from Mickey's Whoopee Party, 1932

Well, the Year 2007 has finally come to an end.

It's been a pretty difficult year. Without getting too personal, we've had a death in the family, legal hurdles and tougher and tougher deadlines.

On the plus side Pat and I came out of all of these trials OK. We made a lot of new, wonderful friends and we both have been privileged to work with some of the best artists, writers and musicians in our business. Pat had fun working on Bees and is now busy on Kung Fu Panda. Every year I am impressed with the caliber of students I get to work with at USC, UCLA and the other schools who invite me out to visit. My book Drawing the Line has been universally well received and was honored by Princeton University and the London Review of Books. I'm already signed up for a new book.

It seems to me that every five years I seem to get on a project that has it all, good idea, challenging work, good people and a good vibe. Car Talk is one of these projects. I count my self very lucky to have the helm of this project, and I am very grateful of the trust my producers Bill Kroyer, Howard Grossman, Linda Simenski and Doug Berman have in me. This coming June we'll see how the show is received by the audience, hopefully they'll find it as entertaining as I do.

The end of some things, the beginning of others. It's been a wild ride, Mr Toad, now it's on to 2008!
From Our Family to Yours, Have a Very Happy and Healthy New Year!

Tom & Pat Sito

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QUIZ: If there is twelve months to the calendar, why is December ancient Latin for Number Ten?

Answer to Yesterday’s Question below: Is there an ulterior meaning to the song The Twelve Days of Christmas?
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History for New Years Eve 12/31/2007
Birthdays: Henri Matisse, Odetta (real name Holmes Felicious Gordon) , Simon Weisenthal, Val Kilmer, Pola Negri, Anthony Hopkins, Jules Styne, Ben Kingsley -real name Khrishna Banji, Sarah Miles, Donna Summer, Patti Smith, Elizabeth Arden, Tim Matheson, John Denver, Dianne Von Furstenberg

192-193 A.D.- The Roman Emperor Commodus assassinated. The natural son of the great philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius turned out to be just another sicko tyrant in the mold of Nero and Caligula. While Nero liked to play his harp Commodus loved playing gladiator and at one point thought he was the god Hercules reborn. His opponents were always given blunt swords while he had the sharp ones. He also liked to behead ostriches in mock combat. Romans called him behind his back 'the Gladiator' and the Parricide, although it was never proven that he murdered his father. This night during a wild New Years Party he drunkenly challenged a top wrestler named Narcissus. Narcissus had been bribed by Commodus's Preatorian Prefect Laetus and head of the Imperial Household Eclectus. So instead of just pinning him down, Narcissus broke Commodus’ neck. Made for one hell of a party.

406AD- Huge hordes or Goths, Alemanni and Vandals trudge across the frozen Rhine River and invade the Roman Empire. This biggest migration of barbarians is the beginning of the Fall of Rome.

1502- Renaissance Prince Caesar Borgia was besieging the Adriatic town of Senigalia. Caesar invited the enemy leaders Vitelli and Oliverotto to a conference with him at the Governors Palace. After dinner and drinks Caesar had them strangled by garrot. Machiavelli among others praised Caesar Borgia for a “most lovely ruse”. Leonardo DaVinci was there on the Borgias payroll at the time.

1862- The U.S.S. Monitor, the little ship that fought the Confederate Merrimac in the first great contest of iron warships, sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras. Her inventor John Ericsson had boasted, 'the waves shall pass over her and she shall ride the sea like a duck', but in rough seas she sank like a rock. The Monitor has recently been discovered on the ocean floor. In 2002 sections of the turret and a propeller have been recovered.

1862-3 - SLAVERY ENDS IN THE UNITED STATES-In a service at Boston's Music Hall Abolitionist leaders Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubmann, Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Lloyd Garrison sang 'Battle Hymn of the Republic" and celebrated midnight when the Emancipation Proclamation would officially take effect.

1879- Thomas Edison did a public demonstration of his new invention the Light Bulb. Special commuter trains brought people to Menlo Park New Jersey for the show.

1881- Los Angeles becomes the first U.S. city to be lit entirely by electricity.

1905-6- THE FIRST BALL DROPPING CEREMONY- The New York Times hosts the first of it's giant news years party's from it's new office tower at #1 Longacre Square, now renamed in their honor Times Square. Midnight was signaled to the crowd outside by the lowering of a lantern on it's roof. ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO -In 1907 an ironworker created a large ball covered with electric light bulbs that was lowered from a flagpole. The Ball-dropping ceremony was only interrupted twice in 1942-43 for World War Two blackout rules. The Times Building was later sold and renamed the Allied Chemical Building, the Sony Building and the Time/Warner building.

1911-12 Dr. Sun Yat Sen elected first President of the Republic of China, replacing the 256 year reign of the Manchu Dynasty. One of his first acts was to abolish the Chinese calendar and go on to the western one for 1912. He also went to the Shrine of the Ming Emperors to tell their spirits that the Manchus had fallen. Dr Sen was a Methodist who no longer followed Chinese religious beliefs, but he was honoring a pledge to political allies.

1917- EUROPE DISCOVERED JAZZ- As the first American units entered Paris to help in World War One the New York 15th Colored Regiment serenaded the city. The regimental band was made up of top Harlem jazz musicians led by band leader James Europe. The French were amazed as the band performed ragtime riffs that only gradually they understood to be La Marsaillaise and Le Marche Sambre et Meuse. Local musicians accused the Harlemites of using trick instruments since no one could make sounds like that. Lieutenant Europe went on tour with the band and Europe the continent embraced the new modern sound.

1923-24-BBC overseas radio service first broadcast the Chimes of Big Ben around the world.

1929-30- New York's "21" Club opened as a speakeasy. Barkeep Jack Kramer opened the hangout at 21 west 52nd street. With a wine celler hidden behind a two foot thick stone wall door. The feds raided 21 once and found nothing after hours of searching. When they went back outside all their cars had been towed away by NYPD traffic cops. It seems the Mayor of New York Jimmy Walker was having dinner in the wine celler and was annoyed by the intrusion. In subsequent years it was normal to see movie stars, Lucky Lucciano, J.Edgar Hoover and John F. Kennedy eating side by side. Richard Nixon loved their tater-tots called potato souffle.

1929- Guy Lombardo and his big band the Royal Canadians first played Auld Lang Syne at midnight for New Years.

1940-41- Avant Garde artists John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp break into the Washington Square Arch in and declare Greenwich Village the Republic of New Bohemia. Like coool, daddy-o.

1943-44- In occupied Europe U.S. Navy frogmen sneak over to the future Normandy beachhead and take sand samplings to analyze if the beach could take the weight of heavy tanks and ordnance. The samples were sent to Detroit so companies could design customized tank-tread teeth. As the frogmen swam back to their midget submarine they could hear the Germans celebrating in their bunkers. One frogman yelled out "HAPPY NEW YEAR !"

1943- Four hundred policemen are called out to control frenzied crowds of bobbysoxers as Frank Sinatra played the Paramount Theater in Times Square. OOHH FRANKIE !!

1946- The first Pismo Beach Clam Festival.

1947- Roy Rogers married Dale Evans.

1958-59- As Fidel Castro's guerrillas close in on Havana, dictator Fulgensio Batista slips out of a New Year's Party and boards a plane for Miami.

1962- Romanoffs closed. One of the premier hot spots on the Sunset Strip, it was the preferred hangout of Humphrey Bogart, who liked to play chess in the afternoon with Nick Romanoff when he was between films.

1967- The Ice Bowl- Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 for the NFL championship. It was nicknamed the Ice Bowl because the game was played in GreenBay in the out doors in below zero weather, with a wind chill of 40 below zero fahreignheit. Referees whistles froze to their lips.

1970- The Beatles officially broke up when Paul MacCartney filed suit to dissolve their partnership. It took four years to complete the final legal separations and contractual commitments of the Fab Four.

1977- President Jimmy Carter in Teheran toasts Iran under the Shah as :“ An Island of Stability in a Troubled Middle East .” Within a year the Shah is overthrown.

1985- Singer Ricky Nelson died when his band's converted old DC-9 airplane crashed near DeKalb,Texas. Nelson it was said had been living on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and Snicker's bars.

1995- The last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Waterston

1997- Will Smith and Jaeda Pinkett marry.

1999- Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of Russia after an 8 year rule administering the break up of the Soviet Union and the establishment of democracy in Russia. His successor was former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

1999-2000 - The Y2K MANIA. While the world prepared to celebrate the new century and the Third Millenium the American media whipped up paranoia over a theory that the change from 1999-2000 would cause most computers to crash. Planes would fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles would launch themselves and marauders would rule the streets like something out of Mad Max. The US Government spent $65 million to prepare for the crisis. But at midnight absolutely nothing of the kind happened. Even older less sophisticated computers in Russia and China were unaffected and everything ran normally, although there was a rumor that the NORAD early warning system went kaphlooey for a few hours. Meanwhile many of the US public stayed home and watched the rest of the world have fun on television.

2001-2002- The European Union currency exchange went into effect. Adieu, Adios and Ciao to the French Franc, Belgian Franc, Italian Lire, German Deutchmark, Austrian Schilling, Dutch Guldin, Greek Drachma, Irish Pound, Portuguese Escudo and Spanish Peseta. Welcome the Euro.
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Yesterday’s Question: Is there an ulterior meaning to the song The Twelve Days of Christmas?

Answer: The Christmas Feast being Twelve Days comes from the Norse Winter Festival of Yule. It has been claimed that the song “THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS” was a secret code from an unknown author appearing in print in 1780. From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their Church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality.
The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ, don’t ask me why. Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments. Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love. The four calling or colley birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament. The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation. Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit: Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy. The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes. Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control. The ten lords a-leaping were the Ten Commandments. The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples. The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.
Recently skeptical scholars say this is all baloney and it’s just a silly song- see http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/12days.asp

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QUIZ: Does the song the Twelve Days of Christmas have an ulterior meaning?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: If King Herod was the wicked king who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, why is he also referred to as Herod the Great?
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History for 12/30/2007
Birthdays: Rudyard Kipling, Gen. Hideki Tojo, W. Eugene Smith, Luther Burbank, Anna Magnani, Bo Diddley is 77, Sir Carol Reed, Sandy Koufax, Solomon Guggenheim, Jeanette Nolan -Granny from the Beverly Hillbillys, Jack Lord, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, Joseph Bologna, Fred Ward, Tracey Ullman. Tiger Woods is 32, Heidi Fleiss, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary -when Stookey became a Born-Again Christian he changed his name to Number One.

1370- Pope Gregory XI is an example of the rather unconventional path one could take to the Throne of Peter in the Middle Ages. His genial uncle Pope Clement VI had made him a cardinal at age 18. Upon his election as Pope at age 39 someone noticed that he had never taken Holy Orders to become a Priest! So yesterday he was ordained a priest and today became Pope.

1672- Violinist John Bannister and his orchestra held a concert at Whitefriars chapel in London. It’s the oldest known music concert given not to a royalty but to the general paying public.

1816- Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married Frankenstein author Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley.

1817- Coffee beans first planted on the Kona coast of Hawaii.

1862- During the Civil War the day before the Battle of Stone's River, Tennessee, Union and Confederate armies spent the day quietly facing each other across a creek under an icy rain. A battle of the bands started up. Blue and gray musicians serenaded each other across no-mans land with patriotic songs like Dixie and John Brown's Body, while the men sang along. Finally both bands synched up with a spontaneous rendition of " Be It Ever so Humble, There's No Place Like Home..". Thousands of throats from both sides took up the chorus.

1884- Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony premiered in Leipzig.

1894- Suffragette Amelia Jenks Bloomer died; she had gained notoriety for inventing "bloomers" a way for women to ride horses and do other physical actions without cumbersome hoops skirts.

1903 - A fire broke out in the crowded Iroquois Theater in Chicago killing 571. After the tragedy building codes were enforced that public buildings have exit doors that always open outwards and some form of fire fighting equipment on the premises. The Iroquois had a sign over the door that read “Absolutely Fireproof”.

1936- The Great General Motors Strike. The strike was violent and tied up steel, rubber tires and other manufactures for months. United Auto Workers invent the first "sit-down" strike at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Mich. "When they tie a can to the Union man-Sit Down, Sit Down! When the Boss won't talk, don't take a walk- Sit Down, Sit Down !"

1940- The Arroyo-Seco, the First L.A. Freeway opened by Mayor Fletchor Bowron, connecting downtown and Pasadena. ( interstate U.S. route 66 is in 1932, and The Imperial Highway opened in 1936., the Ventura freeway in 1958.)

1944- Manhattan project director Gen. Leslie Groves has a private meeting with FDR at the White House. Groves tells the President the two "cosmic bombs" (Atomic Bombs) they are building will end the war. The reason they were making two was one was uranium based and the other was plutonium based. To those who believe the U.S. atomic bombed Japan just out of racism in this meeting President Roosevelt wanted one dropped on Germany immediately to stop the Battle of the Bulge and kill Hitler. But Groves argued the A-bomb hadn’t been tested yet. He worried that if the bomb was a dud, the Germans were smart enough to take it apart and build their own from the fissionable material, which they might shoot in a V-2 at London.

1941- “I Vant to be Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion pictures and all public appearances. She made her disappearing act complete and was only seen fleeting on the streets of New York until her death in the 1990s.

1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with Monty Hall premieres.

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Yesterday’s Question: If King Herod was the wicked king who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, why is he also referred to as Herod the Great?

Answer: King Herod (37BC-4BC) established a dynasty and steered the Jewish kingdom through the shifts of Roman politics. He sided first with Caesar, then Brutus & Cassius, then Anthony & Cleopatra and finally Augustus. Even when Cleopatra wanted Marc Anthony to give her Israel as a gift to join back to Egypt, Herod talked him out of it.
Herod was known as a great builder. He rebuilt Solomon’s Temple so it was known as the Temple of Herod. He also constructed the port of Caesarea, great palaces and the fortress of Masada.
But as Herod got older he grew increasingly paranoid of plots to overthrow him. He executed two of his sons, had his brother-in-law the Chief Rabbi drowned. Even Emperor Augustus said:” It’s better to be one of Herod’s dogs than one of his sons.” So when seers told him of a new king of the Jews was born in Bethlehem of the line of David, he ordered all the children killed. He died hated by all, but he left Israel bigger and more prosperous than in all her history.

So who doesn't have a little bump in the road once and awhile?

Congratulations to David Letterman's company for making the first deal with the WGA and breaking ranks. We hope more companies follow suit. While management is trying so hard to get writers to cross the line and go back to work, it only stands to reason that the production companies might want to cut their own deals as well. What's good for the goose, etc.
I mean, look how much solidarity the studios showed over eliminating DVD screeners of Academy nominated movies, or the one-time-view self-destructing DVD? About two minutes, then it was every studio for himself! Lets hope the idea spreads.

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Quiz: If King Herod ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, why is he referred to as Herod the Great?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is the Sea of Tranquility?
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History for 12/29/2007
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Flavius Titus, Pablo Casals, Madame de Pompadour, Andrew Johnson, Charles Goodyear, Gelsey Kirkland, Dina Merrill, Tom Bradley, Mary Tyler Moore, Jon Voight, Charles Goodyear, Ray Nitschke, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Flanders, Ted Danson, Marianne Faithful, Paula Poundstone, Jude Law is 35

1172- ST. THOMAS BECKET murdered. A debate that raged throughout the Europe in the Middle Ages was whether the Church could boss around Kings or visa-versa. In England when a vacancy opened up for Archbishop of Canterbury, King Henry II arranged to get his old drinking bud, Sir Thomas Beckett elected. However Beckett took his new job so seriously he became the English Churches strongest champion. On this night Henry was so fed up with Beckett that he shouted to his court:" Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest ?!!" Two of Henry's dim bulb knights took this as a hint and went over to Canterbury and stabbed the Archbishop while at prayers. The Pope in Rome excommunicated Henry and placed England under the Writ of Interdict, which meant no local priest could administer baptism, marriage or last rites to anyone. They even took down the church bells so you didn’t know what time it was. King Henry apologized, and Beckett was made a Saint.

1837- THE CAROLINE INCIDENT. A minor rebellion against England had broken out in Canada led by William Lyon Mackenzie. This day on the American side of the Niagara river the Caroline, a ship full of supplies destined for the rebels was attacked by Canadian loyalist militia. They set fire to the Caroline and pushed it over Niagara Falls. The incident caused tensions between the U.S. and British governments. Mackenzie’s Rising was put down and his grandson became Canadian Prime Minister.

1851- In 1844 the Young Men’s Christian Association or YMCA opened in London. An American named Thomas Sullivan was inspired by this idea and brought it home to Boston. This day the first American YMCA meeting was held in the Old South Church. The idea soon spread across the United States. In 1979 the YMCA tried to sue the gay disco group the Village People over the song of the same name, not appreciating the fact that it gave them the best publicity they’ve had in years.

1851- Lola Montez dances on tour in America. Lola Montez was originally an Irish lass named Betty James who created her persona as an Argentine Flamenco star. She became mistress to the King Ludwig Ist of Bavaria, who I guess couldn’t tell between a dancer from Buenos Aires or County Cork but knew a hot babe when he saw one.
Ludwig was so besotted with her that he bankrupted his country and had anybody she didn’t like horsewhipped. He finally had to abdicate his throne rather than give her up. She did dancing and lecture tours to support herself and even published books on beauty secrets. If there had been a ninetenth century Oprah show, she would have been on it. She died an elderly social worker in New York and is buried in Green Wood Cemetery. I'm told her ghost sometimes appears on the Lower East Side.

1890- WOUNDED KNEE- The last battle of the Indian Wars. The US government reacted violently to the Ghost Dance Movement then sweeping Sioux reservations. But the Ghost Dance was not calling for physical rebellion against the US but for a spiritual attack. Ghost dancers believed if they danced with the spirits of their ancestors then the white man would be driven back across the seas by a centennial cataclysm and their towns and cities buried under 6 inches of fresh soil. Then the buffalo and deer would return.
But to the US Department of the Interior even a metaphysical rebellion is rebellion enough. Sitting Bull was arrested and killed. The army was sent to Wounded Knee reservation to demand a disarming of a few braves and when shooting broke out the army opened up with modern rapid firing cannon and rifles. To 30 US casualties 300 Sioux, mostly women and children were killed. Reports of troops shooting the survivors abounded. Ironically the unit was the Seventh Cavalry and soldiers considered it the revenge of Custer.

1913- Cecil B.DeMille telegraphed his partners back in New York:” Flagstaff no good for our purpose. Have proceeded to California. Want authority to rent a barn in a place called Hollywood for $75 a month.” He began shooting the Squaw Man, the first Hollywood Film. His partner Sam Goldwyn (then Sam Goldfish) cabled back: “ Rent barn on month to month basis. Do not make long commitment.”

1916-James Joyce’s novel “the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” published.

1940- Nazi Bombers firebomb London causing 1500 fires. At one point they hit St. Paul's Cathedral. CBS correspondent Edgar R. Murrow achieved national fame in the US by standing on a rooftop and reporting live on the radio even as the bombs fell around him.

1941- Disney animator Bill Tytla tells Time Magazine in an interview about creating "Dumbo": "I don't know a damn thing about elephants!"

1950-Congress passed the Celler-Kefhauver Act, which sought to reign in global companies mega-merger mania. It was the last major piece of legislation to try and regulate corporate monopolies in the U.S. So…… what happened?

1964- The first transistorized hearing aid.

1972- LIFE Magazine ended publication.

1975- Euell Gibbons, natural foods advocate, died of a stomach ailment.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the Sea of Tranquility?

Answer: It was the area of the Moon where in 1969 the Apollo XI Lunar Module landed and men first stepped out on the Lunar surface. When the spacecraft landed, they called it Tranquility Base.

Quiz: What is the Sea of Tranquility?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is eggnog?
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History for 12/28/2007
birthdays: Woodrow Wilson, Robert Sessions, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Hildegarde Neff, Maggie Smith, Edgar Winter , Stan “The Man” Lee, Martin Branner the creator of Winnie Winkle, Denzel Washington is 53, Johnny Otis, Martin Milner (1-Adam-12),Lew Ayres, Lou Jacobi, Terri Garber

Feast of the Innocents-commemorates the Massacre of the Innocents, when King Herod the Great ordered the first born of Nazareth slain. In Spain and many Latin American countries this is a kind of April Fools Day, the victim of a practical joke being proclaimed an "innocent".

1065- English King Edward the Confessor dedicated a new abbey church west of London. Since in those days a church was also called a minister, it was soon known as the West-minster Abbey.

1734- ROB ROY- Scottish nationalist guerrilla Robert McGregor, called Rob Roy, died peacefully of old age in his cottage in the Highlands. Made famous by Daniel Defoe’s novel about him, he spent his last hours making peace with former enemies. His last wish was for a bagpiper to be brought in and pipe a tune his wife wrote. Hoot-Man!

1869- CHEWING GUM- William Semple of Mount Vernon Ohio received a patent for chewing gum. Since early times frontiersmen and Indians had the habit of chewing on a piece of pine resin or sap. The oldest chewed piece of gum was found in Sweden in a glacier in 1993. It is 9,000 years old and no, it wasn’t found under a theater seat. As early as 1842 Charles Curtis was selling spruce chewing gum from his home in Bangor Maine.
In 1869 a Staten Island photographer named Thomas Adams made friends with exiled Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, he of Alamo fame. Adams noticed the old general didn’t smoke but liked to chew a plug of tree sap he called “Chicle”. Adams took the chicle and put a candy shell around it, getting rich on the invention of Gum Balls. Santa Anna hoped the invention would finance his return to power in Mexico City but that never occurred. Gumball machines appeared in 1918, Bubble Gum in 1928.

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe des Capuchines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience jumped for fear of getting wet. In the audience was a magician named George Melies who was inspired to use the new device to invent motion picture special effects.


1897- Edmond Rostands famous play CYRANO DE BERGERAC premiered in Paris. There really was a poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly big nosed hero who helps another man romance his true love. DEGUISE: “Have you read Don Quixote? Reread the part about tilting the windmills. One who tilts with windmills can be cast down into the mud.” CYRANO:” Or up into the stars!”

1914- THE FIRST TRUE CHARACTER ANIMATION- Windsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" premieres as part of a vaudeville act. Up to then most U.S. animations were attempts to bring popular newspaper comic characters to life, but Gertie was a new character never before seen. Some critics had wondered if animated characters weren’t some kind of man in a special suit, so McCay drew a dinosaur, a character that couldn’t possibly be impersonated by a living thing. The brilliant draftsmanship and timing of this film would inspire the generation of Animation artists of the Golden Age of the 1930's-40s.


1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1928- Louis Armstrong recorded West End Blues.

1944- ON THE TOWN, a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green and young composer Leonard Bernstein premiered in NY.

1958- Cuban Communist forces under Che Guevara win the Battle of Santa Clara. It was a decisive battle in Fidel Castro's campaign to overthrow the dictator Fulgensio Batista. In 1997 when Che's remains were discovered in Bolivia they were reburied with great ceremony in Santa Clara.

1968- The Beatles White Album goes to number one of pop charts.

1973-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelego” first published in Paris. The exposing of the Soviet prison camp and police system was a great success in the west. It gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

1983- Dennis Wilson was the original drummer of the Beach Boys but he had a pretty bad drug habit and was once involved with the Manson Family. Taking time off from rehab for Christmas he and some friends sat on a yacht doing more drugs and booze near Marquesas Pier. Wilson recalled this very spot was where after breaking up with his first wife he threw her mementoes overboard. He wondered if he could get them back and started “pearl-diving “i.e.-diving holding your breath without any scuba equipment. But being stoned after several dives he miscalculated the depth he had gone to and drowned. Dennis Wilson was 37. Of all the Beach Boys he was the only one who actually surfed.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is eggnog?


Answer: Eggs with Grog, a sailor’s rum drink that was popular in England and Colonial America. It was brewed in large amounts to be drunk at holiday parties. George Washington was a big fan of egg nogg, and he made his own recipe with whiskey, sherry and rum mixed in. It was considered an achievement to finish a cup.

Question: What is eggnog?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is wassel? A wassell bowl?
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History for 12/27/2007
Birthdays: Johannes Kepler, Linwood Dunn, Marlene Dietrich, Louis Pasteur, Oscar Levant, Sidney Greenstreet, Anna Russell, William Masters of Masters & Johnson, Leslie Maguire, John Amos, Tovah Feldshuh, Heather O’Rourke, Gerard Depardieu is 59

1820- John Quincy Adams wrote a friend that he was sad that Washington DC didn’t have any good monuments. It could use one to George Washington and a cathedral like Westminster Abbey. If John Q. could only see DC today, it’s a rock garden of statuary, including the inventor of the screw propeller.

1831- Charles Darwin sets sail for the Pacific on board the HMS Beagle. The observations he made of exotic species while on this voyage formed the basis of his theories on evolution and natural selection.

1871- The world’s first cat show opened at the Crystal Palace in London.

1892- In New York City the Cathedral of St. John the Divine starts construction (and is still not finished..) The largest Gothic nave in the world, work was stopped during the Depression and resumed in the 1970s. Part of the problem re-starting construction was finding some Gothic medieval-style stonemasons who were willing to re-locate.

1900- Temperance crusader Carrie Nation staged her first public axe attack on a saloon, the bar at the Carey Hotel in Witchita, Kansas. She shattered a large mirror behind the bar and threw rocks at a titillating picture of Cleopatra nude bathing. She called her actions not vandalism, but “hatchetation”.

1903- The Barbershop Quartet favorite “Sweet Adeline” sung for the first time. It was written for opera star Adelina Patti.

1904-PETER PAN, a play by James Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned children who laughed and cheered all night. Peter llewlyn Davies, the little boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan used to say:” I am not Peter Pan. Mr Barrie is.”, He committed suicide in 1960. James Barrie once said to H.G.Wells:” It’s all right and good to write books, but can you wiggle your ears?”

1927- Broadway musical "ShowBoat" debuts at the Ziegfeld theater. Based on a story by Edna Ferber the music was written by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play made a star out of a tall black baritone named Paul Robeson.”Ol’ Man River..”

1934- The Shah declared the nation of Persia would now be known as Iran.

1935- Radio City Music Hall opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater in the world, seating over 6,000. Cole Porter sang” They all laughed at Rockefeller Center, now they clamor to get in…..”

1945- Eleven nations sign the Bretton Woods agreement creating the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

1947- The "Howdy-Doody" show debuts on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the Puppet Playhouse.

1951- The Crosley car goes into service for the post office in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is a little jeep with the steering wheel on the right side so the mail deliverer didn’t have to get out of his vehicle to reach every curbside mailbox.

1954- The" Disneyland" television show premieres. Up until then the major Hollywood Studios were all boycotting the new upstart medium of television, then mostly done in New York by blacklisted stage actors and writers. Walt Disney is the first to break ranks with the studios and get into television production and even films the show in Technicolor, figuring television will develop color broadcasting eventually.

1968- Apollo 8 landed safely on Earth after being the first ship to reach the Moon and come back. The brought back spectacular photos of the Earth from space. When orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve astronaut Frank Borman sent a message back to Earth reading from the first book of Genesis. One of the three astronauts was also the first to barf in deep space, but they aren’t saying which.

1985-Terrorists organized by Abu Nidal open fire in airports in Vienna and Rome. Sixteen tourists killed. When White House aide Oliver North was giving testimony about the Iran Contra Scandal he fixed upon the threat posed by Abu Nidal as though it was a personal vendetta. In 2001 while the world was distracted by the event of 9-11 and the war on Al Qaeda, agents of Saddam Hussein's secret police assassinated Abu Nidal in Baghdad.

2007- Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan. She was once the Prime Minister and had been leading the opposition to the government of Gen. Pervhez Musharraf.
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Yesterday’s question: What is wassel? A wassell bowl?

Answer: Anglo-Saxon bowl of hot ale brewed at Christmas time. Pieces of toast were floating in the bowl. You were invited to dip your ale horn in the brew and pick up a bit of toast, then “toast” by saying Vas-Heil, Wassel, or Hail to You!