre, W.C. Fields and some others (the "Bundy Drive Boys") kidnapped Barrymore's body from Pierce Brothers Funeral Home and propped it up at the poker table to scare the willys out of Errol Flynn is a matter of debate. Flynn and Paul Heinried said it was true, writer Gene Fowler said it was false. John Barrymore's last words were to screenwriter Gene Fowler: "Say Gene, isn't it true you are an illegitimate son of Buffalo Bill?"

1942- Bing Crosby recorded "White Christmas," debatably the greatest selling record of all time.

1952- Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norga became first men to reach the top of Mt. Everest. The tallest mountain on the Earth.

1954- New York Police raided the studio of Irving Klaw, the photographer of the Betty Page kinky pin-up photos. Klaw tried to appeal to the Supreme Court but couldn’t get a hearing.

1956- Hollywood director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man) drowned himself in his pool. His career was over and his health was deteriorating from a series of strokes. Bruises were found on his head and at first the police suspected foul play. It wasn’t until 1989 his gay partner made his suicide note public. His head had struck the pool’s bottom as he jumped in causing the bruise.

1972- Moe Berg died of old age. He was a master spy who using a front as a catcher for the Washington Senator’s Baseball team. He was fluent enough in quantum physics to converse with Einstein. He was once ordered by Washington to go to Switzerland and meet with Rudolph Heisenberg, the Nazi Einstein, and kill him if he felt the Germans were getting too close do developing their own atomic bomb. He chose not to shoot him. In his later years he was a regular contestant on TV game shows. Believe it or not!

1973 - Columbia Records fired president Clive Davis for misappropriating
$100, 000 in funds, So Davis went on and founded Arista records.

1977 - Janet Guthrie becomes 1st woman to drive in Indy 500.

1978 - Bob Crane, (Hogan-Hogan's Heroes), died at 49 under mysterious circumstances. He was found in a Tucson hotel room surrounded by pornography, bludgeoned to death by a camera tripod. The murder was never solved.

1987 –pop singer Michael Jackson attempted to buy the XIX century remains of Joseph Meredith a.k.a. the Elephant Man.

1999- Hikers in a Malibu ravine discovered the remains of Phillip Taylor Kramer, the bass guitar player of the 1960’s band Iron Butterfly. The musician had disappeared four years before. Now his skeleton was found sitting in his Ford Aerostar at the bottom of a steep ravine.

2003- The BBC aired a news expose alleging that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government “sexed up” or exaggerated the proof of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to justify the unpopular invasion of Iraq. The documentary named a shy government researcher named Dr. David Kelly as the perpetrator. He committed suicide as a result.

2007- Apple sold it’s first iPhone.
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Quiz: Why is an American soldier called a G.I. ?

Answer: GI stood for Government Issue. When you were drafted everything you got, your helmet, boots, socks, said Government Issue. So a G.I. Joe meant a government issue guy.

Quiz: Why is an American soldier called a G.I. ?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is a crustacean?
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History for 5/28/2023
Birthdays: Solomon 970 BC, Noah Webster, Dr. Joseph Guillotine, William Pitt the Younger, General Pierre Beauregard, Ian Fleming, Jim Thorpe, The Dion Identical Quintuplets 1930, Gladys Knight, Jerry West, Dietrich Fisher-Deiskau, Sandra Locke, T-Bone Walker, Taffy Abel (one of the first professional hockey stars), John Fogarty is 78, Carey Mulligan is 38, Carol Baker.

585 BC- THALES ECLIPSE An early recorded Solar Eclipse. It struck blind people who dared to look at it, and it scared away the armies of King Cyaxerxes of Media and King Alyattes of Lydia who were about to fight a battle. Not wishing to anger the Gods any further, they immediately made peace.

20AD- Tiberius’ general Drusus celebrated a triumph over the Pannonians (Hungary).

1358- THE JACQUERIE- In the Middle Ages the oppression of the peasantry coupled with the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War reached their breaking point. Major peasant revolts began to break out all over Europe. In Italy they’re called the Ciompi, in England, Wat the Tyner’s revolt, and outbreak today in France was called the JACQUERIE (after "poor Jacques" or peasant). The outraged peasants burned manor homes and castles and massacred nobility without any real plan. To English and French knights class meant more than national feuds, so they took time out from their Hundred Years’ War to join together to chop up their uppity peasants.

1453- The night before his final assault on Constantinople, Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, addressed his troops:" I give you the capitol of the ancient Romans, the greatest city in the world! I give you her women and children, her silks and jewels. All I ask is that you leave me her buildings and monuments. I want the city for myself!" Then battalions of belly dancers danced for the men, but no sex was permitted until the battle ended.

1494- The official "birth" of Scotch - though it probably had been around much earlier, on this date, the Scottish Exchequer recorded a purchase of malt by a friar to make "aqua vitae", the first written reference to spirits in Scotland. Scottish King James IV particularly liked the stuff. Called in Gaelic “Uisge beatha”, this got corrupted by English speakers into “Whisky”

1742 - 1st public indoor swimming pool opens at Goodman's Fields, London.

1786- French explorer the Comte de Perouse became the first European to set foot on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. "The climate of Mowhee is quite delightful." He wrote. Then spending only three days there he hurried his ship on to the Northwest coast of America.

1853- THE CRIMEAN WAR BEGAN- England and the French Empire declared War on Russia over Russia’s trying to beat up Turkey and annex the Bosporus. England and Russia spent the nineteenth century in a tactical struggle for supremacy in Central Asia not unlike the Cold War the Soviet Union fought with America after World War II. The name for the Anglo-Russian duel was "the Great Game". It only heated up once, producing such artifacts as the Charge of the Light Brigade, Balaclava Helmets and Florence Nightingale. Roger Fenton also followed the army to the Crimea as the first war-photographer.

1871- THE COMMUNE OF PARIS CRUSHED- As the occupying Prussian Army looked on, the regular French army loyal to the conservative government of President Alphonse Thiers recaptured Paris from the workers-revolutionary government called the Paris Commune. In the fierce house to house fighting the Hotel Du Ville -city hall was completely destroyed, as well as the Royal Palace of the Tuileries (the open area of the Louvre in front of there the glass Pyramid is.) and the Palace of Saint Cloud.
One hundred and fifty revolutionaries were lined up against the wall in Pere Lachaise Cemetery and shot. Today the Wall of the Communards is still there, and you can see the bullet holes. In Russia young Nikolai Lenin studied the Commune and when he formed his Bolshevik Party he took as his flag the red banner of the Commune.

1892- The Sierra Club formed.

1905- Second day of the Battle of Tsushima Straights- Japanese Admiral Togo, having shot up the first half of the Russian Navy waits for the other half.... They were slowly chugging their way around the world being sent from the Black and Baltic seas to the Sea of Japan.

1928 - Dodge Brothers Automobile Inc & Chrysler Corp merged.

1929 - 1st all color talking picture, "On With the Show" exhibited (NYC).

1935- Tortilla Flat published. The first novel by John Steinbeck.

1940- Throughout World War I the tiny Belgian Army held out heroically against huge German forces. In World War II the story was different. As the Allied frontlines crumbled before the relentless Nazis armored Blitzkrieg, this day the Belgian Army surrendered unconditionally. The surrender left retreating British and French forces dangerously exposed, were it not for quick thinking divisional commander who plugged the line and enabled the escape to Dunkirk. General Bernard Law Montgomery first caught the notice of Churchill and the English high command.

1941- THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE- Labor pressures had been building in the Magic Kingdom since promises made to artists over the success of Snow White were reneged on, and Walt Disney’s lawyer Gunther Lessing encouraged a hard line with his employees. The union claimed they had a majority of employee rep-cards signed, which Walt Refused to acknowledge. On this day, in defiance of the federal Wagner Act, Walt Disney fired animator Art Babbitt, the creator of Goofy, and thirteen other cartoonists for demanding a union. Babbitt had emerged as the union movements’ leader. Studio security officers escorted him off the lot. “Would you mind if I collect my pencils?”
That night in an emergency meeting of the Cartoonists Guild at Hollywood Legion Hall, Art’s assistant Bill Hurtz, made a motion to strike, and it was unanimously accepted. Bill Hurtz will later go on to direct award-winning cartoons like UPA’s "Unicorn in the Garden". Picket lines go up next day in Hollywood animation’s own version of the Civil War.

Walt Disney nearly had a nervous breakdown over the strike, and a federal mediator was sent by Washington to arbitrate. In later years, Uncle Walt blamed the studio’s labor ills on Communists. The studio unionized completely, but the hard feelings remained for their rest of their lives.

1948- During the Israeli War of Independence the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem surrendered after a long siege by the Arab Legion. The Legion was a force organized and led by a British soldier of fortune Sir John Bagot-Glubb or Glub-Pasha. The main Jewish community was in west Jerusalem but the Holy places of the Old City were in the eastern part. Jews lost the Wailing Wall until retaken in the Six-Day War of 1967.

1954- Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 3D premiered.

1957- The National League Baseball owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants to move west to California.

1960- George Zucco 74, a character actor who specialized in horror movies like Blood from the Mummies Hand, died. One version says he died of fright in a mental hospital in San Gabriel California. He was convinced that H.P. Lovecraft's Great God Cthulu was after him. He actually died of natural causes in a nursing home.

1961- Amnesty International, a human rights organization, is founded. It was the result of an Appeal for Amnesty, written in the London Daily Observer by Peter Benennson, who read of several Portuguese students who were arrested because they were overheard in a cafe making a toast to Freedom.

1966- the It’s a Small World exhibit, which had been created for the 1964 NY Worlds Fair, reopened at Disneyland, California.

1977- George Lucas film Star Wars opened in wide release across the country.

1981- The Bambi Murders- Police hunt Playboy Bunny Bambi Bembenek for shooting her husband’s ex-wife in Milwaukee. She was captured but escaped prison in 1990.
Just follow the little stiletto high heel footprints.

1983- “What a Feeling” the theme from the film Flashdance by Irene Cara and Giorgio Moroder reached the top of the pop charts. Everyone began dancing with leg warmers and baggy sweaters torn at the neck.

1987- A young German student named Matthias Rust rented a Cessna airplane in Helsinki, and flying low to avoid radar flew right into the heart of the Soviet Union. Evading a forest of missiles, radar and anti-aircraft weapons, he landed his little plane right in the middle of Red Square at the Kremlin. The ensuing furor and humiliation cost many Russian generals their jobs.

1998- After a dinner at Buca di Beppo in Encino, Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman was shot to death by his wife Brynne as he slept. She was a heavy drinker and pill user. At 6:00am as the LAPD were knocking Brynne turned the gun on herself. Hartman’s last role was doing the English dub of Gigi the cat in Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.

2004- Lorenzo, animated short came out with the Disney film Raising Helen. Directed by Mike Gabriel, from an idea created decades ago by 95 year old storyman Joe Grant.

2005- The great London clock Big Ben mysteriously stopped for 45 minutes.

2005- Actress Lindsay Lohan was photographed passed out drunk in her car shortly after a court hearing for a DUI.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a crustacean?

Answer: The genus category of shellfish, crabs, lobsters, prawns, langoustines, etc.

Question: What is a crustacean?

Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean in Japanese to write in Kanji?
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History for 5/27/2023
Birthdays: James 'Wild Bill' Hickock, Julia Ward Howe, Aemelia Jenks-Bloomer, Dashell Hammett, Leopold Goldowsky (the inventor of Kodachrome film), Hubert H. Humphrey, Herman Wouk, Harlan Ellison, Joseph Feines, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Richard Schiff is 68, Peri Gilpin, Paul Bettany is 52, Dr. Henry Kissinger is 100

605AD, Today is the Feast day of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who saw children in the slave docket and when told 'Those are Angles"-The barbarian tribe that England is named for. Augustine replied: Non Sunt Anglicai, Sunt Angeli” -Those are not Angles, those are Angels" -please forgive my Latin grammar. Augustine of Canterbury should not be confused with the Saint Augustine of Hippo, who wrote the Confessions.

1647-The first witch execution in Salem Massachusetts. Contrary to popular perception, more witches were hanged than burned at the stake.

1647- Peter Stuyvesant inaugurated as Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam. The one-legged old soldier was a strict Calvinist sent by The Dutch West India Company to “clean up the town”.

1703- Czar Peter the Great laid the cornerstones for his new capitol Saint Petersburg. The Baltic Port was called at one time Petrograd, then Leningrad, but was changed back to the original name in 1989. Peter made it the capitol until Lenin moved it back to Moscow in 1917.

1831- Mountain man Jedediah Smith was killed fighting Comanches.

1874- Prostitution was outlawed in Los Angeles central business district.

1895 - British inventor Burt Acres patented a film camera/projector

1905- BATTLE OF THE TSUSHIMA STRAIGHTS- Grand Admiral Togo and the Japanese Navy destroy the Imperial Russian fleet in a battle that announced to the world Japan had become a world power. It had been only 55 years since Admiral Perry forced the opening of its feudal society. Mahatma Ghandi said also the victory was a beacon to all colonialized peoples that the Europeans could be defeated at their own games.
Of course the Japanese weren't fighting for altruistic motives but to see who would take over Manchuria and Korea. One-eyed Admiral Togo was trained as a samurai until their profession was abolished in 1877. When a midshipman cadet in England, had been nicknamed "Joe Chinaman" by the tars. After this battle he became one of the most respected naval strategists of the age. Ishiroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of Pearl Harbor, was his ensign at the time.

1930- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOTCH TAPE -Chemist Richard Drew of Saint Paul Minnesota invented cellophane tape, marketed by the 3M Company under the brand Scotch. It was called Scotch after the stereotype perception that Scots people are frugal with money, so it’s a good value. Three years later Drew invented Masking Tape as a way for car manufacturers to paint cars two tone.

1933- Disney’s cartoon “The Three Little Pigs” premiered, whose song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” became a national anthem of recovery from the Great Depression.
Director of the short Burt Gillette left Disney afterwards to run the Van Beuren Studio in New York.

1935- The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (The NRA) program. Roosevelt responds by unsuccessfully trying to stack the court with judges more to his liking. He referred to them as 'The Nine Old Men', a sobriquet Walt Disney would borrow in 1949 for his top animators.

1937- San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened.

1941- The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by massed Royal Navy ships and torpedo planes. The British sailors of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales helped the German sailors out of the water saying: ”Now you, one day it may be us.” That December, the Prince of Wales sent to the Pacific where it was sunk by the Japanese.
The Bismarck’s pet cat was rescued floating on a piece of wood. The British destroyer that picked him up was torpedoed and sunk a few months later. The cat was rescued from that sinking too. That cat, named “Unsinkable Sam”, survived the war and lived a long happy life at the retired sailors home in Belfast.

1942- Top Nazi official in occupied Czechoslovakia, Reynhard Heydrich, was assassinated by a resistance agent, who casually lifted a bomb out of a vase of flowers and tossed it into his car as it drove by. Hitler angrily responded by ordering the SS to select a Czech village at random and destroy it. They picked Lidice; they leveled it and murdered all its innocent inhabitants.

1942- The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor after being shot up in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The crew expected to be sent Stateside for weeks of major repairs, but the word came down from Admiral Nimitz that the Yorktown had to be ready for battle in just three days! Nimitz needed all his forces for an anticipated Japanese strike at Midway. 1,500 dockworkers labored around the clock patching her up. The Yorktown left on schedule to achieve the victory at Midway Island on June 5th.

1943- In a secret meeting in German occupied Paris, young French resistance leader Jean Moulin got all the various separate underground movements to unite under Charles DeGaulle's Free French. Moulin was eventually captured by the Gestapo and tortured to death, but le Maquis- i.e. resistance, continued the fight until the liberation.

1948- Walt Disney feature Melody Time released, featuring Pecos Bill.

1949- Actress Rita Hayworth married playboy Prince Aly Khan. Prince Aly Khan, 1911-1960, was born in Italy a son of dispossessed Pakistani royalty to the Aga Khan II. He lived his life as an international playboy, socialite and sportsman, making love to women from actress Rita Hayworth to Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela Churchill-Harriman. Cole Porter wrote him into a song. He died when he crashed his sportscar in France.

1961 – The first black light is sold.

1969 – Construction on Walt Disney World Florida began..

1968- At this time 350 Americans a week were dying in Vietnam, and in 12 days George W. Bush’s student deferment was up! But never fear, his family was pulling strings. So even though the normal wait was a year, this day George W. Bush was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard on the first day he applied.

1977- Punk band The Sex Pistols release their hit God Save the Queen, the Fascist Regime, in time for the Queen’s Jubilee year. Her Majesty preferred the Beatles’ All You Need is Love.

1991- The Milwaukee police question serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer after finding a distraught, bleeding young Laotian immigrant in the street. The boy was struggling to shake off the effect of date-rape drugs given him by Dahmer. After deducing that it was merely a spat between gay lovers, the police returned the boy to Dahmer, who killed and ate him later.

1994 – Nobel Prize winner and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after a twenty-year exile.

1995- Actor Christopher Reeve was left paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in an equestrian event in Charlottesville,Va. He became a spokesman for stem-cel spinal chord research, but his efforts in the US were frustrated by powerful religious-right lobbyists. Christopher Reeves died in 2004.

1997- President Bill Clinton liked to appease his critics by appointing conservative judges despite popular perception of him as a Liberal. This day this practice came back to bite him when the conservative Supreme Court of William Rheinquist unanimously rejected Clinton’s plea that a President should not be subject to a private lawsuit while in office. A woman named Paula Jones with heavy funding from the religious right was suing him for sexual harassment. Of course, when President Trump was in office he was being sued by several women for sexual harassment, yet none of those cases were ever allowed to proceed until he was out of office.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean in Japanese to write in Kanji?

Answer: It is the most formal style of calligraphy, using classical Chinese characters. In was also the style of Japanese print used in Manga comics.