Quiz: Why is booze called booze?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What was jus primae noctis?
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History for 4/11/2008
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, Frederick the Warlike of Saxony-1370, Ethel Kennedy, Joel Grey, Louise Lasser, Mason Reese, Oleg Cassini, Cameron Mitchell. Norman McClaren, Bill Irwin, John Milius, Jennifer Esposito

1034- The Byzantine Emperor Romanus III Argyrus was poisoned by his wife.

1241- Battle of Sajoria- Mongol hordes of Subotai destroy the Hungarian army of King Bela and burn Buda. Pest was across the river. \

1713 - FIRST TREATY OF UTRECHT- Ending the War of Spanish Succession. George Frederich Handel premiered the Royal Fireworks Music in celebration. France yields to England the eastern coastal provinces of Canada. When the French speaking inhabitants of Arcadia refuse to swear allegiance to the English King they are driven out of their homes at bayonet point. Scottish colonists are brought in who rename the island Nova Scotia -New Scotland. The French exiles migrate to Louisiana and settle in the swampy bayous. They call themselves Arcadians, which slurs to A'cajun or Cajun.

1890- In England John Merrick, who was known as the Elephant Man, died.

1906- Albert Einstein published his Theory of Relativity.

1907-Baseball N.Y. Giant's Roger Bresnahan becomes the first catcher to wear a mask and shin guards. He had the mask built based on a sword fencing mask.

1914- George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion premiered at the Haymarket in London.

1926- Horticulturist Luther Burbank died. His last words;" I don't feel good."

1931- Dorothy Parker resigned her job as drama critic for the New Yorker Magazine. Mrs Parker was known for her witty but caustic reviews like “Her performance ran the gamut from A to B.” She married an actor named Cambell and moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. While on her honeymoon the magazine bugged her for some more fixes on an article. She sent a telegram from Paris:” Don’t bother me. F*cking busy. And visa-versa. “

1933- the Bauhaus directed by Mies Van Der Rohe was closed down by the Nazis.

1950- First day filming on the movie All About Eve. As Bette Davis said “Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy night.”

1955- WABD in New York and KTLA in Los Angeles began running pre-1948 Warner Bros cartoon shorts in a half hour format, introducing the baby boomer generation to the world of Bugs, Daffy and Porky.

1970-Apollo 13 blasts off for the moon. Halfway there an explosion will force it to return.

1981- Valerie Bertinelli married rocker Eddie Van Halen.

1983- At that year’s Academy Awards the winner for Best Animated Short was Polish artist Zybigniew Rybcyzinski for his film Tango. During the ceremony he stepped outside for a smoke. When Security guards refused to let him re-enter he became combative, shouting the only English he knew:”I Have Oscar!”. He wound up in jail for assault and his Oscar wound up in the bushes.

2006 Italian police captured the capo-de-capo of the Sicilian Mafia, Salvatore Provenzano near the town of Corleone, the birthplace of Mario Puzo’s fictional Godfather. Don Provenzano had been hiding out for 43 years.
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Yesterday’s question: What was jus primae noctis?

Answer: Right of the First Night. Supposedly Medieval lords could claim the right to spend the first night of your wedding having sex with your bride. It is doubtful how wide spread this idea was, or even if it was ever done at all. It was talked about a lot in the 18th Century in the buildup to the French Revolution, as one more reason aristocrats were not to be trusted.

Quiz: Why were Medieval peasants annoyed when their liege lords claimed jus primae noctis?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What was the original purpose of an Olympic torch runner?
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History for 4/10/2008
Birthdays: Josef Pulitzer, Lew Wallace, George Arliss, Omar Sharif is 76, Harry Morgan, Max Von Sydow is 79, Ken Griffey Sr, Claire Booth Luce, Chuck Connors, John Madden, “Dandy”Don Meredith, Paul Theroux, David Halberstram, Steven Segal is 56, Orlando Jones is 40, Mandy Moore is 24, Haley Joel Osment is 20

Last day of the Roman Megaleasian festival in honor of Lunus the Moon god.

1500- The Renaissance Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza , was betrayed by his Swiss mercenaries to his enemy the French King Louis XII. This one time employer of Leonardo da Vinci was thrown in a dungeon to rot at the castle of Loche, dying in 1508. He asked for nothing to take with him except his copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

1741- Battle of Mollwitz- King Frederick the Great's first victory. His big battalions of Prussian-disciplined infantry defeated the Austrians even after his cavalry had been driven off the field with the King swept along in the rout. He thought he had lost. He was drinking his sorrows away in a pub, when he got the news of his victory. The international fame of Frederick’s Army created an unexpected side industry. A Coburg toy maker named Andreas Hipert began selling mass market sets of toy soldiers modeled on his men. Flats made of lead and brightly painted, they were a big hit. Toy soldiers go back at least as far as the Romans and Medieval princes owned little replicas of knights, but Hipert created toys for average people.



1836- THE HELEN JEWETT MURDER- Helen Jewett was a beautiful, well-bred woman. But bad luck had brought her down to prostitution on the mean streets of New York. This night at a brothel at 41 Thomas St, she was murdered with an axe. Her partner shop clerk Richard Robinson was charged with the murder, but there was not enough evidence for a conviction. The Helen Jewett Case was the first Media-Sensation Crime in the US. The emerging mass media held the public spellbound for weeks with salacious details and lurid descriptions of the sad end of this Soiled Dove.

1849- Walter Hunt invented the safety pin. Hunt sold the pattern for $100 bucks.

1866-The ASPCA founded.

1906- O'Henry's story " The Gift of the Magi " first published.

1912- The White Star oceanliner RMS Titanic sailed from Southhampton on her maiden voyage. The loading ramp supposedly was crowned with a banner which read "The Ship that God could not Sink!" but that is a legend. Other hints of sinister premonition was the fact that for some reason the Titanic was launched but never christened. Whitestar was the shipping line millionaire J.P. Morgan set up to compete with British Cunard and be tied into his railroad monopolies. He wanted you to go from San Francisco to London or Bremen all on his transportation. Although White Star had other large ships that had excellent sailing records like the Olympic, the Titanic disaster and subsequent public hearings caused the White Star Company to eventually fail.

1923- Peeps invented. The sweet Easter marshmallow confection that is shaped like a yellow baby chick and can stick to most surfaces.

1925- F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" published by Scribners.

1947- THE FBI PAY A VISIT to Screen Actor’s Guild president Ronald Reagan and actress-wife Jane Wyman. They accuse them of belonging to Communist Party front organizations. Ronnie agrees to become an informer on his own guild, and fink on just about everyone else in Hollywood. Jane Wyman soon divorced him.

1952-ELIA THE FINK-Film director Elia Kazan ( On the Waterfront, East of Eden,etc.) saved his career but earned the lasting hatred of Hollywood by testifying to the House Un American Activities Committee. He named 8 of his friends as Communists, including famed writer Clifford Odets. Unlike others who were forced to testify Kazan never expressed any regret for the pain he caused. Many see the irony of 'On the Waterfront' that it's hero is a guy who does the right thing by turning informer. The film was written by Bud Schulberg, who also named names. In 1999 the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar and caused a new firestorm of protest, when Kazan stood next to visibly uncomfortable Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorcese. I was there, and I estimate atleast 40% of the audience did not rise or applaud. I heard later that on television it seemed louder. That year the American Film Institute preferred to confer it’s lifetime achievement award on Roger Corman, director of Attack of the Giant Crab Monsters.

1953- The Vincent Price film The House of Wax premiered. The first hit film in 3D.

1961- Singer Joan Baez entered the Greenwich Village club called Folk City and was accosted by a funny young man with a nasaly twang ;”Joan Baez! Here, I wrote a song for you!” His name was Bob Dylan. Baez and Dylan became friends and together changed the image of folk music.

1962- DON'T TRY TO DOUBLECROSS JFK ! The U.S. Steel Corporation had made a deal with the Kennedy Administration that if the feds leaned on the steelworkers union for a favorable labor settlement U.S. Steel promised not to raise wholesale prices which would hurt the U.S. economy. On this day chairman Roger 'Ben' Blough told John Kennedy they were reneging on the deal and raising prices anyway. Kennedy exploded- " My father always warned me that all businessmen were sons of bitches but I never believed him until now!" The Kennedy administration made things so hot for U.S. Steel that they cancelled the price increase a month later.

1962- Stuart Sutcliffe was the bass guitarist of the Beatles until creative differences and a marriage made him drop out of the band in favor of George Harrison. This day Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrhage at age 21.

1962- The Los Angeles Dodgers play their first game at their new Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine. They lost to the Cincinnati Reds 6-3.

1969- Radical students of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) protesting the Vietnam War storm the administration buildings of Harvard. It takes 400 riot police and 197 arrests to drive them out.

1971- Rob Reiner married Penny Marshall.

1985- A new singer named Madonna began her first tour, the Virgin Tour.

1992- Raunchy- comedian Sam Kinison was killed in a head on collision with a truck on the road to Las Vegas. Ironically the comedian who had glorified the wild sex, drugs and rock& roll lifestyle was sober at the time and the truck driver was drunk. Kinison was a former evangelical minister who was banned from NBC in 1986 for making jokes about Jesus’ Crucifixion on Saturday Night Live. Paramedics at the crash site claim they heard Kinison shortly before his death having a conversation with an invisible presence.

Others believe Kinison’s last words were “Oh, OOh –AAAUUUUGGHHHH!!!”

1997- The Jerusalem Post announced the birth of a red heifer at a kibbutz near Haifa. The birth of a red heifer is supposed to be the prerequisite for the coming of the Messiah and the End of the World. In 2003 the cow became brisket.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What was the original purpose of an Olympic torch runner, besides being a magnet for protestors?

Answer: In ancient times, heralds with torches ran through the countryside to signal all the Greek city states that war was forbidden as a sacrilege during the Olympian Games. So the herald was a kind of Time-Out referee, letting everyone know to put down the swords and knock it off for ten days, otherwise Zeus would be really pissed at you! The first Olympic torch run in the modern games was for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Quiz: What was the original purpose of an Olympic torch runner, besides being a magnet for protestors.?

Yesterdays quiz answered below: Why are people who peddle influence in Washington called Lobbyists?
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History for 4/9/2008
Birthdays: Tartar conquerer Timur the Lame called Tamurlane, , Vladimir Ulyanov called Nikolai Lenin, Paul Robeson, Jean Paul Belmondo, Dennis Quaid, Ward Bond, Seve Balesteros, Carl Perkins, Michael Learned, Tom Lehrer, Paula Poundstone, Cynthia Nixon, Hugh Hefner is 82, Elle Fanning is 10

192 AD.- Septimius Severus hailed Emperor by the African Legions. Septimius was as tough as his nickname suggests but he was also superstitious. Just to play it safe he prayed every night to statues of Jupiter, Isis, Sol Invictus the Sungod, Mithras and Jesus..

1553- French writer Francois Rabelais died. His last words were: ” I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

1859- Mark Twain received his Mississippi riverboat pilot’s license.

1865- APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE, THE END OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. Robert E. Lee surrenders the remains of his army to Ulysses Grant ( just 11,000 men from an 1863 peak of 70,000). Grant had had a migraine headache all morning until he received the note from Lee requesting terms. Grant’s staff understood that Lee’s note meant the end of the greatest cataclysm in U.S. history. One staff officer called for three cheers but the men could only manage one weak hurrah, then they broke down in tears. All realized that at last the killing was truly over. Lee arrived wearing his best dress uniform, Grant rode in from the field wearing an old muddy private’s jacket. Grant recalled when they met during the Mexican War but Lee didn’t remember. Grant was happy to make small talk until Lee brought them back to the business at hand. Grant’s secretary was a Seneca Indian named Captain Ely Parker. Lee paused to say ”I’m glad there’s at least one real American here.” The house they met in was owned by a man named Wilbur McClean, who moved his family for Bull Run to Appomattox to get away from the fighting. He managed to keep his belongings safe for four years of war. Now, after Lee and Grant left the historic meeting, the officers looted his place for souvenirs, George Custer riding off with the little surrender table perched on his head.

1914- The first all color film” The World, The Flesh and the Devil” premiered in London.

1917- Shortly after declaring war on Germany President Woodrow Wilson was confronted by old former President Teddy Roosevelt who volunteered to lead a new regiment of volunteer Rough Riders into the World War One trenches. Wilson said thanks but no thanks. At the same time he also declined an offer from Annie Oakley to lead a company of lady sharpshooters into combat “Oakley’s Amazons”.

1942- Black opera star Marian Anderson gives her concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to an audience of 75,000. She was snubbed from giving a recital at the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall which caused a furious Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the DAR and arrange this concert.

1948- Variety columnist Ben Mortimer had been needling Frank Sinatra for his advocacy of liberal causes. He accused Old Blue Eyes of draft-dodging and hinted maybe he had pro-Communist sympathies. This day Sinatra responded by meeting Mortimer in front of Ciro's restaurant on Sunset Blvd and punched his lights out.

1953- The first issue of the T.V. Guide.

1974- Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds Restaurants was the owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team. After yet another sorry performance, losing 8-0, Kroc stormed over to the broadcast booth, grabbed the mike and out loud apologized to San Diego fans for his teams lousy playing” You Guys Stink!” Despite this morale boost the Padres eventually did win championship pennants and get to the World Series.

1975- As North Vietnamese armies stream towards the South Vietnamese capitol of Saigon, US President Gerald Ford issued an advisory to all Americans to evacuate the country.

1991- The last Horn & Hardardt Automat was closed on 42nd St in Manhattan. Philadelphia restauranters Joseph Horn and William Hardart saw German experiments in mass market automated restaurants and imported the equipment to start one in Philadelphia in 1902.

1999- American planes flying for NATO bomb the Serbian factory that make the economy car the Yugo. Car enthusiasts rejoice!


2003- Baghdad fell to invading US and British armies.

2004- Archaeologists in Cyprus discover a 9,000 year old grave of a New Stone Age man. In his arms is the remains of a kitten. This is the oldest evidence of man domesticating cats. So rest in peace- Gronk and Fluffy.

2005- Prince Charles wed Lady Camilla Parker-Bowles, his mistress of thirty years. They were not allowed to marry in Saint George’s Chapel in Windsor, the Queen avoided the ceremony and his father didn’t feel like interrupting his trip to Germany; and because of a delay to respect Pope John Paul II’s funeral, all the commemorative cups and dishes have the wrong date on them. Among the thirty invited guests were Mrs. Bowles divorced husband.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why are people who peddle influence in Washington called Lobbyists?

Answer: in 1868 newly elected President Ulysses Grant stayed at the Willard Hotel waiting to move into the White House. He used to rise early, and not wishing wake his wife Nelly, he would sit in the lobby with his feet by a stove and read his morning paper.



But after awhile he was annoyed by so many jobseekers asking for favors, he gave
up on the practice. Too many revolutionists? He was asked. Nope, too many Lobbyists,
was his answer, and the name stuck.

Quiz: Why are people who peddle influence in Washington called Lobbyists?

Yesterday’s quiz answered below: Why are Pirates also called Buccaneers?
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History for 4/8/2008
Birthdays: Gautama Buddha –as commemorated by Japanese custom-Kambutsue, Ponce De Leon, King Albert of the Belgians, Mary Pickford, Yip Harburg, Betty Ford, Sonja Henje, Jim Catfish Hunter, Jacques Brel, Julian Lennon, Carmen McCrae, Shecky Green, Douglas Trumbull, Robin Wright-Penn, Patricia Arquette

64AD est.- An advertisement found on a wall in Roman Pompeii: “ TWENTY PAIRS OF GLADIATORS sponsored by Decimus Lucretius Satrius Valens, lifetime priest of Nero Caesar and TEN PAIRS OF GLADIATORS sponsored by Decimus Lucretius Valens Minor (his son) will fight on April 8th –12th, Their will also be a suitable WILD ANIMAL HUNT , THE AWNING will be opened. “ Ticketmaster, Visa, Mastercard accepted.



1476-In Florence Leonardo da Vinci is accused of sodomy with his 17 year old male model. He was acquitted in a preliminary hearing, but in his sketchbook he designed a lockbusting tool, just in case.

1876- Amiliare Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda debuted. The ballet portion is famous as the Dance of the Hours.

1879- Milk first sold in glass bottles.

1911-Vitagraph releases Winsor McCay's short cartoon "Little Nemo" theatrically.

1933-The WPA- Works Progress Administration-later renamed the Works Projects Administration founded. It was the Franklin Roosevelt Administration’s massive jobs program to heal the Depression by putting unemployed people back to work doing public works. They built bridges, dams, roads, federal buildings .The WPA arts projects employed artists like Grant Wood, Berenice Abbott and Thomas Hart Benton and put on plays with Orson Welles and John Houseman. There was even a WPA Symphony Orchestra, employing out of work classical musicians, including two old Russian immigrants who knew Tschaikowsky.



1973- Famed artist Pablo Picasso died at 91. His last words were 'Drink to me'. On his night table was a comic book drawn by former Disney animator Vip Partch. Picasso along with Churchill are the Epicurean poster boys- symbols for those of us who want to eat, drink alcohol, smoke, make babies at 81 and die in your 90's.

1974- Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth's home run record. Hammerin' Hank hits #715 off Dodger pitcher Al Dowling. Aaron had tied the Babe’s record at the end of the previous season and had to endure an entire winter of stress and racial threats before he could come up to bat again and break the record on opening day of the new season. He retired with a new record of 755. Al Dowling joked: "I never say 7:15 anymore. I now say, 'It's a quarter after seven'."

1986- Actor Clint Eastwood was elected Republican mayor of the town of Carmel, California. Two weeks ago Clint was fired by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from the Cal State Parks Commission for objecting to a new freeway planned through a wetlands.

1994 Chan Ho Park becomes the first Korean to play in the US major leagues as he makes Dodger pitching debut.

1994- Grunge rocker Kurt Kobain’s body was discovered by a security system electrician three days after he committed suicide with a shotgun. Whew, somebody open a window!

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Yesterday’s Question: Why is a pirate also called a Buccaneer?

Answer: In the 1600’s some seafaring people living on the islands of Hispaniola and Tortuga augmented their meager income by hunting wild oxen and boars, then smoked the meat in a barbecue frame hut known in French as a boucan. These same boucaneers many times also augmented their meager income by piracy. Buccaneer had been used as a synonym for pirate since the 1690s.

Charlton and Rex Harrison in the Carol Reed film THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY (1964), still one of the best examinations of the unique relationship between artists and producers

A fond farewell to actor Charlton Heston, our favorite Moses, Ben Hur, Omega Man, gun nut, Major Dundee, John the Baptist, and his Michelangelo was terrific. There is a publicity still of Heston standing next to the only portrait of the great artist, and the ressemblance was spot on. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, going to see Chuck in Sam Peckinpah's violent MAJOR DUNDEE at the Floyd Bennett Field Navy Base movie night, was one of my treasured movie experiences.

Charlton Heston didn't do much animation,a narrator in Disney's HERCULES, but students like me who attended the Art Students League in NYC heard the stories of him as a nude model in the 1940s. At Dreamworks he was considered for a role in THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, as Pharoah Seti, but the powers that be passed on Charlton and went for Patrick Stewart. He was good too, but using Chuck would have been really interesting.

Adieu Big Chuck!

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Question: Why were Pirates also called Buccaneers?

Answer to yesterday’s question below; What is a fait accompli?
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History for 4/7/2008
Birthdays St. Francis Xavier, William Wordsworth, Mongo Santamaria, Francis Ford Coppola, Walter Winchell, David Frost, Percy Faith, Daniel Ellsberg, Jerry Brown, Alan Pakula, Billie Holiday, Ravi Shankar, Irene Castle, Wayne Rogers, Olikirk Christenson-the inventor of Lego toys, Russell Crowe is 44, Jacky Chan is 54

1805- Ludwig Van Beethoven premiered his Symphony # 3 Eroica at Vienna’s Theater-an-der-Wein. It marks his break with the gentle styles of Mozart and Haydn and the evolution of his full mature sound. He originally intended to dedicate it to Napoleon but scratched out the dedication page when he heard Napoleon had renounced Republican liberal values and made himself an emperor. Of all his symphony’s it remained his favorite despite the opinions of music critics-“ Strange modulations and violent transitions… undesirable originality.”

1891- Showman P.T. Barnum died of old age. The last words of the man who invented kiddie matinees, the Greatest Show on Earth and coined the word “Jumbo” were "How were the box office receipts today?"

1927- An audience at the Bell Laboratory watched a three inch television screen broadcast an image of US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover with sound.

1927- Abel Gances classic film Napoleon premiered at the Paris Opera. Gances active camera and wild editing were years ahead of their time, climaxed by a triptych of large images on three movie screens linked by synchronized projectors. One American man in the audience was inspired to invent the Panavision lens, used by many modern movies today.

1933-The Prohibition 18th Amendment is repealed. My grandmother remembered jumping on a beer wagon as they paraded down Fifth Ave. in New York City. Canadian cities like Moose Jaw Saskatchuan, where Al Capone had set up huge distilleries to run-rum across Lake Michigan, went into mourning. Bootleggers like Josef Bronfman of Seagrams and Joe Kennedy Sr. had to look for other sources of income.

1933- Hitler's regime passed the Professional Civil Service Restoration Act, which ordered Jewish and other political undesirables must be fired from all government posts including university professorships and museum curators and arts funded grants. The mass exile of Germany's intellectual elite began- Bertholdt Brecht, Billy Wilder, Kathe Kollwitz, George Gropius, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, George Grosz, Kandinsky, Fritz Lang, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy, Max Reinhardt and Otto Klemperer -Colonel Klink's dad.

1939-"The Ugly Duckling" the last Disney Silly Symphony short cartoon.

1970- The film Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and John Voight won the Best Picture Oscar. The first x-rated film to do so.

1972-Gangster "Crazy Joe" Gallo was machine gunned while celebrating his birthday at Umberto's Clam House in the Little Italy section of Manhattan. He had been disturbing the gang peace in New York set up by the council of the Five Families, under the leadership of Godfather Carlo Gambino. Crazy Joe’s headquarters was in the President’s Street section of Brooklyn where supposedly he kept a live African lion as a pet. Finally when Gallo had hit rival don Joe Columbo in broad daylight at a Columbus Day Italian Unity rally the Five Families decided he had gone too far. Ownership of the restaurant was returned in 1994 by the city prosecutors office to the original owner Manny "the Horse" Ianello. Despite the bullet holes in the wall, you gotta try their fried calamari-yumm!

1990- The Cincinnatti Contemporary Art Center opened a show of the photographs of Robert Maplethorpe that the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC cancelled. Maplethorpes explicit depictions of gay and s/m lifestyles shocked neoconservative critics of government national endowments for the arts. A media debate on whether government should subsidize or censor art raged and Dennis Barry the museum director was tried for obscenity. His acquittal was seen as a victory for free expression but the argument cast a pall on future funding of controversial art.

1998- Pop star George Michael was busted after exposing himself for gay sex to an undercover policeman in a public park men’s room in Beverly Hills.

1998- Lead singer for the Plamatics, Wendy O.Williams, committed suicide with a shotgun. The outrageously mohawked punk rocker was known for stunts on stage like destroying her amplifiers with a chainsaw, skydiving in the nude, autoeroticism with a sledgehammer and crashing a flaming public school bus into a wall of television sets.

Wendy O Williams in one of her more modest outfits.

2155- According to the show Babylon 5 today marked the first contact between humans and the Centauri Alliance.
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Yesterday’s question: What is a fait accompli?

Answer: something that has already happened, and even though you’re hearing about it now, it's already too late to do anything about it.