Quiz: Who said” I’d rather keep that old man on the inside of our tent pissing out, than on the outside, pissing in.”

Yesterday’s Answer Below: : Did the Earl of Sandwich really invent the sandwich?
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History for 11/4/2009
Birthdays: Will Rogers, Art Carney, Loretta Swit, Martin Balsam, Gig Young, Darla Hood, Joe Neikro, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ralph Maccio, Andrea McArdle, Matthew McConnaughy, Walter Cronkite, Laura Bush is 63

1804- LEWIS & CLARK MET SACAJEWEA- The American explorers were spending the winter in a friendly Mandan village when a French Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau offered his services as a guide. He had two wives who were Shoshone (Snake) women. Sacajewea was then 15 and pregnant. Charbonneau won his wives in a bet with some Hidatsa warriors. Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau not because he would be useful as much as Sacajewea, because she spoke the languages of the western tribes beyond the Rocky Mountians. Sacajewea would speak to Shoshone and Nez Perce in their language, then translate into Hidatsa to Charbonneau. He would translate it into French to another trapper named Driar who would speak English to Lewis and Clark.
Despite the clumsiness, this system worked. Sacajewea braved every hardship the expedition faced to the Pacific and back, and with her baby on her back. One scholar said the European conquest of the America's could not have been done without the help of three women: Pocahontas, Malinche' the Aztec Princess and Sacajewea.

1854- THE LADY WITH THE LAMP- English nurse Florence Nightingale arrived at Scutari Turkey to care for English wounded from the Crimean War. The English Army medical system then was a disaster of outmoded bureaucracy. Hundreds of sick and dying men were piled up bed to bed in a hospital 4 miles square without basic sanitary conditions- no blankets, fresh clothes or fresh food. Rich English aristocrat Florence Nightingale brought her own finances to clothe, feed and care for the sick. Even just doing laundry saved lives because men had clean linens to sleep on. She told her volunteers "The strongest women must stand with me at the washtub!" She had no official status or commission from the government, but she revolutionized the military hospital system and the nursing profession, often fighting stodgy old generals who saw her as a troublemaker. Chief surgeon Sir John Hall growled:" The woman insists on grotesque excess and luxury- after all, what does a soldier want with a toothbrush?"

1862- Richard J. Gatling patented the machine gun. "It is to the pistol as the sewing machine is to the simple sewing needle." Gatling's idea was to invent machines to make war too terrible to be waged any longer. What he succeeded in doing was to indeed make war more terrible.

1927- HOWARD CARTER OPENED THE TOMB OF KING TUT-ANKH-AMON ( King Tut ). Other royal tombs had been opened before but they had always been cleaned out centuries ago by grave robbers. King Tut's was the first unspoiled Pharoah's tomb to be discovered in modern times. The site was discovered under a house built for workers excavating the tomb of King Ramses IV. There was King Tut's Curse guarding the door, and a few folks like Lord Carnaervon did go to an early grave: allegedly from scratching a zit and getting blood poisoning, legend has it the same zit was found on King Tut's mummy. But Howard Carter, the man who broke the seal, rifled the tomb and did everything but stick his fingers in Tut's ears, lived to a merry old age and even pocketed a few artifacts he didn't feel like sharing with the British Museum. They were recently returned by an embarrassed family descendant.

1928- Arnold Rothstein, top New York gangster who got vaudeville dancer Jimmy Walker elected mayor and rigged the 1919 World Series, is shot in the groin during a poker game. It took him hours to die. When asked by the police who shot him Rothstein replied before losing consciousness: "If I live, I'll take care of it..."

1931-One of the pioneering trumpet innovators of the new music called Jazz was Buddy Bolden. He was one of the first soloists to improvise within the body of a song, and so doing paved the way for the greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. But by 1931 Bolden was forgotten. This day he died broke in the Louisiana Home for the Insane. His family couldn't even afford a Dixieland Band to play at his funeral.

1939- Packard introduced the first air-conditioned automobile.

1952- UNIVAC, the first all electronic business computer, accurately predicted Dwight Eisenhower would win in a landslide. The first computer projected results for an election.

1955- In Arizona Willie Bioff, former IATSE union official, who tried to hijack the Hollywood unions (Including the Disney cartoonists) for Frank Nitti's gang, turns the key in his Ford pickup and explodes. He had turned informer and was in the Witness Protection plan. He had changed his name to Bill Nelson and was a friend of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. When police arrived they found Bioff's wife up in a tree. At first they feared it was from the explosion but she explained Willie wore a ring with a fat diamond on it. She thought his dismembered hand had gotten stuck up into that tree and she wanted that ring back.

1958- Angelo Roncalli was elected Pope John XXIII. John 23rd was one of the best loved popes of the twentieth century. He liberalized the Church through his council Vatican II, changed the Latin Mass into common language, encouraged folk masses and other reforms. Pope John Paul II has made more saints than any other Pope but withheld final sainthood for John XXIII because he was too liberal for his tastes.

1963- The Beatles are part of the Queens Royal Command performance in London. John Lennon tells the audience: " Will the people in the cheap seats clap their hands?, and if the rest of you would just rattle your jewelry.."

1968- the first issue of Screw Magazine. Former reporter Jim Buckley and former industrial spy for the Bendix Corporation, Al Goldstein named their magazine Screw after trying Hump, Love and being told they couldn't name it F**k.

1979- THE IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS- Iranian militants with the approval of the Iranian revolutionary government and the Ayatollah Khomeni attack the U.S. embassy in Teheran and take most of the 90 staff hostage for 444 days. The event infuriated US opinion and there were loud calls to nuke the Mad Mullahs. Truth be told, without condoning such an outrage, the US public remained blissfully ignorant of how our CIA helped the overthrow of the democratic regime of Mossadegh in 1953 that established the Shah's autocratic regime and that the coup was directed from within the US embassy, but hey, that's just details. The crisis seemed to paralyze the Jimmy Carter administration and probably helped elect Ronald Reagan.

1980- Yomiuri Giants baseball great Saduharu Oh retired after hitting 868 homeruns in his 22 year career.

1993- The Topanga-Malibu fires., Huge brush fries burn expensive homes in Malibu. The fires reached from the Santa Monica Mountains down to the ocean. Eyewitnesses said the 200 foot flames were reflected in the sky and water turning everything orange and the landscape looked more like Mars.

1999- Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This law, drafted by conservative Republicans, repealed many of the government safeguards enacted during the Great Depression against banks speculating in stocks and insurance. It created the free-wheeling Wall Street economy that collapsed in 2008.

2008- Barack Obama was elected first African-American to be President of the United States.
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Yesterday's Question: Did the Earl of Sandwich really invent the sandwich?

Answer: John Montague, the 4th Earl of Sandwich ( 1718-1792) was first Lord of the Admiralty. Some historians say he came up with the sandwich because he needed something portable while hunting. The more popular version was that Montague was such a compulsive gambler that he hated to leave the card tables for a formal sit-down dinner. So he would grab a slice of meat between to pieces of bread and resume playing.
Soon people would say, give me the same as Sandwich!

Question: Did the Earl of Sandwich really invent the sandwich?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the origin of the phrase to “ eat humble pie”?
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History for 11/3/2009
Birthdays: The Roman writer Lucan 39AD, John Montague the Earl of Sandwich, Walker Evans, William Cullen Bryant, Stephen Austin, Bronco Nagurski, Andre' Malraux, Vincenzo Bellini, Bob Feller, Karl Baedeker author of the guidebooks, Ken Berry, Michael Dukakis, Tom Schales, Lulu, Roseanne Barr, Osamu Tezuka

55 B.C. CLEOPATRA MARRIED PTOLOMEY VIII. They were brother and sister. Because the Pharoah was a god, he couldn't mate with a mortal, and the only available goddesses were in the immediate family. This curious inbreeding in the Royal line insured that the mighty family of Ptolomey, general of Alexander the Great, would produce descendants like Orestes the Flute Blower.

361AD- JULIAN THE APOSTATE BECAME EMPEROR OF ROME, upon the death of is uncle Constantius II. Julian's life was much like Claudius 300 years earlier, except the Imperial Family's official religion was now Christianity. The children of Constantine the Great fought, intrigued, seduced and poisoned each other with great gusto, then went to Church. This had a funny effect on bookish young Julian, and he decided Christianity was the mistake and everyone was a lot better off worshiping Jupiter, Hercules, bulls and such like the good old days. He just couldn't command it so, because Rome had been Christian for 50 years and would just kill him rather than switch. So he had to move cautiously. He was slain in battle with the Persians after only a five year reign, before he could affect any real change, but if he had reigned as long as Constantine did ( 30 years) the world might've looked different. When he went on campaign against Persia he sacrificed 5,000 bulls to Mars. One Christian joked: " If it was 5,000 bulls just to start, if Caesar Julian wins any battles I fear for the market price of beef!"

1503- MONA LISA- Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by a Florentine senator Francesco del Giocondo to paint a portrait of his third wife Madonna Elizabetha or Lisa. He fussed over the painting for four years and never gave it to Francesco, he said it was still unfinished and kept it for himself. Eventually he needed money so he sold it to the King of France and today it sits in the Louvre.
courtesy of perfumequeen.com
Was her enigmatic smile because she had lost a child earlier that year and Leonardo was trying to cheer her up? He used to have musicians playing in the room when she posed. Or is she emblematic of Woman smiling at all the foibles of Men? One historian called Mona Lisa “ the Face that Launched a Thousand Reams Upon a Sea of Ink.”

1623- The Dutch government in the Hague decided Henry Hudson had discovered something interesting in America after all and ordered the Dutch West India Company to prepare plans for the building of a colony to be called New Amsterdam. This colony would eventually become New York City.

1755- The Massachusetts Colony offered a bounty of 20 English pounds each for scalps of Indian children under the age of 12. Warrior scalps fetched a higher bounty, about 30 pounds.

1836- California ranchero Juan de Alvarado rallies local ranchers to overthrow Governor Juan de Michaltorena sent from Mexico City. This story may have been an early inspiration for Zorro.

1849-THE PNEUMATIC TRAIN- Alfred E. Beech, the publisher of Scientific American Magazine, first proposed an underground railway be built under New York City to ease traffic snarls. He had invented the pneumatic tube system of delivering messages in tubes pulled through buildings by means of suction and compressed air. He now proposed to build tube shaped railroad cars that would carry people along via suction like a big straw. In 1868 he spent $350,000 to build a Pneumatic train under Broadway that could go one block. Beecher eventually gave up the idea and his tunnel was sealed but the New York City Subway system was inaugurated in 1904.

1888- Jack the Ripper killed his last victim, a prostitute named Mary Reilly.

1930- Amadeo Gianini changed the name of his San Francisco based Bank of Italy to the Bank of America.

1948 -The Chicago Daily Tribune prints the famous premature headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” based on early poll returns. Truman himself was so sure he’d lost the election he went to bed early. When he awoke he discovered he had won and he had a ball mocking the newspapers and doing nasal imitations of hostile correspondent H.B. Kaltenborn.


1957- the first living thing sent into orbit, a Russian dog named Laika. Laika means Barky Dog. She never came back down but she maybe was satisfied knowing she made human history- woof.

1966- President Lyndon Johnson signed the Truth in Packaging Act, which required all packaged foods to print their ingredients on the label.

1969- In a speech President Richard Nixon announced his opposition to young anti- Vietnam War protestors by appealing to what he called the Silent Majority.

1971- The first UNIX manual released.

1971- Carly Simon married James Taylor.

1977- Disney's Pete's Dragon starring Helen Reddy and Red Buttons.

1979- T.V. sitcom Different Strokes premiered, featuring 2003 gubernatorial candidate Gary Coleman..

1990- GM's car line the Saturn announced.

1981- WALLY WOOD was one of the most influential cartoonists of the mid Twentieth Century His versatility enabled him to draw everything from superhero comics, to very cartoony, to playfully naughty girls like Sally Forth. He drew EC Comics, the Mars Attacks series, Mad Magazine, Weird Science, THUNDER Agents and much more. He had done an infamous drawing of the Disney characters having sex that brought down upon him the wrath of the Disney legal dept. But hard living and deadlines took their toll. Suffering from a stroke, and failing kidneys, this day Wally Wood put a 44 cal pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger. Police found the bullet had passed right through his head into the pillow.


1986- A Lebanese newspaper Al Schirrah revealed the details of the Reagan Presidency’s illegal sales of weapons to Iran- the Iran Contra Scandal.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the origin of the phrase to “ eat humble pie”?

Answer: In the Middle Ages, a poor family could feed itself by trapping small game, usually crows, and bake them in a pie crust. So eating Crow, means the same as eating humble pie, namely having to admit your defeat and humiliation and live with it.

Question: What is the origin of the phrase to “ eat humble pie”?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who said:” He’s a sonofabitch, but he’s OUR sonofabitch!”
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History for 11/2/2009
Birthdays: Daniel Boone, Pres. James Knox Polk, Jean Chardin, Luchino Visconti, Giusseppi Sinopoli, Burt Lancaster, Ray Walston, Pat Buchanan, Steve Ditko, Ray Walston, Stephanie Powers, k.d.lang, David Schwimmer

Today is Dio de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It derives from the Aztecs, who believed the life you are living now is a dream, when you die, you awake to your real life.

1483- OFF WITH HIS HEAD! Whether you believe Shakespeares’ portrayal of King Richard III as a hunchback usurper or modern revisionist scholars who call him a maligned monarch, this day Richard III shows his friend the Duke of Buckingham how much he appreciated his help in becoming king, by cutting his head off.

1541- Archbishop Thomas Cranmer handed King Henry VIII a spy’s report that his hot young wife Queen Catherine Howard was getting-it-on with at least three other men.

1889- North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted into the Union. They argued for twenty years the position of a joint state capitol until finally deciding to go separately.

1904- London newspaper The Daily Mirror first published.

1917- Britain passed the Balfour Declaration, calling for a national home for Jews in Palestine. Sit Arthur Balfour was the British Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George. Britain once considered Uganda and Argentina for a Jewish homeland before settling on Palestine, then a sleepy border province of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

1920- The first US Radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began the nation’s first broadcasting with news of election results.

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Halie Selassie Ist, Ethiopian Emperor. The Jamaican movement Rastafarians are named for him.

1932- Young star Katherine Hepburn first shines in the film A Bill of Divorcement, co- starring with John Barrymore.

1937- LaGuardia Airport opened. New York City’s first municipal airport.

1944- RAOUL WALLENBURG- The Jewish population of Budapest was driven off to Nazi concentration camps, but not after Swedish envoy Raoul Wallenberg saved over a thousand by granting Swedish (neutral) passports to them. Wallenberg once walked alongside an SS officer ordered to execute 25 people and pleaded for each person as they were shot. The SS officer finally tired of Wallenburgs pleas and spared the last two. When Wallenburg’s aide asked him “What good did all that begging do?” He replied: “What Good? We just saved two human lives!” When Hungary was conquered by the Red Army Raul Wallenburg was arrested and died in one of Stalin's gulag prison camps. Russia didn’t officially admit this until 1991.

1947- Howard Hughes pilots his monster wooden airplane, the "Spruce Goose" for it's only test flight, one minute over Long Beach Harbor. Two hundred tons, Eight engines, a wingspan longer than a football field, it was conceived as an aid to win World War Two but was completed long after it ended.

1950- Writer George Bernard Shaw died at 94. His last words were:" Oh well, it will be a new experience anyway."

1964- CBS television purchased the NY Yankees Baseball club. This is one of the dumber business deals in entertainment history. CBS thought they were buying the world champion Murderers Row team, if they had done their research they would have known most the Yankee top stars including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra were scheduled to retire. Within a year of the deal the Yankees went from first to last place, and played bad until George Steinbrenner bought them in 1977.

1983- Yielding to nationwide lobbying from the African American community, President Ronald Reagan created the Martin Luther King holiday in January. Arizona was the last state to officially celebrate the holiday.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who said:” He’s a sonofabitch, but he’s OUR sonofabitch!”

Answer: Because of the Cold War, the U.S. and the Free World found itself supporting some odd partners like Spanish dictator Franco and the colonels junta in Greece. Just because they were Anti-Communist. When President Lyndon Johnson was asked why we supported Indonesian dictator Sukarno, LBJ replied” Sure, I know he’s a sonofabitch, but he’s OUR sonofabitch!”

Question: Who said:” He’s a sonofabitch, but he’s OUR sonofabitch!”

Question: Which American President never lived in the White House? George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson or Harry Truman?
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History for 11/1/2009
Welcome to November, Roman Month #9-Novembrius.

Birthdays: Marie Antoinette, President Warren Harding, Stephen Crane, Marcel Ophuls, Benevenuto Cellini, Larry Flynt, Walter Matthau, Fernando Valenzuela, Lyle Lovett, Willie D, Rick Allen of Def Leppard, Jenny McCarthy

To the ancient Romans this was the Feast of Pomona, Goddess of the Fruit Harvest. The Early Christian Church they changed the name to the feast to All Saints Day. Pomona's offerings were apples, a staple of the Roman diet. The custom of bobbing for apples at Halloween comes from a pagan ritual.

79AD- Erupting since last August and burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Mount Versuvius finally calmed down.

1290- This was the deadline King Edward Ist Longshanks ( the bad guy in Braveheart ) set for all Jews to leave England. Many drowned in small boats crossing the Channel. Once in France the French king told them they had to leave in one year. Jews would not be allowed to resettle in England until Oliver Cromwell’s time in the 1650s.

1478- THE SPANISH INQUISITION- At the request of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Pope Sixtus IV promulgated a bull setting up the office of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. The royal couple tired of civil fighting among Moslems, Jews, Christians and converts in their country. As they united the land under their one rule, they wanted Spain united under one orthodox doctrine. The Inquisition, also called La Suprema, dominated life and thought for centuries. Other offices for the Holy Inquisition were set up in Portugal and Brazil.

The Inquisition was administered by the Dominican monks and supported by an elite group of nobles called the Santa Hermandad,or the Sacred Brotherhood. In 1709 King Phillip V broke with tradition by refusing to attend an Auto da Fe, a public festival featuring the burning of heretics. The Spanish Inquisition was stopped by Napoleon’s French invasion of 1808, but restored after liberation. It finally died out in 1819.

1503 –IL PAPA TERRIBLE- Giuliano Della Rovere made Pope Julius II. The Holy Father delayed his coronation until his astrologers told him the stars were right. Julius drove out Caesar and Lucretia Borgia and fought in armor more than as he prayed. In his 10 year reign he'll commission the Sistine Ceiling, the rebuilding of St.Peter's Basilica ,Michelangelo's Moses, Raphael's "The School of Athens", created the Swiss Guard (uniform designed by Michelangelo), dug up the Laocoon, conquered most of Central Italy and left the Vatican treasury a surplus for the first time in decades.

He was known for quotes like:"Let the whole world perish provided I get my way!" One critic wrote how during a festival where the Pope is supposed to kiss the feet of the poor Julius was careful to hold them up, then kiss his own bejeweled fingers. Still he was one of the greatest of the Popes, called "Il Papa Terrible'" the Terrible Father.

1512- Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling is unveiled to the public for the first time.

1604- William Shakespeare's play "Othello the Moor of Venice" first performed.

1755- THE GREAT LISBON EARTHQUAKE-85% of the city destroyed, 50,000 killed, gallows erected around the city to punish looters. The earthquake happened on a Sunday at 9:40AM so most killed were in Church hearing Mass when the rooftops collapsed on them. This irony was seized upon by humanist philosophers like Votaire and Diderot- that a overwhelmingly Catholic city like Lisbon could be struck in such a way while Paris and London went on their sinful ways. This said to them that the great earthquake was not God’s punishment but a coldly impersonal force of Nature. This notion coupled with Sir Edmund Halley's discovery that Comet's are not a message from the Diety but an equally natural phenomena led to the growing disillusionment with religion engendered by the Age of Enlightenment.

1776- Mission San Juan De Capistrano founded on the California coast.

1800- President John Adams, moves into the White House, first president to do so. First Lady Abigail Adams had her wash hung in the East Room because the walls weren't in yet so it had a nice breeze. The first three buildings erected in Pierre L'Enfant's new federal capitol city are the House of Congress, the White House, and Conrad’s Tavern. The first business in Washington City that was not part of the government was a brewery. Pennsylvania Avenue was still dotted with tree stumps. Abigail Adams wrote that Georgetown was “The very dirtiest hole I have ever seen.”

1835- Davey Crockett, after losing his bid for re-election to Congress tells his Tennessee voters:" You can all go to Hell, I'm going to Texas!"

1858- The British Crown takes direct control of India from the Honorable East India Company. The period known as "The Raj" begins.

1880- Pat Garrett elected sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory.

1913- Notre Dame quarterback Gus Doreias throws the first "Forward Pass" to center Knute Rockne. The forward pass was the solution to a request to the coach of Notre Dame by Teddy Roosevelt to do something to make the game more mobile and less bone crunching, since parents were beginning to complain about the injuries to their sons.

1918- The Hungarian subjects of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian Empire declared themselves to be the new independent nation of Hungary.

1920- The first issue of American Cinematographer.

1936-Benito Mussolini in a speech coined the term “The Axis” for his new alliance with Hitler’s Germany. “There is now an “axis of mutual interest between Berlin and Rome”

1938- At Pimlico in Maryland this day was the famous horse race between War Admiral and Sea Biscuit, the two finest thoroughbreds of the age. War Admiral was sleek and aristocratic, sired from the blood of the great champion Man of War. Sea Biscuit by contrast looked ungainly and lame. But in the end The Biscuit he won the race by three lengths. The race was heard live on radio by one in three Americans.

1939- Rockefeller Center in New York City opened.

1945- OPERATION OLYMPIC- If the Atomic Bombs had failed to end the war, this was the planned date for the U.S. Invasion of Japan. Based on the casualty figures to take Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Gen.MacArthur estimated 100,000 U.S. soldiers would be killed or wounded to land on the beaches of Kyushu, another 50,000 to take Tokyo and a guerrilla war in the mountains possibly lasting until 1948. The Japanese had stockpiled 2,200 kamikaze planes in mountain bunkers and had mobilized the civilian population to fight with spears for the Motherland. The Soviets were already in the Kurile Islands and had timed their mainland invasion for July. So the resulting actions would probably divide the island into a North Japan, South Japan situation. But things turned out differently...

1946- THE FIRST NBA BASKETBALL GAME- The first professional game was the New York Knicks 68, the Toronto Huskies 66. The first basket was scored by Ozzie Sheckmann.

1950- Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Coralzo and Griselo Torresola, tried to shoot their way to President Truman. Truman was staying at Blair House while the White House was being renovated. The two assassins were shot down by the Secret Service in a furious gun battle at the foot of his stairs. Secret serviceman Leslie Coffelt shot Collazo as he himself was killed. President Truman was awoken from a nap and went to the window to see what the noise was all about. " Get down ya G-ddamn fool !" the agents shouted at him.

1951- As part of their training, US soldiers were made to witness an atomic bomb test at Desert Rock Nevada, then marched across the radioactive field.

1959- Hockey goalie Jacques LaPlante became the first to wear a face mask during play. Before this many Hockey goalies lost their front teeth.

1968- To replace the outmoded Hays Production Code, the Motion Picture Ratings System introduced-"G,M, R, and X"- Later PG, PG-13, R and NC-17".

1972-John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, who owned the Esso brand of gasoline, changed their name to the Exxon Corporation. Esso- S-O, Standard Oil, get it?

1988- Jeff Goldblum married Gena Davis. They divorced several years later.

2001- President George W. Bush signed an executive order that declared that the President and Vice President can keep their secret records sealed in perpetuity. The 1978 Presidential Records Act ordered that Presidential records be made public after 12 years. But not for Dubya and Cheney. We’ll see if this act is rescinded.
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Question: Which American President never lived in the White House? George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson or Harry Truman?

Answer: George Washington oversaw the construction of the White House, but he himself would never live in it. John Adams was the first occupant in 1800.

Question: Which American President never lived in the White House? George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson or Harry Truman?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is phrenology?
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History for 10/31/2009 Halloween
Birthdays: Jan Vermeer, John Keats, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, John Candy, Dale Evans, Jane Pauley, David Ogden Stiers, Dan Rather, Lee Grant, Ethel Waters, Juliet Low-founder of the American Girl Scouts, Vanilla Ice, Stephen Rea, Rob Schneider, Peter Jackson, Ollie Johnston

courtesy of Alex Ross
HAPPY ALL HALLOWS EVE- The night before the Feast of All Saints, beginning the Christian season of Advent, was confused in Medieval custom with one of the four Druid fire festivals, All Hallows. In Ireland it was called Samhein, at this time all hearth fires in the land are extinguished then re-lit from the fire at the sacred grove. Add to this the early Church's attempt to eradicate the pagan custom of giving food to departed spirits -Greek Anthesterion in Feb., Roman Feralia and Lemuria in May- by moving the date to honor the dead to the Feast of All Saints on November 1st. Many cultures have customs of putting food offerings on doorsteps so the spirits would leave you in peace. So today's the last night for ghosties to romp.

1517- THE REFORMATION BEGINS- Augustine monk and theology professor Martin Luther had had enough of the growing corruption of the Church. Pope Leo X the party-animal Pope who had succeeded Pope Julius II the Warrior Pope, who succeeded Pope Alexander VI Borgia the “totally-out-of-control” pope, ordered a new sale of Indulgences throughout Europe to pay off a loan on St. Peter's construction to the Augsberg banker Jacob Fugger . An indulgence was sort of " after-life insurance" absolving you of sin. When Wilhelm Tetzel, the local Bishop selling indulgences showed up in his area Luther blew his cork. On a wagon Tetzel had a big barrel that had written on it: "For every Coin tinkles in my Well, another Soul is spared from Hell."
Luther nailed 95 theses or arguments against Roman primacy in religion to the door of the Palace Church, in effect challenging Tetzel to debate, the customary university challenge. He picked today to do it because he knew tomorrow being the Feast of All Saints there would be a large crowd to read it. But Martin Luther wasn't made into toast like Jan Hus or Wycliff, because was he was protected by German princes like Frederick the Wise of Saxony. They were tired of sending as much as a third of their GNP to Italy. Called Peter’s Pence. This is the official start date for the Protestant Reformation.

1663- THE GREAT PLAGUE OF LONDON- English writer Samuel Pepys noted in his famous diary: “The plague is much in Amsterdam and we in fears of it here”. The plague took another year to reach London but when it did it decimated the population for most of 1665 and 1666 until burned out by the Great Fire of London.

1820- PAPA HAYDN’S HEAD. Famous composer Franz Josef Haydn had died in 1809. The powerful Ezterhazy Family, who were great patrons of classical music, built a beautiful new tomb for him in 1820. There was only one problem. When they exhumed Haydn’s coffin it was found that his head was missing! It seems the Ezterhazy attorney Rosenbaum was a fan of Phrenology, studying the human mind through measuring bumps on the skull. He ordered Haydn’s head secretly removed three days after the burial for study. When Austrian police questioned Rosenbaum he hid Haydn’s skull under his wifes’ skirts. ( Darling, would you please do me a favor..?) The head bounced around several Viennese musical societies until it was Re-Capitated, returned to Papa Haydn’s tomb in 1939.

1846-THE DONNER PARTY MAKES CAMP- A wagon train of families, pinned down by an early autumn blizzard in the High Sierra Donner Pass made camp at Lake Truckee only 150 miles from help. They took this route because it was advertised back east by a charlatan named Lansford Hastings as a short cut. All their oxen were dead and their food almost gone and it was the worst winter for a generation. The hapless pioneers weren't rescued until the following April! In the meantime they starved, ate tree bark and dogs and finally resorted to cannibalism of their dead. Interestingly enough their Indian guides were the only ones who refused to join in the cannibalistic feast, they ran off. The Donner men caught up with the Indians, killed them and ate them too. So much for calling them savages. Of 86 pioneers, 41 died.....Oh, and the guy who sold them the map was eventually shot by one of the pioneer’s angry relatives.

1887- Charles Goodyear takes out the first patent for a rubber tire.

1914- In World War One during the First Battle of Ypres a British counterattack mauled the Second Bavarian Reserve division, then holding a small French chateau. Less than a third of the Bavarians made it out alive, but one of the survivors was private Adolph Hitler. It’s one of those interesting“what if’s “ of history, if Hitler had been killed.

1916- Charles Taze Russell,the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses, died of a heart attack on a train in Texas. He had predicted the Second Coming of Christ would happen in 1874 but no one would be aware of it and the world would end October 2,1914. He had asked to be buried in a Roman toga so his followers wrapped him in his Pullman car bed sheets.

1926 –The great magician Harry Houdini died. His real name was Eric Weiss but he had seen a French magician named Houdin who had inspired him. Some college boys in Detroit asked the great magician if it was true he could withstand any punch. When he said yes while reading his mail, a large student unexpectedly started punching him in the abdomen, rupturing his already aggrieved appendix. Perintoritis set in, and he died on this day.

He was buried in a coffin he had used for his escape acts. He promised his wife if there was an Afterlife, he would contact her. She held a séance on every Halloween hoping for a message but none ever came. She gave up after ten years.

1931- First day of shooting on the MGM film Tarzan the Ape Man, with Olympic gold medal swimmer Johnny Weissmuller in the title role. Contrary to popular myth no one ever said “Me Tarzan, You Jane” in the film. MGM liked the films so much they never let Weissmuller star in any other type of film other than as Tarzan.

1936- NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena call today Nativity Day, because it commemorates the first firing of a liquid fuel rocket under the Galcit program ( Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory California Institute of Technology ) later renamed the Jet Propulsion Lab in 1944.

1938- In a speech President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned of big corporate tycoons who try to influence American politics. “ Organized Money is as great a threat to American democracy as organized mobs!”

1941-the sculpture group of U.S. Presidents on Mount Rushmore completed. Instead of just their heads artist–designer Judson Borglum wanted the sculpture to go down to the figures waists but he died in early 1941 and with war on the horizon his son and chief engineer rushed to complete the heads as is.

1945- The "War of Hollywood" Ends. The CSU union strike, the film business's longest and ugliest, falls apart and many of the former members drift into IATSE locals.

1956- Brooklyn ended all trolleycar service.

1964- Barbara Streisand single “People, People who need People..” goes to number one.

1964- Today in a taped phone conversation FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave President Lyndon Johnson tips on how to spot a closet homosexual: “It’s a thing you just can’t tell sometimes…There are some people who walk kinda funny. That you might think are a little bit off or kinda queer..” FBI director Hoover was gay himself.


1984- India's Prime Minister Indira Ghandi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards in revenge for her ordering the military storming of the Golden Temple of Amritsar earlier that year. While she lay dying her staff argued over who had the right to donate blood first.

1993- Rising young movie star River Phoenix overdosed and died on the street in front of the Viper Room night club in L.A after partying with Johnny Depp and Alicia Silverstone. The club is owned by movie star Depp and was once the Melody Room owned by old mobster Bugsy Siegel. Ironically, as Phoenix was thrashing spasmodically people walked by unconcerned because it’s a common occurrence on the Sunset Strip.

2000- The first working crew blasted off from Kazakhstan to occupy the International Space Station. A NASA spokesman said ‘If all goes well today will mark the first day of Mans permanent colonization of Space. Yesterday was the last day that the cosmos would be completely devoid of human beings.”

2001- The acting Governor of Massachusetts officially overturned the convictions of the last six people executed in the Salem Witch Trials 300 years ago in 1692.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is phrenology?

Answer: A pseudo-science popular in the XIX Century, that you could analyze someone’s personality by studying the bumps on their head.

"oooh, you better gimme a LOTTA lumps!" --Pete Puma