Question: What is meant by " being hoisted on my own petard?"

Yesterdays’ question answered below: What do Roscoe Conkling, James G. Blaine, Harold Stassen, John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Pat Buchanan and Mitt Romney’s father George Romney have in common?
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History for 3/23/2008
Birthdays: US Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Akira Kurosawa, Joan Crawford, Dr Werner Von Braun, Juan Gris, Chaka Khan, Paul Grimault, Sidney Hillman Jack Ruby, Joan Collins, Eric Fromm, Fanny Farmer, Lora Petty, Katherine Keener


HAPPY EASTER, Commemorating the time when Jesus Christ was crucified and after three days rose from the dead. For those of you who always wondered why Easter moves around so much when the other holidays stay put, the Medieval Church wanted the festival of Jesus moved from any connection with the Jewish Passover. So Church doctors decided the Easter feast would be the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox-Spring. Makes sense to me..? Today is the earliest you will ever see Easter in our lifetimes. The next time it will be this early it will be the year 2204!

The Resurrection story has roots in other cultures- Horus in Egypt, Dionysius and Orpheus in Greece and Odin in Scandinavia all had death and resurrection myths about them. In the early Church a major heresy arose called Gnosticism or Arian Christians. A Bishop Arrius speculated “If Christ was God on Earth how could you kill God? He must have been only pretending to be dead” Orthodox Christians led by Bishop Athanasius argued that the central truth is Jesus suffered death and resurrection. A late pagan philosopher named Plotinus at this time said wearily: “ You can’t buy a loaf of bread at the market without getting a discourse on the transubstantiation of the body. Every beggar and slave is an accomplished theologian!”

Easter is named for Oster or Aster, German goddess of the East Wind, who’s sacrifice was painted eggs laid at her alter. In 63AD. Baodicea, The British warrior queen who battled the Roman legions of Nero had on her flags the Great Moon-Hare, who was the servant of Oster. In 1680 a German writer named Georg Franck published a story of a fantastic rabbit who laid magic eggs and hid them for lucky children to find. How this all got mixed up with the Passion of Jesus, you gotta ask Mel Gibson.

1721- Johann Sebastian Bach sent the first copy of his Brandenburg Concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg. When the Margrave died and an inventory was made of his holdings in Berlin the value placed on each concerto was six groschen, or about $5 each.

1775- During the debate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry said the only way to deal with England was :"I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY FOLLOW, BUT FOR ME -GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH !" Henry became Gov. of Virginia, but later he was forgotten in the formation of the new nation, especially after he declared publicly that the Constitution was a big mistake and Tom Jefferson was an incompetent coward.

1877- the first telephones installed in the White House.

1894- Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan-Doyle was in Davo Switzerland helping his wife recover from tuberculosis at a spa in the Alps. While there the Swiss introduced him to a new sport that he wrote to London about enthusiastically- Ski-Running, or Skiing. Conan-Doyle predicted in the Strand Magazine “Within a generation thousands of English people will be coming to the Alps to ski.” Today there are no statues to Conan-Doyle in England, but there is one of him in Davo, Switzerland.

1918- In a last ditch attempt to break French morale during World War One, the Germans begin firing giant "Big Bertha" cannons at Paris. The monster shells fly 77 miles and took three minutes to reach their targets. The first shell hit Place De La Republique. A German gunner said the discharge of the cannon sounded like an "enormous vomiting dachshund'.

1919-Benito Mussolini founds the Parti Fasci di Combatimento or Fascist Party in Italy. He started his career as a socialist union leader but swung to the other side later (better benefits?) . He named his ultra-right group after the wrapped bundle of sticks with an axe sticking out that was carried before ancient Roman consuls, the fasces, it symbolized Roman power. In a previous generation Garabaldi's men were called Red-Shirts so Mussolini adopted the Black-Shirts. Later Hitler made his storm troopers Brown-Shirts

1945- THE FIRST JET FIGHTER ATTACK- In a last ditch attempt to stop the allied armies entering Germany, the Luftwaffe mounts an attack on two captured Rhine river bridges by fifty jet fighters. The Messerschmidt ME-262 Schwalbe (Swallows).
Half never get off the ground, others get lost and the rest don't accomplish anything. The Luftwaffe aces like Adolph Galland thought the jets were ideal for shooting down big B-17 bombers, but Hitler insisted they carried bomb loads, which slowed them down enough for propeller planes to hit them. The experimental jet fuel was so unstable that it had to be mixed by a chemist as it was being poured into the gas tank. If the mixing was done improperly the whole thing could explode on the runway.

1945- Later that day General George Patton led a group of journalists and photographers out to the center of the Rhine bridgehead. One journalist asked his thoughts now that he was breaching Hitler’s vaunted Seigfried Line and daring to go where no foreign soldier had stepped since Napoleon. As cameras clicked the General undid his fly and took a long healthy piss in the Rhine River. “I waited all morning to do that! Yessir, the pause that refreshes!” My father remembered signal corps photo lab assistants made a brisk business selling copies of the famous incident on left over scraps of enlargement paper. That photo was taken by Tech Sgt. Paul Dougherty of the 737 Tank Battalion.

1957- Art Clokey's "Gumby" Show.

1971- US Congress lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

1989-COLD FUSION Two physicists named Reynolds & Fleischman make incredible claims that they had discovered a way to make electric power from Cold Fusion. This would mean limitless cheap power that left little waste. It could use nuclear waste as a fuel. After a lot of excitement upon closer scrutiny the formula didn’t work. Oh well.

1990- President George Bush Sr. banned Broccoli from the White House. He joked; "Read My Lips ! I hate Broccoli !"
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Yesterday’s Question: What do Roscoe Conkling, James G. Blaine, Harold Stassen, John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Pat Buchanan and Mitt Romney’s father George Romney have in common?

Answer: They were all men who ran for the job of U.S. president and lost. All but James G. Blaine never became their parties’ nominee.

After a week in New York City mixing Car Talk episodes, I'm back in LA. As I walked through Burbank Airport, a large colorful sign greeted me: THE WALT DISNEY STUDIOS WELCOMES YOU TO LOS ANGELES!. This made me think: Gee, does that mean I have my old job back?...

Some friends ask me why I don't put more artwork on this site? Even my family said I should put more images up. I will eventually. In the mean time,I'm pretty busy, and writing history is my way of relaxing. When your full time job is fantasy, reality is where you come to relax and unwind. The other stuff sounds like work!
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Quiz: What do Roscoe Conkling, James G. Blaine, Harold Stassen, John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Pat Buchanan and Mitt Romney’s father George Romney have in common?

Yesterday's Quiz answered below: What were the Lace Curtain Irish?
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History for 3/22/2008
Birthdays: portraitist Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Marcel Marceau, Stephen Sondheim, Karl Malden, Werner Klemperer- Colonel Klink in Hogan’s Heroes, George Benson, James Gavin, Allen Neuharth the founder of USA-Today, Disney animator Milt Kahl, Fanny Ardant, Karl Maldin is 96, Lena Olin is 53, Reese Witherspoon is 32, William Shatner is 77

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN3MGN899yE In honor of Bill Shatner's birthday, here is his rendition of Elton John's early hit Rocketman, from the 1978 Sci Fi Awards.

In ancient Rome this day was the Festival of the Entry of the Tree- when the priestesses of Cybele Goddess of the Harvest would lead a procession through the streets carrying pine or palm branches. In later times the Christians took this custom and made it Palm Sunday.

1622-POWHATAN INDIANS SUPRISE ATTACK JAMESTOWN.-While the Pilgrims were still thinking of coming to America and Plymouth Rock was just another rock, Jamestown Virginia was the only English settlement in North America. After the deaths of Pocahontas and Powhatan in in 1619, Opescanacough- pronounced Opee-cantanoo, became Mamanatowick- overall chief of the Virginia Powhatan Confederation. He had hated the English since the days of John Smith. So he resolved to rid his land of the white settlers once and for all with a simultaneous assault on them from all sides on the same day.
The settlers were taken completely by surprise, many while tending their fields. 300 were killed, among them John Rolfe, the husband of the late princess Pocahontas.
Despite such heavy losses the English recovered and in a slow war of attrition eventually defeated and killed Opescanocough and annihilated the Powhatan people.

1687- LULLY DIES. Jean Francois Lully was court composer to Louis XIV the "Sun King" and by all accounts a champion hustler and opportunist. The King once paid him for a march with a bag of diamonds. In an age when the Baton had not come into use for conductors (not until Beethoven’s time.) Lully conducted his orchestra by beating a large pole on the ground to the tempo of the music. One day during a performance he poked a hole in his own foot with the pole and died of blood poisoning. On his deathbed he asked a priest for Last Rites but the priest refused unless he burned his latest opera "Atys" which the church considered blasphemous (the church was always angry at theater folk for all the mythological allegories, they refused Last Rites to Moliere as well ). Lully admitted his sins and burned the manuscript of ATYS in front of the priest, who then gave him the sacrament. Later a friend came in and said:"How could you burn your work?" Lully replied:" Don't worry. I have another copy here in my desk. "

1882- Congress outlaws polygamy.

1894- First Stanley Cup Game- Montreal 3, Ottawa I."

1913- Jack London (White Fang, The Call of the Wild ) wrote fellow writers HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill and asked them how much they get paid. He was unsure what to charge.

1944- When the evidence became overwhelming President Franklin Roosevelt in a national radio address first told the American people of Hitler’s holocaust of the Jews. He warned that all persons aiding in these war crimes would be hunted down. Still no attempt was ever made to bomb Auschwitz, Dachau or even the railroad links to them. US Immigration rules had been tightened since 1938. Although Jewish groups had complained for years, the US public never really understood the full horror of the death camps until the film footage returned from the land armies a full year later.

1947- President Truman signed an Executive Order # 9835 ordering background checks of all government employees and to take a Oath of Loyalty to the United States. Two million took the oath, only 129 were sacked for refusing.

1958- Hollywood producer Mike Todd was killed in a small plane crash. He produced hit movies like Around the World in 80 Days and romanced starlets like Gypsy Rose Lee and Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor and Todd had been married for one year and she was devastated by the accident. Years and many marriages later Taylor said Mike Todd was the only man she actually loved.

1960- Arthur Shawlow and Charles Townes patent the laser beam. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER.

1972- The National Commission on Drug Abuse recommends ending all penalties and laws prohibiting marijuana. No one listens to them.

1972- Congress passed the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, forbidding any discrimination by sex. The ERA was first proposed by women’s rights groups in 1923. With the heady atmosphere of Women’s Liberation in the early 70s the amendment seemed a no-brainer, however the Conservative backlash led by anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly slowly stunted it’s ability to win over states for ratification and the ERA died unratified in 1982.

1978- Karl Wallenda, 73 year old scion of the daredevil family the Flying Wallendas, fell to his death from a tightrope between two resort hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1991- Ivana Trump divorces Donald Trump. A celebrated court case ensued to see how the huge Trump fortune would be divided. Newspapers cry Ivanna More Money!

1995- First day of shooting on that utterly classic film- Dinosaur Valley Girls!

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Yesterdays Quiz: One more Irish Question. What were the Lace Curtain Irish?

Answer: Poor Irish immigrant families living in America would demonstrate to their neighbors how good they were doing by hanging lace curtains in their front window. This bit of elegance would mask whatever squalor or distress was in the rest of the home. Lace Curtain Irish came to mean Irish families who became so bourgeois they became indistinguishable from the WASP families they were trying so hard to emulate.

Quiz: One more Irish Question. What were the Lace Curtain Irish?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What does Pres. Bill Clinton have in common with Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, Dwight Eisenhower, Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt?
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History for 3/21/2008
Birthdays: Plato, Johann Sebastian Bach, Benito Juarez, Modest Mussorgsky, Fats Waller, Josef Pulitzer, Florenz Zeigfield, Bronco Billy Anderson, Rev Ralph Abernathy, Armand Hammer, Harold Robbins, Matthew Broderick, Gary Oldman, James Coco, Timothy Dalton, Rosie O’Donnell is 47

1617-Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, died at Gravesend, England after being taken off the homeward bound ship, too ill with smallpox to continue. She was 21. Her children with John Rolfe became the beginnings of one of the largest families in Virginia, with many scions of the Old Dominion tracing their ancestry to Pocahontas.

1740- Composer Antonio Vivaldi - Il Pietro Rosso- the Red Priest, conducted his last concert at the Ospedale Della Pietra in Venice. It was a home for orphaned girls so it was an all-girl orchestra. The 64 year old Vivaldi later went to Vienna to see if he could get any commissions from the Austrian Emperor, but caught an illness on the way and died.

1804-THE CODE NAPOLEON- The French Assembly gave final approval to Napoleon’s revising the legal system. The French civil law courts had been in a hopeless muddle with 368 separate regional law codes some dating back to the Middle Ages. Nappy tackled the problem like he did a battle. He presided over 35 of 87 all day meetings of the jurists- once waking up the drowsy legislators with the cry “Come Gentlemen, Let us Earn our Salaries!” The CODE NAPOLEON became the basis for all French civil property rights and family law and is still in use in Louisiana and Quebec Canada today. Napoleon said: ” When the memory of my forty battlefield victories have faded, what will live forever is my Civil Code.”

1918- The Ludendorf Offensive (second battle of the Somme) begins. When Lenin took over Russia he immediately made peace with the Germans to end the Great War in the East. This freed up one million German troops for the Western Front. German strategist Erich Von Ludendorf hurled them into one last attack to win the war before the American armies could arrive in greater numbers. Ludendorf (who was such a stiff Prussian it was said he made love with his monocle on.) called the action "Kaiserschlacht" ( Kaiser's Battle") and he promised the Kaiser that he would be in Paris by April 1st. When this offensive was stopped by the newly arrived fresh American forces the German High Command admitted their chances of winning the Great War was kaput.

1921- Chicago mobster Big Jim Colosimo was rubbed out by a new face in gangsterdom, a hitman for Johnny Torrio named Alfonso “Scarface” Capone. When Al Capone becomes famous he shows his appreciation to Torrio by having him rubbed out.

1921- Russian Communist leader Nicholai Lenin announced at a party conference the New Economic Policy. Russian state controls applied too quickly combined with the hardships of a civil war had destroyed the Russian economic infrastructure. A terrible famine raged. The New Economic Policy allowed for a certain amount of capitalism and free trade to occur until Russia could get back on her feet again. Stalin replaced the NEP with the first Five Year Plan in 1928.

1933- On the anniversary of Bismarck's parliament the Nazis dominated Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, giving newly elected Chancellor Adolph Hitler complete dictatorial powers. Hitler kept elderly President Hindenburg around for image sake until his death a year later. The Weimar Republic virtually ends. Also passed today was an edict called the Heimtuckegesetz, or Malicious Practices Law, which made it a crime to criticize the Nazis.

1935- Persia renamed Iran and Mesopotamia renamed Iraq.

1951- HOLLYWOOD COMMIES- House UnAmerican Acitivities Commitee (HUAC) under Judge J. Parnell Thomas moves from Washington and sets up in Hollywood to continue rooting out Communist subversion in the movies. They began in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and later move to the federal building downtown. Their concerns weren’t total fantasy, actor Sterling Hayden confessed he was ordered by his communist operatives to try and influence the Screen Actor’s Guild. Still the point remains whether the authorities overreaction was justified and whether Congress could get more publicity looking for spies in Tinseltown than the Department of Games and Fisheries. Out of 15,000 people who made a living in the movies and television, only 295 were ever proven or confessed communists. It was an open secret that for $5,000 delivered to the right committee member your dossier would be moved to the bottom of the pile. The hearings stopped in 1956, the blacklist was broken in 1960 and Judge J. Parnell Thomas went to jail himself for embezzlement. Screenwriter Ring Lardner , already convicted of contempt of Congress in the Hollywood Ten trials was sitting in jail with his gangster cellmate listening to all the famous moviestars denounce each other on the radio. The hoodlum turned to Lardner and said:" Hey, if you are one of dem Reds lemme give ya some advice: Any organization wid dat many finks in it can't be any good !"

1952- DJ Alan Freed put on an event of new pop music in Cleveland Ohio. Called the MoonDog Coronation Ball, it was the very first Rock Concert.

1960- THE SHARPEVILLE MASSACRE- White South African police confronting a peaceful demonstration in the black township of Sharpeville open fire with machine guns into the crowd, killing 69 and injuring hundreds. Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress leaders abandon for a time peaceful protest and form a militant wing of their movement- Spear of the Nation.

1961- The Beatles first perform at the Cavern Club in Hamburg Germany.

1961- based on the success of the first Playboy Club in Chicago, Playboy Clubs with their Bunny waitresses opened in New York, Miami and LA.

1963- On orders from Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Alcatraz Prison was closed.

1963- Barbera Streisand married Elliot Gould.

1965- Rev Dr Martin Luther King’s civil rights marchers reached Montgomery from Selma.

1976- ASPEN MURDER- Jet setter Claudine Longet, a model who was formerly married to singer Andy Williams, shot and killed her lover Spider Sabich, a Olympic skiing champion. Even though their relationship was foundering she said it was an accident, that the Luger went off in his abdomen when he was showing her how to use it. In the bathroom. Uh Huh. Imagine being in the bathroom shaving and your girlfriend pops in “Honey, I’m having problems with the safety on my Luger..Here darling I’ll just –oops!”
She spent 30 days in jail for negligent manslaughter, then married her defense attorney.

1980- Mafia capo Angelo Bruno received a shotgun blast to the head while he sat in his car after dinner. The Genovese family had his former capo Phil "Chicken Man" Testa take over rackets in Atlantic City.

1988- the Screen Actor's Guild hits the bricks for the fourth time in twenty years, this time striking Hollywood for residuals for cable and videocassette income.

2014-Asteroid# 2003QQ47 will pass close by the Earth. If the half mile wide rock hits us it will have the effect of 23 Hiroshima bombs and cause drastic climactic convulsions. Right now the odds are 900,000 - 1 we get hit. Get your catchers mitts out!
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Yesterday’s Question: What does Pres. Bill Clinton have in common with Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, Dwight Eisenhower, Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt?

Answer: They were all politicians who had affairs and got away with them.

Question: What does Pres. Bill Clinton have in common with Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, Dwight Eisenhower, Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What do Alexander Hamilton, Roscoe Conkling, Charles Parnell, Walter Jenkins, Sir John Perfumo, King Ludwig Ist, Wilbur Mills and Elliot Spitzer have in common?
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History for 3/20/2007
Birthday: Roman poet Ovid -43b.c., Henryk Ibsen, Lauritz Melchior, Ray Goulding, Mr. Rogers, Carl Reiner, Bobby Orr, Sheldon "Spike" Lee, B.F. Skinner, Pat Riley, Sir Michael Redgrave, Edgar Buchanan, Holly Hunter

Happy Vernal Equinox, or Spring, if you will….

44BC- The Great Funeral of Gaius Julius Caesar. The spot in the Forum where the common people tearfully cremated Caesar’s body is still there today. Caesars lieutenant Marc Anthony won the Roman populace over by appealing to their love of Caesar.” Friends Romans Countrymen Lend me your Ears!” as Shakespeare wrote. At a key moment Anthony revealed Caesar’s bloody toga. The assassins Marcus Brutus and Cassius Longinus thought the people would proclaim them heroes for saving the democracy. But they committed a fatal error by staying hidden during this ceremony. They lost public sympathy and fled Rome.

1760- The Great Fire of Boston.

1787- Benjamin Franklin was officially presented at the court of Versailles to meet King Louis XVI. Spain, Russia and Sweden withheld their ambassadors, not wishing to cause a rift with England. His eyes teared up when he was introduced not as representing rebel English colonies, but as “ DR FRANKLIN, CONSUL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES OF NORTH AMERICA!” This can be considered the birth of U.S. foreign policy.

1841- Edgar Allen Poe's The Murder's in the Rue Morgue first published in Graham’s Magazine. Called the first true detective novel, Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin was inspired by a real French sleuth named Jules Vinquoc who used disguises and science to solve crimes the Paris police could not handle. The character was the inspirations for Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Inspector Poirot.

1852-Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" first published. It sold one million copies within six months. The book was the first to treat the horrors of slavery directly and portray slave families not as dumb brutes or happy minstrels but victimized human beings. Because of this book, during the Civil War Yankee soldiers referred to Confederates as women-whippers, and baby stealers. Stowe said modestly: “I didn’t write it, God did. I just took dictation.”When she visited the White House President Lincoln met her with:”So here’s the little lady who started the big war.”

1899- In Sing-Sing prison Martha Place becomes the first woman in the U.S. to be electrocuted. She had killed her stepdaughter. Because Sing-Sing Prison in Ossining New York was situated up the Hudson River from New York City, the phrase to be” sent up the River” as meaning going to jail, became popular.

1903- Henri Matisse exhibits at the Salon des Independents in Paris.

1931- Cantors Kosher deli opens in Los Angeles.

1942- After a harrowing escape from the Philippines through Japanese lines by pt. boat, submarine and plane General MacArthur arrived at the Australian town of Darwin. His first radio message was to tell the occupied Philippine people “ I Shall Return!” The U.S. State Department later asked MacArthur to amend his message to the more democratic We Shall Return but the imperious general refused..

1943-MGM's "Dumb Hounded" the first Droopy Cartoon.

1969-John Lennon married Yoko Ono on the Rock of Gibraltar.

1976-Heiress Patty Hearst, aka Tanya, convicted of bank robbery. How she could be tried for bank robbery and her Symbionese Liberation Army captors simultaneously tried for kidnapping her is one of the riddles of American jurisprudence. She was finally pardoned by Bill Clinton in one of those last day in office pardons.

1985- Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the Alaskan Iditarod dog-sled race. She would win it a total of four times.

1987- The U.S. food and drug administration finally approved AZT for use in slowing down the effects of AIDS.

1995-A Japanese doomsday cult called Aum Shinrikio released a deadly nerve gas called Sarin into the Tokyo subway system. It killed 13 and sickened 5,500. The cult had tried on several occasions to release anthrax and other germs into the air to kill millions but their attempts always failed. Their philosophy Poa stated the souls salvation could be achieved through mass-murder. Two days later Tokyo police raided Aum Shinrikio’s headquarters and arrested their leader Matsumoto Chuizo

1999- After years of attempts and failures involving millionaires like Richard Branson, Rocky Aoki and Malcom Forbes, Dr Bertrand Picard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of the UK became the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a balloon. It was named the Breitling Orbiter 3. Dr Picard said: “I am with the Angels and completely happy.” Mr Jones said: First thing I’ll do is phone my wife, then like a good Englishman I’ll have a cup of tea.”

1999- Legoland opened in Carlsbad Cal.
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Yesterday’s Question: What do Alexander Hamilton, Roscoe Conkling, Charles Parnell, Walter Jenkins, Sir John Perfumo, King Ludwig Ist, Wilbur Mills and Elliot Spitzer have in common?

Answer: They were all politicians who had their meteoric climb to power toppled by a sex scandal.

Question answered below: What do Alexander Hamilton, Roscoe Conkling, Charles Parnell, Walter Jenkins, Sir John Perfumo, King Ludwig Ist, Wilbur Mills and Elliot Spitzer have in common?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who are the Black Irish?
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History for 3/19/2008
Birthdays: George De La Tour, Wyatt Earp, Dr. David Livingston, William Jennings Bryan, Sir Richard Burton (The African explorer, not Liz Taylor's ex), western artist Charles M. Russell, Jacky Moms Mabley, Leonard Nimoy, Adolf Eichman, Richard Williams, Phillip Roth, German ace Adolf Galland, Ursula Andress, Patrick McGoohan, Ornette Coleman, Harvey Weinstein, Bruce Willis is 53, Glenn Close is 61

Today is Saint Joseph.’s Day, when the swallows come back to Capistrano.

1330- Edmund the Earl of Kent is beheaded by order of his mother. who's a naughty boy!

1611- Moscow Burns- again. During the period called the Time of Troubles a Polish army had captured the Kremlin and tried to get the son of the Polish King Wladyswav IV or Ladislas made Czar. The Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow Hermogenes forbade any good Russian from swearing allegiance to the Roman Catholic Ladislas. So the Poles threw the Patriarch in a dungeon where he soon died. This day a rebel army organized by a Prince Troubetskoy and peasant butcher Kosma Minin attacked the foreign occupiers and in the ensuing conflict the city caught fire. Four hundred years later Prince Troubetskoy’s descendant was a producer on the Fox animated feature "Ice Age".

1628- A group called Puritans, differing from the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony are granted a Royal Charter to set up their own Massachusetts Colony. Oliver Cromwell once considered emigrating to this colony but in the end opted to stay in Cambridge, England.

1866- H.M.S. MONARCH OF THE SEAS leaves Liverpool with 2,000 tons,700
immigrants and freight bound for New York. and disappears forever. No wreckage, no survivors, no distress signals. One of the Mysteries of the Deep...

1875- Mark Twain admits in a letter that he now likes to use a typewriter, a new technology accused of ruining the art of writing.

1914- A fire in the negative vaults of the Eclair Studios in New Jersey destroyed forever all the American work of pioneer French animator Emile Cohl. He had come to the U.S. to animate the first cartoon series, George McManus’ "The Newlyweds" later to be renamed in comic strip form "Life With Father".

1931- Nevada legalized gambling.

1935- Harlem riots. When the rumor spread that a young shoplifter had been beaten to death by police in the basement of Kress Department Store, 10,000 Harlem residents riot in the streets and burn shops. Two people are killed. The child makes an appearance and in fact had never been harmed.

1945- THE NERO ORDER- While allied armies pour into Germany, Adolph Hitler in his bunker issued an order to destroy all bridges, water and telephone systems, dams, schools, anything that could be of any use after the war is over." The Allies will have conquered nothing by ashes!" A immolation worthy of Wagner's Gotterdammerung. Despite some Nazis fanatical wish to fight to the end most rational Germans including Albert Speer completely ignored this order. And Hitler down in his bunker didn't know one way or another. German generals started to refer to the Fuhrer's strange mood swings with a German word: VookenCuckooshein- that translates as "Cloud-Cuckoo-Land".

1953- First T.V. broadcast of the Oscar ceremony. That utterly memorable circus film
"The Greatest Show on Earth" won top honors. Ironically it was Cecil B. DeMille’s only Oscar of his career. Before TV, the Oscars ceremony included a dinner and an hour of dancing before the awards were presented.

1954- Singer Sammy Davis Jr. lost an eye in an auto accident in the California desert. He was left lying bleeding unattended in a hallway in Riverside County Hospital. This was because he was black and it was a segregated facility. Finally actor Jeff Chandler found him and forced the doctors to treat him. Friend Frank Sinatra urged Davis out of his depression and got him out on stage again. That first night at Ciro’s nightclub the entire Ratpack- Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford each preformed on stage wearing a black eye patch similar to Davis’.

1957- Elvis Presley purchased an estate outside Memphis Tennessee called Graceland from Ruth Moore for $100,000.

1957- Skiing aficionado Pete Seibert was wounded in both legs during World War Two and was feared he would never walk again. He not only walked but he got back on skis and by 1950 made the US Olympic skiing team. This day he hiked with a friend up to an isolated Valley in Colorado named Vail:" My God Earl, we’ve climbed all the way to Heaven!" he exclaimed. Pete Seibert built Vail into a world class ski resort and town.

1959- North Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh declared a war of unification against the Republic of South Vietnam.

1962- The first Pillsbury Doughboy comercial.

1964- IBM gives the greenlight to plans for the 360 series. The first compatible computers.

1973- During the Watergate Scandal, President Richard Nixon's lawyer John Dean tells him "There is a cancer on the Presidency."

1974- The band Jefferson Airplane changed its name to Jefferson Starship.

1979- C-Span cable channel started broadcasting live from the floor of Congress. The first Congressman to speak on camera was Al Gore.

1982- Randy Rhoads, the lead guitarist for Ozzy Ozbourne died when he playfully flew his plane buzzing the bands travelling bus and smacked into a farmhouse.

1984- I’LL BE BACK- James Cameron began shooting the film the Terminator. He first considered casting O.J. Simpson for the cyborg killer before settling on Austrian weightlifter Arnold Swarzenegger.

1987- Reverend Jim Baker resigned as head of the PTL Ministries. The Televangelist had been accused of hanky-panky with secretary Jessica Hahn and defrauding his parishioners of millions to put air conditioning in his dog’s house, and on a Christian Theme Park named Heritage USA. Evangelist turned comedian Sam Kinison joked:"I imagine up in Heaven Jesus must be flipping through the New Testament saying "Hey, where did I say anything about a Water Slide?!"

1993- Monkey-cam debuted on the David Letterman Show.

2003- FIVE YEARS AGO, THE INVASION OF IRAQ BEGAN- The United States, Britain and a loose coalition of small states used public outrage over the 9-11 attacks to invade Saddam Husseins’ Iraq and march on Baghdad. The firepower of the attack was so devastating, it was called Shock & Awe. This was the United States first "preventative war" breaking fifty five years of discouraging other nations from resorting to unilateral military actions, and it broke the 200 year old American tradition of never firing first. Although Iraq had not bothered the US directly, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney declared they had solid evidence that Saddam had the ability to attack America with nuclear weapons in 45 minutes. The White House encouraged the belief that Saddam had a tie to Osama Ben Laden’s 9-11 attack. All these claims turned out to be fictions. That summer the movie Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones came out. Wags called this war Gulf Wars Episode II Clone of the Attack.

2004- Brian Maxwell, the inventor of the Power Bar nutrition snack, died of a heart attack at age 51.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who are the Black Irish?

Answer: One theory of the name is that in 1588 when the Spanish Armada was destroyed in a great North Sea storm off the coast of Ireland, thousands of Spanish and Italian sailors were stranded on the beach. After the Irish discovered these strangers were Catholics and didn’t like British people too, many were invited to stay and intermarry with the Irish people. This created a strain of Irish people with milk white skin and black Mediterranean hair.
The other theory is that the Black Irish mean the ones who converted to Protestantism and worked with the English overlords. Many came to America and became slave owners, like Scarlett O’Hara’s family in Gone with the Wind.
But I like the Spanish sailors’ story better.