FROM IMDB TODAY- The Australian animated feature Mary and Max has been chosen to open the 25th Sundance Film Festival on January 15 in Park City, UT. The claymation film, narrated by Barry Humphries, better known as Dame Edna Everage, tells the story of an 8-year-old girl who lives near Melbourne and her pen pal Max, a 44-year-old man who lives in New York City. It is the creation of Adam Elliot and Melanie Coombs, who won the animation Oscar two years ago for their Harvie Krumpet, which also screened at Sundance
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Question: What is meant by “ The Sins of Absalom”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Where does the term come from “ to pull out all the stops”?
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History for 11/21/2008
Birthdays: Francios Arouet called Voltaire, Marlo Thomas called That Girl,, Rene Magritte, Adolphe Marx called Harpo, Colman Hawkins called Bean, Stan ' called the man' Musial, Tom Horn, Pope Benedict XlV, Earl the Pearl Monroe, Goldie Hawn is 63, Harold Ramis is 64, Ken Griffey Jr, Mariel Hemingway, Lorna Luft, Troy Aikman, Bjork is 43

In the Orthodox Church, this is Feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel

1620- THE PILGRIMS LAND AT PLYMOUTH ROCK- Legend has it Mary Chilton and John Alden were the first ones to set foot upon American soil. The English religious sect after first leaving England had lived in Utrecht but the Dutch couldn't stand them either. They had set sail for Virginia but bad weather had blown them to the coast of Massachusetts. The area they were settling was some of the most densely populated Indian land in North America, but the smallpox spread by preceding European explorers had decimated the tribes, leaving entire villages empty. When the Pilgrims saw this they held a thanksgiving service in honor of: "He who prepares a way for His people by sweeping away the heathen." The Puritans landed several years later but they were a separate group who didn't like the Pilgrims. Then came the Quakers, whom neither liked.
The Plymouth Rock enshrined in modern Plymouth was identified in 1677 by an elderly survivor of the landing as the huge rock escarpment they landed on. The city fathers tried to pry it loose but only a little chunk broke off. That’s why Plymouth Rock looks pretty small for a ship to land on.

1718- BLACKBEARD THE PIRATE KILLED. William Teech from Bristol England had served on privateers fighting the French. When the war was over he went into business for himself. He grew a huge black beard, which he tied smoking cannon fuses into the ringlets to scare people. This day two sloops of Royal Marines sent from Virginia colony led by a Lieutenant Maynard RN, boarded Blackbeard’s ship when she ran aground on the coast of North Carolina. The fighting was all hand to hand. Blackbeard f went down after he was shot five times and slashed with cutlasses 25 times. Blackbeard had stationed a black boy with a lit match in the powder magazine, with orders to blow everything to hell the moment the battle was lost, but the boy was killed before he could accomplish his task. After the battle Lt. Maynard found papers proving the Royal Governors of Bermuda and North Carolina were receiving bribes from the pirates for safe harbor. Blackbeard’s head was cut off and hung it from the bowsprit for the trip home. (No one had invented foam dice yet.) They threw the rest of his corpse into the ocean where legend says it swam around the ship once before sinking. Shiver Me Timbers!

1774- Sir Robert Clive had won the great Battle of Plassey that had won India for the British Empire and avenged the Black Hole of Calcutta. But like every general since Scipio Africanis would discover, success in battle breeds jealousy at home. His London enemies pushed lawsuits alleging he used his power in Bengal to embezzle riches. Although he was acquitted of every charge the experience broke his spirit. This day under the influence of opium he committed suicide.

1794- Honolulu Harbor discovered by British explorers.


1852- The Methodist Congregation of Randolph County North Carolina charted a school called the Union Institute later renamed Trinity College. In 1924 a man named James B. Duke gave the school $20 million bucks, so they renamed it Duke University.

1864- THE BIXBY LETTER- President Abe Lincoln was moved to write a Massachusetts mother upon learning she had lost 5 sons in the Civil War. It is one of the most eloquent examples of presidential prose. “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.” The original of the letter had never been found. Mrs Bixby was not a Lincoln supporter, and may have destroyed it. It later turned out only two of her sons were killed. Two others were POWs and another a deserter.

1916- During World War One the hospital ship HMS Britanic struck a German mine in the Aegean Sea, and sank killing 30 people. What makes this sinking stand out to history, is that Britanic was the sister ship of the Titanic, that sank in 1912.

1920- Bloody Sunday- In Dublin IRA chief Michael Collins sent out his best assassination squad, nicknamed the Twelve Apostles. In the early morning of one day they rounded up and shot 20 of the top British counter terrorist police inspectors, nicknamed the Cairo Gang. In some cases they forced the inspectors wives to watch their husbands get shot. In retaliation the British paramilitaries called the Black & Tans entered a soccer stadium with an armored car during a match, and opened fire on the players and fans with machine guns. 25 were cut down.

1933- Columbia director Frank Capra went to Claudette Colbert’s home to talk her into delaying her holiday vacation long enough to star with Clark Gable in “It Happened One Night”. Colbert said she would only do it for double her normal salary and if they would be done by Dec 23rd so she could spend Christmas with friends at Squaw Valley Idaho.
They made the picture on a rush and Colbert later told her friends:” I just finished the worst picture in the world!” It Happened One Night” became a big hit for Capra, Columbia and is one of Colbert’s most memorable performances.

1934- Cole Porter's musical 'Anything Goes!' opened on Broadway. Ethel Merman starring, In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked upon as somewhat shocking. Now Heaven knows- Anything Goes!”

1942- Warner's "A Tale of Two Kitties" the first Tweety Pie. I tawt I taw a puddy cat !


1959- The day after he was fired WABC radio DJ Alan Freed refused to sign a statement that he never received cash payments or payola to run Rock & Roll records on the air, Because it is exactly what he did.

1959- Jack Benny with his violin played a comic duet with Vice President Richard Nixon on piano.

1963- President John F. Kennedy and Jackie fly into San Antonio for a swing through Texas to gather support for a possible re-election run. Tomorrow would take them to Houston for breakfast then through Dallas....

1963- Robert Stroud, the 'Birdman of Alcatraz' died behind bars at 73. Jailed in 1916 for murdering a man who beat up his girlfriend, he spent 54 years in prison, 42 in solitary confinement. His study of birds enabled him to become an expert in bird diseases, he wrote three books. Burt Lancaster played him in the movies as a tragic hero, but those who knew him said he was a morose psychopath who stabbed another inmate and murdered a guard. He was known to shave off all his body hair and drink alcohol distilled from the birdseed admirers sent him. His own mother hoped he'd never be paroled.

1964- The Verrasano Narrows Bridge opens in New York Harbor. I remember the first person through the gate was a motorcyclist who "popped a Wheelie" and tried to cross the bridge balanced on his back tire.e.

1980- Half of America watched The Who Shot J.R. episode of the TV show Dallas.

1980- Australian Olivia Newton John’s disco anthem to aerobic exercise “Let’s Get Physical ” goes to number one of the pop charts and stays there for ten weeks.

1985- Jonathan Pollard, a Navy research analyst was busted for compromising US security and passing intelligence to the Government of Israel. He got life in prison for spying. Occasionally, there is a call for leniency, because he was spying for a friendly power.

1987- Bruce Willis married Demi Moore in Las Vegas. The divorced five years later.

1989- Junk bond king Michael Milken pleads guilty to insider stock trading and 98 counts of fraud. He now does lectures on ethics in business.

1999- 90 year old writer Quentin Crisp died. The author of the Naked Civil Servant had moved from England to San Francisco to lower Manhattan- he asked a friend “I’m moving to New York, I wonder if I should first learn the language?” Another time when Quentin was accosted by young punks he retorted:” Gentlemen, do you not know you are disturbing a National Heritage? I have been declared one of the Stately Old Homos of England!” Sting wrote a song about him- Englishman in New York.
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Yesterday’s Question: Where does the term come from “ to pull out all the stops”?

Answer: When playing a pipe organ a stop is a button that restricts air flow, so pulling it out increases the volume. So pulling out all the stops means to go all in, maximum volume and maximum effort.

Question: Where does the term come from “ to pull out all the stops”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is the little plate under your teacup called a saucer?
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History for 11/20/2008
Birthdays: Robert F. Kennedy, Maya Plisetskaya, Gene Tierney, Dick Smothers, Bo Derek is 52, Sean Young is 42, Richard Dawson, Estelle Parsons, Barbera Hendricks, Duane Allman, Joe Walsh, Chester Gould the creator of Dick Tracy, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis the first baseball commissioner, Alastair Cooke, Senator Robert Byrd is 91, Ming Na, Joe Biden is 66

1601-THE GOLDEN SPEECH- Elderly Queen Elizabeth Ist had ruled England for 42 years, a time of unparalleled prosperity and peace. This day the old queen gave her farewell speech to parliament: "Though God has raised Us to the Throne the Glory of Our reign was ruling with the love of my people…… You may have had and may yet have mightier and wiser princes in this seat, but you will never have one who loved you more than I do." Elizabeth died two years later.

1620- Shortly before coming ashore in the New World, The Mayflower Compact was drawn up and signed by the 24 male Pilgrim settlers "To covenant and combine ourselves into a civile body-politick". Governor John Winthrop wrote: "We shall be a bright City upon a Hill."

1718- " Fifteen men on a Dead Man’s Chest, Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum! Even though he knew the British Navy was going to attack him tomorrow, violent buccaneer Blackbeard spent this night drinking and partying with his crew. Someone asked Blackbeard that if he died did his wife know where he had buried his treasure? Blackbeard laughed" No one but me and the Devil himself knows where it is, and the longest liver can have it all !"

Blackbeard actually enjoyed being a pirate. In the thickest of hand-to-hand fighting, amidst the blood, screams and mayhem, he could be seen smiling. Ultimate job satisfaction. Another time he made his officers sit with him in a locked cabin with smoldering pots of choking, sulphurous brimstone. He told them as they were all going to Hell anyway, it was time they got used to it.

1777- In an amazing speech in the House of Lords elderly William Pitt the Elder, Lord Chatham denounced the governments policy of trying to put down the American Revolution with military mercenaries bought in Germany."My Lords, you cannot conquer America! If I were an American as I am an Englishman, while foreign troops were landed on my soil I would never lay down my arms- never, never, never!"

1783-In Paris Benjamin Franklin is in the crowd watching the first humans go aloft in a balloon designed by the Montgolfier Brothers. For 25 minutes Piastre de Rosier and the Marquis d'Arland flew 500 feet over the Seine, sipping champagne.

1895- Beethoven’s opera Fidelio premiered. He rewrote the overture four times and still wasn’t happy with it. So he rewrote it once more and published the other four as the Leonora Overtures.

1820- In the Pacific Ocean the Nantucket whaling ship Essex was sunk by an enraged sperm whale. The whale's nickname was Mocha-Dick. Only six men survived floating on driftwood for ninety days, resorting to cannibalism before being rescued. This incident is thought to have been one of the inspirations for Herman Melville to write his novel Moby Dick.

1870- "YES , I AM A FREE LOVER!" In a speech in Steinway Hall to 3,000 people feminist Victoria Woodhull shocked polite society by declaring openly her right to her sexual freedom unfettered by law or social custom. That women had the right to own their own bodies. " To Love is a right higher than Constitution or laws!" Woodhull had made great strides by being the first woman to testify to Congress, the first to own a Wall Street Brokerage and she even ran for President in with Frederick Douglas as her running mate. But her frankness shocked polite Victorian society, especially the mainstream Suffragette parties. They distanced themselves from her. Harriet Beecher Stowe lampooned her as Mrs. Avaricious Dangereyes, Thomas Nast drew her as Mrs. Satan.

1912- Carl Warr walked into Los Angeles City Hall with 60 sticks of dynamite strapped to him. Police grab him he sets off his detonator but nothing happened. He then begged police to kill him. Warr was sensationalized in the press as The Mad Bomber.

1945- The Nuremburg War Crimes Trial convened. An international court judged 21 top Nazis including Hermann Goring, Albert Speer Joachim Von Ribbentropp and Rudolf Hess. For the first time the world learned of the methodical workings of the Holocaust.

1947-Princess Elizabeth the future Queen Elizabeth II married her cousin Prince Phillip Mountbatten of the exiled royal family of Greece.

1947- The longest running television show in history- Meet the Press, premiered. And it is still on today.

1963- two days before his assassination the House of Representatives passed a preliminary version of John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights bill. The following year his successor Lyndon Johnson pressed for complete adoption.

1963- Attorney General Robert Kennedy had a birthday party up at his house Washington D.C. suburbs called Hillsborough. There his brother President John F. Kennedy and he discussed the coming 1964 election. The President said he was looking forward to doing a campaign swing through Dallas Texas that weekend. When he left the house that night it was the last time Bobby Kennedy would ever see his brother alive.

1969- The U.S. Dept of Agriculture bans the use of the insecticide DDT.

1975- Spanish Fascist dictator Francisco Franco died at age 89, despite sleeping with the mummified arm of St. Theresa of Avila for a cure. Patriotic Spaniards start partying. Stores sold out of champagne by 10 a.m. As planned King Juan Carlos takes over and Spain converts to a constitutional monarchy.

1990- In the city of Rostov Russian police arrest Andre Chikotila, who since 1982 had raped and killed 53 women and children. Soviet police had actually picked him up in 1984 but let him go. The Communist insistence that crime was an American problem, unknown in the Soviet Union, discouraged local police from pursuing the case. This allowed Chikotila to go about his business unmolested. Chikotila confessed and was shot in 1994. In Oct.1999 a man in Columbia admitted to killing 143 children.

1994- Rock & Roll star David Crosby received a new liver.

1995- During and interview on a BBC television show Panorama Diana Princess of Wales admitted to having an affair with an army officer named James Hewitt. This was after Prince Charles admitted to his long affair with Lady Camilla Parker-Bowles. After the Princesses death Hewitt sold a juicy tell-all story to the London tabloids for half a million pounds.

1998- Several state governments and the US tobacco industry reach a landmark settlement arising from lawsuits over smoking illnesses. The trial also killed off once and for all ads featuring The Marlboro Cowboy and Joe Camel, a cartoon character that at one point was as recognizable to children as Donald Duck.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is the little plate under your teacup called a saucer?

Answer: In the Middle Ages, your dishes consisted of a common platter full of burnt meats and small dishes called saucers. They were called that because they were filled with fruit sauces to dip in, so you wouldn’t taste how bad the meat was. You didn’t have your own plate, but a large slice of bread called a trencher to catch the drippings. Afterwards you gave it to the dogs or the poor.

I found this on my friend Patrick Mate's blog. He said he didn't paint this, but his other stuff is terrific. He did the cover for Drawing the Line. And, it's fun to annoy all my conservative friends. www.patrickmateblogspot.com

For those of you who think animation during World War II was only Bugs Bunny and Popeye propaganda cartoons, many countries mobilized artists to motivate their citizens. Nancy Beiman sent me this interesting link for Soviet Era World War II animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRcBt904OJ0&feature=related

Okay comrades, let's hold the first pose a second longer then cut ten frames off the pan at the end.

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Question: Why is the little plate under your teacup called a saucer?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was the name of Duke Ellington’s first band?
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History for 11/19/2008
Birthdays: King Charles Ist of England, President James Garfield, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Roy Campanella, Tommy Dorsey, Ted Turner, Calvin Klein, Indira Ghandi, Dick Cavett, Larry King, Kathleen Quinlan, Alan Young -Mr. Ed’s friend, Ahmad Rashad, Allison Janey, Meg Ryan is 47, Jodie Foster is 46, Terry Farrell

1493- On his second voyage to the New World, this day Christopher Columbus discovered the island of Puerto Rico.

1581- Czar Ivan the Terrible got so mad at his eldest son he beat him to death with a mace. Young Ivan tried to stop his dad from beating his pregnant wife, who he thought was wearing immodest garb. In one act of blind rage Ivan extinguished his family dynasty. Clearly Ivan had some anger management issues.

1619- A young French student named Renes Descartes had enlisted in the army of Elector Maximillian of Bavaria to fight the Thirty Years War. Outside of Neuberg one evening he climbed into a stove to keep warm and there had the first of a series of revelations to invent analytical geometry and the mathematical applications of religion. Happens to me every time I climb into a stove, too. “ Cogito, Ergo Sum.” I think, therefore I am.”

1703- The "Man in the Iron Mask" died in the Bastille prison. Louis XIV had him locked up for forty years. He was first mentioned in Voltaire's History of the Age of Louis XIV as having a velvet mask, which writer Alexandre Dumas changed to iron for dramatic effect. No one ever discovered who he was or why his face was covered. Speculation was that he was everyone from an Italian diplomat, to the son of Oliver Cromwell, to a twin brother of King Louis XIV himself. It made for great literature but he remains a mystery.

1828- Composer Franz Schubert died of complications of gonnorrea at age 31.

1863- THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS-At the dedication of the soldiers cemetery on the Gettysburg battlefield, the crowd watched Rev. Edward Everett, a famous abolitionist, deliver a fiery two hour speech. Then President Abraham Lincoln stood up and in just two minutes delivered the most famous speech in U.S. History. "Forescore and Seven years ago Our Forefathers set Forth....And Government Of the People, By the People and For the People Shall Not Perish from the Earth. "
The crowd was polite but indifferent. The Times of London correspondent thought it "vague and uninspiring". Lincoln himself told his aide: "Lehman, that speech won't scowl !" meaning a plow blade that's too dull to cut. But Rev Everett was inspired “Mr. President, you said in two minutes much more than I did in two hours.” Contrary to legend Lincoln didn’t write it quickly on the back of an envelope, he worked long on his speeches and was seen doing corrections up to the last minute. There are three pencil copies of the speech still in existence. The photographer at the scene was still setting up his equipment when the brief speech ended and Lincoln started to sit down. He opened his shutter in time to get a blurry view of Lincoln's head in the crowd.

1903- Suffragette Carrie Nation tried to address the US Senate to plead for women’s voting rights and alcohol prohibition. She was barred admittance.

1915- I DREAMED I SAW JOE HILL LAST NIGHT.... Joe Hill executed in Utah- Swedish Immigrant Josef Hilstrom was a nationally known charismatic poet and union organizer. Large Utah copper mining companies that found Hill's folk song singing activism a nuisance had him convicted on trumped up murder charges. He was shot by firing squad despite pleas for clemency from President Wilson, Helen Keller and the Pope. Crowds of 10,000 marched in London and Sydney Australia for mercy for Joe Hill.

Hill's last words were:"I die as I have lived, a rebel. Don't mourn, Organize!" He stipulated in his will that his body be transported over the state line and buried in Colorado because: "I DON'T WANNA BE CAUGHT DEAD IN UTAH!" His body was cremated and the ashes sent in little envelopes to union offices across the nation.

1942-GUERILLA MICE- A curious incident during the Battle of Stalingrad. While house to house battles raged in the inner city, the main German tank forces sat quiet in fields outside since August. When the big Russian counteroffensive finally began the tanks were started up. But soon their engines began to overheat and stall. In the long weeks of waiting, field mice had crawled into the motors and ate away radiator hoses and electrical insulation. 68 of 100 tanks broke down thanks to enemy mousekis.

1945- Trying to complete the plan of social services created by Franklin Roosevelt, President Harry Truman called for National Health Insurance. It was defeated in Congress after intense lobbying by the powerful insurance and pharmaceutical companies. It would also be blocked when reintroduced later by Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Today the U.S. is the only nation in the front rank of developed nations to have no form of national health insurance.

1959-Happy Birthday Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris & Natasha. Jay Ward's television show 'Rocky and his Friends' debuts. Ward and Bill Scott had been planning the adventures of the denizens of Frostbite Falls since 1957. Many of it’s writers like Alan Burns and producer Sheldon Leonard would later help create classic television sitcoms like the Mary Tyler Moore show.

1961- Michael Rockefeller, the son of tycoon Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared in the jungles of New Guinea.

1969- The great soccer champion Pele scored his 1,000 goal.

1988- Billionaire heiress daughter of Aristotle Onassis-Christine Onassis, died of heart failure at age 37.

1998- Film Director Alan J. Pakula was one of the Hollywood community who preferred living in New York City. This day he was driving on the Long Island Expressway when he was killed in a freak accident. A large truck kicked up in its tires a discarded piece of steel pipe. It flipped it through Pakula’s windshield, killing him instantly.

2002- HOMELAND SECURITY. Reacting to the 9-11 attack Congress approved President Bush’s plan for a cabinet level position called the Department of Homeland Security. This branch would concentrate the activities of US Customs & Immigration, FEMA, The Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies. It seemed to be a way to finally get the FBI, CIA and NSA to work together and share info. Up to now not even their e-mail was compatible.

Despite insisting the new organization was vital to all Americans’ safety, the Bush White House stubbornly refused to sign any bill that did not first bar new employees from joining the Gov’t Employees Service Union, like every other office worker in D.C.. Never mind Al Qaeda, what about paying time and a half after 8 hours?!

By 2006 Homeland Security mucked up the Hurricane Kartrina disaster and it’s fourth ranking executive was busted by Polk County Fla police for soliciting sex from a 14 year old with leukemia.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was the name of Duke Ellington’s first band?

Answer: The Washingtonians. ( Thanks to Oscar Grillo)

I attended a screening of Waltzing with Bashir by Ari Folman the other night. A pretty powerful, intense work. Well done technique and art direction.

Some asked me, would it have been better had it had been done in live action?

I thought about it, and I think this way is more interesting. Since 1982 the events covered have been in mainstream media, ignored or glossed over. Some films that protest "why?" can get too preachy. Witness how in the last two years, every live action movie with an Gulf War theme has flopped at the box office. In Waltzing, the violence in a graphic novel look is somehow more digestable, almost subversive in it's restraint, like a videogame, or like doing the Holocast as mice in MAUS.

One point...Normally I'm a snob about subtitles, but for this film it would be worth doing a dubb version into English. I found I wanted to study the visuals, but I didn't want to miss any of the dialogue. The effort proved a little distracting.

Like Persepolis last year, it is a great step forward for the medium of animation being accepted as a mature storytelling medium. We in the industry always knew it could, but films like this help change the general public's perception of animation as just baby-sitter material.


See it, But don't go expecting Chip & Dale.

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Question: What was the name of Duke Ellington’s first band?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Early TV star Danny Thomas “ Make Room for Daddy” had been a nightclub entertainer before. Many of those celebrities were of Jewish ancestry. Was Danny Thomas Jewish?
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History for 11/18/2008
Birthdays: Armelita Galli-Curci, Karl Maria Von Weber, W.S. Gilbert, Johnny Mercer,
Astronaut Alan Shepard, Louis Daguerre, Brenda Vaccarro, Eugene Ormandy, George Gallup, Warren Moon, Pam Dawber, Delroy Lindo, Owen Wilson is 40, Chloe Servigny is 34

500 A.D.- Today is the Feast day of the Irish Saint Mawes, who was born in a barrel floating in the sea.

1602- In Transylvania, 22 year old English soldier of fortune Capt. John Smith killed three Turkish warriors in single combat. Such single matches were customary before a large battle. The Voivode or Duke of Transylvania, Sigmund Bathory, granted Smith a coat of arms with three Turkish heads. This is the same John Smith who will go to Virginia and meet Pocahontas in 1607.

1718- Francois Voltaire’s first major work, the play Oedipe, premiered in Paris.

1863- Abraham Lincoln boarded a train to Gettysburg to deliver “a few appropriate remarks” to dedicate the new national cemetery there.

1865 Mark Twain's first story "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' published.

1883- Congress divided the United States into standard time zones corresponding to timetables set by the railroads.

1902- THE TEDDY BEAR BORN-The Washington Evening Star published a story of how President Teddy Roosevelt while hunting couldn't bring himself to shoot a grizzly bear cub. Cartoonist Cliff Berryman illustrated the incident with one of his signature “dingbat” bear cubs. Brooklyn toymaker Morris Mitchcom sewed dolls from the illustration in the newspaper, and sent the first one to the White House.



1914- SABOTAGE - A secret message was sent out by Imperial German Naval Command to all diplomatic embassies to begin sabotage operations of war material being readied in America and Canada for shipment to England.
Bombs exploding in cargo ships and warehouses in New York, Boston and Baltimore became familiar sights. In one incident called the “Black Tom” pier explosion detonated two million pounds of explosive on a Jersey City wharf. The blast cracked windows on Wall St. and damaged the arm of the Statue of Liberty.
The success of German spies in the U.S. before America's entry into World War One sparked the buildup of a little known government office called the F.B.I. and the strict domestic counterintelligence work done in World War Two.

1928- HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICKEY MOUSE- At the Colony Theater in New York Walt Disney’s cartoon "Steamboat Willie" debuted- The first major sound cartoon success and the official birth of Mickey Mouse. Two earlier silent Mickey's had been done, but they were held back when the sound experiment went ahead.

1942-The KEYES RAID- The British army in North Africa had had enough of their German adversary Rommel the Desert Fox, so they sent a suicide commando mission to the Afrika Korps HQ just to kill him. Desert warfare was so porous the front lines were virtually non-existent. Unfortunately, Rommel was far away in Rome the night 50 British and Australian commandos shot up his offices.

1953- Singer Frank Sinatra had been having trouble with his sputtering career and his crumbling marriage to screen sex goddess Ava Gardner. This day songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen found Old Blue Eyes on his bathroom floor with his wrists slashed. Heusen bound his wounds then called his agent rather than the police. Sinatra recovered and soon his career revived and he had a new marriage. His subsequent rough use of women afterwards, calling them “broads” and using and discarding them may have come as a reaction to his rough treatment in the soft hands of La Gardner.

1963-The first push button telephones go into service.

1964- In a public statement to the press FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called Dr. Martin Luther King “The most notorious liar in the country!” This in response to the criticism Dr. King made that the FBI wasn’t trying hard enough to track down the murderers of civil rights workers. Hoover always believed Dr. King and the whole NAACP were communists.

1978- JONESTOWN- After visiting U.S. congressman Leo Ryan and his party were murdered, 912 American members of the Rev. Jim Jones cult in Jonestown Guiana commit suicide, many drinking from tubs of Kool Aid, spiked with cyanide.

1985- Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin & Hobbs debuted.
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Question: Early TV star Danny Thomas “ Make Room for Daddy” had been a nightclub entertainer before. Many of those celebrities were of Jewish ancestry. Was Danny Thomas Jewish?

Answer: He was Lebanese Catholic. He was born Amos Alphonsus Muzyad Yaqoob in Deerfield Michigan of Lebanese immigrant parents. His stage name came from Danny and Thomas, the names of his brothers.

where's Uncle Tonoosh?