Quiz: What does DC comics stand for?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: Who was the first Superhero?
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History for 05/05/08
Birthdays: Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Cochrane called Nellie Bly, Soren Kierkegard, Alice Faye, James Beard, Michael Palin, Pat Carroll, Patrick Ewing, John Rhys Davies, Lance Henriksen, Pat Carrol the original Ursula the Sea Witch is 81.

National Teacher's Day.

National Cartoonist's Day.

2349BC- According to Flemish Bishop Ussher, a XVI Century cleric who tried to calculate a date for every event in the Bible, today is the day Noah’s Ark struck dry ground on Mount Ararat.

840- Louis the German, a son of Charlemagne, died of fright after witnessing a total eclipse of the sun.

1504 -Sir Anton of Burgundy, known as The Great Bastard, dies at 82. We don’t know much about this knight but you gotta wonder how he got that nickname!

1800- Shortly after winning his Federalist parties nod to run for re-election President John Adams was told by his wife Abigail Adams” Tis a pity that politicians would sacrifice all that Good men hold dear and Sacred just to win an election.” Of course, that doesn’t happen today, now does it?

1821"...le Armee'......Josephine....." Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of St.Helena at age 52. Recent radioactive analysis of his hair samples reveal that in his last 18 months the arsenic level in his body went up 150%. Did he die of stomach cancer like his father or was he poisoned as he stated in his memoirs ? Was there too many bits of mercury and arsenic in his prescribed medicines or the wallpaper ? The debate continues to this day.
When the news reached England King George IV was in the middle of trying to get divorced from his estranged wife Queen Caroline so he could marry his mistress. When an aide announced to him :"Sire! Your Majesty's greatest enemy has died !" George replied: " She is-? Oh, Thank the Lord !"

1862-HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO- Battle of Puebla-Mexican Juaristas under a daring young general named Porfirio Diaz defeated a French invasion force. After Benito Juarez’s presidency Porfirio Diaz made himself dictator and reigned until being ousted in the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

1889- THE PARIS WORLD EXHIBITION opened. This exposition was what the Eiffel Tower was built for: it was the centerpiece of this World's Fair. At the time, it was the world's tallest free-standing metal structure, and hailed as a marvel - and now as an enduring symbol - of the Industrial Revolution. Yet it is still almost a hundred feet shorter than the largest building ever constructed (presumably by mass of construction materials!), the
Great Pyramid at Giza, which is 500 feet tall; only six feet short of Seattle's Space Needle! Americans remembered it as the event where American painting first stood out on the world stage, despite being given a small gallery space between Bosnia and Denmark. The judging of the artwork was controversial. Here they are trying to show the world the uniqueness of American painting yet with not a single Copley, Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer or Mary Cassatt was accepted. James McNeill Whistler considered himself American although he lived most of the time in London. When the show was announced he patriotically entered a dozen paintings but the American judges rejected them all. He angrily re-submitted them as a British artist and won a gold medal.

1891-Carnegie Hall in New York opens. One old musician told me the acoustics are so perfect that you can fart in the trumpet section and you'll be heard in the second balcony.

1953- Broadway Director Jerome Robbins was riding high after directing hits like On the Town and King & I when he was labeled a Communist by Ed Sullivan. To save his career, this day he testified before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee HUAC and named names. One actress he finked on Jack Gilford's wife-Margaret Lee said” I’ve just been stabbed by a wicked fairy”. Ironically Robbins went on to direct two of his biggest hits “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the Fiddler on the Roof using blacklisted actors like Zero Mostel, Bea Arthur and Jack Gilford, who all hated him.

1960- Soviet Premier Khruschev announces to the world press the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia. President Eisenhower vigorously denied anything of the sort until Khruschev in a world media news conference produced the planes wreckage and pilot Lt. Francis Gary Powers. The incident not only deepened the Cold War, but for the first time in modern history a U.S. President was caught lying his head off. For the most recent time, uh, what’s in the news today?

1961- Alan Shepard became the first American in space on board Friendship VII. The rocket took him 115 miles into space but not high enough to achieve an orbit. That was done one year later by John Glenn. Shepard was kept on the ground in his capsule for so long he had to pee in his suit. In the upside down position the fluid ran up his back and puddles in his helmet behind his head. Ick.

1968- Albert Dekker, star of monster movies like Dr. Cyclops, was found hanged in his bathroom, handcuffed, and wearing ladies lingerie. A narcotics needle was sticking in his arm. The police declared it an 'auto-erotic episode that had gone wrong."

hey, so I like to party in my own way. Don't go all Hollywood Babylon on me!

1975- Anne Rice’s novel The Interview With The Vampire first published.

1985- President Ronald Reagan started a firestorm of controversy among WWII veterans when he laid a wreath in Germany at a cemetery in Bitburg that contained graves of 49 Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. Some of them may have participated in the infamous Malmedy Massacre of US prisoners. When looking for a place for Reagan to stay the State Department scouted around for a German host who was conservative but had no Nazi connections. Finally they found a Baron who was born in 1942. So Reagan stayed at his castle. Once there the Baron revealed even though his father was not in the Nazi party, his godfather was Adolf Hitler! Doh!

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Quiz: Who was the first Superhero?

Answer: The problem is to define where the concept of Superhero, a fictional character with superhuman powers, differs from a Hero of Legend, like Hector, Achilles, Theseus, Robin Hood, Siegfried, Mushashi Miyamoto. In this definition then the first superhero was the Sumerian King Gilgamesh, the hero warrior of the epic story of 2600BC, who was “ two thirds god and one third man”.

You could argue the first superhero of American literature was Natty Bumppo called Hawkeye. In the James Fennimore Cooper novels like The Last of the Mohicans (1826) he was the super-frontiersman- drawn out of stories of real life heroes Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. This form later adapted to the Western cowboy, making a fictional hero out of real scout Buffalo Bill Cody, then into the Industrial Age with Tarzan the Apeman in 1910. In modern comics the supra-human superhero began with 1938’s Superman, and from then on it was Up, Up and Awaaayyy!!

Quiz: Who was the first Superhero?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?
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History for 5/4/2008
Birthdays: Bartolomeo Christofori'-inventor of the piano, Audrey Hepburn –real name Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten, Roberta Peters, Maynard Ferguson, Howard Da Silva ,Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, George Will, Pia Zadora is 54

1493- the Papal Bull Inter-Contrera and the Treaty of Tordesillas was announced. Pope Alexander VI Borgia divided up the non-European world between Portugal and Spain- saying Spain could conquer everything west of the Cape Verde Islands like America and Portugal could have everything east like Africa and India. Damned sporting of him! Columbus knew of this impending treaty when he sailed so may have deliberately falsified coordinates in his ship's logs to hide the fact he was violating Portuguese territorial waters to catch the transatlantic current he counted on.

1626- Peter Minuit arrived at the settlement of New Amsterdam to be it’s first governor.

1715- A French inventor demonstrated the first folding umbrella.

1776-While marching up the California coast Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola came upon a Chumash Indian village on a big placid bay. It being Saint Monica's feast day he named the bay Santa Monica.

1876- THE ARREST OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER- General Custer almost didn't make his fateful ride to the Little Big Horn. He had gotten in big trouble with the Grant administration when he testified to Congress about waste and corruption in the War Department. He even implicated President Grant's own brother-in-law Orville as leading a graft ring and his testimony helped impeach Secretary of War William Belknap.
On May 4th when Custer stepped off a train in Chicago he was intercepted by two officers who told him he was under arrest and should remain there to await orders. He defied this order and continued on to Fort Lincoln where he tearfully begged Generals Terry and Sheridan to intercede for him to get his Seventh Cavalry back. Terry's written pleas to Grant and Sherman worked and Custer was allowed to resume his command. Terry had drawn up a contingency plan for a Colonel Hazen to lead the Seventh to the Little Big Horn. So we almost had Hazen's Last Stand.

1886-The HAYMARKET RIOT. A defining incident in U.S. labor history. Striking workers demonstrating in Chicago for an eight hour workday confront mass police and militia. Suddenly a bomb explodes among the police who open fire on the crowd. The culprits are never identified but authorities blame the union leaders- The Haymarket Eight - who are all arrested. Despite an international outcry from celebrities like George Bernard Shaw and William Morris they are all convicted and hanged. The Haymarket incident was considered damaging to the prestige of the union movement at the time but the union organizers hanged on circumstantial evidence became martyrs to the average working person. As the defiant Albert Parsons dropped from the gallows door he shouted: "Oh America, Let the voice of the People be heard!" A decade later a Chicago mayor reexamined the evidence and concluded they had executed innocent men. He lost his bid for reelection. In 1968 a monument erected to the policemen was blown up by hippy radicals.

1891 –THE DEATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES According to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle this was the day Sherlock Holmes, perished at the Reichenback Falls grappling with sinister Prof. Moriarity- The Napoleon of Crime. Conan Doyle had tired of his eccentric detective and wanted to get on to other types of writing like novels. But English readers were horrified he had killed off the great sleuth. Conan-Doyle couldn’t take a walk down the street without someone stopping him:” Sir, How could you?!” When touring the US he wanted to lecture about historical subjects but people only wanted know more about Holmes and Watson. After a while Arthur Conan-Doyle gave in and began a new series of the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1897- In Paris during a charity cinematograph show the nitrate film catches fire and 200 die. Movie film before the 1940’s was made from a very unstable mixture and could explode from the slightest contact with flame.

1927-The Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences formed. Studio heads Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer originally conceived the Academy as an an arbiter and ombudsman where studio artists could air grievances without fear of retaliation, thereby sidetracking the call for unions. It didn't work because of the nature of it's founders. Writer Dorothy Parker commented: "Going to the Academy with your problems is like trying to get laid in your mother's house, someone's always peeking through the curtains"
After the stock market crash the Academy supported the studio heads enforced employee salary cuts. Soon all pretense as a human resources ombudsman was abandoned and AMPAS focused on being the arbiter of artistic achievement.

1959- At the first Grammy Awards, Ross Bagdasssarian, aka David Seville, won two Grammies for the Chipmunk Song.

1967- The Big Mac hamburger is invented in a MacDonald's restaurant in Uniontown Pennsylvania by franchise manager Jim Deligatti. After trying names like The Aristocrat and the Blue Ribbon Burger, the name Big Mac was coined by Esther Glickstein Rose, a legal secretary at MacDonalds Chicago offices. The Big Mac went national in 1968.

1970- KENT STATE- Two days after Vice President Spiro Agnew tells law enforcement associations that" you should treat the student anti-war protesters as you would have treated the brown shirted stormtroopers." Ohio National Guard units opened fire on college demonstrators at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine, two of whom weren't even protesting but had just paused to watch. Troops also fired on students at Jackson State a week later. These incidents and the fatal bombing of a science lab by militants at Wisconsin later in the month caused the public to recoil from increasingly militant rhetoric over Vietnam. Shortly afterwards one friend recalled seeing President Nixon at an appearance in Akron mutter something to the effect that he wished more students had been gunned down at Kent State. President Nixon had called the anti-war protesters "bumbs". The middle class father of one of the slain students wrote him: "Mr President, my daughter was not a bumb!"

2000- The Love Bug Computer virus ravaged the worlds commerce through Microsoft Outlook causing $10 billion dollars in damage and shutting down temporarily the e-commerce of large firms like Reebok. It was launched by a Phillipino AMA Computer College graduate student as part of his thesis.

2001- Bonnie Lee Blakely, the wife of actor Robert Blake, was found in her car dead of a gunshot wound to the head outside of Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City, Ca. They had just had dinner and Mr. Blake had returned into the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left at his table. In 2005 the actor was acquitted of his wife’s murder, but lost a wrongful death suit to Blakely’s family. It is still on appeal. Why did Robert Blake bring a gun to his dinnertable? I guess it’s if the waiters get snippy or something.

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Yesterday’s Question: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?

Answer: In 1809 writer Washington Irving wrote a fanciful History of New York, by the fictitious author Deidrich Knickerbocker. It celebrated the port’s early Dutch colonial roots. To the growing young American City already feeling that arrogance that so annoys the rest of the country, it provided a nostalgic central mythology. Members of old New York families started calling each other Knickerbockers. The book also coined the nickname for New York City- Gotham.

Just got back from a week in New York City doing final mixes on two episodes of CLICK & CLACK'S AS THE WRENCH TURNS. Had some pizza, a toasted bagel with cream cheese and a Carvel soft cone with chocolate sprinkles. Mission Accomplished!


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Question: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Which one of the four men who wrote the Gospels, Luke, Mark, Matthew and John, actually knew Jesus personally?
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History for 5/3/2007
Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70's singer Englebert Humperdinck, Dule Hill

1702-William Hyde- Lord Cornbury arrived from England to be Royal Governor of colonial New York. This English aristocrat surprised the solid Dutch Calvinists of former Nieu Amsterdaam by his eccentric behavior. His favorite pastime was dressing up in ladies clothing and jumping out at people at night and pulling their ears. When in drag he bore an uncomfortable resemblance to England¹s Queen Anne. He later explained he dressed this way so the colonists could see what their queen in England looked like, but nobody believed him. There is today a painting of the Lord Governor in drag at the New York Historical Society . It was alleged that he was a fence for pirates and once asked the New York City council for money to repel a fictitious French attack, which he pocketed and bought the land today called Hyde Park.


Lord Cornbury in drag at the New York Historical Society

1812- A new poem called Childe Harold¹s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1848- Working people of Saxony revolt against their king. Leo Bakunin the father of anarchism and the composer Richard Wagner were two of the leaders. The Prussian army was sent to help put down the workers and Wagner fled into Switzerland, but not before he had the pleasure of burning down the Leipzig Opera House.

1851- San Francisco burned down.

1863-2nd Day Battle of Chancellorsville-Lee sent Stonewall Jackson 12 miles swinging around the Yankee Army flank to attack them from behind. O.O. Howard, the Union General in charge of that area wouldn¹t believe the scouts reports of an imminent attack and when a German immigrant officer demanded he prepare Howard accused him of being drunk. Then Jackson¹s men burst out of the woods and sent the Yankees running. The fighting lasted well into the evening and confusion reigned in the darkness. General Daniel Sickles division got into a vicious three way firefight with a Confederate division shooting at him from one side and his own reinforcements shooting at him from the other. Stonewall Jackson and his staff had ridden out beyond his lines to observe the Yankee preparations for tomorrow. He was riding back towards his own lines when a shot or two rang out. General A.P. Hill called out " Don't shoot! Were Southerners! ". But the Mississippi colonel in charge had been surprised once already that night by enemy cavalry :" It's a Yankee trick! Pour it into them, boys !" A mass volley hit Jackson and several other officers." My boys, my own boys!" Jackson groaned. He died two weeks later.

1888- Poem "Casey at the Bat" published.

1948-THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theater chains had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years and a World War later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature.

1968- THE PARIS '68 REVOLT- Police are sent into the Sorbonne University in Paris to break up student demonstrations. The grounds of the university had never been violated by police, even during the Nazi occupation. This act enraged the student leaders who are joined by labor unions and there is fighting in the streets of Paris for the next three weeks that eventually brought down the DeGaulle gov't. All night political meetings center in the Odeon theatre as the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and John Luc Goddard make intellectual manifestations of aesthetic freedom."The More I make Love, the More I make Revolution!" One of the student leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bedit "Danny the Red". Conservative media tried to draw attention to Cohn-Bendit¹s Jewish foreign background . This caused an even larger angrier march of everyday Parisians and Unionists chanting: "We are all Jews!"

1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts.

1971- National Public Radio¹s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first national news program with women news anchors- Linda Ellerbee and Susan Stanberg.

1973- Chicago¹s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the worlds¹ tallest office building.

1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once. So thank Gary that you get endless messages like "Biancas Backdoor Bliss" and "Nigerian Bank Trustee Investment schemes."

1979- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. The green grocers daughter called the Iron Lady dominated British politics for the next twenty years.

1985- The White House confirmed rumors that President Reagan would occasionally adjust his schedule on the advice of a San Francisco astrologer.

1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company tells a congressional committee that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears. -Uh-huh.

1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.
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Yesterdays Question: Which one of the four men who wrote the Gospels, Luke, Mark, Matthew and John, actually knew Jesus personally?

Answer: It's amazing that a book so central to Western Civilization has an authorship that is so little understood. Some Biblical scholars maintain that Saint John the Evangelist is the St. John the Apostle who was the only one who was not martyred, and lived to a great age. Modern scholarship concludes that the oldest of the books, the Gospel of Mark, was written in 120AD, so then all four could not have lived long enough to meet Christ. In fact, some scholars contend that Matthew not only is not the Matthew the Tax Collecting Apostle, but that five people wrote that one work under his name. Still other groups like the Southern Baptists maintain that the whole work is written by God, and so can't be interpreted or doubted. But all acknowledge that the Bible was edited by the Vatican who declared it complete at one point.

So when a Gospel of St. Thomas appeared in a 1945 dig in Nag Hammadi Egypt, everyone kinda hemmed and hawed and put it on the trivia shelf. This even though scholars like Joseph Cambell declared it the genuine voice of St. Thomas the Apostle. But no one seems to want to open the argument of what is in the Bible. So the discussion continues.

Question: Of the four men who wrote the Gospels- Mark, Luke, Matthew and John, which ones actually looked Jesus in the face and spoke with him?

Yesterday's Quiz answered below: Who wrote On Civil Disobedience, a philosophy followed by Ghandi and Martin Luther King?
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History for 5/2/2008
Birthdays: Czarina Catherine the Great, Domenico Scarlatti, Manfred Von Richtofen the Red Baron, Bing Crosby, Dr. Benjamin Spock the Baby Doctor, Vernon Castle, Theodore Bikel, Lesley Gore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Satyajit Ray, Pinky Lee, Link Wray of the Wraymen, Dwayne Johnson called The Rock is 36

1349- The Kings of England and France are forced to declare a ten year truce in their Hundred Years War because of the ravages of the Black Plague. After all, how can one be expected to have a good war when everyone was already dead?

1519- Leonardo Da Vinci died at the chateau of Amboise in the arms of King Francis Ist. He had accepted the offer of the French King of a stable retirement (even then artists worried about that kinda stuff). Two hundred and eighty years later during the French Revolution peasants broke into his tomb to get the lead lining for cannonballs and threw his bones in a pile. So no one is sure where he's buried.

1797- One of the marvels of Europe today is the preservation of the City of Venice. Beyond an occasional flood Venice never had a great fire or destruction by war. Many of the buildings are as old as Notre Dame. Venice was a naval power so all of her wars were fought out at sea. Venice was besieged once by Pepin the son of Charlemagne in 967AD, this day in 1797 Napoleon pursuing his conquest of Italy declared war on the Venetian Republic. They immediately surrendered.

1808- Spanish Independence Day- Napoleon had invaded Spain and put his older brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. The Spanish called him "Pepe Bottaglia" (Joey Bottles-due to his fondness for drink) and bitterly hated the French occupation. Reacting to the occupation of Madrid, the Spanish people riot in the Playa Del Sol and cut up all the French soldiers they can find. The French arrest and shoot them. Francisco Goya does lots of neat drawings and paintings. The Spanish invention of organized small scale partisan actions they will give the name "guerilla" warfare.

1863- Battle of Chancellorsville - Robert E. Lee is surrounded by the superior Union army of "Fighting Joe" Hooker. Hooker bragged: "God have mercy on General Lee, for I shall have none!". Lincoln was more realistic: "The hen is the wisest of all animal creation. She does not cackle until AFTER her egg is laid." Lee gets out of the trap and defeats Hooker.

1932- Jack Benny's Radio Show on radio debuts. Oh Rochester! Mel Blanc the voice of Bugs Bunny did many characters and voices on the show, including the engine of Jacks¹ old Maxwell automobile.

1933- The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. The Inverness Courier published an account of a couple who sighted Nessie and offered a reward for proof.

1952- the British Airline B.O.A.C. began the first trans-Atlantic jet plane service. This began the class of globe-trotting rich partygoers named Jet-Setters. BOAC later became British Air.

1957- Frank Costello had taken over the Lucciano New York crime family after Lucky Lucciano had been deported permanently to Sicily. Another Lucciano triggerman named Vito Genovese felt he had been passed over. This day Frank Costello was crossing the lobby of his apartment on Central Park West when Vinny " the Chin" Gigante came up behind him: "Hey Frank, this is for you!" and started shooting. Costello was left for dead but Vinny bungled his job- Costello was only grazed in the skull. He recovered but wisely decided to retire from racketeering. Costello¹s job went to Carlo Gambino.

1957- Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy the Commie Hunter died in an asylum from hepatitis and advanced alcoholism.

1967-" Say It Loud, I¹m Black and I¹m Proud!" The Black Panther Party announced it¹s armed militancy to the US and the world by trying to break in with shotguns on the California State assembly during a vote. The US media would ring with the words and images of Bobby Seale, Elderidge Cleaver and Huey Newton.

1972- J. EDGAR HOOVER DIED. He had been F.B.I. director since 1934. Despite his numerous achievements like neutralizing Axis espionage in World War Two and he had half the Ku Klux Klan informing on the other half, he never seemed willing or able to attack the Mafia . While the FBI chased lone criminals like Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde, the big national syndicates of Capone and Lucciano functioned unmolested. Some say it was because he knew they would expose the FBI chiefs cross-dressing lifestyle. Hoover lived in a long term relationship with his second in command Clyde Tollson. That didn¹t stop him from outing high profile gays in the Truman and Johnson administrations and ruining their careers. J. Edgar needed his secrecy to pursue his high profile war on "American Immorality". Hoover was convinced Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King were Communist spies. The Kennedy brothers hated him but he seemed to have enough dirt on them to stay in power. When Bobby was attorney general forced Hoover to come to his office at the ringing of an electric bell like a butler, which drove the old man crazy. When Lyndon Johnson was asked why he still kept the F.B.I. director around he said:" I¹d rather keep the old bastard on the inside pissing out, than on the outside pissing in.".

1972- First day shooting on Steven Speilbergs film JAWS. The giant mechanical shark used as a prop was nicknamed "Bruce" after Speilberg¹s lawyer.

1982- During the Falkland's War a British helicopter equiped with Exocet missles sank Argentina's largest battleship, the Belgrano. Tacky London tabloids ran as the headline over the burning ship- "Gotcha !" Interestingly the Belgrano was a refitted 45 year old American battleship, the U.S.S. Phoenix, that had survived the Pearl Harbor attack.

1982- The 24 hour Weather Channel started.

1997- Movie star Eddie Murphy was busted for picking up transvestite hooker Artisone Seiuli at 4:45 in the morning on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. Murphy said he was just being a good Samaritan and giving the young He/She a ride home.
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Yesterday's Quiz: Who wrote On Civil Disobedience, a philosophy followed by Ghandi and Martin Luther King?

ANSWER: The first writings spelling out the doctrine of passive-non violent disobedience was a paper written by Henry David Thoreau in 1849. Entitles On Civil Disobedience. He was against the U.S. War with Mexico, which was also opposed by Daniel Webster, Lincoln and Grant. Thoreau refused to pay his taxes as a protest and so was fined by his local constable.

Quiz: Martin Luther King and Gandhi fought the establishment with Civil Disobedience.
Who coined the term- Civil Disobedience?

Yesterday's question answered below: What is ersatz? like ersatz coffee?
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History for 5/1/2007
Birthdays: Mary Harris a.k.a.Mother Jones, Marshal Vauban 1633, Benjamin Latrobe, Calamity Jane, Joseph Addison, Kate Smith, Jack Paar, Joseph Heller, Rita Coolidge, Steve Cauthen, Judy Collins, Glen Ford, Ray Parker Jr., Maurice Noble, Fyodor Khytruk, Louis Nye, John Woo, Wes Anderson,

Happy Birthday Eric Goldberg!

May or Maius is named for Maia, Roman god of flowers, daughter of Fauna and Vulcan.

62BC- Publius Clodius Pulcher- The Handsome, seduced the wife of Julius Caesar by dressing like a woman and sneaking into Caesars home while the women were celebrating the secret sacred mysteries of Bona Dea. Caesar wasn¹t too upset because he was sleeping around as well. Part of Greco-Roman religious mysteries was the drinking of a wine mixed with herbs approximating the effect of modern LSD. Sex, Drugs and Latin Conjugations!

1373- Dante Alighieri met the love of his life Beatrice at a MayDay party in Florence. Although she married another he was inspired to write his Divine Comedy to her.

1886- MAYDAY- In most of the world except the U.S. this is Labor Day. Ironically the tanks and red banners that used to parade down Tianamehn or in Havanna celebrate events that began in the United States. In 1886- The Knights of Labor- an underground movement of unions came out in the open and announced itself America's first national labor organization. On this day they called for strikes against all employers who wouldn't institute an 8 hour workday. The norm in America was 12 hours, 7am to 7pm six days a week. 500,000 people go out on 1,700 strikes and paralyze the nation's economy. The authorities crushed the strikes with violence, shootings, arrests and firings with a brutality that shocked the rest of the world. Karl Marx said: " Isn't it amazing what's happening in America ?". The 8 hour day doesn't become normal in America until 1913. In 1889- in Europe the International Socialist Congress declaring itself in sympathy with the embattled American worker designated May 1st as International Worker's Day. In 1894 American Federation of Labor, a less militant successor to the Knights, ask President Cleveland to move Labor Day from May 1st to the end of August. This was so people can have a holiday between Independence Day and Thanksgiving, but also a Labor Day free of "radical politics".

1893- The WORLD COLUMBIAN EXHIBITION opened in Chicago. A great White City topped by the first Ferris Wheel, a giant that carried passengers higher than the crown of the Statue of Liberty. Worlds Fairs then still had a certain amount of cheap sensationalist burlesque to attract customers uninterested in dynamos and new farming exhibits. Candy maker Milton Hershey inspected some new German milk chocolate machines and was inspired to build his business around chocolate. This exhibition was made famous by the erotic gyrations of an hootchie-cootchie dancer named Little Egypt. It was the first example of belly dancing in America but the famous tune "In the Land of Oz Where the Ladies Smoke Cigars" was not written in Egypt but by a local songwriter named Joe Blume. It also displayed the World¹s Largest Red Cedar Bucket, then filled with lager beer. I had the pleasure of seeing the Bucket at Mufreesboro Tennessee, minus the beer.

1898- BATTLE OF MANILA BAY- Admiral Dewey's fleet sinks the Spanish fleet when
he gives the order to the captain of the USS Olympia :"You may fire when ready, Gridley:" I'm sorry, Bugs Bunny didn't say it first. The Spanish admiral Marquis de Montijo is remembered in Spain as a hero for even trying to engage the Americans with his outdated and outgunned fleet. Forgoing the support of shore batteries he deliberately drew his ships up away from the city of Manila so civilians wouldn't get hurt in the battle and his ships could sink in shallow water. Hundreds of Spanish sailors were killed but the only Yankee swab who died was an engineer who had a heart attack from all the excitement.

1902- Richard Outcault's comic strip Buster Brown and Tige first appeared. Outcault, the creator of the first hit cartoon the Yellow Kid was so famous that as part of his deal to do this strip he negotiated the first back-end deal for a percentage of the merchandise sales.

1914-THE BIRTH OF THE BIG BLUE- Thomas Watson got a job at a little business machine company called CTR, the Calculating, Typewriter and Regulating Company. He quickly rose to the top and renamed the company International Business Machine or IBM. When he retired in 1956 it employed 60,000 and is one of largest companies in the world.

1931- The Empire State Building in New York dedicated. For fifty years it was the worlds tallest office building and King Kong¹s hangout. It¹s topmost deck was designed to be a dirigible mooring post but despite several tries no zeppelin has ever been able to park there. A Goodyear Blimp attempted mooring there in 1976 but the highwinds bobbed it around like a bucking bronco. The building was dedicated during the depths of the Great Depression when business was so bad it was nicknamed the 'Empty State Building'.

1939- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia exports it's first barrel of crude oil.

1939- The first Batman comics created by Bob Kane appear on newsstands.

1941-ROSEBUD- Orson Welles film "Citizen Kane" debuted at the Paramount theater (the El Capitan) in Hollywood. At the last minute William Randolph Hearst's friend Louis B. Mayer tried to buy and destroy every print of the film and the Hearst press went crazy attacking it. Hearst spokesperson Louella Parsons threatened "A Beautiful Lawsuit" if the film was not pulled. Despite winning some Oscars the film didn't do well in it's initial release, but it remains one of the greatest films of all time. Welles said later:" The problem I've always had is my movies become classics ten years later."

1960- THE U-2 INCIDENT Soviet authorities shoot down a high observation U-2 spy plane violating Soviet airspace and capture the pilot Francis Gary Powers. Ironically President Eisenhower had ordered a halt to the U-2 spy program but the Pentagon tried to get one more flight in. After 1989 the US Government admitted the overflights of Russian airspace had been going on since 1950. In those ten years the Soviets had shot down around 20 planes with a loss of 100-200 U.S. servicemen killed or sent to die in Siberian Gulags, ignored by their government to whom they did not officially exist. Powers¹s plane was hit and disintegrated. He fell 70,000 feet but miraculously he survived. Before he was captured he at first hitchhiked a ride from a Russian couple going to a wedding. They saw nothing strange in the uniformed man and when they noticed he couldn¹t speak Russian in the middle of Russia they decided he must be Bulgarian.

1967- Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas.

1989- Walt Disney Feature Animation in Orlando Florida opens. It closed in 2006.

1993- The Florida Animation Union Local 843 chartered.

1997- Frank Gifford, ABC television sportscaster and husband of morning show celebrity Kathy Lee Gifford, was caught on videotape doing the nasty with stewardess Suzie Johnson. She got paid by a tabloid and posed nude for Playboy.

1997- Bebe, the dolphin who played Flipper on the television show, died at age 40.

1997- Tony Blair defeated Tory John Major to become Prime Minister of Britain.

2003-MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? President George W. Bush lands a military jet onto the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to deliver a speech declaring the war in Iraq to be officially over. In the next three years 2800 more Americans would be killed, 25,000 wounded. A big banner on the carrier read Mission Accomplished. The White House said it was set up spontaneously by crewmen, but later admitted it was conceived, printed and hung by West Wing functionaries. George also broke the 220 year tradition of a sitting president never appearing in military uniform, scrupulously kept by real soldiers like Washington, Jackson, Grant and Eisenhower.

I got my George W. Bush flight suit G.I.Joe packed away in storage next to my sixpack of BillyBeer, as an investment in the future.

2005- The Sunday Times of London first printed the Downing Street Memo. It was minutes of a meeting between US and British strategists that proved that the Bush White House was irrevocably settled on removing Saddam Hussein from the leadership of Iraq by force in 2002. This while the official spin in the media was that America was only going to war as a last resort. The US Media gave this story little coverage.

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Yesterday's Question: What is something that is Ersatz? Like Ersatz Coffee?

Answer: Towards the end of WWII, as shortages of basic staples wracked Germany, the Nazi government created fake consumer goods like coffee made from sawdust and chicory. These products were called Ersatz, replacements, and touted by the Propaganda Ministry as better than the originals.
So long after the war is over, the term ersatz lives on to denote fake products.