Quiz: Who was the first movie star?

Yesterday’s question answered below What country has for its’ official name The Great Socialist People’s Arab Jamahirjiya?
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History for 9/7/2009
Birthdays: Grandma Moses, Dame Edith Sitwell, Elia Kazan, Richard Roundtree, Sinclair Lewis, Anthony Quayle. Peter Lawford, Senator Daniel Inouye, Susan Blakely, Shannon Elizabeth, Sonny Rawlins, Julie Kavner the voice of Marge Simpson.

605 B.C. Nebuchanesser II crowned king of Babylon. In 597 he destroyed Israel and began the Baylonian Captivity of the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic writings, but he also build the famed hanging Gardens of Baylon for his wife Amrytis.

1191-KING RICHARD VS. SALLADIN-The Battle of Arsuf, the only major set battle between King Richard's Crusaders and Saladin Saracens. Saladin's men were driven back by the charging armored knights, but no final victory was achieved. Richard galloped about chopping people so fiercely, that the Saracen warriors rode around him and avoided contact. Contrary to the image Saladin didn't ride around on a fiery Arab white stallion. He directed his army from the rear on a donkey. This he did in imitation of the example of the pious Caliph Omar, who also disdained white chargers as vanity. After such hot work in the desert Salladin sent his enemy Richard a cup of snow with rose water called Sherbat, which is the forerunner of modern Iced Sherbet or Slurpie.

1303- ATTACK ON THE POPE- Pope Boniface VIII considered his throne higher than all Royal crowns. He even had a big triple tiara crown made bigger than all royal crowns to prove it. He got into a fight over sovereignty with French King Phillip the Fair, excommunicating him and all France. Then Phillip had a French clerical assembly accuse Boniface of being a “murderer, false monk, sorcerer, embezzler, adulterer, sodomite, idolater and infidel”. But King Phillip could fight with more than words. This day he sent a hit squad of 2000 knights to attack the pope at his summer residence in Anagni.

As the knights slew the Vatican guards and burst into the palace Boniface knew his hour had come. He put on his full pontifical robes and mounted his throne to await his end. The knights William of Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna marched up to the old man, held a dagger over his head and paused.” That is the message from my master, King Philip” Then they left. The 70 year old Pope was rescued by the Orsini family three days later, but Boniface died mentally broken from his ordeal.

1812- BATTLE OF BORODINO, or La Moskova. Napoleon's French army and the Russians pound each other to bits before Moscow in the great battle immortalized by Tolstoy in 'War and Peace'. As the French army marched to the attack, Russian Prince Bagration sat on horseback in front of his troops. Before opening fire he pulled out a silver flask and toasted his enemy:"Gentlemen of France, Bravo! C'est Superb!". He was killed later. Leo Tolstoy had an ancestor at the battle. General Mikhail Tolstoy was an eccentric who rode into battle in a horse drawn carriage with his pet black bear seated alongside him who drank his champagne.

The French capture all the strategic points and force General Kutusov to abandon Moscow, but while the Russians could make good their losses La Grande Armee' was exhausted and thousands of miles from supplies and reinforcements. Napoleon was listless from a bad cold and hesitated sending in his Imperial Guard at a key moment to finish off the Russian army. Bad tempered Marshal Ney was enraged: ”Have we come so far merely to possess another battlefield? What is he doing so far back? He is no longer a general, he is an Emperor. Let him sit home in the palace and leave the fighting to us!”

1876- THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID-One old Hollywood myth is of the Western town cowering in fear while desperadoes shoot up the street whoopin’ and a’hollering. When the Jesse James & Cole Younger gang rode out of Missouri and tried to rob the Bank of Northfield they found a town full of old Civil War veterans, who hauled out their rifles and shot them to pieces from every window and doorway. Frank and Jesse are about the only ones who escaped. They laid low in Tennessee for three years until resuming their outlaw ways. Cole Younger was captured and did 25 years in prison. In 1903 Cole and Frank James went on tour with their own Wild West Show.

1880 - George Ligowsky patents device to throw clay pigeons for trapshooters

1888 - Edith Eleanor McLean is 1st baby placed in an incubator.

1892 -Gentleman Jim Corbett finally KOs John L. Sullivan after 21 rounds for heavyweight boxing title. Corbett was an advocate of the new Marquis of Queensbery rules and preferred using boxing gloves to bare knuckle fighting.

1911- French avant-garde poet Guilliame Appollinaire was the man who coined the term “surrealism’. He was such an elitist, outspoken radical guy that Parisian authorities felt he must be up to something. So when the Mona Lisa was stolen out of the Louvre this day Appollinaire was arrested. There was no evidence and he was released shortly after. The real thief was a disgruntled waiter who once worked as a security guard at the museum.

1916 - Workmen's Compensation Act passed by Congress

1923 - Interpol was formed in Vienna

1936 - Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam) began operation.

1940- Nazis bombers change their strategy of bombing RAF bases in southern England and instead concentrate on destroying London for psychological value. For the next 57 straight days London suffered under a rain of high explosives.

1956- US test pilot Ivan Kinchilo flew his experimental Bell-X plane to the edge of the Stratosphere. While modern passenger planes fly at 37,000 feet, Kinchilo was 126,000 feet up, almost 26 miles. He could see the curve of the earth, the blue of the atmosphere turning ultramarine and the stars at the edge of space. He was weightless for a few seconds. Called the First Spaceman, had Kinchilo not died in 1958 in an accident he would have been an important figure in Nasa’s Space program.

1957- Actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini separate.

1963- Mushi productions cartoon series."Tetsuan Atomo" debuts in the U.S as AstroBoy.

1978 - Keith Moon, rock drummer of the Who, died of a drug overdose at 31. He actually overdosed the drug he was perscribed to treat his alcohol and drug abuse. In one night he took 22 tabs of choloromethiazole edysilate. He was staying in the very same London apartment #123 Curzon Place, was the one that Mama Cass Elliot died in four years earlier.

1984-The Walt Disney Board formally fired Walt’s son-in-law CEO Ron Miller.

1996- Rap artist and actor Tupac Shakur was shot to death gangland style in Las Vegas Nevada. He was standing up in the open roof of a BMW 750 sedan talking to some girls when a Cadillac pulled along side and opened fire. In 2002 the LA Times concluded and investigation that rapper Biggie Smalls or Notorious B.I.G. hired and killer and provided the gun. Notorious B.I.G. was himself shot to death shortly after.

1998- Google started.

2000- Barely legal teen pop star Britney Spears shocked even the permissive MTV Music Video Awards crowd by singing her hit “Oops, I Did it Again” while stripping and grinding in a Las Vegas showgirl type sheer bikini.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: What country has for its’ official name The Great Socialist People’s Arab Jamahirjiya?

Answer: Libya under Mohammar Khadafi.

Quiz: What country has for its’ official name The Great Socialist People’s Arab Jamahirjiya?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In Shakespeare, who was the character of Oberon?
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History for 9/6/2009
Birthdays: Marquis De Lafayette ,Joseph Kennedy Sr., Buddy Holly, Jane Curtin,
Sergio Aragones, Swoozie Kurtz, Jo Ann Worley, Rosie Perez, Billy Rose, Ernest Tubb, Justin Whalin

338BC- Five days after Athens was conquered by Phillip of Macedon, the Greek philosopher Isocrates died. It was said the 98 year old was depressed by world events and old age. So he simply stopped eating. Isocrates created the first literary criticism essays.

1298- Battle of Curzola- One of the perennial battles between Venice and the Pisa only distinguished by the fact that Marco Polo was captured. The first thing the globe trotting merchant did upon getting home from China was get drafted. While a P.O.W. in a Pisan prison he wrote his accounts: " My Travels". He actually dictated them to another prisoner because he may have been illiterate or simply had weak eyes. Recently scholars challenged just how much of China he actually saw, because he makes no mention of The Great Wall or chopsticks.

1522- A ship reached Spain manned by only a dozen or more skeletal sailors. They were all that was left of Fernand de Magellans fleet of five ships and 260 men that set out one year ago to reach the Indies. Magellan was killed and eaten by cannibals in the Philippines, Magellan had beheaded three of his captains in Argentina and most of the crew was dead. The last leg of the trip the men sailed up the coast of Africa without stopping for food or water for fear of falling into the hands of their Portuguese enemies. But they had achieved the dream of the great Columbus, they reached the Indies by sailing west. In fact they had circumnavigated the globe, forever proved the world was round.

1566- Elderly Turkish Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent died while besieging the Hungarian castle of Szigetvar. His Vazirs worried that the news of his death would panic the troops and leave their lands open for invasion. So they kept it a secret and marched back to Istanbul with Sulieman’s body propped up and held down by wires on his throne in his rolling pavilion. Censers of perfumed incense were waved to cover the fact that the Sultan stank.

1642- The English Civil War just declared, Parliament issued a declaration that all Englishmen who weren't on their side would be declared 'delinquent' and subject to having their lands and properties seized. Unfortunately his edict had the reverse effect than intended because the threat of losing their fortunes pushed many fence-sitters over to the King's side for protection. King Charles could barely manage to raise one thousand sulky soldiers on Sept. Ist before the edict, afterwards his ranks swelled to the tens of thousands.

1696- William Kidd set sail from Portsmouth with a heavily armed ship named the Adventure Galley. Captain Kidd’s orders were to clear the Indian Ocean of pirates, but instead, he became a famous pirate himself.

1782- Patsy Jefferson, the wife of Thomas Jefferson died. Jefferson promised her on her deathbed that he would never marry again, and was so distraught he refused to leave their bedroom. He finally emerged after three weeks. They spent her last hours writing out their favorite passages from Tristram Shandy together. Jefferson kept the little folded up piece of paper on him the rest of his life.

1791- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera La Celemenza de Tito premiered in Prague.

1812- At Borodino the Russian army prepared to fight Napoleon’s Army before the entrance to Holy Moscow. This night the Orthodox Metropolitan in procession carried through the camp the icon of the Black Virgin of Smolensk. Thousands of soldiers kneeled, crossed themselves and whispered Gospodi Pomilui- Lord Have Mercy. During the Napoleonic Wars Russian officers began the curious custom of making sure that they went into battle wearing clean underwear- no gentleman wanted to his body to be found with dirty undies!

1821- Jacob Fowler with 21 frontiersmen left Arkansas for Santa Fe New Mexico to see if the local government was more amenable to Americans now that Mexico had won their independence from Spain. They were welcomed and began to hunt and trap.

1847- After living in a shack on Walden Pond for two years, Henry David Thoreau moved in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord Mass.

1862- During the Civil War an incident occurred when Stonewall Jackson’s Confederate brigades moved through the pro-Union town of Frederick, Maryland. All civilians kept indoors and waved white flags from their homes. But elderly widow Barbara Fritchie flew a bigass American Stars & Stripes from her window and dared anyone to do anything about it. General Jackson just smiled and tipped his hat as he rode by. Years later a famous poem was written about the incident, The Ballad of Barbara Fritchie:” Shoot if You Must, This Old Grey Head, But Spare your Countries’ Flag, She Said!”

1901-PRESIDENT WILLIAM McKINLEY ASSASSINATED- The President was visiting the Temple of Music at the World Exposition in Buffalo when anarchist Leon Czogolsz shot him with a pistol hidden in his bandaged hand. Czogolsz was such an emotionally unstable character that even other anarchists avoided him. He said he was inspired by the political speeches of Socialist Emma Goldman, which soured many mainstream Americans to radical Socialism.

McKinley lingered for two weeks while doctors were afraid to probe for the bullet. Ironically he had just inspected a new-fangled X-Ray machine at the science pavilion that could have saved his life but doctors said: " This is too serious a time for toys!" He died and Teddy Roosevelt became President. Roosevelt was a maverick Republican that McKinley reluctantly chose as his running mate because he was a hero in the recent Spanish-American War. When Tammany boss Paul Crocker heard about Roosevelt being made V.P. he shouted;" Don't you realize that now there's only one heartbeat between that nut and the Presidency-?!" Republican Senate Majority Leader Marc Hanna was also annoyed: ” Oh, no! Now that crazy cowboy is President!”

1914- As the First World War raged all across Europe the country that started it all, Serbia, had a curious campaign. It was expected that the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire would quickly stomp this little country. But under the leadership of their resident military genius, Marshal Radomir Putnik, the Serbs drove out the invading Austrian army and this day even had the cheek to invade Austria! The Austrians pushed them out, tried another invasion, then forgot about them for the rest 1914 and all of 1915.

1945- Four days after the Japanese surrender ending World War Two FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sent a rather nasty memo to Attorney General Tom Clark complaining about General Donovan. Wild Bill Donovan had led the wartime espionage agency the OSS, now he proposed a continuation of intelligence gathering in the US as well as overseas. Hoover saw this as a direct challenge to his authority. Donovans’ wing was reborn as the CIA in 1947. And relations with the FBI have remained cool ever since. Before the 9-11 attack, the FBI and CIA could not directly e-mail one another.

1954- Groundbreaking for the first nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

1958- The Spunky and Tadpole show debuts!

1966- Dr. Hendryk Verwoerd, the South African Prime Minister most responsible for the institutionalizing of racial segregation called Apartheid, was assassinated by a demented aide.

1968- Many momentous events occurred in 1968: assassinations, riots, the Vietnamese Tet offensive, the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, Easy Rider, 2001 a Space Odyssey Sergeant Pepper. But that’s nothing compared to the television premiere of H.R. PUNFNSTUFF this day! Witchipoo, Orson and the Vroom Broom. They only made 17 episodes, but the images still follow baby boomers into their twilight years.Whether or not Sid and Marty Kroffts strange kiddie show was a code for drug use -HR meaning Hand-Rolled Puffing Stuff, is a matter for scholastic conjecture.


1969- Depatie-Freleng's the Pink Panther TV Show premiered.

1971-Happy Birthday Pampers! Scientists at Proctor & Gamble invent the disposable diaper.

1972 - John Lennon & Yoko Ono appeared on Jerry Lewis' Muscular Dystrophy Telethon

1997- The great Funeral of Princess Diana of Wales brought England to a halt and was televised around the world. There was a last minute fuss over the fact that Buckingham Palace refused to lower the Royal Standard to half-mast, customary for a death in the Royal Family, because technically Diana was divorced and no longer part of that family. The tabloid press jumped on this as a way to divert public attention from the discussion that their hounding Diana was what caused the fatal car accident. As this day began the flag came down at the urging of the elderly Queen Mum.

2000- The United Nations called a Millennial Summit. 150 presidents, kings, princes and prime ministers convened in New York City, the largest international conference ever held. Nothing important was decided and New Yorkers grumbled about the traffic.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Shakespeare, who was the character of Oberon?

Answer: He was the King of the Faeries in A Midsummer’s Nights Dream.

Quiz In Shakespeare, who was the character of Oberon?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Cogito Ergo Sum
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History for 9/5/2009
Birthdays: Louis XIV The Sun King, Jesse James, Cardinal Richelieu, Johann Christian Bach, Jacopo Meyerbeer, John Cage, Quentin de la Tour, Darryl F. Zanuck, Jack Valenti, Bob Newhart, George Lazenby, Raquel Welch is 69, Kathy Guisewhite, Dweezil Zappa, Werner Herzog, Michael Keaton is 58

1499- Former Columbus captain Alonso De Hojeda arrives in the New World on his own expedition. Along with him as pilot (Navigator) was a Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci made several more trips to the alien land and published a book about his adventures never mentioning Hojeda. His publishers spiced up his accounts with naked brown natives with lascivious morals throwing themselves on the Europeans. It was quite popular reading.
In 1538 when Columbus was dead and forgotten German mapmakers Martin Waldseemuller & Gerhardus Mercator published the first mass printed maps of the known world. They drew on Vespucci's books and called the new hemisphere "America". I guess that's better than the United States of Hojeda.

1536- Protestant Reformer John Calvin was put in charge of the religious life of the city of Geneva. His ideas were so Puritan that within two years he was asked to leave.

1654-FIRST JEWS IN AMERICA- The first boatload of Jewish families arrived in America at what would one day be New York City- then Nieu Amsterdaam. They were fleeing the Spanish Inquisition that was being set up in Brazil. They had to auction their furniture to pay off their French pirate captain, Jean De La Monthe, but Asher Levy and his family where here to stay. Puritan Dutch Governor Peter Stuyversant immediately complained to the Hague that Jews not be allowed to settle in New Amsterdam. The Dutch East India Company told him to mind his own business and apologize. He was reminded he was running a business, not a religious colony. Anyone who wanted to work and raise a family was welcome.

1698 - Russia's Peter the Great was determined to drag his kingdom into the modern world. Since the fashion in Europe at this time was clean shaven, he imposed a tax on beards. When Czar Peter spotted a boyar at his court who refused to comply, he personally jumped the old man with a pair of shears.

1781- BATTLE OF THE VIRGINIA CAPES- Arguably the real battle that won the American Revolution. French Admiral DeGrasse' navy drives off the English fleet attempting to save Lord Cornwallis's army trapped inside the port of Yorktown by Washington and Rocheambeau. For command of the vital mission the British admiralty had passed over a more aggressive fighting admiral named Rodney in favor of an semi-retired fossil named Graves. Graves caught the French fleet dispersed unloading troops and supplies but instead of attacking he waited for three hours while the enemy formed in line. He then raised confusing signals – flags for “Attack” and “Maintain Position” being raised simultaneously/ The inability of the British navy to rescue Cornwallis sealed his fate and eventual surrender. If the British had won this battle scholars agree the French were tired of propping up the bankrupt American rebels who could barely muster a few thousand volunteers.

1867- After the Civil War the US experienced a beef shortage. This was answered by herding Texas longhorn cattle up to where they could be put on trains to Chicago and eastern meat markets. This day the first herd of Longhorns made it up the Chisholm Trail to the train depot of Abilene Kansas. A rancher who bought a thousand head of cattle at $4 a head could sell them up north for $40 a head. One cattle drive could net up to $100,000, well worth fighting Indians, rustlers and floods. This created cattlebarons and a new kind of hero in the publics mind, the Cowboy.

1882- The first Labor Day parade occurred when 10,000 union workers marched in Union Square New York.

1885 - 1st gasoline pump is delivered to a gasoline dealer (Ft Wayne, Ind)

1917- The U.S. Government made nationwide police raids to close down the offices of the IWW (The International Workers of the World- or The Wobblies). They were a folk-song-singing radical labor union who came out against U.S. participation in World War One, ."The Master Class has always declared the wars, the Working Class must fight the battles"- Eugene Debs. Their apologists point out that while the Great War cost 166,000 U.S. casualties it made 200 new millionaires and if you had stock in petrochemicals like Dupont you made 400% profit.

1929- Wall Street stocks soared to unprecedented heights throughout 1929. Starting today they began to taper off and slide. Economist Roger Babson, the Sage of Wellesley , warned of an impending Stock Market crash but people laughed him off. They called his warnings "Babson-Mindedness". The market would continue to move downwards for the next several weeks climaxing Black Tuesday, the great crash of October 29th and the Depression.

1932- Paul Bern, the studio executive husband of sexy starlet Jean Harlow, was found lying naked on his bathroom floor with a bullet in his head. He committed suicide and left a note apologizing to Harlow for not being able to satisfy her. Harlow called the studio and her agent before calling the police. All jumped to hush up the scandal. Jean Harlow loved to flirt with men in front of her husband. Once at a USC football game she saw a hunky fullback and said to Bern:”Daddy, please buy me that!”

1923-FATTY ARBUCKLE- Ex-plumber turned comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle signed a $3 million dollar deal with Paramount Pictures. He celebrated by staging a wild three day party in the penthouse of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. During the wild goings on he pulled young starlet Virginia Rappe into a bedroom. Soon screams were heard. Arbuckle came out and said "Get her dressed. She makes too much noise". Friends found Rappe in agony with her clothes shredded. She died of toxemia from a ruptured bladder saying "Fatty Arbuckle did this to me! Make sure he doesn't get away with it." Arbuckle was tried twice for rape and first degree murder, but was acquitted after both were hung juries. To this day film historians argue if Arbuckle was framed. In the trial it came out that Rappe had had a botched abortion and was suffering from internal bleeding before the party.
But Fatty Arbuckles career was destroyed. Women tore down the screen whenever his face appeared. In Wyoming cowboys shot their sixshooters at the screen. At the suggestion of Buster Keaton he made a living writing gags under the pseudonym William or Will B, Good. Years later Santa Monica pulled him over for drunk driving. He flung a champagne bottle out of the car and laughed "There goes the evidence again!"

1935- At a giant Nazis Party rally in Nuremberg Adolph Hitler told the world “We want Peace. Germany has no interest in harming her European neighbors .” uh-huh..

1935- Tumbling Tumbleweeds premiered, the film that made a star out of Gene Autrey, the Singing Cowboy.

1943- Young British cartoonist Ronald Searle is captured by the Japanese in Burma. He spent his time as a P.O.W. working on the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai and making sketches of the nightmarish conditions of his fellow prisoners.

1957- Jacques Kerouac’s ode to the beat life ON THE ROAD, first published. Kerouac wrote it in a white heat using one large roll of white paper stuffed into his typewriter instead of individual sheets. When the editor got the novel it had no paragraph breaks of chapter breaks. Another young writer of the time, Truman Capote, was unimpressed. “That’s not writing, it’s typing.”

1958 –The novel DR ZHIVAGO by Boris Pasternak published in US. It was banned in Russia until the collapse of Communism.

1964- Buffalo NY cook Angela Bellissima took some chicken wings, threw them into a deep fryer with spices and invented Buffalo Wings.

1965- CBS television network headquarters are moved into a sleek building on 6th ave. in Manhattan. Because of it's black granite and smoke tinted window's it's nicknamed "Black Rock". NBC's headquarters in Rockefeller Center are called "30 Rock". ABC's, owing to their status as the third network, calls their headquarters "Little Rock".

1972- Palestinian Black September terrorists attack Munich's Olympic Village during the Summer Games. They kill 11 Israeli athletes of their national team.

1975 –Manson Family cult member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford. She was released from jail in 2009.

1980 - World's longest auto tunnel, St Gothard in Swiss Alps, opened.

1989- President George Bush Ist, does a major speech highlighting his war on drugs. He brandishes a bag of crack-cocaine he declares was purchased across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park. Later the truth came out that no crack cocaine is sold in Lafayette Park, the DEA agents had to talk a crack dealer into coming to the park. They even had to give him directions because he never visited the White House area before.

1994-Patrick McDonnell started drawing the comic strip MUTTS.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Cogito Ergo Sum

Answer: It’s Descartes- I think, therefore I am. Meaning, Descartes doubted God,, other people, everything he experienced and everything he knew. All he knew he was thinking, therefore he at least had to exist.

Quiz: Cogito Ergo Sum.

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who said: “ an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, set in a question..” and what was he/she referring to?
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History for 9/4/2009
Birthdays: Marcus Whitman the missionary who led US settlement of Oregon, Howard Morris, Darius Mihlaud, Anton Bruckner, Chateaubriand, Craig Claiborne, Dick York, Richard Wright, Nigel Bruce, Mary Renault, Tom Watson, Mitzi Gaynor, Damon Wayans, Paul Harvey, Beyonce' Knowles

218BC- Hannibal’s army with elephants reached the summit of the Alps.

1781- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOS ANGELES. Royal Governor of New Spain Gaspar de Portola and Franciscan monk Fra Junipero Serra with twelve soldiers, some free black families and Indians, about 44 in all, dedicated a new town, one days ride north of San Pedro. The 63 year old Serra had been stung by a scorpion but ignored it, so he hobbled around dragging his swollen leg. Fra Serra named the town after St. Francis of Assisi's first church in Italy- St. Mary of the Angels, so El Pueblo Nuestra Senora Santa Maria Reina de Los Angeles de Porcuincula. Like awesome, dude!

1781- Benedict Arnold, the American Colonial general turned traitor, led a force of British redcoats to burn his own home town of New London, Connecticut. Who says you can never go home?

1821- Russian Czar Nicolas I issued an Imperial Ukase- edict restating Russia's claim to all of the North American Pacific coastline from Alaska to Northern California. The United States rejected this claim and threatened war, which is interesting considering they didn't own any of it at the time. They had plans.

1833 –The New York Sun hired young boys to sell their papers on street corners. The first newsboy was ten year old Barney Flaugherty. Now go peddle your papers, kid.

1839- The Opium Wars began between Britain and China. U.S. Ambassador John Quincy Adams called it "the KowTow Wars" because he felt the real issue was the British Consul refused to lie prostrate on his face before the Chinese Emperor as was the local custom. The Chinese had never smoked Opium until it was introduced by Britain from Pakistan.

1877-Crazy Horse, the "Napoleon of the Plains" was murdered. He had surrendered his weapons on a promise of fair treatment , then was suddenly arrested and bayoneted in the back while resisting attempts to push him into a jail cell. His dying words to his tribe were "Tell the people it is no use to depend on me anymore." Indians enjoy a legend today that Crazy Horse's secret burial place is on the top of Mt. Rushmore.

1884-Thomas Edison proves he could replace gas streetlights with electricity by illuminating one square New York City block (around Pearl st.) with his new dynamo. J.P. Morgan's bank on the corner of Wall and Broad streets is the first private business to be lit solely by electricity.

1888-George Eastman patents the roll film camera. The word "Kodak" is supposedly the sound the shutter made. Another story on the origin of the word was that George wanted a word pronounced the same in all known dialects. So after some research (Rochester lore has it that he did all of this himself) he concluded that only k and x qualified as sounds uttered the same way in all languages. Thus Eastman Kodak. Years later the Rochester based Haloid company, which had for years manufactured photographic paper for Kodak, invented a dry copying process and renamed their company Xerox, following the same convention.

1893- Writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter sent a letter to a sick child: " I don't know what to write you so I shall tell you the story of four little rabbits. Their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter." The Peter Cottontail stories born.


1904 – The Dali Lama signed the first treaty allowing British commerce in Tibet. Tibet had been a closed society forbidding any contact with the outside world.

1914-The Miracle of the Marne- In World War One the main German advance smashed down into France and after 5 weeks were approaching Paris. But Von Kluck's grey clad soldiers were stopped at the river Marne. It was the first battle where telephones played an important role and at one point General Gallieni rushed French reserves up to the front in Parisian taxicabs. The commander of the defense of Paris was Albert Dreyfus, the Jewish officer of the famous scandal of the 1890's now fully exonerated.

1934- Young filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl was contracted by the German Propaganda Ministry to film the 1934 Nazis Party Congress to be held in Nuremburg. While they were expecting a routine documentary Reifenstahl instead created the film The Triumph of the Will, who’s darkly hypnotic images would make film history.

1940- The Columbia Broadcast Service or CBS network started up their first television station.

1949- THE PEEKSKILL RIOTS. Singer Paul Robeson was a renaissance man who embraced controversy. An athlete, opera singer and actor he was also a passionate Black Civil Rights champion who expressed open admiration for the Soviet Union and Maoist China. This did not win him any friends in the segregated, paranoid America of the post war era. This day when Robeson and fellow activist folksinger Pete Seeger gave a concert in Peekskill New York their cars were pelted with stones by screaming white rioters, all with the blessing of the local police. Robeson’s person was shielded by a bodyguard of union men. Fifty years later the town of Peekskill officially apologized to Paul Robeson Jr. Pete Seeger said he saved two of the stones and put them into his chimney.

1957-Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel, named for Henry Ford's son. Touted as "the dream car of the decade". Ford spent more to promote it than any other car in history. Only 200,000 were sold and after complaints like the steering and brakes failing and dashboards unexpectedly bursting into flame the car was discontinued. Ford lost $250 million. Edsel became the synonym for corporate failure.

1957- Defying direct orders from the Federal Government Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent any black students from attending classes at Little Rock High School. President Eisenhower took over direct control of the Guard and sent in the bayonet wielding 101st Airborne to ensure his orders were followed.

1972- American swimmer Mark Spitz won his 7th gold medal in Olympic competition in Munich. He also spawned a cottage industry selling the poster of him wearing his medals, tiny Speedos and that’s about it. This image and the swimsuit poster of Farrah Fawcett, were two of the more famous images of the 1970’s.

The Gillette Company offered Spitz a million dollars to shave his mustache in a commercial. Spitz said no. Spitz held the record until Michael Phelps came along in 2008.

1976- College party boy George W. Bush was busted for drunk-driving close to his family home in Kennebunkport, Maine. He later applied for a brand new Texas State driver’s license, which came with a clean record with no report of the arrest. As President delivering the commencement at Harvard in 2002 he joked:"In the motorcade, seeing all those police cars behind me with their lights flashing… kinda brings me back to my college days…”


1985- Australian press baron Rupert Murdoch became a U.S. citizen so he could build the Fox television and movie networks. US regulations forbade foreign ownership of broadcasting stations so Rupert didn’t fuss about what country he was a citizen of.

1993- Herb Villechaise, the little person who began the show Fantasy Island with the announcement: ”Da PLANE! Da PLANE!’ committed suicide with a shotgun.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who said: “ an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, set in a question..” and what was he/she referring to?

Answer: Winston Churchill, in a radio address in October 1939, after Soviet Russia joined Hitler’s Germany in crushing Poland. “ I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, set inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."

Quiz: Who said: “ an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, set in a question..” and what was he/she referring to?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What does it mean to call someone a “ real live wire..?”
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History for 9/3/2009
Birthdays: Alan Ladd, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, Irene Papas, Memphis Slim, Eddie Brat Stanky, Mort Walker creator of Beetle Bailey, Bill Flemming, Mitzi Gaynor, Richard Tyler, Eileen Brennan, Valerie Perrine, Charlie Sheen is 43, Phil Stern- former WWII Darby’s Ranger and personal photographer for Louis B. Mayer, is 90!

401BC- THE MARCH OF TEN THOUSAND- Cyrus the Younger had begun a civil war to overthrow his brother the Persian Great King Artaxerxes The Mindful. In Prince Cyrus’ army was ten thousand Greek mercenaries led by several generals including Xenophon, a writer who was once a student of Socrates. Today at a Babylonian town called Cunaxa, Cyrus’s force defeated the Persian Royal Army, but Cyrus was killed. Without an employer and a thousand miles from home in a hostile country. These ten thousand Greeks were really screwed. But they got themselves together and in an epic march they fought their way through hostile armies from the Euphrates to the Greek colonies on the Black Sea. After 5 months their cry "Thalassa! " The Sea! meant they were at last safe and could get a ship home. They dedicated a monument which was discovered by archaeologists near Trapizond Turkey in 1997. Xenophon wrote a book about this adventure called Anabasis. He wrote a book about horsemanship- Dressage, which is still used today.

1189- King Richard Ist the LionHearted crowned at Westminister. He declared his desire to fulfill his father Henry II’s vow to go on Crusade. Richard spoke French and only visited England twice more in his ten years as king. The Anglo-Saxon tongue would not become the official language of England until the 14th century. We don't know Richard's full opinion of London but he allegedly once told his minister William Longchamps:" I'd sell the whole place if they'd let me.." The people celebrate their new king by killing all the Jews they can find, including a mass burning in York. That didn’t stop good King Richard from keeping a Jewish man as his personal doctor.

1260- Battle of Ayn Jalut- Hulugau & the Mongol horde are turned back from Egypt by the Mamaluke army of Sultan Baibars. The Mongols had been in the saddle since China. They had already ravaged Baghdad, Moscow and the Holyland. The Mamelukes were originally an elite guard of slaves handpicked as children to be brought up as fanatical fighting machines. They eventually seized power in Egypt and ran things until Napoleon's French invasion in 1798. When emissaries from the Caliph of Baghdad asked the Mameluke Sultan who was his family and by what right did he rule, the Sultan shook his scimitar in their faces and declared "This is by what right I rule!' Throwing some gold coins on the floor and watching the slaves and eunuchs scamper for them he said "And That is my family!!'

1592- Retired London actor Richard Green wrote a letter to his fellow actors complaining of a newcomer becoming popular in their midst "A new upstart crow filled with Bombast" - Master William Shakespeare.

1651-Battle of Worcester. Puritan Oliver Cromwell destroyed in battle the resurgent Royalists. Young King Charles II hid in an oak tree, forever called the Royal Oak. He then slipped out of the country in disguise as a chimney sweep. This is why a fair number of English pubs along the track bear the curious name "The Black Boy".

1657-Battle of Dunbar- Cromwell whups the Irish.

1658- Oliver Cromwell doesn't whup Death. As you can see Cromwell the Lord Protector liked things on lucky days. Even though he was a religious Puritan he believed in astrology and would send money to German astronomer Johannes Kepler to cast his horoscope. Kepler was the father of modern astronomy but it was horoscopes that paid the bills.

1777- In a small skirmish with British redcoats near Cooch Maryland the American rebels raise their new Stars & Stripes banner for the first time in battle. They are quickly defeated.

1833- The New York Sun began publication, the first American mass circulation newspaper.

1838- Writer Frederick Douglas escaped slavery by boarding a northern bound train disguised as a sailor. Later when he was making a living as a writer he returned to his former master enough money to compensate his loss. Southerners doubted anyone as intelligent and well read as Douglas could have really ever been a slave, but Douglas liked to remind them he "stole himself out of slavery."

1870- Napoleon III surrenders himself to Bismarck and the Kaiser after losing the Battle of Sedan. Louis Napoleon was suffering so from kidney stones that he was wearing rouge and lipstick to give color to his grey face.

1886- Geronimo gives up to the U.S. Army for the fourth and last time. He and his Chiracaua Apaches were promised no retribution would befall them. After they were disarmed they were packed up into railroad cars and shipped to prison in Ft. Myers, Florida to die in the malaria infested swamps. Geronimo in his time had as many Apache enemies as cavalry. The White Mountain Apaches helped guide the US cavalry in their pursuit. After Geronimo's Chiracaua's were exiled the White Mountain Apache were rewarded by also being transported to the Florida everglades. Geronimo survived all and after his release he retired to Santa Fe, where he died in 1910.

1895 - 1st pro football game played, Latrobe beats Jeanette 12-0 (Penn)

1912- Los Angeles attraction Frazier's Million Dollar Pier destroyed by fire.

1930- The first issue of the Hollywood Reporter.

1937- Orson Welles Mercury Theater of the air produced its first play on nationwide radio- an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Mierables.

1939- Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany over the invasion of Poland, World War Two begins.

1939- British Prime Minister Chamberlain's war announcement interrupts a Disney Cartoon "Mickey's Gala Premiere" showing on the nascent BBC television service. Television shuts down for the duration.

1940 -Adolph Hitler sets the invasion of England for Sept 21st. Operation-Sea Lion after Goering’s Luftwaffe would destroy the Royal Air Force, which they never did.

1941-1st use of Zyclon-B gas in Auschwitz, on Russian prisoners of war.

1944- During the World War Two U.S. pilots shot down by the Japanese were rescued by submarines. The submariners called the pilots Zoomies. This day off the coast of Ichi Jima, the submarine USS Tampico plucked out of the ocean a Zoomie who would one day be President of the United States. Second Lieutenant George Bush Sr.

1946- After the War, the BBC television service resumes and an announcer says:" Well now, where were we?" They continue the Mickey cartoon from where it was interrupted in 1939. World War Two probably held back for a decade the development of television.

1950- Mort Walker's "Beetle Bailey" comic strip first appeared.

1960- The Hanna-Barbera show 'Lippy the Lion and Hardy-Harr-Harr" premiered.

1971- The offices of the psychiatrist of Defense Department attorney Daniel Ellsberg were burglarized by agents of the Nixon White House, to look for incriminating dirt on Ellsberg. They hoped to stop him from publishing the Pentagon Papers by resorting to blackmail. Chief White House counsel John Dean noted that agent G. Gordon Liddy was such a loose cannon that as he stood watch outside the offices he invited a friend to take a photo of him! A true Kodak moment!

2003- Two crooks in Detroit hijacked a Krispy Kreme truck and tried to hold three thousand donuts hostage.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean to call someone a “ real live wire..?”

Answer: There was a time when setting up an electrical appliance, a person had to splice and attach wires. You had to know which wire was the ground, and which one was the hot or live wire. Mishandling it could give you an electric shock. So a live wire was a term meaning someone who’s personality was dynamic or electric.