Quiz: Why did L. Frank Baum called his fantasy land over the rainbow, the Land of Oz?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: KILROY WAS HERE was scrawled everywhere in the 1940s. Was Kilroy a real person?

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History for 2/16/2008
Birthdays: Charles Taze Russell founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Edgar Bergen, Sonny Bono, John MacEnroe, Frank Welker, John Schlesinger, Faith Hubley, Katherine Cornell, John Corligiano, Kim Jong Il, Levar Burton is 50, Ice-T is 50

In ancient Rome it was the Festival of Quirinalia- when the founder of Rome Romulus was taken up into the clouds and became the god Quirinus

Today is the feast of St. Juliana, who was tortured by both her father AND her boyfriend.I know a lot of you girls out there can relate to that. She also liked to wrestle winged devils in her spare time.

1923- Bessie Smith made her first recording-"Downhearted Blues".

1937- Chemist Wallace Carothers working for the Dupont Company received the patent for the synthetic fiber called Nylon. This fabric could replace expensive silk. By World War Two nylon stockings for women were so popular that limited by shortages resourceful women would draw a seam in pencil down their bare leg to impersonate the effect.

1978- The first computer bulletin board goes on live. Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss's Computerized Bulletin Board System was an S-100 motherboard and CP/M, and a Hayes 300 baud modem. It still runs to this day, but the Internet has taken the place that BBS's used to have

1985-"Family Dog" episode on Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories show. The first direction by Brad Bird.

1994- Apple announced the introduction of the digital camera, the first camera that needed no film but could load images directly into a computer.

2003- As part of his lavish birthday celebrations, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il called for this people to "Burn with Everlasting Hatred for the United States."
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Yesterday's Trivia Question: All through World War Two the preferred American graffiti was a drawing of a big nosed man looking over a wall and the words KILROY WAS HERE, written over it. Was Kilroy a real person?


Answer: During World War Two, James Kilroy worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy Mass. His job was to check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks, and so get paid twice for the same job.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. But with war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troop ships the yard produced. To the servicemen he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived. From Berlin to Tokyo.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.)

And as the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for the coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Truman, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. The first person inside was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is this Kilroy?" ...

( Special Thanks to KARL COHEN of ASIFA/ SF for sending me this story)

courtesy of seldomnicenowadays.blogspot.com

Question: All through World War Two the preferred American graffiti was a drawing of a big nosed man looking over a wall and the words KILROY WAS HERE, written over it. Was Kilroy a real person?



Answer to yesterdays question below: Name a US president who’s name ends in a vowel.
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History for 2/15/2008

Birthdays: Galileo Galilei, French King Louis XV, Michel Praetorius, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Tiffany, John Barrymore, Matt Groening, Jane Seymour, Cesar Romero, Gale Sondergard the Spider Woman, Melissa Manchester, Claire Bloom, Chris MacDonald, Chris Farley, Marisa Berenson is 61

1720- Young Francois Voltaire had begun a career as a successful playwright with his first play Oedipe. But his second play Artemire was booed as loudly as his first play was cheered. The irate poet ran up on stage and argued with the audience for over an hour about its merits. But the audience still thought the play sucked.

1815- Things on the Island of Elba had gotten so quiet that the British officer in charge of Napoleon's exile, Sir Colin Cambell, informed his prisoner he was going on holiday to see his girlfriend in Italy. “Will you be back by the 28th?” Napoleon asked. “Yes, why ?” Oh, nothing. it's just my sister Princess Pauline is planning a party and we'd hate for you to miss it." In reality Nappy planned to escape and reconquer Europe. Pauline had her party on the 25th. Sir Colin returned to find his prisoner, and his career in the army, had flown the coup.

1898- The U.S.S. Battleship MAINE EXPLODES in Havana Harbor, killing 252 sailors. The cause was never confirmed, it may have been a spontaneous igniting of fumes in the gunpowder magazine, but the American public was urged to blame Spanish sabotage.
The next day a motor launch out to the site of the disaster rescued the ships cat clinging to the mainmast protruding from the water. U.S. public opinion against Spain was pushed by "yellow journalists" like William Randolph Hearst and Josef Pulitzer who told his correspondent artist Frederick Remington: "You supply the pictures, I'll supply the war."American expansionists had been planning a war with Spain since 1896 and had tried to pick a fight over Cuba in 1871 and 1874. President McKinley, who Teddy Roosevelt described as having :"no more backbone than a chocolate eclair" gave in and declared War on Spain to cries of "Remember the Maine!". More Americans were killed on the USS Maine than in the entire Spanish American War, which was fought and over by December of the same year. America emerges as a power player on the world stage.

1933- ATTEMPTED ASSASINATION OF FDR- Unemployed anarchist Guisseppe Zangara shot a pistol at President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a rally in Chicago. He missed FDR but killed the Mayor of Chicago Anton Czermak. Guisseppe
Zangara was tried and sent to the electric chair the following month.

1947- During the anti-Communist witchhunts the FBI revoked the visa of famed documentary filmmaker and founder of the National Film Board of Canada John Grierson because they thought his politics were subversive.

1954- Future President and b-movie star Ronald Reagan tried doing a stand-up act at the Las Vegas Ramona Room with the "Honey Brothers", a comedy troupe similar to Abbot & Costello.

1969- President Richard Nixon combined the twin holidays of Lincoln’s Birthday Feb. 12th and Washington’s Birthday Feb.22nd into one three day weekend and called it President’s Day. So instead of two days off in February you have one with no emotional meaning to it. Nixon does it to us again!

1984- Touchstone Pictures created so the Walt Disney Company could do more adult movies. Their first film was Splash., starring a tastefully naked Darryl Hannah.

1989- The last Soviet troops leave Afghanistan.

1991- In a speech President George I Bush Ist invited dissident elements in Iraq to rise up against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. He declared: ”The Day of the Dictator is Over!” Iraqi Kurds, Shiites and Marsh Arabs rose in revolt, confident the US would back them. The US instead pulled out and left them to be bombed and nerve-gassed by Saddams’ Republican Guard. Maybe as many as 500,000 died..

1994- After months of insane bidding, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone beat out QVC’s Barry Diller to buy Paramount Pictures. The cost is $20 billion, although the studio’s net worth was estimated at $8 billion. When asked, Diller replied: “What’s done is done. Next.”

2002- Scientists announce the first discovery of fossilized Dinosaur vomit.

2003- Millions of protestors march in cities from Hollywood to Kiev to Capetown to protest US plans to attack Iraq. Nearly a million marched in London alone. Pres. Bush II invaded anyway.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: In 1988 hesitant Democratic Presidential candidate Mario Cuomo joked:” The American people would never elect a president who’s name ended in a vowel”. This year we’ve seen Rudy Giuliani, and now Barak Obama. So, have any U.S. Presidents had a name that ended in a vowel?

Answer : What Super Mario may have been saying, in so many words, is that almost all US presidents have been WASPS ( White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) ( all except Kennedy) but there were four presidents who’s name did end in a vowel. James Monroe, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore and Calvin Coolidge.

Quiz: In 1988 hesitant Democratic Presidential candidate Mario Cuomo joked:” The American people would never elect a president who’s name ended in a vowel”. So far this year we’ve seen Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and now Barak Obama. So, have any U.S. Presidents had a name that ended in a vowel?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Was Robin Hood a real person?
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History for 2/14/2008
Birthdays: Joshua Norton aka Joshua Ist Emperor of the United States 1819, Jack Benny- real name Benjamin Koubeilsky, Frederick Douglas, Christopher Latham Scholes- inventor of the typewriter, George Washington Ferris inventor of the Ferris Wheel, Pier Francesco Cavalli, Jimmy Hoffa, Vic Morrow- COMBAT star and Jennifer Jason-Leigh’s dad, Skeezix Wallet (character in Gasoline Alley comic strip), Gregory Hines, Ignaz Friedman, Thelma Ritter, Carl Andersen, Hugh Downs, Jim Kelly, Florence Henderson, Meg Tilly, Alan Parker, Margaret Knight the inventor of the flat bottom paper bag in use in supermarkets today.

Happy Valentines Day!
so where's my Whitman's sampler?

This holiday was originally the Roman fertility festival LUPERCALIA, when the young men of Rome wearing olive oil and not much else, would run through the streets waving oak branches over the heads of young girls to inspire fertility. Then they would all go to the orgy.
Keeping with the custom of the early Church to sanctify pagan holidays with saints days-. Pope Gelasius Ist decided to rename the holiday for St.Valentine, who was martyred by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus in 295 A.D.. The olive oil and the orgy was out, but tradition has it that Valentine in prison kept communicating with his flock by writing little notes and tossing them through the bars.. These notes or "Valentines" fused with the romance notion of the old Roman party and became a custom for lovers as early as the 14th century.

Today in the Orthodox calendar is the Feast of Saint’s Cyril and Methodius, the “Apostles to the Slavs”, who created the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet out of Greek and Hebrew characters.

1848- President James Knox Polk is the first president to sit for a photograph. The daguerrotype was taken by a young Matthew Brady.

1876- THE TELEPHONE- One of the strangest coincidences in technology history was that two men invented the same device at almost the same moment. Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell in Boston and Elijah Gray in Chicago were both working on a device to transmit human voices instantaneously over wires. Each knew of the others work and labored furiously to be the first. When Bell was able to get a weak sound of his voice over the wire his sponsor and future father in law Robert Hubbard wanted to file the patent. But Bell procrastinated until he felt it was perfect. Exasperated, Hubbard took the schematics and went to the office to file the patent himself. What he found out later, was he filed the patent barely two hours ahead of Gray in Chicago! Gray tried to challenge the patent. US courts decided that since Grays attorney had filed a “caveat” to a patent- which meant I’m working on an idea” while Hubbard & Bell filed a patent “I’ve invented the idea”, they awarded the patent to Bell. Elijah Gray still went on to invent more things, founded the Western Electric Company and grew very rich. But Alexander Graham Bell got the credit as inventor of the telephone.

1884- 25 year old Teddy Roosevelt was an up and coming member of the New York State legislature. On this day he received a double shock - both his mother and young wife died on the same day. Shattered, he abandoned his political career and fled to the Badlands of North Dakota to be a rancher and deputy sheriff. He said the landscape was so bleak it "looked like the personification of a poem by Edgar Alan Poe."

1886- Los Angeles began to export its first trainload of oranges back east.

1887- Several leading French intellectuals including Guy DeMauppasant, Balzac and Charles Gounod publish a letter to the President of the Republic begging him not to build the Eiffel Tower.-" A Useless Monstrosity, which even America with it's crazed passion for commerce has the sense to reject! And what if it lasts twenty years ?" There were plans to pull down the tower 1907 but by then it had new use as a wireless radio antenna.

1907- Golden Books incorporated. One of their artists was Gustav Tennegren, who would become the stylist of Walt Disney's Pinnochio.

1927-Alfred Hitchcock’s first suspense film “The Lodger” opened in London.

1929- the ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE- Scarface Al Capone's gang dressed as Chicago police round up a bunch of Bugs Moran's hoods at the S.M.C. Cartage Company garage at 2122 North Clark Street and blow them away with tommy guns. Dr Reinhardt Schwimmer, one of the men killed, wasn’t even a mobster but an optometrist who liked to hang out with gangsters to see life on the edge. The seven men had 200 bullets in them. They even shot their dog. When Moran was asked who he thought had done it, he replied: ”Only Capone kills like that.” Big Al himself was in Key Biscayne Florida having lunch with the Dade County District Attorney. One of the triggermen was Machine-gun Jack McGurn, but when questioned by police his girlfriend testified he had been in bed with her all that day. Newspapers called her his 'Blonde-Alibi". McGurn was bumped off later that year. At the massacre site amazingly one gangster- Joe Duesenberg- lived long enough for police to question. But to the end he wouldn't spill the beans. When asked who shot him full of bullets, he replied:" Nobody!" and died.

1931- Tod Browning's film of the play Dracula, starring Hungarian actor's union organizer and recreational morphine addict Bela Lugosi, premiered.

1946-Enniac, the first all electronic circuited computer, started up at the university of Pennsylvania.

1949- The United States charged that the Soviet Union had as many as 14 million people in prison camps in Siberia, called Gulags.

1962- First Lady Jackie Kennedy gave a tour to network television cameras of the private living quarters of the White House. It’s the first time most Americans had ever seen the inside of the Executive Mansion.

1965- The Detroit home of black activist Malcolm X was firebombed.

1967- Former kinky pinup model Betty Page married Harry Lear.

1968- Part of the Vietnamese Tet Offensive was the Communists overrunning the old Imperial Capitol of Hue. This day US Marines finally recaptured the cities Imperial citadel after weeks of bitter house to house fighting. The Communist command center was set up in a throne room called the Place of Perpetual Peace.

1979- Digital music composer Walter Carlos, who scored the film A Clockwork Orange, announced he had undergone a sex change and was now Wendy Carlos.

1989- Iranian religious leader the Ayatollah Khomeni issued a 'fatwah' -death sentence against Pakistani novelist Salman Rushdi because he considered parts of his book "The Satanic Verses" to an insult to the character of the prophet Mohammed. Rushdie’s birth home of India only allowed him a visa in 1999. The fatwah was finally revoked in 2000 by the Supreme Islamic Counci, Iran's equivalent of the Supreme Court.

1991-Meg Ryan married Dennis Quaid.
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Yesterdays Question: Last time I asked if Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Now I’ll ask- was Robin Hood a real person?

Answer : Well,…yes in a way. Many scholars have wondered just who the heck this Robin Hood guy was. He's sort of a composite of several notable rogues. Robin of Loxley was a Saxon bandit, but evil King John liked crooks, so he gave him a job. A few decades later there was Will of the Weald called Windikin, Eustache the Black and Fulk Fitzwarren, a nobleman in disgrace who became an outlaw. He and other woodsmen fought for justice for England's poor in King Henry III 's reign. But Henry was a good king- well, kind of an okay-middle-of-the-road, could-have-done-better king. So it's convenient to combine them with Robin of Loxley and King John the Bad king. People have celebrated Robin Hood since Piers Ploughman (1382) and Shakespeare mentioned him in As You Like It (1603) but his character was cemented by the internationally popular novels of Sir Walter Scott. In Ivanhoe (1819) Scott has King Richard Lionheart call him :” Robin Hood, Prince of Outlaws and his Merry Men!”
Prop of Time/Warner Bros.

Well, the three month old Writers Strike is at last over. Congratulations to the great victory of the WGA and it's supporters. Of course, they didn't get everything they wanted, but one rarely does. Didn't Voltaire say "There are no complete victories, or no complete defeats"? Every negotiation is winning and losing a few things, and all sides will spin it to sound like they won. But the WGA did get the expansion of residuals and recognition of their jurisdiction of internet downloads. The actors will demand the same thing and more this June.

There is lots of talk of how one thing they lost was the jurisdiction of animation, and the media portrays it as though there are no organized union writers. But the fact is animation writers have been unionized by the cartoonists guild since 1939. It's not WGA, because it was negotiated in a time when all writing was done on the storyboards. I feel for writers who are mad their animation payrates are not as good as the WGA, but a few hotheaded animation writers made my last year as guild president miserable. I hear there are still some who are mad at me.

I would be the first to cheer the success of the writers in getting better conditions. Hell, I'm a writer myself. These past weeks I juggled my schedule around so I never had to cross a WGA picketline. But my job back then was to be president of all the animation tribe. I was not going to destroy the livelihoods of three thousand animators and their families, because a dozen writers were unhappy, most of whom had double cards with the WGA anyway. I asked them then, would the WGA strike Hollywood for you? ( anim writers). Now we see they couldn't budge the studios this time either. I knew the animation jurisdiction would be a minor negotiation chip that would go away as soon as the real deal was made.

If you seriously want to resolve this jurisdiction problem, the only thing that would work would be a one time sit down of the WGA, the Studios and IATSE. And the WGA better have something to trade to IATSE in exchange. No one wins anything by offering nothing in exchange. Now that this current strike is over, I don't see that meeting happening anytime soon. The studios like splitting this hair, the way they keep a difference between animators doing cartoon animation and animators who do motion picture visual effects.

From my distant viewpoint, the thing that impressed me most about this strike was the writers solidarity. I heard very little, inside or out, of writers crossing the line and going back to work or writing under the table. And the support of the actors and celebrities was admirable. If anything, more employers scabbed on the AMPTP than writers breaking ranks with the Guild. The Weinsteins, UA, Lionsgate , RKO, Marvel and more crossed the line and made a deal. But the writers, including the celebrity writer-directors like Woody Allen and Chris Carter, all hung tough, even though half of their ranks are unemployed most of the time.

This strike is a great lesson to us animation people. You see what you can do when we all stick together? All you rugged individuals, can you think of a job that is more subject to personal ego and solo achievement than writing? Yet, they all understood if they stuck together, they would win for all. When I was animators union president, I had a steady stream of "arteests" whining at me " What has the union ever done for me?!" " I make my own deals!" and " If you guys strike, I'm working anyway and screw you!" then " why is our union so damn weak? It can't do anything!!"

Draw your own conclusions.

The big guilds like the Writers, Actors and Directors didn't become powerful overnight. They fought their way up from nothing as we did. But if you are willing to work for WalMart wages just to get to make cartoons, an employer will be more than willing to accommodate you. - TS

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Quiz: Last time I asked if Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Now I’ll ask- was Robin Hood a real person?

Answer to yesterdays question below:
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History for 2/13/2008
Birthdays: Giambattista Piazzetta, Bess Truman, Grant Wood, Lord Randolph Churchill- Winston’s dad, Fyodor Chaliapin, Peter Tork of the Monkeys, Oliver Reed, Chuck Yeager, Woody Hayes, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Carol Lynley, Kim Novak, George Segal is 73, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Springer is 63, Stockard Channing is 63, Kelly Hu

1503- Today during the endless string of Italian wars of the Renaissance, outside the town of Barletta things were interrupted by a unique event. Angered by a French captain who said that the Italians were a sissy people, thirteen Italian knights challenged thirteen French knights to single combat. Both armies lined up and cheered them on like a sporting event. They fought until all thirteen Frenchmen were down.

1547-Catherine Howard, the 5th wife of Henry VIII was beheaded. The execution was held on the exact spot where wife Number 2 Anne Boleyn was beheaded six years before.

1863-President Lincoln hosted a wedding reception at the White House for P.T. Barnum star attraction General Tom Thumb and his bride. Lincoln was heavily criticized at the time for having such a frivolous party during the depths of the Civil War.

P.T.Barnum and Tom Thumb

1866-The first daylight bank job. In Missouri the Clay County Savings Bank is robbed of $60,000 by a young ex confederate guerrilla named Jesse James.

1867- The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss Jr premiered in Vienna.

1886- Artist Thomas Eakins resigned his professorship at the Philadelphia Academy of Art in disgust when he was attacked for having male nudes in his art class with women as students.

1914-ASCAP founded.

1917- German spy H-21. Also known as the beautiful Mata Hari, was arrested in Paris.

1932- Free Eats, the first Our Gang short comedy to feature Spanky MacFarland.

1933-comic character Blondie married Dagwood Bumstead.

1939- Producer David O. Selznick replaced directors on Gone With the Wind. George Cukor was out, Victor Fleming was in after completing The Wizard of Oz. Vivien Leigh liked Cukor who was known for directing women, but Clark Gable convinced the producers that they needed an action director. About 15 minutes of George Cukor’s work remains in the picture. Victor Fleming loved Clark, but didn't get along with Vivien Leigh and came to hate the controling Selznick. David O. brought in Sam Wood to direct second unit when Fleming fell behind. At the end Victor Fleming had one more tantrum when Selznick proposed giving Wood and Cukor co- screen credit.. Yet despite it all Gone with the Wind became a box office phenomenon. Years later Clark Gable came up to Selznick at a party and said: "Maybe I'm wrong about disliking you David, 'Gone With the Wind' keeps getting re-released and keeps me a star." Selznick once said:” My biggest fear is that all I shall ever be remembered for is producing Gone With the Wind.”

1935-German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptman found guilty of the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby and electrocuted. The chief of police in the town of Bergen New Jersey where the murder occurred was the father of Desert Storm General Norman Schwarzkopf.

1937- Hal Foster's comic hero Prince Valiant first appeared.

1945- THE FIREBOMBING OF DRESDEN.- Some experts say the annihilation of this militarily defenseless city was an act of revenge for Rotterdam and Coventry, the fact was at the Yalta conference several days earlier Stalin had asked that the major German cities on his eastern front be bombed by his Anglo-American Allies to delay Nazi divisions withdrawn from Norway and Holland to be used to slow the Red Army 's advance. Dresden was to be a major assembly point for these new reinforcements. Still, it's a legacy the Allies find troubling. On this day in the early evening 845 British bombers followed by 700 American dropped thousands of tons of incendiary bombs in a pattern calculated to cause a firestorm. The temperature reached 800 degrees, the church bells melted and the oxygen was literally sucked out of the air by cyclonic winds. By conservative estimate 35,000-100,000, mostly civilians, died. Young American P.O.W. Kurt Vonnengut was in a group made to help dig out bodies. The experience changed his life and he later wrote his accounts in the classic anti-war novel "Slaughterhouse-5"

1959 -Happy Birthday BARBIE ! Mattel introduces the plastic nymph, originally named by the German artist who created her 'Lily" but changed to 'Barbie" by an exec who's daughter Barbara was nicknamed that.

1964- The Invention of Cool Whip.

1996- Off-Broadway musical Rent by John Lawson, premiered

1996- In an airport in Thailand eccentric Icelandic rock and roll star Bjork attacked a journalist, beating her and dragging her by the hair.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the origin of the rounded shape with the point at the bottom that symbolizes a heart?

Answer: When Saint Valentine was imprisoned, he passed little notes out to his brethren. Not having paper, he wrote on little leaves, that are that shape. They were from the heart of Valentine, thus valentines. The earliest known regular valentine card was sent in the 1400s.

Uhh...I'm not sure this is what Saint Valentine had in mind...

Quiz: What is the origin of the rounded shape with the point that symbolizes a heart?

Answer to yesterdays question below:
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History for 2/12/2008
Birthdays: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin are born on the same day in 1809 although an ocean apart. Austrian Emperor Francis II, Thaddeusz Kosciuszko, Joe Garagiola, Luigi Boccherini, John L. Lewis, Bill Russell, Franco Zeffirelli, Lorne Greene, Joe Don Baker, Arsenio Hall, Christina Ricci is 28

1502-Ferdinand and Isabella had thrown all the Jews out of Spain, now what about the Moslems? This day all Moslems not accepting baptism were given until April 30th to leave the country. They complained that when the Moors ruled they tolerated all religions, but the Spanish monarchs were deaf to all entreaties. Up to 3 million Moors eventually left. A century later Cardinal Richelieu called the Edict of 1502 "the most barbarous act in history."

1733- General James Oglethorpe landed with a prison colony near present day Savannah to found the colony of Georgia.

1789- Ethan Allen, the frontiersman who's Green Mountain Boys were heroes of the American Revolution, died from injuries gotten from drunkenly falling out of a sleigh crossing frozen Lake Champlain. His last words were when someone said :"Ethan, the Angels await thee!" Allen replied:" They do? Well G-ddamn 'em, let em wait!"

1798- LORD NELSON AND MRS. HAMILTON DO THE NASTY..... Admiral Horatio Nelson had been increasingly shivering his timbers over his friend Sir William Hamilton's sexy young wife Emma. He was staying with the Hamilton's in their villa in Naples during his tour of duty in the Mediterranean. According to historians analyzing their love letters to each other Emma and Nelson make specific references to the 'Delightful Twelfth of February", and Mrs. Hamilton bore a daughter nine months later she named Horatia. Their open love affair in the face of polite society was one of the scandals of their age.

1809 -Happy Lincoln's Birthday, Because of Richard Nixon’s law creating President’s Day in 1970, you do not have today off as a holiday. One of my favorite Lincoln quotes is :" If I'm supposed to be two-faced, then why did I settle for this one?"

1924- RHAPSODY IN BLUE- Big Band leader Paul Whiteman had commissioned a rhapsody for Jazz Band from the famous composer George Gershwin. Tonight at a concert at the Aeolian Hall in New York City it premiered in a long bill of "Modern Music". Also on the bill was jazz interpretations of "Yes We have no Bananas" and "Kitten on the Keys." Sergei Rachmaninoff, Fritz Kriesler, Igor Stravinsky and Leopold Stokowski were in attendance.
Interestingly enough Gershwin’s orchestrator was Ferde Grofe’ the composer famous for the Grand Canyon Suite. It was Grofes’ idea to bring in a jazzman named Ross Gorman to do the opening clarinet solo. While rehearsing the piece Gorman took Gershwin’s opening 17 note ascent and ‘smeared’ the riff to the long high note, creating the famous opening. Gershwin liked it so much he told him to play it always that way. Gershwin was originally going to call his piece Concert Rhapsody for Jazz Band & Piano or American Rhapsody but his brother Ira Gershwin was inspired by some Whistler paintings he saw recently at a museum called Nocturne in Blue and Green and Harmony in Grey and Green. He suggested Rhapsody in Blue.

1941- General Irwin Rommel lands in North Africa to take over the Italian forces and his new Afrika Korps. Using lightning tactics and brilliant improvisation in the desert he became legendary as the "Desert Fox". He took over from an Italian general named Barbazioli, who because of his wild facial hair was nicknamed "Electric Whiskers".

1947- THE BIRTH OF THE 'NEW LOOK' The Paris fashion show where designer Christian Dior defined the look for women of the 1950s into the early 60's: Wasp waists, gloves and patent leather accessories, pleated mid length skirts.

1967- London police arrest Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Marianne Faithful for doing drugs and doin’the nasty.

1994-"WHY ME! WHY ME?!" The Winter Olympics at Lillehammer began, which are remembered mainly for figure skater Tanya Harding hiring a hit man to break her rival Nancy Kerrigan's kneecaps with a steel pipe. Despite all the hub-bubb the gold was won by Ukrainian skater Oksana Baiyul who was arrested a year later for drunk driving.
Nancy Kerrigan signed a multi-million dollar endorsement contract with Disney, which she succeeded in blowing within a month by making fun of Disneyworld during a parade. Within range of a microphone she whispered." This is all so corny!" When someone asked if Tanya Harding could get any commercial endorsements, it was pointed out that she's an asthmatic who smokes Marboros.

1999- President Bill Clinton was acquitted in his Impeachment trial in the Senate stemming from his affair with young intern Monica Lewinsky. During the trial word leaked out that several of the president’s chief critics like Representative Robert Livingston and Newt Gingrich also had extramarital affairs or sexually harassed their female employees. Chief Justice William Rheinquist, high on painkillers, presided over the trial with his dark Justices’ robes adorned with some gold stripes on the sleeves, the first time any Supreme Court Justice robes had any such adornment. He got the idea watching the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Iolanthe. The Parker Pen Company had created special monogrammed pens for the Senator’s use during the trial. But when the pens were used it was discovered they all had the name United States misspelled on them- they read the Untied States of America. Others said it was a fitting statement on the state of the government at the time.
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Yesterdays Question: Why is Valentines day, a day that celebrates love and courting, named for a saint? Did he date other saints?

Answer: Part of the strategy of the Roman Church to convert the pagans of Europe was to displace pagan feast days with Christian worship days. Feb 14th was the Roman fertility festival Lupercalia, with lots of orgies and wild goings on. The Church re-sanctified the festival for Saint Valentine, who was martyred on that day by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus. While in prison Valentine communicated with his flock by tossing messages out of his jail window- Valentines.