Question: Why is the speed of a ship measured in knots?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In Moby Dick, what are the names of the two retired captains who owned the ship the Pequod?
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History for 3/26/2008
B-Days: Harald von Braunhut 1926 - the inventor of Sea Monkeys, Robert Frost, Chico Marx, Conde’ Nast, Tennessee Williams, Joseph Campbell, General William Westmoreland, Erica Jong, Bob Elliot of Bob & Ray is 85, Duncan Hines, Bob Woodward, Leonard Nimoy is 77, Alan Arkin, James Caan is 69, Diana Ross, Former Justice Sandra Day-O’Connor, Martin Short, Keira Knightley is 23.

1199- English King Richard Lionheart died of blood poisoning from an arrow scratch. He was 42. After returning from the Crusade and getting ransomed from prison in Austria, Richard embarked on a campaign of regaining lands in central France he lost while he was away. He received his fatal wound while attacking the small castle of Chalus in Limousin. Since Lionheart shunned the company of women and never made a son (He married his wife Berengaria of Navarre to his sword) he died without an heir. His brother evil Prince John became king anyway.


1791- The French politician Mirabeau had guided the French Revolution from the Bastille towards creating a constitutional monarchy on the English model.Now, being the most famous man in France, he lived hard and played hard. This night he “entertained” two female dancers from the Opera all night and woke up with violent intestinal cramps. He was dead by April 2nd. The Revolution spun out of control into the Reign of Terror, then the dictatorship of Napoleon. It’s interesting to think if things would have been different had Mirabeau contented himself with one actress.

1811- Poet Percy Shelley was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet that argued that God didn’t exist.

1827- Ludwig van Beethoven died at age 56. Six people visited him while he was sick, 20,000 attended his funeral in Vienna. Romantic legend says he died at the violent peak of a thunderstorm raising his fists skyward in a last act of defiance to God and the elements, but in actual fact he died peacefully in his sleep. He lived in an abandoned monastery given him as public housing by the Austrian government along with a small pension. He constantly complained about his poverty so that the Philharmonic Society of London sent him 1,500 gold English pounds from a benefit concert. After his death they found around 20,000 gold pieces hidden in cupboards and pots.

1830- Vermonter Joseph Smith, 24, first published The Book of Mormon.

1832- Artist George Catlin began his first trip to the West. He departed up the Missouri River on the American Fur Trading steamer the Yellowstone. Catlin’s paintings of Plains Indians became famous.

Courtesy of Univ of Indiana

1860- The tip of the Kowloon penninsula and Stonecutter’s Island ceded by China to Great Britain. This would become the site of Hong Kong. A British Empire diplomat called it "The notch by which the tree will be eventually felled.." meaning that like India eventually all China would be a British colony.

1865- At City Point, Virginia, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, had a covert meeting with Abraham Lincoln to discuss possible peace terms to end the Civil War. But they couldn’t agree on anything. Even at this late date, Lincoln offered a cash compensation of $4 million for the loss of slaves but Stephens said the deal breaker was that Southerners would not admit they were wrong and ask for pardons and amnesties. Alexander Stephens went back to Richmond empty-handed and the war went on. Not the last time a Republican and Democrat couldn't agree.

1883-To inaugurate her opulent, new, 5th Ave. mansion, Mrs. Cornelia Vanderbilt held one of the greatest costume balls in New York City history. She and Mrs. Astor had formed the Social Register, also called the Golden 400, the ranking of the top families in polite society first invented by the Venetian Republic. If you weren’t on their list then darling, you simply weren’t anybody. The mansion stood where Bergdorf Goodman’s faces the Plaza Hotel today. The party set new standards for the conspicuous wealth and excess of the Gilded Age. Many guests dressed as Venetian nobility and Mrs. J.P. Morgan dressed as “Electric Light: The Wonder of the Age.”

1900- The Happy Hooligan comic strip.

1909- The U.S. Board of Censorship created.

1920- This Side of Paradise, the first novel published by a young Minnesota writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a descendant of Francis Scott Key, writer of the Star Spangled Banner.

1937- A statue of Popeye the Sailor unveiled at the Crystal City Texas Spinach Festival.

1943- Just outside Chicago, gangster Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti took a walk down a railroad track, took a swig of bourbon, put a 32mm pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. He first waved to get the attention of some track workers so they could witness that he was taking his own life and was not the victim of another gangster. The successor to Al Capone was going to be indicted the next day on Federal charges of racketeering and he knew they had enough from stoolies like Willie Bioff to put him away for a long time.

1953-The Salk Vaccine for Polio announced.

1958- The Mau-Mau Rebellion in Kenya. It's debatable just how extensive or violent the Mau-Maus were, or even if there ever was such an organization, but the British colonial authorities used it as the excuse to jail the real nationalists like Njomo Kenyatta.

1959- Writer Dashell Hammett died.

1969- On this day, a frustrated young writer named John Kennedy Toole committed suicide. When his mother went through his things she found the manuscript of a novel in an old shoebox. Seven years after John Kennedy Toole killed himself, his mother forced the manuscript upon novelist Walker Percy to read. He was teaching at Loyola University in New Orleans. He was stunned with what he read and that lead to it being published by Louisiana State University Press. The book the " Confederacy of Dunces " went on to be a critically acclaimed bestseller and win the Pulitzer Prize.

1970- Peter Yarrow, of the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary, admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old girl. “ If I had a Hammer…”

1975 - The Who’s rock opera "Tommy" premiered in London

1976 - Wings release "Wings at the Speed of Sound" album

1979 - Camp David Peace Accords signed between Israel and Egypt. Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt’s leader Anwar Sadat at one point were so uncooperative President Carter had to shuttle from cabin to cabin because they wouldn’t meet in the same room. Menachem Begin liked to mess with people’s minds. At one point, to cut the tension, Presidential advisor Zbignew Brezshinski invited Begin to play chess. As they sat Begin said softly,”I haven’t played chess in 40 years. Not since the day the Nazis kicked in my door and dragged me and my family off to Auschwitz.” While Brezshinski was humbled thinking about the enormity of that statement Mrs. Begin came in and said: “Oh, I see you’re playing chess, it’s Menachem’s favorite. He never stops playing!”

1997- Turner Animation's film 'Cats Don't Dance", featuring the last film work of Gene Kelly opened. He was a consultant on the dance sequences.

2228 - According to Star Fleet records- James T. Kirk, captain of Federation Star Ship Enterprise (Star Trek) was born.
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Quiz: In Moby Dick we all remember Captain Ahab, Mr. Starbuck and Quequeg. What are the names of the two retired captains who owned their ship the Pequod?

Answer: Avast ye! The part-owner agents were the venerable Nantucket Quakers Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad.

Quiz: In Moby Dick we all remember Captain Ahab, Mr. Starbuck and Quequeg. What are the names of the two retired captains who owned their ship the Pequod.?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the origin of the custom of “Knock on Wood”?
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History for 3/25/2008
B-Days: English King Henry II Plantagenet, Joachim Murat, Gudson Borglum, David Lean, Gloria Steinhem, Arturo Toscanini, Aretha Franklin, Bela Bartok', Howard Cosell, Bonnie Bedelia,Simone Signoret, Elton John is 61, Sarah Jessica Parker is 43.

In the medieval calendar this was Lady Day, when street lights no longer had to be lit after dark.

1441-During the Council of Clermont the Church invited Czech Jan Hus under an amnesty to come and explain his Protestant doctrines. After he plead his case, they explained that the Reformation won't happen for another 76 years and then burned him at the stake.

1521-FIRST MAN CIRCUMNAVIGATES THE GLOBE- No, it was not Magellan. It was Magellan's slave, Enrique. Enrique was taken from his native Philippines by traders to Sumatra, then Madagascar where Fernan de Magellanes while serving with the Portuguese purchased him and brought him by sea around Africa to Lisbon then to Spain. Later Magellan took him with his fleet west to South America and around the Cape into the Pacific and eventually back to the Philippine Islands. On this day Enrique found on the Isle of Cebu he could converse with the natives. Magellan knew he had done it and reached the Indies by sailing West. After Magellan’s death Enrique jumped overboard and swam home.

1524- Explorer Guisseppi Verrazzano, with a French fleet going up the coast of North America, drops anchor off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Verrazzano could not see the Carolina coastline beyond the thin isthmus of Diamond Shoals so he decides the American Continent must become really thin in the middle before widening out to Canada. His men strain their eyes for signs of China beyond what he thinks is the" Pacific". For a century, European maps reflect this silly mistake and Verrazzano is later eaten by cannibals.

1911- THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE- 145 seamstresses, mostly teenage, Jewish, immigrant girls, burn to death in a terrible fire. They could not escape the flames because their employer padlocked them into their sweatshop so they wouldn't take so many breaks. The pavement was littered with girls who jumped ten stories to their death rather than burn while a helpless crowd looked on in horror. They would hold hands and leap to their deaths together. The factory owners were never charged with any crime. The owners soon opened another clothes factory that was cited for fire safety violations. The tragedy was a major cause of the formation of the ILGWU now called UNITE and the first job safety laws. One of the eyewitnesses to the horror, Frances Perkins, later became Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. The last survivor of the fire died in 2001 at age 107.

1931- The Scotsboro Boys. In Alabama, nine young black men were accused of raping two white women in a freight car. Although convicted, the case was appealed and retried four times, and only the spotlight of national attention prevented any from being lynched.

1931- Shortly after the invention of automobiles, there were automobile races. This day, in the dry lake beds of Muroc, California, saw the first race car speed trials sanctioned by the American Automobile Assoc. It was the beginnings of NASCAR. In the 1950's, Muroc became Edwards Air Force Base.

1932- Motion Picture Academy President William deMille, brother of Cecil B., started a 'Squawk Forum", inviting film industry workers to air their grievances with their studio heads. (and this way they won't ask for their own union ). The first boss on the hot seat was MGM's Louis B. Mayer. He was greeted with boos, insults and catcalls, mostly from writers. In a short time, the forum devolved into a shouting free for all. Mayer furiously stormed out and proceeded to fire and cut the pay of all those Metro employees he could remember were there. The Squawk Forum idea was abandoned.

1933- Nazis Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels offers famed director Fritz Lang a job. Fritz said he’d think about it, then immediately packed his bag for Hollywood.

1944- During World War Two, a British pilot bailed out of a burning plane and when his chute failed to open he fell 18,000 feet. In a freak ocurance, he hit a wet beach that broke his fall. He suffered only a broken ankle. English film director Michael Powell made the strange incident the basis of a fantasy film with David Niven called "A Matter of Life and Death", released in the US as "The Big Staircase".

1953- NUMBER 10 RILLINGTON PLACE.-A new tenant to this modest flat in London made an awful discovery- behind the walls were the bodies of 4 women with one more buried under the pea patch. The previous tenant, Jack Christie, confessed to the murders and was executed. Christie became the most infamous British serial killer since Jack the Ripper.

1954- RCA began mass production and marketing of color television sets. At the time the set cost as much as an automobile - $1,000, had only a 12-inch screen and there was very little programming in color.

1955- US Customs seize a shipment of 258 copies of Alan Ginsburg’s poem," Howl " , printed in the UK on the grounds it was obscene." I saw some of the finest minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Next year when Lawrence Ferlinghetti of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore printed the poem he was arrested.

1957-The Rome Treaty establishing the European Economic Community.

1960- Thirty-five years after it was written and published in Europe, an American judge rules that D.H. Lawrence's novel, 'Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not pornography and could finally be sold in the U.S. Whatya think of that, John-Thomas?

1960- The Moulin Rouge Agreement. After a lot of agitation and arm twisting from Frank Sinatra, the owners of the Las Vegas casinos agree to integrate. It was so named for the Moulin Rouge Casino, which up to then had been the only casino that allowed black and white patrons to mix freely.

1967 -The Who & Cream make their US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show.

1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their week-long "love-in" for peace in the bed of Room 902 of the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam.

1975- King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was assassinated by a nephew. The nephew was beheaded.

1990- The Happy Land Social Club fire. A Cuban immigrant man broke up with his girlfriend over drinks in a crowded Latino bar in New York City. The bouncers threw him out when he got abusive. He left the club, then returned and splashed gasoline around the one entrance and set it on fire. 87 people died; some so fast that their remains still had their drinks in their hands. It was the worst fire in New York since the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, ironically on this same date.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the origin of the custom of “Knock on Wood” .

Answer: In the Middle Ages, the wood of the True Cross was carried around as relics. People touched it for good luck and to swear oaths. The Holy Wood is also the origin of Holy Rood and Hollywood.

I just opened my union newsletter this morning and learned of the death of cartoonist Dave Stevens. He was 52 and had been battling leukemia for a long time.

Dave Stevens was a staff animation artist doing layouts and designs in the various TV studios in LA for years in the 70's and 80's. In 1982, Stevens hit stardom with this stylish retro character THE ROCKETEER. The comic, merchandise and feature film were a big success. He said he modeled the character on himself and his sidekick was cartoonist/director Doug Wildey. In addition, for the hero's love interest, Dave reached back into 1940's-50's pulp arcania and brought back the raven-haired, kinky, pin-up queen, Bettie Page.



The Rocketeer succeeded in resurrecting interest in Bettie Page, who had long since undergone a spiritual conversion and dropped from public view. It spawned a whole new industry around the glamour symbol- fan magazines, documentaries and movies.

Adieu Dave. Not only were you a great cartoonist, you are a great example to all of us toiling away at small desks for our forty hours pay.

That it's never to late to be a star.

Tonight the Motion Picture Academy is hosting a show entitled THEY PUT THE LOONEY IN TUNES- celebrating the centennials of Tex Avery and Mike Maltese. See www.oscars.org for details.

Later in May will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Joe Grant.
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Quiz: What is the origin of the custom of “Knock on Wood”-?

Answer to yesterday's question below: What does it mean to be Hoisted on your own Petard?
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History for 3/24/2007
Birthdays: Steve McQueen,Ferlingetti,Ub Iwerks (the first Disney animator), John Wesley Powell, Harry Houdini aka Eric Weiss, Edward Weston, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde, Elton John, Bob Mackie, Robert Carradine, Laura Flynn-Boyle, Alyson Hannigan, Joe Barbera

To the ancient Romans this was the Day of Blood- when the priests of the Goddess Cybele would end a nine day fast by walking through the streets practicing self-flagellation with whips, atoning for sins with blood. The Christians later called this Good Friday, which ends the fast of Lent.

1241- The Mongol hordes sent into Europe by Subotai, under Vuldai and the Tartar Paidar burn the Polish capitol of Krakow. A trumpeter trying to give a warning from a church tower was shot through the throat with an arrow. Since then in his memory in the town square every hour on the hour a trumpeter plays the bugle call and stops short at the same note -The Heynal. I was there a few years ago, and believe me, it IS played every hour on the hour !

Hey, got any Tartar sauce?

1603- Queen Elizabeth Ist of England dies of a gum inflammation, James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I Stewart of the United Kingdom. Elizabeth was 69 and had ruled England since she was 25. She was famous for being frugal but she loved extravagant clothing. At her death she left 2,000 dresses. When an Anglican bishop in a sermon tried to criticize her for vanity, the Queen warned him to hold his tongue, ”ere ye may attain Heaven before your time”.

1635 - Jacques Callot, French cartoonist/engraver, dies at about 42

1882 -In Berlin German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacillus that caused Tuberculosis, enabling a vaccine to at last be created. T.B. or consumption, was the AIDS of the 1800's- killing everyone from Frederic Chopin to Doc Holliday to Aubrey Beardsley. Today there is a new strain of Super-TB spreading from underdeveloped countries. In Franz Schubert's time it was a strange turn-on for young men to date girls they knew were dying of consumption. Apparently the disease made one especially beautiful just before the end, like a candle flaring up before it goes out.

1912- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyles adventure novel The Lost World, first published in magazine installments. It was the first of the Land-of-the-Dinosaurs type stories.

1934-The Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour debuted on radio. It became a national craze to see who could be a future star. Frank Sinatra was among their finds. The show eventually moved to television and later spawned the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Chuck Barris the Gong Show, Star Search and American Idol.

1939- The film the Hound of the Baskervilles premiered with actors Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson . They became the most famous interpreters of the characters and went on to make a dozen more films.


1943 - The first Japanese anime’ feature "Momotaro's Sea Eagles" premiered.

1954- The Nash-Kelvinator Company and the Hudson Car Company merge to form American Motors Corporation or AMC automobiles.

1955- Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" debuts at Broadway's Marosco Theater. Barbera Bel-Geddes was the first Cat and Burl Ives was " Big Daddy".

1958- Elvis Presley inducted into the Army.- G.I. Blues!

1962- No one had been a more loyal supporter of President John F. Kennedy than Frank Sinatra. The singer got his Ratpack friends to stump for the candidate, and even got Mafia money to support a man who’s brother Bobby was busy busting the rackets in Congress. But the President was warned that association with such a known libertine would cost him family values votes one day. So when Kennedy next visited Palm Springs he not only refused an invitation to stay with Sinatra, but he stayed with more wholesome singer Bing Crosby, a Republican! Sinatra in a rage took a sledgehammer to the extra guest cottage he was preparing for JFK, and broke off his friendship with JFK’s brother-in-law, actor Peter Lawford.

1973- In Buffalo a drunk fan bit rock singer Lou Reed on the ass.

1989- A drunk captain of the supertanker Exxon Valdez runs aground and spills 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound Alaska. Insiders claim Exxon fabricated the drunk-captain story to excuse the inadequate detection and warning equipment. The route was well charted and easy to maneuver.

1999- The U.S. and Nato begin bombing Belgrade over Serbian attacks on Albanians in Kossovo.

2005- A Colorado Rockies baseball game was called off on account of bees. The bee swarms were attracted by the coconut oil in the pitchers hair gel.
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Yesterday's Question: What does it mean to be hoisted on your own petard?

Answer: in the Middle Ages a petard was an explosive charge that was attached to a castle door or drawbridge to blow it open. Hoisted meant being thrown up into the air. So Hoisted on your own petard means to be blown up by your own bomb.

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.