Quiz: When he was a Navy fighter pilot in World War Two, what was the nickname George Herbert Walker Bush, was given by his squadron mates?

Quiz: Did they use computers in World War II?
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History for 5/29/2008
Birthdays: King Charles II Stuart (the "Merry Monarch"), John F. Kennedy, J.G. Chesterton, Patrick Henry, Oswald Spengler, T.H.White, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Josef Von Sternberg, LaToya Jackson, John Hinckley Jr., Al Unser Jr., Beatrice Lilly, Danny Elfman, Annette Benning, Melissa Etheridge, Rupert Everett, Bob Hope

1453- CONSTANTINOPLE CONQUERED BY THE TURKS- Sultan Mohammed II the "Scourge of Christendom" captured the capitol of the old Byzantine Empire. His great cherry wood cannons firing giant stone balls blew great holes in the city walls, proving the end of castles as serious defenses. When he knew the battle was lost the Last Eastern Emperor of the Romans, Constantine XI Paleologus sallied out sword in hand and went down fighting. His body was identified out of a pile of corpses only by the bejeweled purple slippers. As Mohammed II rode into the city in triumph he recited a Persian poem:" A spider weaves it's web in the palace of the Caesars, a shadow falls over the House of Amonhasarib". Legend has it that when he entered the great Basilica of Hagia Sophia he put is finger in a magic hole and caused the entire building to rotate and face Mecca. (?!) The Byzantine Empire’s fall did have one beneficial effect on Western Europe. All the fleeing Greek scholars and scientists with their arms full of the works of Plato and Aristotle would settle in European capitols and help spark the Renaissance.

1606- Michel Caravaggio the artist shot a man over a tennis match. Caravaggio was a mad-artist before the term was invented. The police records of Rome show the master painter constantly in trouble, seducing man, woman and child, throwing rocks at soldiers, stabbing waiters, etc.

1692- The Battle of La Hogue- Great naval battle when the French fleet of Admiral de Tourville was ordered by Louis XIV to attack an Anglo-Dutch navy despite being heavily outnumbered. The French admiral did a brilliant job but lost anyway, and the French monarch turned his back on the navy, abandoning supremacy of the seas to England.
Once considered the most important naval engagement until Trafalgar, La Hogue is now mostly remembered on cheap framed prints of naval battle paintings you see hanging in doctor’s waiting rooms.

1765 - Patrick Henry historic speech against the Stamp Act, answering a cry
of "Treason!" with, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

1856- THE LOST SPEECH- Former Congressman Abraham Lincoln was called upon to deliver the adjournment speech to the convention inaugurating the new Illinois Republican Party. He had decided to abandon his strategy of mincing words about slavery and “hit it hard.”Lincoln delivered what many regarded as the best speech of his life, a speech better than the Gettysburg Address or “ With Malice Towards None” the Second Inaugural. And maddeningly for history we have no record of what he said. The newspapermen jotting it down shorthand were so amazed by what they heard that they stopped writing, confident they could share the notes of another later. Even Abe’s close friend Herndon, who was a prodigious note taker, gave up after fifteen minutes, admitting he “threw pen and paper away and was swept up in the inspiration of the hour”. The speech made Lincoln one of the rising stars of the party yet we don’t know anything he said that night.

1859 –Illinois Congressman Abe Lincoln says in a better documented occasion "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of time, but you can't fool all of the people all of time"

1908- Teddy Roosevelt signed the first ban on child labor in the U.S.

1911 -The first running of the Indianapolis 500

1912- 15 young women were fired by the Curtis Publishing Company for dancing "Turkey Trot" during their lunch break.

1914-THE COLONEL REDL AFFAIR- In the years before World War One the Great Powers of Europe spent vast sums on spies and agents to discover each other's future war plans. The period was known as the “soft war” not unlike the Cold War of a later generation. Coloneloberst Redl was on the Austro-Hungarian General Staff but was passing information on to Russian Intelligence. He was exposed by an Italian double agent who was also his male lover. According to the Austrian military code of honor Redl was forced by his fellow officers to shoot himself. An eccentric man, his apartment was filled with life-size mannequins in chairs. Hungarian director Istvan Szabo made an award winning film about Redl with Klaus Maria Brandauer in 1986. There were earlier films made of the story in 1931 and 55.

1932- The" BONUS MARCHERS "announce their march on Washington D.C. Men who joined the army during the Great War were promised a huge extra bonus to be received in 1945. But, by 1932, the Great Depression had so ruined people's lives a movement was started by a Portland Oregon veteran named Captain William Waters to have a bill in Congress to get their bonus early. Veterans would lobby congress by mounting a poor people's march on Washington. People's marches of this sort had happened before, like "Coxey's Army" in 1896. Veteran's groups came from all over the nation and by the time they got to Capitol Hill they numbered around 80,000. The set up shantytowns on the Mall nicknamed “Hoovervilles”. Everyday Senators going to work had to slip through a huge line of homeless men shuffling silently around the Capitol Building. The Hoover government panicked and believed Soviet-style revolution was imminent. The opposition to the bonus bill was led by Senator Howard Vidal, father of writer-activist Gore Vidal and uncle to Al Gore.

1941-THE GREAT WALT DISNEY CARTOONIST'S STRIKE. The picket line and campsite went up across the street where St. Joseph's Hospital is today. Chefs, from nearby Toluca Lake restaurants, would cook for the strikers on their off-time and the aircraft mechanics of Lockheed promised muscle if any ruffstuff was threatened. Striking assistant, Bill Hurtz's future wife, Mary, was Walt Disney's secretary and they would meet at a chain link fence to swap gossip. Picketers included Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace), Walt Kelly and Margaret Selby (later Kelly) (Pogo), Bill Melendez (A Charlie Brown Christmas), Steve Bosustow and John Hubley (Mr. Magoo), Maurice Noble and Chuck Jones (What's Opera Doc?), George Baker (Sad Sack), Dick Swift ("the Parent Trap") Frank Tashlin (Cinderfella) and four hundred others. The strike was eventually settled by Federal arbitration and a little arm twisting on Walt by the Bank of America. Many of the artists who left the studio afterwards set up U.P.A. and pioneered the 1950's style.


Me with John Hubley's Picket Sign, courtesy of Emily Hubley.

1942- JOHN BARRYMORE- The great dramatic actor, the first American to dare to play Hamlet in England, died of his vices at age 60. Whether the infamous prank actually happened where Raoul Walsh, Bertholdt Brecht, Peter Lorre, W.C. Fields and some others (the"Bundy Drive Boys") kidnapped Barrymore's body from Pierce Brothers Funeral Home and propped it up at the poker table to scare the willys out of Errol Flynn is a matter of debate. Flynn and Paul Heinried said it was true, writer Gene Fowler said it was false. The Barrymore family has a history of brilliant acting and alcoholism. Barrymore's father and grandfather were famous actors who drank themselves to death. His daughter Diana overdosed on sleeping pills and his son John Drew Barrymore just barely saved himself from drugs in the 1960s and dropped out of show business. His granddaughter Drew Barrymore started drugs and liquor at age 9 and was a recovered alcoholic by 17. John Barrymore's last words were to screenwriter Gene Fowler-"Say Gene, isn't it true you are an illegitimate son of Buffalo Bill?"

1942- Bing Crosby records "White Christmas," arguably the greatest selling record to date.

1952- Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norga become the first men to reach the top of Mt. Everest.

1954- New York Police raid the studio of Irving Klaw, the photographer of the Betty Page kinky pin-up photos. Klaw tried to appeal to the Supreme Court but couldn’t get a hearing.

1956- Hollywood director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man) drowned himself in his pool. His career was over, and his health was deteriorating from a series of strokes. Bruises were found on his head and at first the public suspected foul play. It wasn’t until 1989 his partner made his suicide note public. His head had struck the pool’s bottom as he jumped in causing the bruise. He himself never swam, but he had the pool built so he could watch his friends frolic.

1972- Moe Berg died of old age. He was a master spy who using a front as a catcher for the Washington Senator’s Baseball team, fluent enough in quantum physics to converse with Einstein and Neils Bohr. He was once ordered by Washington to meet with Rudolph Heisenberg, the Nazi Einstein, and kill him if he felt the Germans were getting too close do developing their own atomic bomb. He chose not to shoot him. In his later years he was a regular contestant on television trivia game shows. Believe it or not!

1973 - Columbia Records fired president Clive Davis for misappropriating
$100,000 in funds, Davis then founded Arista records

1978 - Bob Crane, actor (Donna Reed Show, Hogan-Hogan's Heroes), died at 49 under mysterious circumstances. He was found bludgeoned to death in a Tucson hotel room surrounded by pornography.

1987 –Eccentric pop singer Michael Jackson attempted to buy the nineteenth century remains of Joseph Meredith a.k.a. the Elephant Man.

1999- Hikers in Malibu California discover the remains of Phillip Taylor, the bass guitar player of the 60’s band Iron Butterfly. The musician had disappeared four years before. Now his skeleton was found sitting in his Ford Aerostar at the bottom of a steep ravine.

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Quiz: Did they use computers in World War II?

Answer: Yes. And this was before silicon chips or transistors. During World War II a number of advanced analog counting machines were developed for code breaking and precision bombing. The Norden Bombsite and the Enigma Machine are now considered forerunners of the computer. When John Whitney, the Father of Computer Graphics, first experimented with electronic images, he began by adapting a war surplus Mark V Anti-Aircraft targeting sight.

Quiz: Did they use computers in World War II?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is a Pyrrhic Victory?
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History for 5/28/2008
Birthdays: Solomon 970BC-?, Noah Webster, Dr. Guillotine, William Pitt the Younger, Ian Fleming is 100, Jim Thorpe, The Dion Identical Quintuplets 1930, Gladys Knight, Sandra Locke, T-Bone Walker, John Fogarty,

585 BC- The first known Solar Eclipse recorded by man. It scared away two armies of Lydians and Medes who were about to fight a battle. Thales of Miletus, the first true Greek Philosopher, predicted it. Thales had studied astronomy and science in Egypt and Babylonia and brought those sciences back to Greece. But he is also counted as the forerunner of Socrates and Plato. When the Greeks referred to the Seven Wisest Men in the World they always counted Thales first.

1494- The official "birth" of Scotch - though it had been around for a long time, on this date, the Scottish Exchequer records a purchase of malt by a friar to make "aqua vitae", the first written reference to spirits in Scotland. Hoot Man!

1742 - 1st public indoor swimming pool opens at Goodman's Fields, London.

1786- French explorer the Comte de Purvoise became the first European to set foot on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. "The climate of Mowhee is quite delightful." He wrote. Then spending only three days there he hurried his ship on to the Northwest coast of America.

1853- THE CRIMEAN WAR BEGAN- England and the French Empire declare War on Russia over Russia’s trying to beat up Turkey and annex the Bosphorus. England and Russia spent the nineteenth century in a tactical struggle for supremacy in Central Asia not unlike the Cold War the Soviet Union fought with America after World War Two. The name for the Anglo-Russian duel was "the Great Game". It only heated up once, producing such artifacts as the Charge of the Light Brigade, Balaclava Helmets and Florence Nightingale. Roger Fenton also followed the army to the Crimea as the first war-photographer.

1892- The Sierra Club formed.

1929 - 1st all color talking picture "On With the Show" exhibited (NYC).

1935- Tortilla Flat published. The first novel by John Steinbeck.

1941- THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE- Labor pressures had been building in the Magic Kingdom since promises made to artists over the success of Snow White were reneged on and Walt Disney’s lawyer Gunther Lessing encouraged a hard line with his employees. On this day, in defiance of federal law, Walt Disney fired animator Art Babbitt ,the creator of Goofy, and thirteen other cartoonists for demanding a union. Babbitt had emerged as the union movements’ leader. He has studio security officers escort Babbitt off the lot (a custom that still happens today.). That night in an emergency meeting of the Cartoonists Guild, Art’s assistant on Fantasia, Bill Hurtz, made a motion to strike and it is unanimously accepted. Bill Hurtz will later go on to direct award winning cartoons like UPA’s "Unicorn in the Garden" and the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Picket lines go up next day in cartoon animation’s own version of the Civil War.
Walt Disney nearly had a nervous breakdown over the strike and a federal mediator was sent by Washington to arbitrate. In later years, Uncle Walt blamed the studio’s labor ills on Communists. The studio unionized but hard feelings remained for the rest of the artists lives.

1954- Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 3D premiered.

1960- George Zucco 60, a character actor who specialized in horror movies like Blood from the Mummies Hand, died of fright in a mental hospital in San Gabriel California. He was convinced that H.P. Lovecraft's Great God Cthulu was after him.

1961 -Amnesty International, a human rights organization, is founded. It was the result of an Appeal for Amnesty, written in the London Daily Observer by a British author who read of several Portuguese students who were arrested because they were overheard making a toast to Freedom in a café.

1977- " MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU." George Lucas' space fantasy film STAR WARS opened. This blockbuster was the first film where the filmmaker retained the licensing rights for merchandise instead of the distributor, known in Hollywood as the 'backend deal'. Today a film can make many times more in licensing revenues than it does from its box office take. Several studios including Universal passed on the film because the prevailing wisdom was sci-fi films didn't make money. Twentieth Century Fox picked up the distribution but let the backend go to Lucas because they didn't think the film would do any serious business. Even George Lucas didn’t think the film would break even. Fox's market research department told studio head Alan Ladd, Jr.” Results with test audiences confirmed: a) don't make this movie; no one will go see a science fiction movie; and b) change the title; no one will go see a movie with "War" in the title.
Fox executives had predicted the studios monster hit for that summer would be "Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry" with Peter Fonda and Susan George. Star Wars was a monster hit. It was like there were no other movies playing that summer. George Lucas became a seriously rich man and developed THX Dolby sound, digital animation and Industrial Light and Magic special effects. The film’s popularity ran so ahead of expectations that at Christmas when you purchased a Star Wars Game you got a box with a pink IOU note in it pledging to get you the game when they printed more.

1981- The Bambi Murders- Police hunt Playboy Bunny Bambi Bemenek for shooting her husband’s ex-wife in Milwaukee. She was captured but escaped prison in 1990. Just follow the little stiletto high heel footprints.

1987- A young German student named Matthias Rust rented a Cessna airplane in Helsinki, and flying low to avoid radar flew into the heart of the Soviet Union. Evading a forest of missiles and anti-aircraft weapons, he landed his little plane in the middle of Red Square in the Kremlin. The ensuing furor and humiliation cost many Russian generals their jobs.

1998- Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman was shot to death by his wife Brynne as he slept. She was a heavy drink and pill user. At 6:00am as the LAPD were knocking Brynne turned the gun on herself.

2005- The great London clock Big Ben mysteriously stopped ticking for 45 minutes.

2005- Up and coming actress Lindsay Lohan was photographed passed out in her car shortly after a hearing for a previous DUI.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a Pyrrhic Victory?

Answer: A victory in which you lose so much to win, that it becomes as bad for you as if it were a defeat. Named for Pyrrhus King of Epirus, one of the Greek Successor kings of Alexander. Pyrrhus picked fight with the rising Roman Republic on behalf of the Greek colonies in Southern Italy. He defeated the Roman legions incurring such great losses that he said:” One more such victory and I am undone!”

Dave Master, courtesy of Sheldon Borenstein's academy site.shedlonsartacademy.com



A new article I did on educator Dave Master is up now on Animation World Network wwww.awn.com.

Also Cartoon Brew has a note about my Click & Clack show.


--------------------------------------------
Question: What is a Pyrrhic Victory?

Yesterday’s Question: Walt Disney called his animators the Nine Old Men. Did he invent that term? Answer: See 1939.
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History for 5/27/2008
Birthdays: James 'Wild Bill' Hickock, Julia Ward Howe, Aemelia Jenks-Bloomer, Dashiell Hammett, Vincent Price, Dr. Henry Kissinger is 85, Leopold Goldowsky (the inventor of Kodachrome film), Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Herman Wouk, Christopher Lee is 86, Rachael Carson, Harlan Ellison, Joseph Feinnes, Peri Gilpin, Richard Schiff,Paul Bettany is 37

1647-The first witch execution in Salem Massachusetts. Contrary to popular perception more witches were hanged or crushed with stones than burned.

1647- Peter Stuyversant inaugurated as Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam. The one legged old soldier was a staunch Calvinist who was sent to “clean up the town”.

1703- Czar Peter the Great laid the cornerstones for his new capitol Saint Petersburg. The Baltic Port was called at one time Petrograd and Leningrad but was changed back to the original name in 1989. It was the capitol until Lenin moved it back to Moscow in 1917.

1895 - British inventor Burt Acres patented a film camera/projector

1930-HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOTCH TAPE! Mr. Richard Drew of Saint Paul Minnesota invented cellophane tape, marketed by the 3M Company under the brand name Scotch. Three years later Drew invented Masking Tape as a way for car manufacturers to pain cars two tone.

1933-SEVENTY FIVE YEARS AGO- Disney’s cartoon“The Three Little Pigs” premieres, whose song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” becomes a national anthem of recovery from the Depression. It was also a favorite song of Adolph Hitler. Director of the short Burt Gillette left Disney afterwards to run the Van Bueren Studio in New York.
The Three Little Pigs was a major breakthrough for animation. The color and the quality made everything else up to that time look crude. It marked the point where Disney Animation moved out in front as the creatively dominant force in animation.

1935- The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (The NRA) program. Roosevelt responds by trying to stack the court with judges more to his liking. Good thing that doesn’t happen today, eh Boys & Girls? He referred to them as 'The Nine Old Men', a sobriquet Walt Disney would borrow in 1949 for his animators.

1937- San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opens.

1949- Actress Rita Hayworth married Prince Aly Khan.

1961 – The first black light is sold

1969 – Construction on Walt Disney World Orlando began.

1977-The Sex Pistols release their single God Save the Queen, the Fascist Regime in time for the Queen’s Jubilee year.

1995- Actor Christopher Reeve was left paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in an equestrian event in Charlottesville, Va. He became a spokesman for stem-cel research but his national effort was stymied by powerful religious lobbies. Reeves died in 2004.
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Answer to yesterday’s question: Look back at 1935.

The TV series I've been directing for the last year and a half- Click & Clack's As The Wrench Turns has just started up it's website. The full site is still under construction, eventually it will feature games, interviews and behind the scenes artwork. But for now there is a trailor up for your delight and edification.

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Question: Walt Disney called his animators the Nine Old Men. Did he invent that term?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Sometimes you see the phrase, a Brave New World. What does that mean?
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History for 5/26/2008
Birthdays: the Duke of Marlborough, Pope Clement VII the Medici Fox-1478, Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin 1759- early feminist writer and mother of Mary Shelley, Alexander Pushkin, Isadora Duncan, Norma Talmadge, Paul Lukas, John Wesley Hardin the shootist, John Wayne- real name Marion Morrison, Al Jolson, Jay Silverheels (Tonto), Peter Cushing, Robert Morley, Peggy Lee, Sally Ride, Pam Grier, Helen Bonham Carter, Bobcat Golthwaite, Matt Stone the co creator of South Park

Memorial Day in the U.S.A.

1805- Explorers Lewis & Clark first sight the Rocky Mountains.

1896- Charles Dow started his stock index named the Dow Jones Index. The first Dow Jones closing is 40.94

1913- Actors Equity formed. The originally called themselves the White Rats,rats being star backwards.

1933- Jimmy Rogers "the Singing Brakeman", considered the father of modern country music, died of tuberculosis at age 31. Shortly before his death he recorded a song about it called "TB Blues".

1940-The Miracle of Dunkirk- When German panzers overrun France they surrounded the British army and pinned them against the Normandy coastline. Instead of finishing them off Marshal Goering asks Hitler's permission to use the Luftwaffe (airforce) to administer the coup de grace. Britain mobilized all available ships and hundreds of small boat owners volunteer to cross the channel under dive bombing and strafing. In ten days evacuated 340,000 troops. 40,000 stayed behind and surrendered. The British force was decimated, but not destroyed, and would live to fight again.

1960- THE MOULIN ROUGE AGREEMENT- Las Vegas gambling casinos integrate. Before this, stars like Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald could headline in the clubs, but had to exit via the kitchens and sleep across town in the colored section. Singer Nat King Cole was requested to keep his eyes on his piano keys for fear if he looked up he would seduce young white girls. Frank Sinatra played a big part in pressuring the Vegas 'powers-that-be' i.e. the mob, to change with the times. Marlene Dietrich grabbed Lena Horne by the arm and stormed into a casino bar defying any reaction. The Moulin Rouge was the first completely integrated casino.

1962- The Isley Brothers single “Twist & Shout” released.

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono have their "Bed-In for Peace" news conference in New York. One of the most acerbic exchanges was one Lennon had with Lil'Abner cartoonist and conservative curmudgeon Al Capp.

1994- Singer Michael Jackson married Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie Presley in the Dominican Republic. They keep the wedding a secret for six weeks, then divorce 18 months later.

1995- Looney Tunes director Isadore Friz Freleng died at age 89.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Sometimes you see the phrase, a Brave New World. What does that mean?

Answer: In 1932 Aldous Huxley wrote a science fiction novel called the Brave New World. He borrowed the phrase from Shakespeare’s the Tempest.” Oh Brave New World, that has such people in it..” Huxley portrayed the future as an over controlled dystopia, where there is no room for creativity, love or dissent, and the public is kept anesthetized with regular doses of a drug called SOMA.
So a Brave New World has become a term to describe a flawed idea of a perfect society.

I was in Silicon Valley this weekend doing work on my next book. While there I dropped in on the Museum of Computer History in Mountain View California, a stones throw from the headquarters of APPLE and HP.

This museum as been growing in recent years, getting a lot of the goodies from the MIT computer museum started in Boston a few years back.

They have a fun collection of some of the most famous computers ever created. They have an Enigma machine from World War II, The Enniac electronic brain from the 1950s, the first Cray supercomputers, early Apples, the first laser-printer from Xerox Parc, Commodores and PC's as well as the original Utah Teapot.

the first Apple computer kit from 1976, signed by Steve Wozniak.

the SAGE system invented in the 1950s by IBM for the Air Force to spot enemy nuclear bombers, a la Dr Strangelove. It has the first electronic pen that interacted with the screen. The forerunner of todays Cintiqs Wacoms and light pens. I noticed the SAGE computer had a built in ashtray and cigarette lighter!

They even have a complete working reconstruction of Charles Babbidges' Differential Engine from his plans from 1837. They do daily demonstrations of how the device worked. In addition, they have large labs were they are restoring ancient mainframes, much like the scientists in Jurassic Park were getting dinosaur DNA out of amber. Big old contraptions that took up an entire room, like something out of the Tracy-Hepburn 1957 movie Desk Set.

I got to admit, it's a bit of a middle-aged moment to see my old MAC II that I had on my desk at Walt Disney in 1990, sitting in a museum, it's once white plastic now yellowed with age. Egads! Am I far behind?


DO not ask for whom the computer-bell tolls...

Anyway, the museum is pretty cool and deserves our support. Admission is free, because it relies on donations. For folks serious about the origins of our computer crazed world, this museum is a fun way to see how it all began.


Check out their site-
http://www.computerhistory.org
-------------------------------------------------
Quiz: Sometimes you see the phrase, a Brave New World. What does that mean?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What does it mean to be Dressed to the Nines..?
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History for 5/25/2008
Birthdays: Miles Davis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josef Broz Tito, Igor Sikorsky, Pontormo, Bennett Cerf, Claude Akins, Leslie Uggams, Bill Bojangles Robinson, Beverly Sills-aka Bubbles Silverman, Anne Heche, Mike Myers is 45

1660-RESTORATION DAY- After Oliver Cromwell executed King Charles Ist, he declared the British Monarchy abolished, and ruled England with a junta of generals as Lord Protector. When Cromwell died of natural causes in 1659 he tried to elevate his son Richard Cromwell in his place. But the son is not the father. The rickety system didn’t work, and Richard earned the nickname “Tumbledown-Dick”. The generals led by General Monck had no other remedy to avoid chaos other than recalling King Charles’ son Charles II from exile in Flanders to be king of England. For many years Restoration Day was a holiday in the UK.
Charles returned this day with a taste for a new sport he learned in Holland of racing small boats called yachts. He also liked to take a morning walk on Constitution Hill, which is why such a walk is now called a constitutional.

1878- Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore premiered at the Savoy in London. “So Stick to your desk and never go to Sea, and You can be the Leader of the Queen’s Naveeee”

1906- Putting on the Ritz! London’s Ritz Hotel opened.

1911-The beginnings of Mexican Revolution forced longtime dictator Gen. Jose Porfirio Diaz into exile. As a young man Diaz had fought the French under Juarez but later seized power for himself. Under his long rule Mexico industrialized. He built railroads, water and telephone systems and schools. He had once said:" My poor Mexico. Too far from Heaven and too close to the United States."

1911- Thomas Mann visited Venice Italy. On the Lido Beach he was inspired to write A Death in Venice.

1927- Ford had put America on wheels with the Model T, the most successful car model in history. Today they stop making the Model T after 15 million cars, costing on average $300 each, $26 dollars down with monthly payments.

1932- Flamboyant New York Mayor Jimmy Walker testifies before the Seabury Commission. The corruption scandals of his administration will force him to resign.

1957- Sid Caesar's Your Show of Show's cancelled after nearly a decade. The show used future star playwrights like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon. The show pioneered the executive strategy of network programmer Pat Weaver to not let the show be owned by an entire sponsor but the network would produce the show and would sell the sponsor commercial time in 30 second chunks. Pat Weaver’s daughter is Sigorney Weaver.

1961- THE SPACE RACE- The United States had been chafing about how far ahead the Soviet Union was in the exploration of space. In an address to Congress this day President John F. Kennedy pledged the wealth and resources of the U.S. to beating Russia to the Moon. "Our pledge is within the next ten years to send a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth… We choose to go to the Moon not because it will be easy but because it is hard!" The Moon landing was achieved in 1969. Today it is acknowledged that without the motivation of the Cold War the conquest of the Moon would have happened much more slowly. In 2004 President George W. Bush tried to appropriate some of JFK’s luster by declaring a great national effort to get to Mars, but then followed it up with nothing.

1965- The Saint Louis Gateway Arch dedicated.

1968- The Rolling Stones release Jumping Jack Flash.

1979- Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Alien opened.

1980- Evangelist Oral Roberts sees a 900-foot Jesus over his bed.

1982- Sci-fi film Blade Runner opened.

1986- Hands Across America stunt to help hunger has 7 million people at one time holding hands at noon.

2000- It was revealed that in 1958 US scientists planned to explode an atomic bomb on the moon. There would be no mushroom cloud because that requires an atmosphere, and the flash would only be visible for a few seconds. What the purpose would be other than to scare the BeeJeezus out of the Russkies no one knew. This idea was soon scrapped.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean to be Dressed to the Nines..?

Answer: The slang term has been around since quoted in an 1859 book on English slang. It means to be dressed up really fancy, as elegant as you can manage. There are several theories as to the origin. One is that a tailor required nine yards of costly fabric to create a suit and vest for such a look. Another was that the 99th Regiment of Foot was famous for their smart look. “dressing like the Nines”. Still another is that the number nine had a certain magical level of intensity, like Dante putting Judas and Beelzebub in the Ninth Level of Hell, so Robert Burns in a poem in 1793 says” Thou art Nature to the Ninth Degree.” So no one knows for sure.