QUIZ: If there are twelve months to the calendar, why is December ancient Latin for Number Ten?

Answer to Yesterday’s Question below: Why does lowering a glass ball from a flagpole on top of a building signal the New Year?
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History for New Years Eve 12/31/2008


Birthdays: Henri Matisse, General George C. Marshall, Odetta (real name Holmes Felicious Gordon) , Simon Weisenthal, , Pola Negri, Anthony Hopkins is 71, Jules Styne, Ben Kingsley-born Khrishna Banji is 65, Sarah Miles, Donna Summer, Patti Smith, Elizabeth Arden, Tim Matheson, John Denver, Dianne Von Furstenberg, Bebe Neuwirth, Val Kilmer is 49, Gong Li is 43

192-193 A.D.- The Roman Emperor Commodus assassinated. The natural son of the great philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius turned out to be just another sicko tyrant in the mold of Nero and Caligula. This night during a wild New Years Party he drunkenly challenged a top wrestler named Narcissus. Narcissus had been bribed by Commodus's Preatorian Prefect Laetus and head of the Imperial Household Eclectus. So instead of just pinning him down, Narcissus broke Commodus’neck. Made for one hell of a party.

314 AD-This was the Feast Day of Saint Sylvester, the Pope who baptized the Roman Emperor Constantine who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Legend had it Sylvester miraculously cured Constantine of leprosy, and in reward Constantine gave the Roman Pontiff dominion over all the world. This Donation of Constantine was the philosophical reason the Pope in Rome became the supreme head of the Christian Church over any other bishop. In the 1440’s Italian humanist scholar Lorenzo Valla proved the Donation story was a myth forged in the 700s by a Vatican clerk named Christophorous. But no one listened to him.

406AD- Huge hordes or Goths, Alemanni and Vandals trudge across the frozen Rhine River and invade the Roman Empire. This biggest migration of barbarians is the beginning of the Fall of Rome.

1502- Renaissance Prince Caesar Borgia was besieging the Adriatic town of Senigalia. Caesar invited the enemy leaders Vitelli and Oliverotto to a conference with him at the Governors Palace. After dinner and drinks Caesar had them strangled. Machiavelli praised Caesar Borgia for a “most lovely ruse”. Leonardo DaVinci was among the Borgias’ retinue at the time.

1600- England starts thinking about India... Queen Elizabeth grants a charter for exploration to the Honorable East India Company.

1711- Queen Ann of England dismissed the Duke of Marlborough from command of the British Army and from all his cabinet and government posts. John Churchill the Duke of Marlborough was one of the greatest English soldiers, ranked with Wellington, Nelson and Henry V. Yet, by now the Queen found him and his pushy wife Sarah annoying.

1772-3 THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. STROHENSEE-The King of Denmark, Christian VII was slowly devolving into insanity from syphilis. In 1770 he hired a doctor named Strohensee to try to alleviate his pain. The Doctor became more and more influential at the Danish Court as the king withdrew into seclusion. Strohensee was made a count and to top it all off he became the lover of the Queen! Soon Count Dr.Strohensee was defacto ruling Denmark. In the name of Queen Caroline he passed 1,000 acts of enlightened reform, updating the Danish civil service and outlawed torture. Finally the Royal Court couldn't stand being dictated to by a low born sawbones anymore. At a New Years ball Strohensee was overthrown and arrested by order of the Queen Mother Juliana Maria. He was quickly tried and beheaded. The King's care devolved to several regents until his son took over after his death. Queen Mum Juliana Maria said one of the greatest pleasures of her old age was looking out her window and watching the birds peck at the bones of Doctor Strohensee.

1862- The U.S.S. Monitor, the little ship that fought the Confederate Merrimac in the first great contest of iron warships, sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras. Her inventor John Ericsson had boasted, 'the waves shall pass over her and she shall ride the sea like a duck', but in rough seas she sank like a rock. The Monitor has recently been discovered on the ocean floor. In 2002 sections of the turret and a propeller have been recovered.

1862-3 - SLAVERY ENDS IN THE UNITED STATES-In a service at Boston's Music Hall Abolitionist leaders Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubmann, Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Lloyd Garrison sang 'Battle Hymn of the Republic" and celebrated midnight when the Emancipation Proclamation would officially take effect.

1879- Thomas Edison did a public demonstration of his new invention the Light Bulb. Special commuter trains brought people to Menlo Park New Jersey for the show.

1909- The Manhattan Bridge, the second span across the East River after the Brooklyn Bridge, opened to the public.

1911-12 Dr. Sun Yat Sen elected first President of the Republic of China, replacing the 256 year reign of the Manchu Dynasty. One of his first acts was to abolish the Chinese calendar and go on to the western one for 1912. He also went to the Shrine of the Ming Emperors to tell their spirits that the Manchus had fallen. Dr Sen was a Methodist who no longer followed Chinese religious beliefs, but he was honoring a pledge to political allies.

1917- EUROPE DISCOVERED JAZZ- As the first American units entered Paris to help in World War One the New York 15th Colored Regiment serenaded the city. The band of the 15th was made up of top Harlem jazz musicians led by band leader James Europe. The French were amazed as the band performed ragtime riffs that only gradually they understood to be La Marsaillaise and Le Marche Sambre et Meuse. Local musicians accused the Harlemites of using trick instruments since no one could make sounds like that. Lieutenant Europe went on tour with the band and Europe the continent embraced the new modern sound.

1923-24-BBC overseas radio service first broadcast the Chimes of Big Ben around the world.

1929-30- New York's "21" Club opened as a speakeasy. Barkeep Jack Kramer opened the hangout at 21 west 52nd street. With a wine cellar hidden behind a two-foot thick stone wall door. The feds raided 21 once and found nothing after hours of searching. When they went back outside all their cars had been towed away by NYPD traffic cops. It seems the Mayor of New York Jimmy Walker was having dinner in the wine celler and was annoyed by the intrusion. In subsequent years it was normal to see movie stars, Lucky Lucciano, J.Edgar Hoover and John F. Kennedy eating side by side. Richard Nixon loved their tater-tots called potato souffle.

1929- Guy Lombardo and his big band the Royal Canadians first played Auld Lang Syne at midnight for New Years.

1940-41- Avant Garde artists John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp break into the Washington Square Arch in and declare Greenwich Village the Republic of New Bohemia. Like coool, daddy.

1941- A Warner Bros memo dated this day from producer Hal Wallis office announced that the movie to be made from a play by Murray Bennett called “Everybody Goes to Rick’s” has been renamed “Casablanca”. This was to capitalize on an already popular film title “Algiers” with Charles Boyer “come with me to ze Casbah” etc.. Humphrey Bogart got the lead after George raft first turned it down. Bogie told a friend about his new project: “It’s just some more sh*t like Algiers.”

1943-44- In occupied Europe U.S. Navy frogmen sneak over to the future Normandy beachhead and take sand samplings to analyze if the beach could take the weight of heavy tanks and ordnance. The samples were sent to Detroit so companies could design customized tank-tread teeth. Ironically when the D-Day invasion happened a storm had washed all the sand out to sea and the tanks slipped around helplessly on gravel.
As the frogmen swam back to their midget submarine they could hear the Germans celebrating in their bunkers. One frogman yelled out "HAPPY NEW YEAR !"

1943- Four hundred policemen are called out to control frenzied crowds of bobbysoxers as Frank Sinatra played the Paramount Theater in Times Square. OOHH FRANKIE !!

1946- The first Pismo Beach Clam Festival.

1947- Roy Rogers married Dale Evans.

1958-59- As Fidel Castro's cigar smoking, hairy-ass guerrillas close in on Havana, dictator Fulgensio Batista slipped out of a New Year's Party and boarded a plane for Miami arranged by the CIA.

1962- Romanoffs closed. One of the premier hot spots on the Sunset Strip, it was the preferred hangout of Humphrey Bogart, who liked to play chess in the afternoon with Nick Romanoff when he was between films.

1967- The Ice Bowl- Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 for the NFL championship. It was nicknamed the Ice Bowl because the game was played in GreenBay in the out doors in below zero weather, with a wind chill of 40 below zero. Referees whistles froze to their lips.

1977- President Jimmy Carter in Teheran toasts Iran under the Shah as :“ An Island of Stability in a Troubled Middle East .” Within a year the Shah was overthrown.

1985- Singer Ricky Nelson died when his band's converted old DC-9 airplane crashed near DeKalb, Texas. Nelson it was said had been living on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and Snicker's bars.

1995- The last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Waterston

1997- Will Smith and Jaeda Pinkett marry.

1999-2000 - The Y2K MANIA. While the world prepared to celebrate the new century and the Third Millenium the American media whipped up paranoia over a theory that the change from 1999-2000 would cause most computers to crash. Planes would fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles would launch themselves and marauders would rule the streets like something out of Mad Max. The US Government spent $65 million to prepare for the crisis. But at midnight absolutely nothing of the kind happened. Even older less sophisticated computers in Russia and China were unaffected and everything ran normally. Meanwhile many of the US public stayed home and watched the rest of the world have fun on television.

2001-2002- The European Union currency exchange went into effect. Adieu, Adios and Ciao to the French Franc, Belgian Franc, Italian Lire, German Deutchmark, Austrian Schilling, Dutch Guldin, Greek Drachma, Irish Pound, Portuguese Escudo and Spanish Peseta. Welcome the Euro.

2006- Saddam Hussein hanged. ( I listed it yesterday, without taking into account the time difference, it was already the 31st over there.)

2008- Dedication in Baghdad of the Killing Saddam Museum. I wonder what the gift shop is like..?
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Yesterday’s question: Why does lowering a glass ball from a flagpole on top of a building signal the New Year?

Answer: In the 1700-1800s Newspaper services like Reuters and the London Times would post headlines and important news on large signboards in front of their offices for people on the street to see. Some times they would mark an important event like the death of a monarch by dropping a lantern, raising a flag, or firing a signal gun.

In New York City in 1905-6- THE FIRST BALL DROPPING CEREMONY- The New York Times hosted the first of it's giant news years party's from it's new office tower at #1 Longacre Square, now renamed in their honor Times Square. Midnight was signaled to the crowd outside by the lowering of a lantern on it's roof. -In 1907 an ironworker created a large ball covered with electric light bulbs that was lowered from a flagpole. The Ball-dropping ceremony was only interrupted twice in 1942-43 for World War Two blackout rules. The Times Building was later sold and renamed the Allied Chemical Building, the Sony Building and the Time/Warner building. I don’t know who owns it now.
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THANKS FOR READING MY LITTLE HISTORIES. I HOPE YOU HAVE AS MUCH FUN READING THEM AS I DO WRITING THEM.
HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!

me by Hans Bacher

QUIZ: Why does lowering a glass ball from a flagpole on top of a building signal the New Year?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean when you have Carte Blanche?
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History for 12/30/2008
Birthdays: Rudyard Kipling, Gen. Hideki Tojo, W. Eugene Smith, Luther Burbank, Anna Magnani, Bo Diddley, Sir Carol Reed, Sandy Koufax, Solomon Guggenheim, Jeanette Nolan -Granny from the Beverly Hillbillys, Jack Lord, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, Joseph Bologna, Fred Ward, Tracey Ullman. Tiger Woods is 34, Heidi Fleiss, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary

1370- Pope Gregory XI is an example of the rather unconventional path one could take to the Throne of Peter in the Middle Ages. His genial uncle Pope Clement VI had made him a cardinal at age 18. Upon his election as Pope at age 39 someone noticed that he had never taken Holy Orders to become a Priest! So yesterday he was ordained a priest and today became Pope.

1672- Violinist John Bannister and his orchestra held a concert at Whitefriars chapel in London. It’s the oldest known music concert given not to a royalty, but to the general paying public.

1689- The opera Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell premiered in London.

1816- Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married Frankenstein author Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley.

1817- Coffee beans first planted on the Kona coast of Hawaii.

1853- The Gadsen Purchase- After the Mexican-American War the U.S. bought an additional 45,000 square miles from Mexico and finally settled the US border at the Rio Grande. The deal was brokered by U.S. Secretary of War and later President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis.

1862- During the Civil War the day before the Battle of Stone's River, Tennessee, Union and Confederate armies spent the day quietly facing each other across a creek under an icy rain. A battle of the bands started up. Blue and gray musicians serenaded each other across no-mans land with patriotic songs like Dixie and John Brown's Body, while the men sang along. Finally both bands synched up with a spontaneous rendition of " Be It Ever so Humble, There's No Place Like Home..". Thousands of throats from both sides took up the chorus.

1884- Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony premiered in Leipzig.

1894- Suffragette Amelia Jenks Bloomer died; she had gained notoriety for inventing "bloomers" a way for women to ride horses and do other physical actions without cumbersome hoops skirts.

1903 - A fire broke out in the crowded Iroquois Theater in Chicago killing 571.The Iroquois had a sign over the door that read “Absolutely Fireproof”.

1936- The Great General Motors Strike. The strike was violent and tied up steel, rubber tires and other manufactures for months. United Auto Workers invent the first "sit-down" strike at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Mich. "When they tie a can to the Union man-Sit Down, Sit Down! When the Boss won't talk, don't take a walk- Sit Down, Sit Down !"

1940- The Arroyo-Seco, the First L.A. Freeway opened by Mayor Fletchor Bowron, connecting downtown and Pasadena. ( interstate U.S. route 66 is in 1932, and The Imperial Highway opened in 1936., the Ventura freeway in 1958.)

1944- Manhattan project director Gen. Leslie Groves has a private meeting with FDR at the White House. Groves tells the President the two "cosmic bombs" (Atomic Bombs) they are building will end the war. The reason they were making two was one was uranium based and the other was plutonium based. Franklin Roosevelt wanted one dropped on Germany immediately to stop the Battle of the Bulge and kill Hitler. But Groves argued the A-bomb hadn’t been tested yet. He worried that if the bomb was a dud, the Germans were smart enough to take it apart and build their own from the fissionable material, which they might shoot in a V-2 at London.

1941- “I Vant to be Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion pictures and all public appearances. She made her disappearing act complete and was only seen fleeting on the streets of New York until her death in 1990.


1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with Monty Hall premieres.

1965- Ferdinand Marcos became president of the Philippines.

1988- Col. Oliver North, on trial for the Iran Contra Scandal, subpoenaed former President Ronald Reagan and then President-elect George Bush. Bush declined and Reagan testified on videotape.

2006- Saddam Hussein was hanged.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean when you have Carte Blanche?

Answer: Carte Blanche came from the 1700s when a vote of no contest was signaled with a white ballot submitted. Carte Blanche means you have the right to do something at your discression with no argument. It became one of the first popular credit cards, Diners Club being the oldest- about 1950.

Quiz: What does it mean when you have Carte Blanche?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What does YMCA mean?
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History for 12/29/2008
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Flavius Titus, Pablo Casals, Madame de Pompadour, Andrew Johnson, Charles Goodyear, Gelsey Kirkland, Dina Merrill, Tom Bradley, Mary Tyler Moore, Jon Voight, Charles Goodyear, Ray Nitschke, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Flanders, Ted Danson, Marianne Faithful, Paula Poundstone, Jude Law is 35

1172- ST. THOMAS BECKET murdered. A debate that raged throughout the Europe in the Middle Ages was whether the Church could boss around Kings or visa-versa.
In England when a vacancy opened up for Archbishop of Canterbury, King Henry II arranged to get his old drinking bud, Sir Thomas Beckett elected. However Beckett took his new job so seriously he became the English Churches strongest champion. On this night Henry was so fed up with Beckett that he shouted to his court:" Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest ?!!" Two of Henry's dim bulb knights took this as a hint and went over to Canterbury and stabbed the Archbishop while at prayers. The Pope in Rome excommunicated Henry and placed England under the Writ of Interdict, which meant no local priest could administer baptism, marriage or last rites to anyone. They even took down the church bells so you didn’t know what time it was. King Henry apologized, and Beckett was made a Saint.

1851- Lola Montez dances on tour in America. Lola Montez was originally an Irish lass named Betty James who created her persona as an Argentine Flamenco star. She became mistress to the King Ludwig Ist of Bavaria, who I guess couldn’t tell between a dancer from Buenos Aires or County Cork but knew a hot babe when he saw one.



Ludwig was so besotted with her that he bankrupted his country and had anybody she didn’t care for horsewhipped. He finally had to abdicate his throne rather than give her up. She did dancing and lecture tours to support herself and even published books on beauty secrets. If there had been a nineteenth century Oprah show, she would have been on it. She died an elderly social worker in New York and is buried in Green Wood Cemetery. Her ghost is sometimes seen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan I’m told.

1890- WOUNDED KNEE- The last battle of the Indian Wars. The US government reacted violently to the Ghost Dance Movement then sweeping the reservations. But the Ghost Dance was not calling for physical rebellion against the US but for a spiritual attack. Ghost dancers believed if they danced with the spirits of their ancestors then the white man would be driven back across the seas by a centennial cataclysm and their towns and cities buried under 6 inches of fresh soil. Then the buffalo and deer would return.
But to the US Department of the Interior even a metaphysical rebellion is rebellion enough. Sitting Bull was arrested and killed. The army was sent to Wounded Knee reservation to demand a disarming of a few braves. When shooting broke out, the army opened up with modern rapid firing cannon and rifles. To 30 US casualties 300 Sioux, mostly women and children were killed. Reports abound of troops shooting the survivors asking for help. Ironically the unit was the Seventh Cavalry and soldiers considered it the revenge of Custer.

1913- Cecil B.DeMille telegraphed his partners back in New York:” Flagstaff no good for our purpose. Have proceeded to California. Want authority to rent a barn in a place called Hollywood for $75 a month.” His partner Sam Goldwyn cabled back: “ Rent barn on month to month basis. Do not make long commitment.” DeMille began shooting the Squaw Man, the first Hollywood Film.

1916-James Joyce’s novel “the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” published.

1940- Nazi planes firebomb London, causing 1500 fires. At one point they hit St. Paul's Cathedral. CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow achieved national fame in the US by standing on a rooftop and reporting live on the radio even as the bombs fell around him.



1941- Disney animator Bill Tytla tells Time Magazine in an interview about creating "Dumbo": "I don't know a damn thing about elephants!"

1950-Congress passed the Celler-Kefhauver Act, which sought to reign in global companies mega-merger mania. It was the last major piece of legislation to try and regulate corporate monopolies in the U.S. So…… what happened?

1972- LIFE Magazine ended publication.

1975- Euell Gibbons, natural foods advocate, died of a stomach ailment.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does the YMCA stand for?

Answer: The Young Men’s Christian Association. In 1844 the first was opened in London by a consortium of drapers led by George Williams. It was seen as something for a place for idle youth to go to, instead of the filthy, crime infested streets. An American named Thomas Sullivan was inspired by this idea. This day in 1851 the first American YMCA meeting was held in the Old South Church in Boston. The idea soon spread across the United States. In 1979 the YMCA tried to sue the disco group the Village People over the song of the same name, not appreciating the fact that it gave them the best publicity they’ve had in years.

Quiz: What does YMCA mean?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When George Washington entertained at Christmas, he was particularly proud of sharing something with his guests. What was it?
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History for 12/28/2008
birthdays: Woodrow Wilson, Robert Sessions, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Hildegarde Neff,
Maggie Smith is 74, Edgar Winter, Stan “The Man” Lee, Martin Branner the creator of Winnie Winkle, Denzel Washington is 54, Johnny Otis, Martin Milner (1-Adam-12),Lew Ayres, Lou Jacobi, Terri Garber, Sienna Miller is 27

Feast of the Innocents-commemorates the Massacre of the Innocents, when King Herod the Great ordered the first born of Nazareth slain. In Spain and many Latin American countries this is a kind of April Fools Day, the victim of a practical joke being proclaimed an "innocent".

1065- English King Edward the Confessor dedicated a new abbey church west of London. Since in those days a church was also called a minister, it was soon known as the West-minster Abbey.

1734- ROB ROY- Scottish nationalist guerrilla Robert McGregor, called Rob Roy, died peacefully of old age in his cottage in the Highlands. Made famous by Daniel Defoe’s novel about him, he spent his last hours making peace with former enemies. His last wish was for a bagpiper to be brought in and pipe a tune his wife wrote. Hoot-Man!

1847- Peace Conference of Guadalupe Hidalgo began to try to end the U.S war with Mexico. Diplomat Nicholas Trist was given the tricky assignment of alone seeking out the Mexican authorities, although their government structure was in chaos at the time, and convincing them to sign away half their country while hostile American armies roamed their heartland. At one point President Polk and the war-hawks in the U.S. Government wanted to annex all of Mexico down to Panama! Trist ignored their orders to break off negotiations, signed the treaty and committed the U.S. and Mexico to fix their border as the Rio Grande.

1869- CHEWING GUM- William Semple of Mount Vernon Ohio received a patent for chewing gum. Since early times frontiersmen and Indians had the habit of chewing on a piece of pine resin or sap. The oldest chewed piece of gum was found in Sweden in a glacier in 1993. It is 9,000 years old and no, it wasn’t found under a theater seat. As early as 1842 Charles Curtis was selling spruce chewing gum from his home in Bangor Maine.
In 1869 a Staten Island photographer named Thomas Adams made friends with exiled Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, he of Alamo fame. Adams noticed the old general didn’t smoke but liked to chew a plug of tree sap he called “Chicle”. Adams took the chicle and put a candy shell around it, getting rich on the invention of Gum Balls. Santa Anna hoped the invention would finance his return to power in Mexico City but that never occurred. Gumball machines appeared in 1918, Bubble Gum in 1928.

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe des Capuchines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience jumped for fear of getting wet. In the audience was a magician named George Melies who was inspired to use the new device to invent motion picture special effects.

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play CYRANO DE BERGERAC premiered in Paris. There really was a poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly big nosed hero who helps another man romance his true love. DEGUISE: “Have you read Don Quixote? Reread the part about tilting the windmills. One who tilts with windmills can be cast down into the mud.” CYRANO:” Or up into the stars!”



1914- THE FIRST TRUE CHARACTER ANIMATION- Windsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" premieres as part of a vaudeville act. Up to then most U.S. animations were attempts to bring popular newspaper comic characters to life, but Gertie was a new character never before seen. Some critics had wondered if animated characters weren’t some kind of man in a special suit, so McCay drew a dinosaur, a character that couldn’t possibly be impersonated by a living thing. The brilliant draftsmanship and timing of this film would inspire the generation of Animation artists of the Golden Age of the 1930's-40s.

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1928- Louis Armstrong recorded West End Blues.

1944- ON THE TOWN, a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green and young composer Leonard Bernstein premiered in NY. "New York, New York's a Helluva Town. The Bronx is up and the Battery's down. The People ride in a hole in the ground..."

1958- Cuban Communist forces under Che Guevara won the Battle of Santa Clara. It was a decisive battle in Fidel Castro's campaign to overthrow the dictator Fulgensio Batista. In 1997 when Che's remains were discovered in Bolivia they were reburied with great ceremony in Santa Clara.

1968- The Beatles White Album goes to number one of pop charts.

1973-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelego” first published in Paris. The exposing of the Soviet prison camp and police system was a great success in the west. It gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

1983- Dennis Wilson was the original drummer of the Beach Boys but he had a pretty bad drug habit and was once involved with the Manson Family. Taking time off from rehab for Christmas he and some friends sat on a yacht doing more drugs and booze near Marquesas Pier. Wilson recalled this very spot was where after breaking up with his first wife he threw her mementos overboard. He wondered if he could get them back and started “pearl-diving “i.e.-diving holding your breath without any scuba equipment. But being stoned, he miscalculated the depth he had gone to and couldn't get back to the surface before he drowned. Dennis Wilson was 37. Of all the Beach Boys he was the only one who actually surfed.
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Yesterday’s Question: When George Washington entertained at Christmas, he was particularly proud of sharing something with his guests. What was it?

Answer: George Washington loved to mix the egg-nog himself and was very proud of it. He spiked it with so much liquor that people said it was an achievement if you could even finish one cup.

I don't know about you guys, but Jeez, I really need to get hammered tonight!

Drawn 15 years ago, yet eerily relevant.