Quiz- What is the origin of the phrase- to start from scratch?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When thinking of the patriots of the American Revolution, we think of Washington, Lafayette, the Marquis de Galves….., who is that?

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History for 4/3/2009
Birthdays: King Henry IV of England (1361), Washington Irving, William Marcy " Boss" Tweed, Sally Rand the Fan Dancer, Ma Rainey, Iron Eyes Cody, Wayne Newton, Doris Day, Robert Sherwood, Virgil Grissom, Marsha Mason, Melissa Etheridge, Marlon Brando, Amanda Byrnes, David Hyde Pierce, Alec Baldwin is 51, Eddie Murphy is 47

In Ancient Greece the beginning of April was the Aphrodisia- the Festival of Aphrodite. Greeks would offer sacrifices to the Goddess of Love and some would visit the holy prostitutes in the great temple in Corinth. Gimme that Ole Time Religion…..

1312-The Vatican, under the influence of the French King Phillip the Fair, abolished the Holy Order of the Knights Templar. The order was rich in international finance and none of it taxable and because they were monks there were no relatives to sponge it off. They invented the personal check, so a Templar didn’t have to ride from castle to castle with those heavy bags of gold. Just write out a note (or have your scribe do it if you were illiterate) and affix your seal to it. I wonder if they had pretty sunsets printed on them...

1657- Oliver Cromwell formally refused the title King of England and preferred to remain the Lord Protector of the English Republic.

1721-THE FIRST BRITISH PRIME MINISTER-Before this time men who ran the government of England at the kings pleasure held a variety of titles: Lord High Admiral, Chancellor, Mayor of the Palace, etc.. As the complicated checks & balances of democratic government evolved more dependable positions were needed. In 1663 King Charles II formed a Privy Council that met in his private chambers or "cabinet". The king’s cousin the Earl of Shaftesbury invented the idea of a political opposition party that wasn’t treasonous, a loyal opposition.

When in 1720 The British Crown was offered to the German George Ist of Hanover, he was bewildered by how complicated English parliamentary democracy was! Couldn't I just work with one man who could get what I wanted done? So Minister of the Exchequer (treasury) Sir Robert Walpole (father of writer Hugh Walpole), who's party was in the majority in Parliament became First Minister, later Prime Minister .The reason the job evolved out of the Treasury is that minister could grease the rights palms to get things done.

1730 -EMPEROR MOYTOY OF AMERICA- An English conman, Sir Alexander Cummings, had ingratiated himself into the council of the huge Cherokee Nation, then occupying most of Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee. In a scam to make himself look like the spokesperson of all native Americans, Cummings convinced one Cherokee chief named Moytoy to travel to England and do ritual submission to King George II under the title Emperor Moytoy of the Americas! The Indians were confused but went along with what they thought was a gag. Cummings disappeared shortly after the truth came out, undoubtedly a much wealthier man.

1764- Aging Empress Maria Theresa of Austria raised her son Joseph II to be co-emperor. He was the Emperor in the movie Amadeus. This day he was crowned at Frankfurt. He later wrote his mother “ ..a lot of elegant people mouthing idiocies.”

1860-The Pony Express system starts. Relay riders from Saint Louis across the prairies and deserts all the way to Sacramento, California. For all it's romance it failed after just 1-1/2 years. Stagecoaches and telegraph wires soon covered the message business.

1861- Seven days before the Civil War would begin, as tensions between North and South built to the point of explosion at Fort Sumter South Carolina a Boston ship, the R. H. Shannon, with a cargo of ice bound for Savannah puts in a stop at Charleston Harbor.
She sails right in between the itchy fingered Yankee and Rebel cannons. The captain rarely read newspapers so he was completely unaware of the political situation. When he heard a warning shot, he ran up the Stars and Stripes. Suddenly cannons started to boom out all around him. Mystified, he lowered the flag, the gunfire stopped and he sailed on...

1869- First performance of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor.

1882- JESSE JAMES SHOT-The famous outlaw had been living quietly with his family under the alias of Mr. Howard when he was murdered by his own gang members, his cousins Bob and William Ford. Jesse was shot in the back of the head while he was standing on a chair straightening a picture frame. His last words were: ”My, it’s awfully hot today...” He was 34. Jesse’s older brother Frank took the hint and went straight. Bob Ford went on tour giving lectures, re-enacting how he had killed Jesse. Finally in a mining camp someone blew him away with a shotgun.


Recent research has a challenging new theory. That James staged his own death and killed someone else. Then he moved to Texas, changed his name to James Lafayette Courtney, had kids and grandkids and died peacefully in 1943 at age 96. Some of the proof was when Jesses James mother saw the body she initially said “That is not my son!” Then mysteriously changed her story later. There is no evidence that brother Frank James ever had any contact with this Texas man. James Courtney has the same facial features as Jesse James, James’ mother had one arm and his stepdad a mangled right hand as did photos of Courtney’s parents. Another of Histories Mysteries!

1922- JOSEF STALIN made General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In the scramble for power after the death of Lenin this move allowed him to consolidate his his hold on the top job and push out Leon Trotsky and the other top Bolsheviks like Zioniev, Kamieniev and Krupskaya. He made sure Lenin's last will and political testament was never made public. Stalin's real name was Djugashvili, his other code name that close friends were allowed to call him was 'Kobal'. He once told Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta :"The problem with Americans is your people don't know how to follow orders."

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Emperor of Ethiopia as Halie Selassie. The Jamaican movement called Rastafarians are named for him.

1936-Bruno Richard Hauptmann was electrocuted for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby.

1948 -THE MARSHAL PLAN signed into law by President Truman. It called for 5 billion U.S. dollars to be spent to help 16 European countries rebuild their shattered economies after World War Two.

1968- In Memphis Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was supposed to give a sermon
at the Temple Baptist Church but excused himself because of his workload and
stress. Since he had openly come out against the Vietnam War the death threats had
increased and it all weighed heavily on his mind. Rev. Ralph Abernathy telephoned from the church that the crowd was disappointed Dr. King had not showed up. "Martin, they don't want to hear me. They're here to hear you." So Dr King went to the church and delivered off-the-cuff the last great speech of his life: "I have been to the Mountain and have Seen the Promised Land, and though I may not get there with you, it is alright.". At one point he was startled when the wind outside caused a shutter to bang. Then he returned to the Lorraine Motel. He was murdered the next day.



1968- Stanley Kubrick's epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered. The N.Y. Times review said it was : " Somewhere between hypnotic and boring". Pauline Kael called it "monumentally unimaginative!" In a recent interview screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke said HAL the computer was not a coded reference to IBM . At the Oscars for that year Clarke and Kubrick lost the best screenplay award to Mel Brooks for the Producers. The film won only one Oscar, the only one Kubrick ever won, for visual effects.

1974- Even while the Watergate Scandal continued, this day the IRS reported President Richard Nixon had been paying taxes based on an income of only $15,000 a year, when he was making at least $200,000 a year.

1975- Eccentric chess champion Bobby Fischer was stripped of his World Chess Championship for refusing to play any more matches to defend his title.

1984-THE COFFEE SHOP CONVERSION. Future President George W. Bush was a cocaine-snorting alcoholic who had been busted for drunk driving. This day he claimed he became Born-Again after meeting an evangelist in a coffee shop.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: When thinking of the patriots of the American Revolution, we think of Washington, Lafayette, the Marquis de Galves….., who is that?



Answer: While we remember all the help the French gave America at Yorktown, the Spanish had declared war on Britain also. A Spanish Army under the Marquis de Galves came out of Spanish Florida and campaigned along the Gulf Coast in support of the Franco-American Armies in Virginia. Galves founded a town on the Texas coast- Galveston.

Question: When thinking of the patriots of the American Revolution, we think of Washington, Lafayette, the Marquis de Galves….., who is that? ”?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In American colloquial slang, when did bluesmen begin referring to the authorities as “ The Man”…?
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History for 4/2/2009
Birthdays: Frankish Emperor Charlemagne, Giacomo Casanova, Hans Christian Andersen, Marvin Gaye, Emile Zola, Max Ernst, Buddy Ebsen, Sir Alec Guinness, Frederick Bartholdi, Emmy Lou Harris, Linda Hunt

430 a.d. Today is the feast day of Saint Mary the Egyptian, a former prostitute who repented by living naked and alone in the desert for 49 years, only appearing briefly at Easter time to take communion, and to get some more sunblock.

1459- Vlad II "Dracula" -Little Dragon, duke of Wallachia, shows why he got the nickname Vlad the Impaler by impaling the city council of Brasov high on stakes then eating lunch under their quivering bodies. Impaling was a torture of Turkish origin, where you had a huge sharpened stake hammered up into your body, then standing it up. A good executioner could keep the stake from piercing too many important organs, prolonging the agony of your death. This was Vlad’s preferred method of getting rid of inconvenient people. No wonder in the 1890’s when British author Bram Stoker was collecting folk tales in the Transylvanian mountains to use as source material for a gothic vampire novel he chose Dracula for it’s title.

1502- King Henry VII Tudor’s primary heir Arthur of Britain died at age fifteen. King Henry had just married Arthur to the Catharine daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain a few weeks before. Now Henry didn’t want to lose the Spanish alliance, and he was too cheap to send back Catharine’s huge dowery. So he remarried her to his other son, Henry VIII. Catherine and Henry VIII’s marriage problems would lead to the English Churches break with Rome.

1520- Somewhere off the coast of what will one day be Argentina, Magellan's captains, convinced this crazy Portuguese turncoat didn’t know where he was going, try to mutiny and go home to Spain.

1800- Beethoven's First Symphony premiered. Vienna's leading music critic called it - 'a vulgar, impertinent explosion, more expected from a military band than an orchestra!’

1801- BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN- The British Navy has a one day war with Denmark. The fleet was sent by London to intimidate the Danes into leaving Napoleon's anti-British blockade, but the Danes were more worried about a Russian-Swedish alliance forcing them to remain. So Admiral Nelson sailed his fleet into Copenhagen harbor and pounds it out with the Danish Navy and shore batteries. Nelson’s ships sailed up and down the drydocks pounding the unmasted Danish battleships in for repairs. Despite fearful manpower losses the British don't lose one ship while sinking or capturing 17 Danish top ships of the line.
The one-eyed, one armed Nelson gloried in battle. When a Danish cannon ball struck his mainmast showering him and his staff with burning splinters, he laughed and said: "Hot work, what ?" At one point the action got so desperate, that Nelson's superior Admiral Hyde Parker raised the ensign flags to break off battle and retreat. Nelson ignored them. He jokingly raised his spyglass to his dead eye and said :"What ensign flags ? I don't see any ensign flags !" Denmark made peace the next day and all the surviving combatants had a lovely dinner together at the Copenhagen Palace, as though nothing had happened.

1865- The Confederate capitol Richmond finally fell to U.S. armies. More destruction to the city was done by looting Confederates and released prisoners than the enemy. Several large fires created the type of total urban destruction not to be seen again until the World Wars in the 20th Century. In another part of the field one of Lee’s top officers Ambrose Powell Hill was struck down and killed. He wore a flaming red shirt in battle instead of his uniform so everyone would know it was him. I guess the Yankees knew him as well.

1877- First man shot out of a cannon.

1877- The first White House egg rolling contest.

1917- President Woodrow Wilson called a special session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. ‘The World Must be made Safe for Democracy!” he said.

1943- Disney short 'Private Pluto' the first Chip & Dale cartoon.

1943-Happy Birthday SAT’s! This day Harvard Dean Henry Chauncey supervised the distribution to 316,000 High School seniors of the Army-Navy College Qualifying Test, later re-titled the Scholastic Aptitude Tests or SAT. This became a standardized test that manages every year to raise the stress level of seniors regardless of race, class or religion. Go On To Next Page.

1974-While actor David Niven was speaking at the Academy Awards telecast a nude streaker ran past him on nationwide television. Mr. Niven, completely unflustered, dryly commented: "The only laugh that man will ever get is by stripping off his clothes and showing off his shortcomings. "

1978-The TV show "Dallas" debuts.

1982- THE FALKLANDS WAR-Britain declared war on Argentina over the their takeover of the Falkland Islands. British tabloid papers called for a boycott of Argentine imports. It turns out the chief Argentine imports were bully-beef for SPAM and grass seed which nefarious jelly makers would use as imitation strawberry pips to convince unsuspecting customers that the jam they were buying was real strawberry. That'll bring them to their knees...

1981- John Welsh made CEO of General Electric. After automating factories and firing one third of his employees, he earned the name "Neutron Jack" after the bomb that kills people but leaves buildings intact.

1993- Bullocks Wilshire department store with the famous Tea Room closed.

1994-Disney chief executive Frank Wells is killed in a helicopter crash on a skiing trip. It’s been speculated that blowing snow off some high peaks caused a ice ball to be sucked into the copter’s air intake manifold. Clint Eastwood was supposed to be on that trip but couldn't make it. Billie Joel and Christie Brinkley had a similar scare with their helicopter on the same day. The death of the Disney CEO set in motion the events that would lead to Jeffrey Katzenberg forming Dreamworks and Michael Ovitz’s brief tenure as a mouseketeer and Michael Eisner’s eventual fall. In 1999 the Hollywood Reporter estimated that the little iceball cost the Walt Disney Company one billion dollars.

1996- Lech Walesa, who led the first great people’s movement to overthrow a Communist dictatorship and was president of Poland for two terms and a Nobel Prize winner, got his old job back repairing electric batteries at the Gydansk shipyard. The shipyard was later closed. Capitalism’s a bee-atch, ain’t it?

2004- Walt Disney Studio released Home on the Range.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: In American colloquial slang, when did bluesmen begin referring to the authorities as “ The Man”…?

Answer: In 1934 Hudlan Ledbetter, called Leadbelly, recorded a number of African-American work songs from his prison. There the prisoners referred to the brutal guards collectively as “the Man..” The song Midnight Special had the lyric-No food upon the table, no pork in the pan; But you better not complain, boy…. You get in trouble with the Man…..” When black R&B became hip among the rock & soul counterculture of the 1960s, the sobriquet the Man came to mean all authority Establishment types.

Steve Moore's online magazine written by animation pros about our business is now up.

Articles about Cintiq Tablets, Kirk Wise the co-director of Beauty & the Beast, and Caricaturist Ed Wexler.

http://www.flipanimation.net/flipcover.htm

check it out.

Question: In American colloquial slang, when did bluesmen begin referring to the authorities as “ The Man”…?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is today called April Fools Day?
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History for 4/1/2009
Welcome to April, named for Aprilis, an Etruscan Goddess of Agriculture and planting or it may even be a corruption of the name of the Greek Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The month was considered by Romans sacred to Venus- Venuralia.

To Ancient Egyptians it was the birthday of the God Het-Heth or Hathor. http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_april_calendar.htm

Happy April Fool’s Day
"This is the day upon which we are reminded what we really are on the other three hundred and sixty four.." -Mark Twain
In San Francisco today the Church of the Last Laugh holds it’s annual Saint Stupid’s Day parade. They go to the Sock Exchange to exchange socks, then inspect the large bolts holding San Francisco in place from sliding into the ocean.

Birthdays: Edmund Rostand, Lon Chaney, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ali McGraw, Toshiro Mifune, Big Jim Fisk, Debbie Reynolds is 77, Hans Conreid, Phil Neikro, Wallace Beery, Jane Powell, Bo Schembechler, Annette O’Toole, Barry Sonnefeld, Rachel Maddow is 36

1081- Alexius Comnenus Ist, captures Constantinople and establishes the Comnenoi dynasty. He took the city by bribing the Varangian Guards –English, Hun and Viking mercenaries, to open the gates and let his army in. Alexius I was the Byzantine Emperor when the Crusades began. His daughter Anna Comnena described the event in her journal :"Then one day all of Europe decided to walk to our door..."

1488- Ludovico Buonarotti, after going through a lot of trouble to get his son in the wool and draper’s guild, gives up hope that the boy would ever be anything other than an artist. He reluctantly takes him to be an apprentice to fresco painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Michelangelo's career begins.

1621- The first treaty between English and Indians signed in Massachusetts. Massacoit of the Wampanoags made peace with the newly arrived Pilgrims.

1747-Georg Frederich Handel premiered his oratorio Judas Maccabeus with the song "Hail, Conquering Hero !" frequently used at royal functions.

1861- As the Civil War was breaking out, Secretary of State Seward delivered to Lincoln a memo proposing that the way to keep the South united to the U.S. would be to declare war on Spain or France. Lincoln said thanks for the advice, but no thanks...

1862- Confederate General John Sibley declared the counties of western New Mexico to be the new independent Confederate State called Arizona. Sibley's rebs were driven out but Lincoln kept the idea, setting up Arizona in 1864.

1865- BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS- Grant's Yankee Army closed in on Robert E. Lee's Confederates, Grant's cavalry master Phil Sheridan cut off and destroyed one over extended division of Lee's under George Pickett, taking 5000 prisoners. Pickett had won fame as the leader of the famous charge at Gettysburg. But he blew it at Five Forks because while his men were dying he was away with some friends at a fish fry. No pagers or cell-phones in those days.

1867- Opening of the Paris World Exhibition. The gala worlds fair was seen as the zenith of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. Visitors marveled to fascinating exhibits as Dr Lister’s new Disinfectant, a new alloy called Aluminum and in the American exhibit a novel bit of furniture called a Rocking Chair. The Art galleries of the exhibition were filled with Ingres, Courbets and Delacroix. But nothing was accepted by those weird painters Cezanne, Manet, Pizarro or any of the others who would one day be called Impressionists.

1923- Developers S.H. Woodruff and Canadian William Whitley start advertising lots for sale in Hollywoodland, beneath his his giant new Hollywoodland sign. The sign originally was covered with lightbulbs. It collapsed and was repaired in 1939, the 'land' part never restored. The Hollywood Sign was made over again in 1978.

1924- After the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Nazis party leader Adolph Hitler was sentenced by a German court to 5 years in prison. He serves only 8 months in a beautiful lodge in Bavaria named Castle Landsberg and uses the time to write Mein Kampf. I guess if it were today he'd be working on his web site- Maddictator.com

1932- The baby of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was kidnapped from their home.

1944- Tex Avery's "Screwball Squirrel"

1945- OKINAWA- The Marines land and the battle begins. Because it was not a conquered territory but part of the home Japanese islands, Washington weighed it’s decision to use the atomic bomb by it’s observation of the Okinawa battle. It would indicate how tough it would be to land on mainland Japan, only 360 miles away. The fighting was brutal, hand to hand with bayonets and flame-throwers. Of the 125,000 man Japanese garrison only 7,500 didn’t fight to the death, and civilians threw themselves off cliffs in mass suicide. A children's class trip visiting from Tokyo who were caught in the battle. The kids were shown by soldiers how to cluster themselves around a single hand grenade, so as to save on the number needed. Today there is a shrine to their memory. The Cave of the Maidens is dedicated to a group of schoolgirls who hid in a cave. When the Americans heard Japanese voices inside, and none would answer their calls to come out and surrender,they filled the cave with flamethrower fire. Almost every American soldier who was captured was executed. The U.S. Navy suffered the worst number of ships sunk and men killed since Pearl Harbor in 1,900 Kamikaze plane attacks. U.S. casualties were so high the government re-imposed a press blackout.
This battle has the rare distinction like the Plains of Abraham in 1759 where both opposing commanders died. US General Simon Bolivar Buckner, who’s father had fought Ulysses Grant in the Civil War, was killed by an artillery round three days before the battles end. Japanese General Usijima committed hari-kiri almost at the same time.

1945- Adolph Hitler moved his headquarters from the Reich Chancellery to a bunker deep below it’s street level.

1949- Zsa Zsa Gabor married George Sanders.

1961- Rev Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker get married.

1970- A symbol of the 70’s.- AMC’s compact car the Gremlin introduced.

1972- In a gesture of turnabout-is-fair-play for women, Playgirl Magazine ran its first male nude centerfold- Burt Reynolds.

1984- Motown star Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his own father in an argument over plans for the singer's 45th birthday party the next day.

1995- Chasen's restaurant closed. Former actor Frederick Chasen opened his exclusive Beverly Hills Restaurant in 1936. James Stewart and Mickey Rooney were regulars. During the filming of Cleopatra (1963) Elizabeth Taylor had Chasen's chili flown out to her in Rome. Walt Disney met Leopold Stokowski over dinner at Chasens and conceived the film Fantasia, Orson Welles and Joe Mankiewicz got into a fistfight over the script outline of Citizen Kane there, Bogart, Bacall and John Huston discussed how to fight the Hollywood Blacklist there. There is a complete booth from Chasens preserved in the Reagan Presidential Library.

1996- Animation World Network, Toontown’s virtual trade magazine, started up. www.AWN.com

2004- G-Mail invented.

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Yesterday’s Question: Why is today called April Fools Day?

Answer: – The Ancient Romans considered today ALL FOOLS DAY-a day of comedy- they did things backwards, men and women swapped clothes and carried on. Before the Gregorian Reforms in 1582 some Old Style Calendars had the year begin in April instead of January. As the new modern calendar became more widely accepted the people who stubbornly clung to the old practice were made fun of, and called April-Fools.

Question: Why is tomorrow called April Fools Day?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who was the last President to wear facial hair?
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History for 3/31/2009
Birthdays: Rene' Descartes, Franz Josef Haydn, Serge Diagheliev, Richard Chamberlain is 79, Cesar Chavez, Herb Alpert, Gordie Howe, Liz Claiborne, Gabe Kaplan, Rhea Perlman, Shirley Jones, Richard Kiley, Volker Schlondorf, William Daniels, Lucille Bliss the voice of Crusader Rabbitt, Christopher Walken is 66, Colin Farrell is 33. Ewan McGregor is 37, Al Gore is 61

1146- St. Bernard preaches the Holy Crusade at Vezalay, King Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad of Germany declare the SECOND CRUSADE. After all the ready-made pilgrim cross emblems were distributed Saint Bernard tore his own cloak to pieces for cross making material. Folks don't remember much about the Second Crusade because it was pretty much a non-event. Conrad took the land route through the Balkans to the Holy Land and by the time he got to Jerusalem his army was about 5 guys. The French king’s army arrived intact but he was more of a tourist than a conqueror, after visiting the holy places and gathering some medieval tourist trinkets ( 'My folks went on Crusade and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt!") he went home. They wasted most of their time in an unprovoked attack on the Emir of Damascus, who at the time was one of the Christians’ only Moslem allies. The most memorable person on the voyage was the French Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had an affair with a Saracen Prince, and legend has it inspired the troops by riding barebreasted to Damascus. Later she would leave Louis and marry Henry Plantagenet of England and give birth to Richard Lionheart.

1814- PARIS FALLS- Since his Retreat from Moscow, Napoleon seemed to be fighting all of Europe. Today the allied armies of Austria, Sweden, Prussia and Russia captured Paris despite a spirited defense in the suburbs of Montmartre by Marshals Moncey and Marmont. Moncey had reformed the municipal police and is considered the father of the Paris Gendarmerie.

1836- Charles Dickens first work published "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club."

1840- Congress lowers the minimum workday for federal workers from 11.4 hours a day to 10 hours a day. At this time in mines and factories people worked an average 12-16 hour day. The 8 hour day wasn’t achieved until 1913, not until 1941 in Hollywood and it’s still a dream in most digital effects studios and dot-com companies today.

1889- The Eiffel Tower opened to the public to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. Twice as tall as the Saint Peter's in Rome or the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Wizard of Iron Gustave Eiffel also designed the armature holding up the Statue of Liberty. Eiffel’s original deal with the French government called for the tower to only stay up for twenty years, then pulled down if no further use can found for it. Eiffel agonized about what to do as the deadline approached but fortunately by 1909 Wireless radio transmissions became important and the Eiffel Tower was a great broadcast antenna.

1905- THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought back his famous sleuth in a new series of adventures. Conan Doyle had created Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in 1887 but by 1893 he had tired of the characters, he wanted to write more serious fiction like his novel The White Company. So he killed him off. Holmes fell to his doom fighting Prof. Moriarity at the Reichenbeck Falls. The reaction of the public was astonished outrage. It seemed whenever Conan Doyle went out inevitably someone would stop him and say "You Blackguard! How Could You ?!" Finally Conan-Doyle bowed to public pressure and resumed the career of the inhabitants of #221B Baker Street.

1930 -Reacting to charges that the movies had become too naughty, Hollywood producers accept the MOTION PICTURE CODE. It was regulated by Will Hays, former Republican Party Chairman. The regulation wouldn't really start to have strength until 1935-36 when pressure groups like the Catholic League of Decency went after Mae West and the Tarzan pictures. The Hays Code forbade open sex and obscenity:
- twin beds only in a bedroom, nightclothes buttoned to the neck.
-if a couple were seated together on a bed they must have at least one foot touching the floor,
-"kisses with a duration of no longer than 3 seconds, parting with lips closed."
Lots of jokes were spawned like: "Give him the bird!" "If the Hays Commission would let me, I'd give him the bird!" One other little known clause was the forbidding of members of different races from kissing on camera. So Anna Mae Wong, the greatest Chinese actress of her time, could not play a Chinese heroine if her co-star was a Caucasian with eyepieces.

1931- ITT transmits the first message by microwave, from Dover to Calais.

1943- Rodger & Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" debuts. Despite the opinion of producer Mike Todd -"No legs, No Laughs, No Chance", the musical becomes one of the great hits of American musical Theater.

1950- Thor Heyderthal's book of his exploits Kon Tiki published. This was an account of his 4200 mile voyage which proved ancient mariners could have traveled from Peru to Polynesia on boats made from tied reeds.

1962- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened on Wilshire Blvd. No, it didn’t display customized surf boards or the ideal tuna melt with sprouts, but an exhibit of paintings by Bonnard.

1967- In a small London nightclub rising young rock & roller Jimmy Hendrix burned his guitar for the first time. British rock luminaries like Paul MacCartney, John Lennon and Pete Townsend sat in the audience stunned at the technical brilliance of this unknown former paratrooper who played left handed. The pieces of his guitar were purchased by Microsoft chairman Paul Allen and today are in his Seattle Rock Museum.

1968- Depressed over Vietnam War, the strong primary surge of Sen. Eugene McCarthy and the challenge of his old enemy Bobby Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for re-election. Borrowing the words of General Sherman in 1884 he says: "If Nominated Ah will not Run, If elected Ah will not serve.." In retirement Johnson resumed cigarette smoking and neglected his health. He was dead in four years.

1973- Comic strip hero Smilin' Jack gets married, the strip concludes next day.

1991- Former child star Danny Bonaduce arrested for fighting with a transvestite prostitute.

1995- In Corpus Christy Texas famed Tejana singer Selena Perez was shot and killed by an obsessed fan. The woman Yolanda Saldivar was president of the Selena Fan Club. “the gun just went off, I didn’t mean to shoot anybody.” Uh-huhh.

2003- Countdown with Keith Olbermann premiered on MSNBC.

2004- Left wing radio network Air America went on the air.
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Yesterday’s Answer: Which was the last President to wear facial hair?

Answer: President William Howard Taft ( in office 1909-1913) , wore great walrus mustachios. Ever since, they’ve all been clean shaven, except for Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, who was defeated by Truman in 1948.