I will see UP this weekend. One thing I noticed during all the years of enjoying PIXAR films is the personal growth of all the artists there. I recall back in the early 90s' when all these young computer guys flocked up to the Bay Area, to work long hours and live on pizza and Diet Coke.

Their first big film TOY STORY, was about a bunch of young single guys hanging out, (plus Bo Peep and Mrs. Potatohead, of course.)

TOY STORY II was a young guy torn between girlfriend and family.

egads! Responsibility! courtesy Disney/Pixar

MONSTERS INC. was about a young daddy and a toddler.

FINDING NEMO was about a young daddy and a school age son

THE INCREDIBLES was about a Dad dealing with Middle Age disillusionment and alienation from their teenage kids.

Now UP is about a retired old man and a kid.

I'm wondering when I'm going to see the PIXAR dad as a three time divorcee' with a combover, riding a Harley, growling about alimony and shacking up with a High School Senior.



Bravo, Gang!
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Quiz: Are airplane black boxes, actually black?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Where is the oldest town in the continental USA?
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History for 6/4/2009
Birthdays: King George III, Alvah Bessie, Rosalind Russell, Gene Barry, Dennis Weaver, Robert Merrill, Bruce Dern, Andrea Jaeger, Dr Ruth Westheimer, Freddy Fender, Noah Wylie, Rachael Griffiths, Angela Jolie is 34

Happy Birthday to Youuuu

Happy Saint John the Baptist Day.

1070- THE BIRTHDAY OF ROCQUEFORT CHEESE. Legend has it on this day in the town of Roquefort a shepherd found in a cave some cheese he had been saving but had forgotten about. He noticed it was covered with mold but he was hungry and ate it anyway, and lo and behold, it tasted much better than before...

1259- Kubilai Khan, the grandson of the Genghis Khan, was elected council the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Kubilai then shattered Mongol tradition by dividing the huge Empire into three pieces. His uncles Kaidu and Batu would rule the Mongol homeland and Western section (the Golden Horde) respectively while Kubilai preferred to rule China as it's emperor. In doing this he was acknowledging the reality that the master plan of Genghis for world conquest was unfeasible. The empire which extended from Korea to Budapest to Baghdad was unmanageable and would break up anyway. Kubilai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China would last. He was the Chinese Emperor who met Marco Polo.

1666- Moliere’s play "Le Misanthrope" premiered.

1717- FREEMASONS- The Grand Lodge of England was inaugurated in London on St John the Baptist Day. This is considered by some the birth of Freemasonry, but many alleged histories claim the practices of the Brotherhood of the Craft go back to ancient Egypt and was brought to England by the Knights Templar in the 1300’s. There is some validity to the reports of independent Lodges already existing in the 1630’s in England and earlier in Scotland. The Freemason movement spread throughout Europe and became an alternative to religion for many intellectuals in the 1700’s. Mozart, Haydn, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Casanova, Voltaire and many more were members.

1896-Henry Ford tests out his automobile with headlights in a nighttime drive around Detroit.

1916-THE HERO PIGEON OF VERDUN- During the horrific battle of Verdun the Germans had surrounded the French strongpoint of Fort Vaux. The fighting in the underground 15 foot high concrete tunnels of the fort was ghastly, men killed each other with hand grenades and flamethrowers at close quarters while groping through the blackness and gagging at the stench of rotting corpses. The French commander Captain Reynal, his telephone communications cut, sent his last carrier pigeon to get help. The pigeon, despite being badly gassed and perching on the roof of the fort for a little while, got through to the high command. Delivering his message like Phiddipides of Marathon he then fell over dead. Help never got through, and Captain Reynal had to surrender, but the dead pigeon was awarded the medal of the Legion d'Honneur. Go figure.

1916 - Mildred J Hill, one of the two Hill sisters who composed the song Happy Birthday To You, died at 56.

1919- The Women's Suffrage Act passes the Senate by one vote. A chorus of women in the visitor's gallery break into :"Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow". The deciding vote was cast by a Utah senator who wanted to please his mother.

1940- The last day of the Miracle of Dunkirk. British sea transports and small pleasure craft cross the English Channel and withdraw most of the British Army trapped against the sea. 280,000 British men and 100,000 allies were saved, 40,000 men go into captivity.

1942- The BATTLE OF MIDWAY. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto committed the bulk of his carrier force to destroy the American Navy once and for all. Recent research of Japanese Imperial files reveal he considered this step a prelude to the invasion of the Hawaiian Islands, which he hoped would force America to negotiate peace. But the path of Yamamoto’s fleet was revealed by the breaking of the top Japanese radio codes and the American fleet laid an ambush for him. It was a battle of carrier-based planes where the opposing ships never see each other. The famous suicide attack of TBY-8, was an attack of U.S. torpedo planes on the Japanese carrier fleet without fighter cover. Of 51 planes, 47 were shot down by faster more agile Zeros. But while the zeros were on deck getting refueled and rearmed a cloud of screaming Dauntless divebombers dropped out of the sky and blew Yamamotos four best aircraft carriers to bits- The Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu and Kaga. One American carrier the Yorktown was sunk. The Japanese fleet would never mount an attack of this size again. Its defeat was seen by the U.S. Navy as the turning point of the Pacific War.

1947- The film "A Miracle on 34th St." opened. Starring Maureen O’Hara, Edmund Gwen and 8 year old Natalie Wood.

1951- The Supreme Court upholds the anti-Communist Smith Act. This act stated you could be fired from your job or jailed even on a suspicion that you were a communist, no proof required.

1951- Tony Curtis married Janet Leigh. Besides proving Tony wasn’t gay the result was to produce Jamie Leigh-Curtis.

1965- The Rolling Stones release the single "Satisfaction".

1967- The television show "The Monkees" win the Emmy award for Best Comedy.
go figure... The producers of the Pre-Fab Four raise enough money and clout to fund later projects like the hit movie Easy Rider. This same ceremony saw Bill Cosby become the first African-American to win an Emmy, this for his role in the series I-Spy.

1977- The Apple II went on sale. It became the Model T of the cyberworld, the first successful mass marketed personal computer.

1989-THE TIENAHMEN SQUARE MASSACRE. Chinese army troops loyal to Deng Zhao Peng crush the student democracy movement in the center of Bejing. The demonstrations started around a funeral for Hu Yao Bang, a party premier who was ousted for his liberal democratizing policy. The crowds gathered in strength and militancy, students joined by workers and soldiers. There was a hope China’s ruling regime would fall to a "people-power" type revolution that had overthrown Marco’s Philippines and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. But Premier Deng brought in soldiers from the rural provinces and brutally cracked down. No figures of total casualties exist but the figure ten thousand is thrown around as conservative. Incidentally this incident probably was the beginning of the world popularity of CNN news. Despite threats from commissars correspondent Mike Chinoy remained at his post and continued to broadcast when all other news teams had fled. Deng Zhao Ping’s name was a pun on the word for "little bottle" so people showed their resistance by smashing dozens of small bottles out on the street.

1990- The New York Daily News quietly discontinued its long running comic strip Ching Chow. Besides being ethnically offensive, the little one panel strip of a stereotype Chinese man with a long hair queue saying silly Confucian platitudes, also was the source of racetrack and numbers racket tips.

2003- Martha Stewart, the self-made millionaire leader of a home recipe empire, was indicted for insider trading.

2004- THE HOMEMADE TANK- In the small town of Granby Colorado, a muffler salesman named Jim Heemeyer got so annoyed at the town, that he welded iron plates on to a large bulldozer to create a kind of homemade tank. While policemen fruitlessly shot at his tank, he razed to the ground most of the public buildings before shooting himself. If you can’t fight City Hall, bulldoze it.
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Yesterday’s Question: Where is the oldest town in the continental USA?

Answer: St Augustine Florida was founded in 1515, more than a hundred years before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.

Quiz: Where is the oldest town in the continental USA?

Quiz- Who said- The Pellet with the Poison is in the Vessel with the Pestle?
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History for 6/3/2009
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Jefferson Davis, Josephine Baker, King George V, Henry Shrapnel, Tony Curtis is 84, Allen Ginsburg, Collen Dewhurst, Alain Renais, Curtis Mayfield, Paulette Goddard, Maurice Evans, Jack Oakey, Jan Peerce, Zoltan Korda, John Dykstra, Tom Arnold, Hale Irwin, Chuck Barris is 80

The First Friday in June is commemorated as DONUT DAY, when we reflect on the origins of the portable cake. It’s birth in 1847 is credited to a Maine sea captain Hanson Crockett Gregory. Out at sea, the old salt had his breakfast interrupted by a New England squall. So he stuck his cake onto the spoke of his ship’s wheel, while he steered out of danger, thereby creating the legendary hole.

1579- Sir Francis Drake, his ship the Golden Hind parked in Drake's Bay or Anchor Bay or wherever, claims California for England. He calls it Nova Albion. Early explorers thought North and South America was one big island. Magellan had found the way around the southern tip. Drake repeated Magellan's route around South America to attack Panama and the Peruvian treasure fleet. After which he sailed north trying to find the northern end of the island so he could sail around the top to get back into the Atlantic. By Mendocino California Drake realized that this was one big mother of an island and it would be wiser to turn around and go home another way. The Northwest Passage isn't discovered until Canadian ice breaker does it in 1958.

1778- MOTHER ENGLAND OFFERS A DEAL- After the French, Dutch and Spanish decide to intervene in the American Revolution, and pile on Britain, The British Government under Lord North offered the rebellious American colonies all of their grievances, taxation, seats in Parliament. Everything short of full independence. The Continental Congress says too late, you're dealing with a separate country now.

1779-HMM, WHAT TO DO WITH DANGEROUS PRISONERS..? British General Sir Henry Clinton had a problem. He had just captured Charleston South Carolina and accepted the surrender of the largest number of American rebels- 4000, as many as his own army. Now orders from London were to leave Lord Cornwallis with a force to subdue the South and return to New York. But what about the prisoners? Today Clinton published an edict that all rebels who take an oath of loyalty to the Crown will be released. His subordinate grumbled:”Sir Henry doesn’t understand that these rebels swallow an oath to their King then an oath to their Congress, with the same ease his Lordship swallows a plate of poached eggs!”

1846- General Stephan Kearny with his Army of the West forming in Texas received orders from Washington to invade Mexican Alta-California.

1851- The American clipper ship Flying Cloud began her maiden voyage from Sandy Hook New York. She was so fast she could sail from New York around South America to San Francisco in 89 days, making her the most celebrated Yankee merchant ship and with the British Cutty Sark the subject of numerous model boat kits.

1864- BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR- The Civil War battles between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant had settled into something resembling the trench warfare of World War One. This day General Grant, mistakenly believing Lee was abandoning his impregnable Petersburg defense lines, launched huge frontal attacks near Cold Harbor. Seven thousand men were cut down in 20 minutes. Before rising from their fortifications to the attack, Union men wrote their names on pieces of paper and pinned them to their shirts so their bodies could later be identified. One Massachusetts private wrote in his journal: "June 3rd. I was killed today." He went out and was indeed killed. By the third assault the Yankee army was near mutiny. A captain reacted to the order to attack: "I won't go back out there if Christ Almighty himself came down and ordered me to!"

In two months battle Grant had lost 20,000 men, more than Lee had in his entire army. The newspapers started to call him “the Butcher”. But Grant knew if he held on, he would defeat the Confederacy, if only by sheer weight of numbers. Still, for the rest of his life he regretted his attack at Cold Harbor.

1875- Harper's Weekly Newspaper reported the Kansas Pacific Railroad was bowing to editorial pressure from back east and would no longer allow it's passengers to shoot at buffalo from their moving trains. It had become quite a tourist attraction.

1888-The poem: "Casey at the Bat" by Edward Lawrence Taylor published in the San Francisco Examiner.

1923- Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini gave Italian women the right to vote.

1924- THE FIRST D.J.- Moses Baritz, working for the BBC affiliate in Manchester England, started a radio program where he spun classical records and chatted in-between song cuts, inventing the Disc Jockey format.

1924- Writer Franz Kafka died in Keirling Austria. He left instructions to Friends to burn all his unfinished manuscripts including the Trial, but fortunately his friends did not.

1929- Movie stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr married Joan Crawford.

1928- General Chang Zhao Lin was one of the last Chinese warlords to give in to the ascendant Kuomintang Nationalist front led by Chiang Kai Shek. Chang yielded his control of Peking to the Kuomintang and went into retirement . But soon after boarding a train to Manchuria he was killed by a bomb. It was blamed on Japanese agents, but no one is sure. The intrigue and internal chaos of the time inspired several films and novels like Shanghai Express, the Bitter Tea of General Yen and Lost Horizons.


1943- First Day of the ZOOT SUIT RIOTS- In Los Angeles Navy and Marine servicemen awaiting embarkation to the Pacific battlegrounds clashed with Hispanic gangs. Truckloads of off-duty servicemen return to town to enlarge the fight. The servicemen would choose who to beat up based on whether they were wearing a zoot-suit. They beat up two 13 year olds sitting in a theater watching a movie. Downtown L.A. becomes an urban war zone for several days…so, this is something new-?

1944- Nazi meteorologists in Norway predict a storm system over Europe to last all week. German High Command was sure an invasion of Europe was imminent but that Eisenhower would need at least 4 days of good weather to launch an attack. The original date for D-Day was supposed to be tomorrow June 4th but this night Eisenhower canceled the go-ahead until June 6th. The tides would never be this favorable again until September. Field Marshal Rommel, deciding there would be no invasion that week, goes home to Germany for conferences and his wife's birthday, June 6th.


1946- THE BIKINI went on sale. Parisian designer Jacques Castel and lingerie shop owner Louis Reard invented the two piece women’s bathing suit. Named the Bikini for the Atomic test in the Bikini, islands Castel said it would "hit the fashion world like an atomic bomb". The first model to wear it was a stripper-Micheline Bernardini, because the regular fashion models refused to parade around in 'Castel's flimsy straps'.

1946- A consumer study finds there are only 10,000 television sets in America.
A follow up study five years later finds the number at 12 million.

1948- The Hale telescope at the Mount Palomar Observatory in California dedicated. The 200 inch mirror had taken 11 years to polish and the observatory two decades to build. Called the “Giant Eye” it gave us out first looks at nebulae, black holes and doubled our depth perception of the size of the Universe.

1949 - Dragnet is 1st broadcast on radio ( KFI in Los Angeles ). Creator Jack Webb wanted to capture the dry, non-theatrical delivery he heard real cops use. He ordered his actors to “stop acting, just read the lines”. Webb wrote the scripts from real LAPD cases and starred in them as well. At the end of a days’ recording, the crew adjourned to Webb’s room where he mixed martinis.

1965- Edward White becomes the first American to walk in space in Gemini VII. Cosmonaut Sergei Leonov walked in space several years earlier.

1967 - Aretha Franklin's "Respect" reaches #1. Sockittome, sockittome, sockittome.

1968- Artist Andy Warhol was shot in the gut three times by Valerie Solanas, author of the "SCUM Manifesto". Warhol barely survived. Solanas was institutionalized.

1971- The First artificial gene created.

1976 –Scaramouche, scaramouche, can you do the Fan-dango? Queen's single "Bohemian Rhapsody" goes gold.

1980- President Jimmy Carter announced the United States would boycott the 1980 summer Olympic Games in Moscow because of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians boycotted the LA Olympics in 1984 and left Afghanistan in 1989. We've been stuck there since 2001.

1986- Attorney Roy Cohn was disbarred by a federal appellate court. It was a symbolic act because Cohn Was dying of HIV/AIDS. In his career Cohn had prosecuted the Rosenbergs, helped Sen Joe McCarthy in his anti-Communist witchhunts and defended Mafia dons like John Gotti. Despite being gay himself, one of Cohn’s last acts was to lobby New York State legislators from his deathbed to defeat a Gay Rights Bill.
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Yesterday’s Quiz- Who said- The Pellet with the Poison is in the Vessel with the Pestle?

Answer: Danny Kaye in his comedy The Court Jester (1955). But the Flagon with the Dragon has the Brew that is True..!

Quiz- Who said- The Pellet with the Poison is in the Vessel with the Pestle?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was the original colonial name for Alabama?
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History for 6/2/2009
Birthdays: John Randolph, The Marquis DeSade, Martha Custis Washington, Thomas Hardy, Hedda Hopper, Sir Edward Elgar, Johnny Weismuller, Charlie Watts, Disney animation story artist Dick Heumer, Lotte Reinniger Marvin Hamlisch, Barry Levinson, Jon Peters, Dana Carvey, Garo Yepremian, Jerry Mathers the Beaver of the old TV show Leave it to Beaver is 65, Dayvid Haysbert, Lasse Halstrom is 63

303AD-Martyrdom of St. Elmo. This guy has to win the endurance record. The Emperor Diocletian had him starved, beaten with clubs, flogged with lead balled whips, rolled in tar and set on fire, roasted again in an iron chair, and he finally died after having his intestines wound out around a windlass. He is the patron saint of seafarers. When the blue electrical phenomenon appeared on ship's masts during a storm, it is called "St. Elmo's Fire".

1453-At Breslau, Papal Legate John of Capistrano presided over the torture of six Jews. After they confessed to Jewish practices, he had them burned at the stake. After John died the Protestants dug up his bones and threw them to their dogs. John was canonized San Juan Capistrano in 1690. A century later Franciscan monk Fra Junipero Serra named the picturesque little mission in California after him. And the swallows do migrate there.

1763- At the British Fort Michilimackinac near Lake Superior some Sauk and Chippewa Indians were playing lacrosse. While the British sentries were engrossed in the ball game Indian women gathered near the forts’ open gates. When one player hurled the ball up over the wall as a signal the women tossed concealed knives and tomahawks to the players who rushed the fort and massacred its garrison.

1886- President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony. She was the daughter of his former law partner and Cleveland became her legal guardian after his death. Despite her being half his age and his earlier reputation for fathering cxhildren out of wedlock they were much in love and she especially charmed the American public. At age 21 she became the youngest woman to be First Lady. Songs were written for her and their first baby was honored with a candy bar- the Baby Ruth.

1896- Gugielmo Marconi took out a patent on wireless broadcasting - radio.
At the time his device could be heard from almost 12 miles away !

1920- Eugene O’Neill won a Pulitzer Prize for his first play Beyond the Horizon.

1920- THE WAR ON TERRORISM- Anarchists set off several bombs in the US, including at the home of the U.S. Attorney General. This year they also set off a bomb in a wagonload of scrap metal on Wall Street and tried to assassinate banker J.P. Morgan. This sparked a large government crackdown called The Palmer Raids. Many innocent immigrants, suffragettes and union organizers were jailed or deported as criminals. The progressive reaction to the crackdown was the birth of the American Civil Liberties Union. One junior member of Palmers investigator staff was J Edgar Hoover.

1924- Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all American Indians, whether they wanted it or not.

1928 - Velveeta Cheese invented.

1928- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek recaptured the city of Peking (Beijing) from warlord Chiang Zhou Lin, called the Old Marshal.

1932- The Screen Publicists Guild formed

1940-Will Eisner's "The Spirit" comic first appears.

1941- Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's disease at age 38.

1952 - Maurice Olley of General Motors began designing the Corvette.

1952- Queen Elisabeth II of England crowned. The date was set by meteorologists who predicted it would be one of the few days that year that would have bright sunshine. And-you guessed it... it rained all day. It was also the first Royal Coronation to be seen on television.

1958- An L.A. referendum allowed the county to buy Chavez Ravine from its inhabitants to build Dodger Baseball Stadium.

1961- Humorist writer George F. Kaufman died. He wanted on his headstone:
"Over My Dead Body!"

1973- London animator Richard Williams closed down his Soho studio for a month so his staff could be lectured by Disney legend Art Babbitt. The notes from these lectures have been xeroxed and rexeroxed and have become the most famous unpublished animation manual of all time.

1996- Roy Coombs, who took over the job as host of the TV game show Family Feud after Richard Dawson, hanged himself with his bed sheets at Glendale Adventist Hospital.

1999- Pope John Paul II blessed the new Vatican Parking garage!

2003- Thousands of unemployed Iraqi soldiers demonstrated in front of American Occupation Headquarters in Baghdad demanding to be paid. One secret to the American victory in Iraq was Saddam’s army heeded an appeal from the invaders not to resist and they would be taken care of. After the victory the occupation authority announced the Iraqi Army would be disbanded and all career soldiers lost their pensions and benefits. It is the first time a defeated army demanded wages from their opponent.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What was the original colonial name for Alabama?

Answer: West Florida. While Spain was preoccupied with Napoleon’s French invasion, in 1808 American troops occupied the territory. The acquisition was settled in 1814 with the capture of Mobile. Alabama is an old Choctaw Indian word meaning " clearing weeds, or gathering herbs".

FROM ANIMATION MAGAZINE: Charles Rivkin, CEO of the animation studio Wildbrain, has been tapped by President Obama to be the United States’ ambassador to France.

The move has prompted Rivkin to step down from his position at the studio, best known for creating the hit Nick series Yo Gabba Gabba! Rivkin served as Obama’s campaign finance co-chairman for Southern California during last fall’s election.


I didn't quite believe this until I read it twice. Not that Mr Rivkin is probably more than worthy and up to the task. It's just rare to see such honors bestowed upon animation people. Bravo et Bon Chance Monsieur Rivkin!

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Quiz: What was the original colonial name for Alabama?

Yesterday’s Quiz: What were LaSalle, DeSoto, Nash, Maxwell and Duesenberg?
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History for 6/1/2009
Welcome to June, from Iunius, the month of Juno, queen of the Roman gods.

Birthdays: Brigham Young, Marilyn Monroe would be 83!, Pat Boone, Mikhail Glinka, Red Grooms, Karl Von Clausewitz, Andy Griffith, Morgan Freeman is 72, Nelson Riddle, Lisa Hartman, Cleavon Little, Frederica Von Stade, Powers Booth, Rene Aubergjenois, Lisa Hartman, Brian Cox is 63, Heidi Klum is 36, Josef Pujol *

*Pujol was famous throughout late Victorian Europe as Le Petomane- The Fartiste- who could fart musical melodies and snuff candles at great distances. He performed an entire concert for crowned heads, and would finish by farting La Marseillaise.

193 AD- Roman General Septimius Severus defeated his rival for the Empire Pescennius Niger “Black Pescennius”, massacred his family, and carried his head around on a spear. Septimius used the corpse of another rival as a doormat to his tent. Pretty severe guy.

1660- Boston Puritans had passed a law that preaching any religion other than that accepted by the Massachusetts Bay Puritan group was heresy and forbidden. When Quaker Mary Dyer refused to cease, leave or recant her views she was hanged this day. Her death and that of another Quaker Anne Hutchinson shocked the colonies so that soon after the King Charles II of England issued an order forbidding hanging for heretical preaching.

1813- In battle with a British warship, HMS Leopard, dying Captain Lawrence, of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, cried:" Don't Give Up the Ship!" They don't, but he died anyway.

1876- Eighteen-year old Milton Hershey opened his first candy store. Hershey's goes on to become the largest candy maker in the U.S. The Hershey’s chocolate kiss is so named because the machine that creates the candy looks like it is kissing the conveyor belt.

1880 - 1st pay telephone installed; this one in a bank.

1879-After falling from the French throne in 1870 the Emperor Louis Napoleon III and his family lived in England. Young Louis Napoleon IV, only son of Napoleon III and Eugenie, went with the British Army to South Africa to fight Zulus. While waving his granduncle's sword around on patrol, he falls off his horse during a skirmish and is speared to death by 17 Zulu’s. The direct Bonaparte family line disappears .

1909- The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, formed. W.E.B. Dubois edited their newsletter The Crisis.

1931- Swiss artist Albert Hurter joined the Disney staff, giving the look of cartoons like Snow White a more Germanic storybook look.

1933 - Charlie Chaplin wed actress Paulette Goddard

1939- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUPERMAN- Joe Seigel and Jerry Shuster, two aspiring cartoonists in High School create a character called “Superman”. Jewish kids, they had read about the Nazis racial concept of the Aryan Superman. They wanted to show a Superman could be on the American side. On this day they sell all the rights to their characters to Detective Comics (D.C.) for $130. When the first megabudget Superman movie was being made in the 1976, the National Cartoonist's Society pointed out that Seigel and Schuster were now poverty stricken. They never shared a nickel of the multi-millions their creation had generated. Seigel was blind and Schuster delivered sandwiches from a local deli. The publicity forced Warner Bros and DC Comics to award them and their families pensions for life.

1942- British actor Leslie Howard, who played Ashley in" Gone with the Wind " and Henry Higgins in the first film of "Pygmalion", was shot down and killed by the Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay. He was such an effective emissary for English interests that when Nazi agents in Mardrid reported he was en route home in a commercial Dc-3, Eight JU-88 fighters were dispatched to kill him.

1961 FM multiplex stereo broadcasting 1st heard

1966 George Harrison is impressed by Ravi Shankar's concert in London.

1967–Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the US and it immediately goes gold.

1968 - Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" hits #1

1979- Gannett News Services began USA Today, called by some critic's- 'MacPaper'.

1980- Ted Turner started CNN news channel. Hard to believe now, but before Larry King, Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck, it delivered only hard news, every twenty minutes, 24 hours a day.

2001- In Katmandu, Nepal Crown Prince Dipendra quarreled so much with his mother and father, the King Birenda and Queen Aiswarya, about his upcoming marriage that he came to dinner and shot them to death. He also killed four other members of the royal family and then himself. This was the largest massacre of a royal family since Czar Nicholas II’s family was executed in 1918. Next day, a Nepalese government spokesman labeled the incident an “accident”. Dipendra was in a coma for several days before dying and in those few days a government council declared him king anyway. In 2008 the Nepalese Monarchy was officially deposed.

2009- General Motors, once the world's largest car company, declared bankruptcy.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What were LaSalle, DeSoto, Nash, Maxwell and Duesenberg?

Answer: In honor of General Motors, they were also failed American car companies.

Quiz: What were LaSalle, DeSoto, Nash, Maxwell and Duesenberg?

Answer to Yesterday’s Quiz Below: For all you WWII experts: if you took a Higgins Boat, where did it drop you off?
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History for 5/31/2009
Birthdays: King Manuel Ist of Portugal –1495, Walt Whitman, Fred Allen, Clint Eastwood, Don Ameche, Prince Ranier, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Ranier Fassbinder, Brooke Shields, Joe Namath, Richie Valens, Tom Berenger, Denholm Elliot, Peter Yarrow, Lea Thompson, John Bonzo Bonham of Led Zepplin, Colin Ferrell

1578- A farmer plowing a vineyard near Rome causes the ground to collapse beneath him revealing the long buried Ancient Roman CATACOMBS. Antonio Bosio studied them and writes in 1632 "Underground Rome".

1793- LA TERREUR- THE REIGN OF TERROR BEGAN- French extreme leftists the Jacobins named for their meeting place, near the monastery of St.Jacob- Danton, Robespierre and Marat take over the French Government. They declare anybody who doesn't agree with them to be counterrevolutionary dead meat. Robsepierre said: “Virtue without Terror is Impotence, Terror without Virtue is Criminal.” Marat said: "If we cut off 10,000 heads today, it saves us having to cut off 100,000 tomorrow!"
For a year they guillotined 17,000 people, including Madame DuBarry, the scientist Lavoisier, poet Andre Chenier and even fellow revolutionaries Danton and Camille Desmoulins. They also drowned hundreds in barges. Napoleon, Josephine, Roget Du Lisle -who wrote Le Marseillaise, even American Thomas Paine barely escape the blade. 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.

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 English clowns are known as “Joey’.

1873- SCHLEIMANN FOUND TROY. German archaeologist Heinrich Schleimann unearthed the horde of gold known as Priam's Treasure in a mound near Hysarlik Turkey. This proved this site was the Troy of Homer and 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 to resemble a Venetian Palazzo.

1884-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 gentle Victorian people curb their urge to sexual excesses. Hmm…should I mud wrestle Jessica Alba or have a bowl of corn flakes? Decisions, decisions.

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.

1901-THE BOER WAR ENDS. English troops entered Praetoria; Boer survivors signed the Treaty of Vereeniging. Tranvaal 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 swell story for his character Sherlock Holmes to solve. The Hound of the Baskervilles was the result.

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

1916-The BATTLE OF JUTLAND. German and British battleships boom away at each other in the only major naval 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 grappled 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.

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

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 record "Give Peace a Chance." It became the theme song of the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Because of this song and Lennon’s support of the Hippie protestors 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. The Republican who suggested the INS revoke Lennons visa was Sen. Strom Thurmond.

1979- The nation of Rhodesia became the Republic of Zimbabwe.

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 companies 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. Today Steve Jobs runs the reinvigorated Apple as well as PIXAR and is 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 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 Ytschak Rabin, the Israeli public voted for the right wing Likud today, making Benjamin “Bibi” Netnayahu Prime Minister, and setting back the peace process once again.

2000- The first Survivor show premiered, shepherding in a new deluge of TV Reality shows.

2003- A dove got into the Pentagon and flapped around the Air Force Secretary's office on the 4th floor. Can we say- symbolic?
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Yesterday’s Question:For all you WWII experts: if you took a Higgins Boat, where did it drop you off?

Answer: A Higgins boat was the name for the small landing craft that dropped it's front and dropped you off on beaches like Omaha and Anzio.