Quiz: Who invented television?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who were the Paladins?
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History for 6/12/2008
Birthdays: Egon Scheile, John Roebling the architect of the Brooklyn Bridge, Uta Hagen, Chick Corea, Jim Nabors, Vic Damone, Irwin Allen, Arthur Fellig-better known as Weegee, Sherry Stringfield, Former President George Herbert Walker Bush or George Ist is 83, if Anne Frank had survived she would be 78 today, my buddy Richard Sherman the composer of the Mary Poppins music is 80 today!

1192- King Richard Lionheart stood on a hilltop overlooking the Holy City of Jerusalem. Lionheart had been campaigning in Palestine for a year. The other Crusader leaders had gone home, leaving him with too weak a force to capture the city. On the hilltop he covered his eyes with his shield and refused to look, saying he could not bear to see the Holy City in chains. Salladin was having problems of his own with unruly vassals and lukewarm support for the Jihad. But when he got the news that the Christians were withdrawing from Jerusalem to the coast. The Third Crusade had spent itself, and Salladin had won.

1733- King Frederick William I had his son Crown Prince Frederick married to Princess Elizabeth Christine of Bavaria. Despite his being gay Frederick the Great did his royal duty and tried to sire some heirs, after which he and his wife kept separate households. Later as King when asked if he ever spoke with the Queen, King Frederick replied:" You see, the problem is, my wife has the intelligence of a duck."

1936- Cooperstown's Baseball Hall of Fame dedicated on the supposed 100th anniversary of Abner Doubleday inventing baseball. We now know that date to be fiction but it was a good party anyway. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson were the first inductees. Doubleday was a Civil War general and the composer of the bugle call "Taps", first called General Doubleday’s Lullaby.

1942- On her birthday Anne Frank was given a diary.

1949- The first LA parking ticket.

1952- Chief auto designer for Chevrolet Maurice Olley completed work on a sports car originally code named the Opel but later released as the 1952 Corvette.

1962-Edward M. Gilbert, the "Boy Wizard of Wall Street," loses $23 million for his firm E.L. Bruce Flooring, then embezzles $2 million more and escaped to Brazil.

1962- In Modesto California a teenage film student named George Lucas was almost killed in a car accident.

1963- Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was shot and killed by a high powered rifle in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. His killer, Klansman Bryan del la Beckwith was not convicted until 1994.

1963- Twentieth Century Fox released the Elizabeth Taylor -Richard Burton epic CLEOPATRA. Costing $44 million,- 285 million in modern money, four times more than the average film – the next most expensive Ben Hur cost $15 million , it remains in comparable dollars the costliest flop in film history. The cast was put up at the swankiest hotels in Rome for months of shooting and La Taylor had to have her chili from Chasens restaurant in Beverly Hills flown in. Director Joe Mankewicz said "Cleopatra was the toughest three pictures I ever made!" Fox had to cut 2,000 jobs and almost went bankrupt. The area of LA known as Century City with its huge shopping mall used to be Fox ‘s backlot before Cleopatra. When Liz Taylor saw the finished film she threw up.
On the plus side Andy Warhol said Cleopatra was the most influential movie of the 1960s because suddenly every woman had to have heavy black eyeliner, light lipstick and Egyptian style straight bobbed hair.

1994- Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, pizza delivery guy Ron Brown, were savagely murdered with a knife. Nicole’s throat was cut so deeply her head was almost decapitated. Brown was there returning Mrs. Simpson’s glasses from her dinner at the Brentwood restaurant Mezzaluna. The only suspect seems to remain her estranged husband O.J. Simpson, actor, Football of Fame member and Heisman Trophy winner. O.J. Simpson was acquitted in his murder trial but convicted in a wrongful death suit brought by Nicole’s family. Another suspect has never been found.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who were the Palladins?

Answer:
The Palladins were the legendary knights of Charlemagne's court, Roland, Oliver
and Ogier the Dane. They were celebrated in Medieval literature as much as the Knights of the Round Table.

Now Baby Boomers: com’on, I’ll bet you remember the 1960’s TV show about the western gunfighter who wore all black and was named Palladin? It was Richard Boone, and the show was Have Gun Will Travel. Palladin’s calling card was a playing card with a knight’s horsehead chess piece on it.

Dick Williams has a new website up with lots of neat bells and whistles. Check it out.

http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/

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Quiz: Who were the Paladins?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why are bad guys called thugs?
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History for 6/11/2008
Birthdays: Ben Johnson, Richard Strauss, Jacques Cousteau, Nelson Mandela, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Joe Montana, John Constable, Gustav Courbet, Vince Lombardi, Adrienne Barbeau, William Styron, Chad Everett, race car driver Jackie Stewart, Gene Wilder is 75, Shia LaBoeuf is 22

1809- The Pope excommunicated Napoleon. "Good," he said, "This will bring me even more followers."

1928 - Alfred Hitchcock's 1st film, "The Case Of Jonathan Drew," is released

1934- the first Mandrake the Magician comic strip.

1936- Shy, quiet, 30 year old Texas writer Robert E. Howard had created the macho warriors Conan the Barbarian, Kull and single handedly defined the genre we call Sword & Sorcery. This day after he learned his mother was dying and would never regain consciousness, he went into his garage and blew his brains out. Some say he had an Oedipal fixation, others that he always intended to end his life and was waiting to spare his mother the pain. On his typewriter he left a short message: "All fled, all done, so lift me upon the pyre. The feast is over and let the lamps expire."

1937 –" Getta’ yu tutsie-frutsie Ice-a Creem!"the Marx Brothers' "A Day At The Races" premiered.

1939 – President Franklin Roosevelt hosted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the White House. There the rulers of the British Empire ate Hot Dogs for the first time. Whether they in turn gave FDR some Marmite is an open question.

1964 - Chicago police break up a Rolling Stones press conference.

1964 - Manfred Mann recorded Do Wah Diddy Diddy

1966 - "Paint It, Black" by The Rolling Stones peaks at #1

1966 - Janis Joplin played her 1st gig in San Francisco.

1972- THE MOST PROFITABLE FILM IN HISTORY. The film Deep Throat premiered. The first full length blockbuster porn film. The film was shot in just three days, by an ex-hairdresser turned director. It cost $22,500 to make and grossed $600 million. It became a counterculture cause celebre. Frank Sinatra screened a print for Vice President Spiro Agnew. Star Linda Lovelace later disavowed her career and claimed she did the sex scenes under duress from her husband Chuck Trainor. She died in a car accident in the 1982. Today the term Linda Syndrome denotes former porn actresses who try to deny their past.

1977 - Main Street Electrical Parade premiered at Disneyland.

1979- John Wayne died after a long struggle with cancer. Many believed his condition began as a result of filming the movie "The Conquerer" near the Nevada Atomic Test site. Half the crew of that film including all the stars and director died of cancer. When Wayne made a final appearance at the Academy Awards two months earlier he had purchased a small size tuxedo to hide his emaciated frame, but he was still too thin even then so he filled it out by wearing a scuba wetsuit underneath

1984- In the freewheeling economy of the 1980’s tycoons conducted hostile takeovers of companies by buying a majority of their stock on margin. When Wall Street corporate raider Saul Steinberg announced he intended to target the ailing Walt Disney Company for takeover CEO Ron Miller paid him $23 million just to make him go away. The Disney shareholders are outraged at this payment of "greenmail’ and demanded Miller’s resignation, which some say was exactly as Roy Disney had planned.

1987- Margaret Thatcher was re-elected to a second term as Britain’s Prime Minister.
See? so, don't blame us about re-electing Bush!

1987- Britain noted the first outbreak of Mad Cow Disease.

1993 –Steven Speilberg’s "Jurassic Park" opened. The film set a box office record of $931 million. It was begun with modelers and puppeteers about to do the dinosaurs with clay and beeswax. But after seeing tests using the new 3D CGI –computer graphic imaging software, Steven ordered all of ILM to do it digitally. Jurassic Park clinched the digital takeover of Hollywood and set the standard for future special effects.

2004- The state funeral for former President Ronald Reagan. The Great Communicator was the oldest chief executive to hold office, the first president to be divorced, to lead a labor strike, to tell former hippies it was time to wear Armani suits, and the first to get Alzheimers. The largest state funeral since Lyndon Johnson in 1973. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Hoover and Nixon preferred private ceremonies.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why are bad guys called thugs?

Answer: In India since the 13oos, there was a murder cult called Thugee. They strangled their victims with a bright yellow ritual scarf called a Rumaal. The Thugs were violently suppressed by the British Imperialists in the 1830s, and the word passed into common British slang.

Thugs were the bad guys in the Hollywood film Gunga Din, with Sam Jaffee, old Hollywood's all purpose ethnic person, in the title role

Congratulations to my student Shih-Ting Hung of USC for winning the Gold prize at the Student Academy Awards for her film Viola: The Traveling Rooms of a Little Giant

Congratulations also to my UCLA student Melissa Graziano for winning Best of Prom for her film Love on the Line at the Prom 2008 held at the workshop last week.

Congratulations also to the Kung Fu Panda gang for winning big-ass box-office bucks this past weekend.



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Quiz: Why are bad guys called thugs?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What are the modern names of these cities? Peking, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Salisbury Rhodesia?
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History for 6/10/2008
Birthdays: Charles James Stuart the Old Pretender, Yamaoka Tesshu (1832- Japanese swordsman), Saul Bellow, Judy Garland, Hattie McDaniel, Frederick Loewe (of Lerner & Loewe),Bob Cummings-Love that Bob! F. Lee Bailey, Howlin’ Wolf, Dan Fouts, Maurice Sendak, Gina Gershon is 46, Leilee Sobieski is 25, Jean Triplehorn is 45, Jurgen Prochnow, John Edwards, Britain’s Prince Phillip, Elizabeth Hurley is 43

1682- English colonists in Connecticut observed a phenomenon unique to the Americas, a dark windstorm taking the form of a funnel. The first recorded Tornado.

1750- Francois Voltaire accepted the invitation of King Frederick the Great of Prussia to come live at his court. French King Louis XV commented : “ Now there will be one less nut in Versailles and one more nut in Berlin.” The friendship between Frederick and Voltaire is fascinating- night after night over dinner, the enlightened gay despot matched wits with the commoner who was the greatest philosophical mind of the century. When Voltaire argued that the world would be better off with no religion or belief in God King Frederick retorted:” But my dear Voltaire, if you did away with God, then common people would raise statues to you and pray to them.” At times Voltaire’s arguments would get Frederick so angry that the Frenchman would flee fearing for his life. Frederick ordered the borders closed and sent a troop of cavalry to drag him back, so they could finish their arguement.

1752- BEN FRANKLIN FLIES HIS KITE- The wizard of Philadelphia was not the actual discoverer of electricity, Leyden Jars and Volta's experiments predate him. He did make the connection between lightning and electric currents and created the lightning rod and the first electric battery. He didn't tell anyone about the kite experiment until 15 years later for fear people would think him a silly fellow. There’s a famous painting of Ben with his kite being assisted by his young child William. In actuality William was about thirty at the time and during the Revolution he became Royalist Governor of New Jersey and couldn’t stand his old man.

1776- The great English actor David Garrick went on stage for the last time, playing in a benefit for the Decayed Actor’s Fund. Hmm, I wonder if could start a Decayed Animator’s Fund….

1847 –The Chicago Tribune begins publishing.

1860- The Comstock Lode- Near Virginia City Nevada Two grubstake miners, one named Old Pancake McGaughlin hit a vein of silver so big and pure that it will eventually yield $300 million dollars worth of ore and make millionaires of men like William Randolph Hearst's father.

1865- Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde premiered in Munich. To meet the demands of Wagners music the orchestra needed to be so much larger than usual that they had to take out the first two rows of seats to enlarge the orchestra pit. Conductor Franz Von Bulow , whose wife Cosima was busy schtupping Maestro Wagner at the time, committed a brilliant blunder when he announced within earshot of the news reporters:"Take out the seats! One or two extra schweinhunts won't matter!" Not the way to get good reviews..

1910- The first Krazy Kat comic strip- Cartoonist George Herriman was doing a strip for Hearst called "The Family Upstairs". He was amused at the idea of a friendship between a cat and a mouse. So Herriman put them in the corner playing marbles while the family quarreled. First an office boy and later editor Arthur Brisbane suggested they have their own strip. The immortality of the denizens of Coconino County follows, loved by the likes of H.L.Mencken, e.e.cummings and Jacques Kerouac. Krazy herself explains:"It's wot's behind me that I am."

1926- Artist Antonio Gaudi was run over by a streetcar while crossing in front of his famous cathedral in Barcelona. Begun in 1886 The Cathedral Sacreda Familia is still scheduled for completion- in the year 2035.

1939 - Barney Bear, cartoon character, by MGM, debuts

1944- A USO troop was entertaining soldiers in Normandy from the back of a truck but they needed a piano player. They called out to the audience if anyone could play. A shy cattle rancher’s son from Modesto California came up and played so well his colonel ordered him out of the line to form his own G.I. band. Dave Breubeck’s jazz career began.

1945- General Eisenhower was given a massive ticker tape parade down Broadway in New York City. Looking down on Ike from an office building 20 floors up, was a rumpled Navy Reserve Second Lieutenant named Richard Nixon.

1947- Sweden’s Saab motorcar company introduced it’s first model car. Saab in neutral Sweden had made planes and tanks for World War Two, but after the war was over they recognized that combat was not a growth industry and they switched to autos.

1948- Chuck Yeager exceeds the speed of sound in the Bell XS-1 Glamorous Glennis.

1948- THE JOHNSON CITY WINDMILL- Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson was trying to win a senate seat from Texas but he was lagging far behind a popular ex-governor named Coke Stevenson. So he hit upon a novel way of campaigning. He hired a helicopter and barnstormed the rural towns and districts of the Texas hill country. People came out just to see the newfangled flying machine land and take off and this gave Johnson a captive audience. They nicknamed it the Johnson City Flying Windmill. Johnson also mounted a massive outlay of posters and pamphlets. LBJ told his staff:” Ah don’t want a voter to wipe his ass with a piece of paper that ain’t got my face on it!” He pulled even to Stevenson and with a little extra ballot box skullduggery won the election.

1957- “Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog” cartoon debuts on the Captain Kangaroo show.

1980- Comedian Richard Pryor had been doing so much cocaine even his dealers were worried about him. This day, while trying to freebase he exploded in flame, and ran screaming down his street. Another version of the story said he tried to commit suicide by pouring tequila on himself and setting it alight. During his long recovery in the Sherman Oaks burn unit his nurse once put on the news and he watched CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite report his death. `He thought to himself: "If Walter Cronkite said I died, it must be true !" He recovered but developed Muscular Dystrophy in the late 1990s.

1995-110,000 people jam Central Park in New York to see Disney's Pocahontas, the largest audience ever to attend a single movie premiere.
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Yesterday’s Question: What are the modern names of these cities? Peking, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Salisbury Rhodesia?

Answer: Beijing, St Petersburg, Volgograd, Harare Zimbabwe.

In recent times I find myself writing much more than drawing. Currently, I have two book projects under way and have written several scripts. Seems strange for a person who has been a professional artist for so many years.

Those who know me, know I have always had a penchant for telling stories. All artists are storytellers of a kind. Art Babbitt used to say it's all about expressing thoughts from my heart to yours.

But it's funny how it's taken me so long to finally getting around to it. Now, I find as my silver hair advances, writing comes very easily. Perhaps it is the transition from the active life to the contemplative. Maybe I had to have a certain number of years under my belt before I could see things clearly in retrospect. Like Xenophon the pupil of Socrates and friend of Plato who became a general, but is known for his written memoirs of his life Oeneaomicus and the March of Ten Thousand, written in a late age. In Rabbinical Law, they say you could not teach about life until you have lived.

Or maybe it's just Spellcheck. I was always a lousy speller!

I know many who have been writing since a young age. I envy their skill and imagination. But in the end, everyone follows their own path.

The message for you, dear reader, is there is always time to change gears if you wish. If you want to write, write. If you want to draw, draw. Life is like a big XIX Russian novel, and everyone wants to check ahead to the last page and see where you wind up. As Tacitus told his friend Pliny the Younger:"But let us continue along the road we have followed, for if it lifts few to the full light of fame, it brings many out from the shades of obscurity."

Just don't give up your day job! Now if you excuse me, I have a storyboard to draw.

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Question: What are the modern names of these cities? Peking, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Salisbury Rhodesia?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What are the old names of these cities? Yangon, Mumbai, Ho Chi Minh City?
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History for 6/9/2008
Birthdays: Ernesto "Che" Guevara- Serna, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cole Porter, John Bartlett of Bartletts Familiar Quotations, Boy George O’Dowd, Les Paul, Burl Ives, Lash LaRue,Robert MacNamara, Major Bowes, Carl Neilsen, Donald Trump, Jerzy Kosinski, Pierre Salinger, Steffy Graff, Marvin Kalb, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, physicist who formulated Coulomb's Law, Dr. Alois Alzheimer, Aaron Sorkin, Michael J. Fox is 47, Johnny Depp is 45, Natalie Portman is 27

68 AD- " Oh, what an artist dies in me!" Roman Emperor Nero committed suicide.

1358- The Massacre of Meaux. In a France already ravaged by the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, a violent peasant revolt broke out called the Jacquerie -Poor Jacques. On this day two top knights, one from the English side and one from the French- Gaston Phoebus and the Captal De Buch, took time out from their war to join forces and chop up dozens of rebellious peasants in the town of Meaux. Phoebus later became a character in Hugo's novel the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

1798- Napoleon's fleet, on the way to Egypt, stops to attack the strategic island of Malta. The keepers of the Island fortress, the once valiant Knights of Malta, had become so stodgy and decrepit that the French easily burst in. When Napoleon inspected the massive defense works, capable of holding an attacker at bay for months, he said: " This conquest is embarrassing." After the Napoleonic Wars Britain took over Malta until the 1950's. The Knights went from an order of warrior-monks, to a jet-set club, with members like Prince Rainier and Sir Frank Sinatra and charity work like Saint John's Ambulance.

1834 - Sandpaper patented by Isaac Fischer Jr., Springfield, Vermont

1860- DIME NOVELS & PULP FICTION. Mr. Erastus Beadle (don’t you love 19th century names?) published the first dime novel, Maleska, Indian Wife of the White Hunter by Anna Stephens. Sometimes called the Penny Dreadfulls, pocket-sized stories printed on cheap pulp paper became popular reading. They fantasized the West, extolling two-gun chivalry and virtuous maidens, roaring desperadoes and wild savages. This early form of mass media made celebrities out of fringe yahoos like Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid and Belle Starr.

1918- Louella Parsons began her Hollywood Gossip column in the LA Examiner. Louella became one of the most powerful and widely read columnists in Hollywood’s golden age. Agents called her column " The House that Fear Built." Stories say Louella got as much pull as she did in the Hearst newspaper empire for helping cover up the death of director Thomas Ince and also trying to stifle the release of Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane.

1920- King George V dedicated the new Imperial War Museum, comprising artifacts from the recently concluded Great War. In 1936, the War museum moved to its present home in the former building of the infamous mental asylum, Bedlam.

1930- Chicago Tribune reporter Jack Lingle was shot and killed by Al Capone’s hoods. The hit was done right in broad daylight on Michigan Ave and Randolph St at the Illinois Central underpass at the height of rush hour. It was first thought that Lingle was going to do some kind of courageous crusading journalist expose, but Big Al had him rubbed out because he welched on a $100,000 gambling debt.

1934- Happy Birthday Donald Duck! Walt Disney's short cartoon"The Little Wise Hen".

1934- The film the Thin Man with William Powell, Myrna Loy and Asta the dog.

1938 - Chlorophyll isolated by Benjamin Grushkin

1938 - Dorothy Lathrop wins the 1st Caldecott Medal for outstanding childrens books.

1941- First day shooting on the film, the Maltese Falcon. It was John Huston’s first directorial effort and the budget Warner Bros gave them was so cheap, Humphrey Bogart had to provide his own wardrobe.

1950- After all appeals fail the first of the Hollywood Ten, screenwriters Dalton Trumbo, Philip Dunne, Alvah Bessie, Waldo Salt, Edward Dymtytrk, David Ogden Stewart, Ring Lardner and John Howard Lawson are sentenced to prison. In the L.A. Municipal Jail one felon greeted the leftist writers with a smile and said: "Hi Ya, Hollywood Kids!”

1976 – Chuck Barris’ the" Gong Show" premiered. Where’s Jean-Jean the Dancing Machine?

1992- Congress passed the Internet Communications Act, opening up the Internet to the public. The act was sponsored by Tenn Senator Al Gore, hence the claim that he was one of the inventors of the Internet. At this time,only defense contractors had been using it, the Internet had 50 websites; by 2000, it had 77 million websites, now in the hundreds of millions.

2160 - Montgomery Edward Scott, called Scotty or Mr. Scott, born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the engineer of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek. “ Cap’n, Ah dunno know how much more the engines can take!”
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What are the old names of these cities? Yangon, Mumbai, Ho Chi Minh City?

Answer: Rangoon, Bombay, Saigon

Quiz: What are the old names of these cities? Yangon, Mumbai, Ho Chi Minh City?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does Gung-Ho mean?
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History for 6/8/2008
Birthdays: Robert Schumann, Frank Lloyd Wright, Barbara Bush, Admiral David Dixon Porter, Leroy Neiman, Joan Rivers is 75, Emmanuel Ax, Alexis Smith, Nancy Sinatra, Boz Scaggs, Jerry Stiller, Dana Wynter, British cricketeer Ray Illingsworth, Juliana Margulies, Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) is 50. Gary Trousedale the codirector of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, is 47

452AD- Attila the Hun invades Italy.

1786- A New York newspaper advertised a Mr. Hall was now selling the Italian confection called Iced Cream. First reference to Ice Cream in the United States.

1809- American Revolutionary writer Thomas Paine died. His last words were when his chubby doctor said: " Your belly diminishes." Paine smiled and replied: "And yours augments." Paine was an English immigrant who had been living in American for one year when the Revolution broke out.

1869- Chicago native Mr. Ives McGaffey was given a patent for a “sweeping machine that utilizes the power of air suction” the Vacuum cleaner.

1886- King Ludwig II, ruler of the second largest independent German State, Bavaria, was declared legally insane by his cabinet and put under arrest. Ludwig the Mad bankrupted his treasury building wild anachronistic castles like Neuschwanstein and the Blue Grotto and Richard Wagner’s concert hall at Bayreuth. Ironically, today, these buildings are among the main tourist attractions in Germany.

1889 –The Red Car cable cars begin service in LA.

1889 - Start of the Sherlock Holmes Adventure "Boscombe Valley Mystery"

1892- Bob Ford, the man who killed Jesse James ten years earlier, was running a saloon in the Colorado silver mining country. A man named Ed Kelly came up behind him and said: "Oh, Bob?" As Ford turned around, Kelly let loose with both barrels of his shotgun.
Ford had just come from a Church where he donated money to bury a local saloon girl. He had written on his donation " Charity Covereth Up a Multitude of Sins..."

1900 - Start of Sherlock Holmes story the "Adventure of 6 Napoleons"

1912- Carl Laemmle forms Universal Pictures Studio.

1942 - Bing Crosby recorded "Silent Night".

1942-In a private meeting at the White House President Franklin Roosevelt asked movie mogul Jack Warner to make a movie showing our new ally the Soviet Union to the American people in a positive light. The movie “ MISSION TO MOSCOW” starring Walter Huston put a rosy glow on Stalin’s regime and even made excuses for his genocidal political purges. After the war and FDR’s death, angry conservative politicians conducting the House un-American Activities Committee went after Warner Bros over MISSION TO MOSCOW. Everyone who worked on the film got in trouble and had to apologize.

1946- Bob Clampett's cartoon 'Kitty Kornered' ,the first Sylvester the Cat cartoon ,debuted. "I like cheese...SMACK!" AHH,I think I've got it! The cheese? SMACK!

1948 - "Milton Berle Show" Uncle Miltie- premiered on NBC TV.

1950- Universal pictures released 'Winchester '73', the first film in which the star James Stewart negotiated for a back end percentage of the profits. Stewart's agent was Lew Wasserman, the head of MCA and mentor of Steven Speilberg.

1954- During the Army-McCarthy Anti-Communist hearings, in front of a live television audience, attorney Joseph Walsh takes apart Senator Joseph McCarthy for stooping to accuse a junior law partner in Walsh’s office for once belonging to a socialist organization. Walsh’s dramatic cry gained national prominence “ Finally Senator, have you no shred of decency?” McCarthy was censured by Congress and was politically finished.

1962- Twentieth Century Fox fired starlet Marilyn Monroe for her erratic druggy behavior on the set of “Something’s Got to Give”and cancelled the picture. Monroe went into a tailspin that would lead to her suicide four weeks later. Even after her death Fox then sued her estate for $80,000.

1968 - Rolling Stones release "Jumpin' Jack Flash".

1969 - "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," last airs. The show was cancelled by CBS, not for bad ratings, but because its format highlighted liberal and anti-Vietnam War performers like Buffy Saint-Marie, Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. Producer Tommy Smothers was constantly battling nervous network executives to let Seeger sing songs like “Big Muddy” a direct criticism of U.S. war policy. Finally when former President Lyndon Johnson personally called CBS chief Bill Paley to complain, the show was yanked. When writer/singer Mason Williams learned the Smothers Brothers Show was canceled, he planned to make an enormous pie to throw at the eye logo on the CBS building, but they threatened to sue him for trespassing if he actually staged the stunt...

1983 – The films "Trading Places," & "Gremlins," premiered.

1984-Ivan Reitmans’ film "Ghostbusters" premiered. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, West German politicians tried to get the wildly partying crowd to sing the national anthem Deutschlandlied. But they got drowned out by the crowd happily singing “Who Ya Gonna Call? GHOST-BUSTERS!!”

1984- Donald Duck officially became a member of the Screen Actors Guild- SAG.

1986- NBC was bought by General Electric. David Letterman joked about now having to interview toaster ovens on his show.

1998- the President of Nigeria, General Sani Abacha, died during a Viagra reinforced assignation with three prostitutes.

2002- Forest Service ranger Terri Barton was trying to burn a letter from her estranged husband. The blaze she started became the Haywood Fire, the worst forest fire in Colorado history. The fire destroyed 103,000 acres and almost burned down the city of Denver.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does Gung-Ho mean?

Answer: In 1938 Lt Col. Evans Carlson saw the Chinese guerrillas resisting the Japanese invasion, had a motto in Mandarin Gong Hao or Gunghe meaning “ Everyone Together”, When he was training the 2nd US Marine Rangers, Carlson’s Raiders, in the tactics he learned, he adopted the motto. It became the motto of the Marines, meaning Can Do! So when you say someone is real Gung ho, it means they are anxious or inspired to begin an assignment.