Question: What is a Papist?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Sometimes when discussing the politics of the last 8 years, you hear the term Bizzaro World. Who created that idea?
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History for 5/26/2009
Birthdays: John Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough, Pope Clement VII the Medici Fox-1478, Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin 1759- early feminist writer and mother of Mary Shelley, Alexander Pushkin, Isadora Duncan, Norma Talmadge, Paul Lukas, John Wesley Hardin the shootist, John Wayne- real name Marion Morrison, Al Jolson, Jay Silverheels (Tonto), Peter Cushing, Robert Morley, Peggy Lee, Sally Ride, Pam Grier, Helen Bonham Carter is 44, Bobcat Golthwaite, Frank Gladestone, Matt Stone the co creator of South Park

1805- Lewis and Clark sight the Rocky Mountains.

1828- THE MYSTERY OF KASPAR HAUSER- On this day on a street in Nuremberg a judge came upon a filthy boy unable to read, write or even speak. As the boy's trauma eased and he could communicate he said he had been kept in a dungeon since he was three years old, never seeing another human soul. One day he was suddenly released. His name was Kaspar Hauser and his case became a cause celebre throughout Europe. Some thought he was the rightful prince of the German State of Baden. Then one day while walking in the park a man came up and stabbed Kaspar Hauser. He bled to death. The judge who first cared for him was poisoned. The murderers were never found and the mystery never solved.

1865- Rebel General Simon Bolivar Buckner surrendered the last organized body of Confederate troops to Yankee General Canby in New Orleans. Rebel Gen. Joe Shelby rather than surrender took his cavalry over the border to Mexico where a Confederate exile community was forming under the Emperor Maximillian.

1896- Charles Dow started his stock index named the Dow Jones Index. The first Dow Jones closing is 40.94

1913- Actors Equity formed.

1933- Jimmy Rogers "the Singing Brakeman", considered the father of modern country music, died of tuberculosis at age 31. Shortly before his death he recorded a song about it called "TB Blues".

1937- The Battle of Millers Overpass- Henry Fords hired thugs beat up Walter Reuther and four other UAW union men for handing out union literature.

1940-The Miracle of Dunkirk- When German panzers overrun France they surround the British army and pin them against the Normandy coastline. Instead of finishing them off Marshal Goering asks Hitler's permission to use the Luftwaffe (airforce) to administer the coup de grace. Britain mobilized all available ships and hundreds of small boat owners volunteer to cross the channel under dive bombing and strafing and in ten days evacuate 340,000 troops. 40,000 stayed behind and surrendered. The British force was decimated but not destroyed and would live to fight again.

1949- Mao Tse Tung’s Red Army entered Shanghai, effectively winning the Chinese Civil War.

1960- THE MOULIN ROUGE AGREEMENT- Las Vegas gambling casinos finally integrate. Before this stars like Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald could headline in the clubs but had to exit via the kitchens and sleep across town in the colored section. Singer Nat King Cole was requested to keep his eyes on his piano keys for fear if he looked up he would seduce young white girls. Frank Sinatra played a big part in pressuring the Vegas 'powers-that-be' i.e. the mob, to change with the times. Marlene Dietrich grabbed Lena Horne by the arm and stormed into a casino bar defying any reaction. None came. The Moulin Rouge was the first completely integrated casino.

1960-UN ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge complained that the gift of a wood carving of the Great Seal of the United States given the US Embassy by Moscow had a concealed microphone in it.

1962- The Isley Brothers single “Twist & Shout” released.

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono have their "Bed-In for Peace" news conference in New York. One of the most acerbic exchanges was one Lennon had with Lil'Abner cartoonist and conservative curmudgeon Al Capp.

1994- Singer Michael Jackson married Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie Presley in the Dominican Republic. They keep the wedding a secret for six weeks, then divorce 18 months later.

1995- Looney Tunes director Isadore Friz Freleng died at age 89.

2008- To commemorate Memorial Day, President Bush asked all Americans to stop what they were doing at 3:00PM to remember the sacrifice of our soldiers. Then he went mountain biking. No kidding.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Sometimes when discussing the politics of the last 8 years, you hear the term Bizzaro World. Who created that idea?

Answer: In 1958 D.C. comics editor Otto Binder wrote and Wayne Boring drew an alternative reality dimension for Superman. The Bizarro Superman was crude, brutish and dim, the Bizarro world much more violent than the normal world. In recent times the term Bizzarro World denoted a political climate where values and logic were the opposite from what you would think of as normal.

Today at a National Cartoonists Society event I had the chance to shake hands with legendary old sports cartoonist Bill Gallo. I remember all his imaginative cartoons in the NY Daily News sports section. That moment and an interview asking me about my choice of comic books brought me back to a memory.

Summer 1964,on a hot night my dad would take me for a walk a few blocks to the local Candy Store on the corner of Seaview Ave & Rockaway Parkway in Canarsie, Brooklyn.



The candy store is a ubiquitous neighborhood institution that featured everything from a rootbeer float to cigarettes to milk to Good & Plenty candy. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, the floor sticky from spilled soda pop and echoing with the chatter of old men. But the center of this regional meeting house was the piles of newspapers and the comic book rack.

In New York at the time you could choose the NY Times, the Herald Examiner, the NY Post or the Daily News. We were a Daily News family.

My dad would get the evening edition of the News, a container of milk and a pack of unfiltered Camels, Kool cigarettes for mom, back home watching Ed Sullivan.

Meanwhile I would be allowed to peruse the comic books, and get one or two at 12 cents each. I browsed through the rotating rack with the gravity of a judge at the Westminster Dog Show. Hmmm.... Spiderman vs. Green Goblin again, Fantastic Four vs Dr. Doom again, Double Issue of Hawkman and Green Lantern, and Our Army At War featuring Sgt Rock and the Haunted Tank. Cool!

Only years later as a professional did I realize I was attracted by the drawing and inking techniques of John Buscema, Jack Kirby, and Joe Kubert.

I think every animation person begins as a fan of cartoon art, and only later comes to analyze what he or she was intrigued by.

I kept trying to copy the cross-hatching style,and that eye squint

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Quiz: Sometimes when discussing the politics of the last 8 years, you hear the term Bizzarro World. Who created that idea?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Who sang the solo vocal on the original theme song of Star Trek?
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History for 5/25/2009
Birthdays: Miles Davis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josef Broz Tito, Igor Sikorsky, Pontormo, Bennett Cerf, Claude Akins, Leslie Uggams, Bill Bojangles Robinson, Beverly Sills-aka Bubbles Silverman, Anne Heche, Irwin Winkler, Mike Myers is 46, Ian McKellen is 70

1660-RESTORATION DAY- After Oliver Cromwell executed King Charles Ist, he declared the British Monarchy abolished, and ruled England with a junta of generals as Lord Protector. When Cromwell died of natural causes in 1659 he tried to elevate his son Richard Cromwell in his place. But the son is not the father. The rickety system didn’t work, and Richard earned the nickname “Tumbledown-Dick”. The generals led by General Monck had no other remedy to avoid chaos other than recalling King Charles’ son Charles II from exile in Flanders to be king of England. For many years Restoration Day was a holiday in the UK. Charles returned this day with a taste for a new sport he learned in Holland of racing small boats called yachts. He also liked to take a morning walk on Constitution Hill, which is why such a walk is now called a constitutional.

1720- John Copson became the first Insurance Agent in the New World.

1787- First meeting of delegates in Philadelphia to write the U.S. Constitution.
Interestingly enough, nobody really asked them to. They were only summoned by Congress to iron out some bugs in the Articles of Confederation. However James Madison and Alexander Hamilton hatched a plan to chuck the whole system and write a new document. Ben Franklin was carried in on a sedan chair from time to time but at 81 he was so old he didn't offer much beyond moral support.

1878- Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore premiered at the Savoy in London. “So Stick to your desk and never go to Sea, and You can be the Leader of the Queen’s Naveeee”

1895- Author and playwright Oscar Wilde sentenced to prison for sodomy.
The terrible conditions of his imprisonment in Redding Gaol will break his spirit and health and lead to his early death in exile in 1900. In a 1995 ceremony honoring him in Westminster Abbey it was revealed the laws that sentenced Wilde are still on the books in England.

1906- Putting on the Ritz! London’s Ritz Hotel opened.

1911-The beginnings of Mexican Revolution forced longtime dictator Gen. Jose Porfirio Diaz into exile. As a young man Diaz had fought the French under Juarez but later seized power for himself. Under his long rule Mexico industrialized and gained railroads and schools. He had once said:" My poor Mexico. Too far from Heaven and too close to the United States."

1911- Thomas Mann visited Venice Italy. On the Lido Beach he was inspired to write A Death in Venice.

1927- Ford had put America on wheels with the Model T, the most successful car model in history. Today they stop making the Model T after 15 million cars, costing on average $300 each, $26 dollars down with monthly payments. Asked what color to make them, Ford answered:" Any color so long as it is black."

1935- Babe Ruth hits his last home runs. The Bambino was in his last year, working out his contract with the Boston Braves. This day in Pittsburgh the Babe showed his old form when he hit three home runs and a single. His record of 714 home runs held for over sixty years.

1942- First day shooting on the film “ Casablanca”.

1950- Brooklyn Battery Tunnel opened in NYC.

1957- Sid Caesar's Your Show of Show's canceled after nearly a decade. The show used future star writers like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen and Neil Simon. The show pioneered the executive strategy of network programmer Pat Weaver to not let the show be owned by an entire sponsor but the network would produce the show and would sell the sponsor commercial time in 30 second chunks. Pat Weaver’s daughter is Sigourney Weaver.

1961- THE SPACE RACE- The United States had been chafing about how far ahead the Soviet Union was in the exploration of space. In an address to Congress this day President John F. Kennedy pledged the wealth and resources of the U.S. to beating Russia to the Moon. "Our pledge is within the next ten years to send a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth… We choose to go to the Moon not because it will be easy but because it is hard!" The Moon landing was achieved in 1969. Today it is acknowledged that without the motivation of the Cold War the conquest of the Moon would have happened much more slowly. In 2004 President George W. Bush tried to appropriate some of JFK’s luster by declaring a great national effort to get to Mars, but then followed it up with nothing.

1965- The Saint Louis Gateway Arch dedicated.

1968- The Rolling Stones release Jumping Jack Flash.

1979- Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Alien opened. It featured the exotic designs of Hungarian artist Giger and John Hurt with a classic case of chest pains!

1980- Evangelist Oral Roberts sees a 900-foot Jesus over his bed.

1982- Sci-fi film Blade Runner opened.

1986- Hands Across America stunt to help hunger has 7 million people at one time holding hands at noon.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who sang the solo vocal on the original theme song of Star Trek?

Answer: Metropolitan Opera soprano Frederika Von Stade. Despite her Prussian name, she was born in Somerville New Jersey. Her friends called her Flicka. I once saw her as Sophie in Die Rosenkavalier and she rocked!

The National Cartoonist Society Reuben Awards held at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel were a great success. The award has been given since 1946 to all the tops in cartooning art. Think of it like the Pulitzers of toontown. 380 of the most famous cartoonists from all over North America and even Australia were at the black tie event.



Congratulations to Dave Coverly, who won top honors as Cartoonist of the Year. A big shout out also to my friend Mort Gerberg of the New Yorker, for winning Best Gag Cartoon.

Animation was certainly the talk of the weekend, as many popular strips in fading daily newspapers are looking to get their stuff animated on the web. Representing the art of animation was Glen Keane, Eric Goldberg, Bert Klein, Stephen Silver, David Silverman, Chad Frye and myself. Eric and Burt are on terrible deadline OT to finish Princess and the Frog, but they still attended. Unfortunately as far as we could see, none of the nominees or winners from TV or Feature animation categories had made it.

While other cartoonists tearful thanked their families and friends and said this was the proudest day of their lives, when the animation winners were announced, there were long periods of silence, no one was there to accept them.

In past years we've had to defend the animation categories from those in the NCS who wanted to drop them, figuring the Annies are enough for us. So its' going to be hard to explain this year when we do the post mortem. Next time if you know you can't make it, please try to arrange for someone to go up and accept on your behalf.

As a proud animator, I hope we in animation make a better showing next year, so as not to spoil it for future winners.

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Quiz: Who sang the solo vocal on the original theme song of Star Trek?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Why is Memorial Day in the US celebrated at the end of May, while England and Canada celebrate it in November?
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History for 5/24/2009
Birthdays: Jean Paul Marat, Queen Victoria, Walt Whitman, Emmanuel Leutze, Bob Dylan by 68, Gary Burghoff, Priscilla Presley is 64, Patti LaBelle, Tommy Chong of Cheech & Chong, Frank Oz, Jim Broadbent is 60, Alfred Molina is 56, Kristin Scott Thomas is 49, Ray Stephenson is 45

1429- Near Champagne, Joan of Arc was pulled off her horse and captured by the Burgundians. The independent Duchy of Burgundy then was the area where Belgium and Lorraine are today. They sold her to the English, who put her on trial as a witch. The French king, Charles VI, whom Joan had re-conquered half of France for, did absolutely nothing to help or ransom her, as was the custom with noble prisoners. She was tortured and burned at the stake. While other kings are nicknamed Lion Heart or The Great, Charles VI nickname is Charles "The Well-Served."

1543- Astronomer Nicolas Copernicus died in Frombork, Poland. He made sure his powerful book ‘Die Revolutionabus Orbium Coelestrum’, ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies’, would be published after his death. Legend says that after thirty years of trying to get it published, on his deathbed his friends laid the first copy on his pillow. The old scientist smiled and died. In the book, he mathematically proved the Earth went around the Sun instead of visa-versa and that the Earth rotated on its axis daily. The Pope, Martin Luther and John Calvin all agree that Copernicus was crazy. In Scripture, hadn’t Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still? One question historians debate is whether Copernicus was a priest or not. He worked for the Archbishop of Gniezno as a lay-clergyman that didn’t have to take Holy orders. No record exists of his saying a Mass. He never married, but he lived with his housekeeper like man and wife.

1590- In Rome, construction of the great Dome of Saint Peters Basilica completed.

1626- MANHATTAN BOUGHT FROM THE INDIANS- Dutchman Peter Minuit stopped several Indians he found on the island and negotiated a purchase of the land for $24 dollars in trade goods, which at the time was not a bad price. To the Indians the purchase and ownership of land was crazy ("Why not also buy the clouds?"-Chief Seattle), and besides, the Hackensack-Lanapii Indians weren’t even from that area, they were just hunting. Manhattoes is old Algonguin meaning " island of little hills". The Lenapii were named Canarsie by Frenchman Jacques Cartier “duck people”(canard) because their village on the Jamaica Bay (just west of present day J.F. Kennedy Airport,) was surmounted by a totem topped with the image of a duck.

1647- With the English Civil War almost over, the various factions of the Parliamentary side start to bicker and pull apart. Presbyterians and Puritans squabble over the spiritual direction of the nation and, on this day, Parliament ordered the dissolution of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army. The Army refused to disarm and instead marched on London- General Cromwell declared: "This army is no mere assemblage of mercenaries but the true embodiment of the will of the English people!” From this point on, King Charles I, currently a prisoner in Scotland passing the time by learning to play a new game called “Golfe” would be encouraged to restart the civil war. Cromwell's Army, not Parliament, now became the only real power in English politics.

1804- On their route up the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark came ashore at Boone’s Settlement Missouri, near what will one day be Kansas City. They bought butter and corn. Did Lewis and Clark meet old Daniel Boone? Lewis’ diary pages for that day are lost.

1830 –The poem "Mary Had A Little Lamb," was written.

1844- Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message. From Washington to Baltimore it said:"What Hath God Wrought." The message was from the Bible- Numbers 23:23.
Samuel Morse considered himself an artist first and did a little inventing to pay the bills. He heard a French inventor had speculated about the idea of telegraphy so he decided to build a working model and invented the Morse code system of representing letters with dots and dashes. Members of Congress and octogenarian former First Lady Dolley Madison was present at the ceremony. By the decade’s end, twenty thousand miles of telegraph wire criss-crossed the country.

1850- America’s first nationwide newspaper/magazine Harpers Weekly began.

1853- First cases reported of Yellow Fever Epidemic in New Orleans. The city had swelled with ethnic immigrant Irish and Germans who had been forced to live and work in the low-rent swamp districts. 2,000 people or 10% of New Orleans population died in just four months, at the rate of 200 a day. The disaster was later evoked by Anne Rice in her book “ Interview with the Vampire.”

1883-The Brooklyn Bridge Opened. After 14 years and 27 deaths, including the architect John Roebling, and the crippling of his son Washington Roebling, President Arthur and the Mayor of New York walked out on to the span to be met at the middle by the Mayor of Brooklyn. At this time the Brooklyn Bridge was the tallest structure in the world.

1899 - 1st auto repair shop and car garage opens: The Back Bay Cycle and Motor Company of Boston.

1929- The Marx Brothers first movie comedy” The Coconuts” premiered.

1935- The first Baseball night game- Reds vs. Phillies.

1941- The German Battleship Bismarck sinks the largest warship in the British Navy, HMS Hood, when a lucky shot explodes her internal ammunition stockpile. The news shocked a world accustomed to the invincibility of the British Navy.

1950- Married movie star Ingrid Bergman shocked American morality by having an open love affair with neorealist film director Roberto Rosselini. This day they were finally married but the outcry of conservatives about this “Apostle of Degradation” was such that her image needed a makeover, so she played Saint Joan.

1954 - IBM announces vacuum tube "electronic" brain that could perform 10
million operations an hour.

1958 - UP & International News Service merge into United Press International

1991- Tri-Star Pictures 75 million-dollar mega-flop "Hudson Hawk" opened.
Star Bruce Willis, whose fee was $17 million, blamed the film’s costs on union filmworkers’ rates being too high. He would return to his car after a day’s shooting to find it covered with animal excrement. The film almost sank his career. Willis’ next two films, "Death Becomes Her" and 'Pulp Fiction", he did for scale. In 2000 he made a $100,000 dollar donation to the SAG/AFTRA strike fund.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is Memorial Day in the US celebrated at the end of May, while England and Canada celebrate it in November?

Answer: For those who are curious why America celebrates Memorial Day in May instead of November 11th like most of Europe, it is because of our Civil War. The main Confederate field armies surrendered in early April; it took this long to stop the final hostilities, the final action happening on May 27th. Once the countryside was finally at peace, the U.S. government declared a Day of Remembrance of the fallen. An abolitionist named James Redpath began having black children in South Carolina decorate the graves of fallen union soldiers with flowers. The early name of this holiday was Decoration Day.

We all had a great time at The Little Mermaid at 20 panel for ASIFA/Hollywood.



A sell out audience at Woodbury University watched a panel I hosted consisting of JOHN MUSKER & RON CLEMENTS, who wrote and directed, MARK HENN who was the animator of Ariel along with Glen Keane ( Glen is in Europe), ANDREAS DEJA who animated King Triton, RUEBEN AQUINO who did Ursula, DUNCAN MARJORIBANKS who created Sebastian, RICK FAMILOE who animated on Scuttle, MIKE PERAZA who was the art director, and TINA PRICE who was instrumental in the development of Disney's computer efforts and CAPS painting system ( Mermaid was the last traditionally painted ink & paint feature. The last shot of the film was the very first digitally painted shot.) A number of other crew veterans like KATHY ZIELINSKI( Ursula's spell casting),JOERIN KLUBIEN (animator), BOB LAMBERT (music production), my wife PAT SITO( checking), BILL MATTHEWS ( training) were in attendance as well. Woodbury's animation chair DORI LITTEL-HERRICK also worked on the film.

I know a dozen other animators equally deserving of being up on the stage like Dave Stefan, Russ Edmonds, Matt O'Callaghan, Tony Fucile and Will Finn and more. Sorry gang, you can kick my butt when you see me, but I had to limit the crowd up there.

I was pleased to see many of my students there. There was a fun intermingling with the filmmakers afterwards.

Lots of great stories about the making of the film were told, John Musker was particularly eloquent, but we all got some good stuff in. ( And YES, we did bring up the Priest with the stiffy! It's his knees, get your mind out of the gutter!)

I wish all my old Mermaid crew-mates a hearty CONGRATS! on our little Ariel, still enchanting twenty years later. And happy memories of when we all went UNDA' DA SEA..


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Quiz: Why is Memorial Day in the US celebrated at the end of May, while England and Canada celebrate it in November?

YESTERDAYS Quiz answered below: What movie ends with the line:” Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown….”
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History for 5/23/2009
Birthdays: Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Scatman Crowthers, Rosemary Clooney, Artie Shaw, ,Alicia de Larrocha, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Dr. Robert Moog –inventor of the first Music Synthesizer, Drew Carey is 51, Joan Collins is 76

Today in ancient Rome was the feast of Vulcan.

1498- In Florence mystic monk Savonarola was hanged and his body burned for defying the Pope and Church. Artists Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Sandro Botticelli and Luigi Della Robbia were admirers of his. Among his reforms were to hold a large Bonfire of the Vanities.

1533- King Henry VIII of England has his first wife Catharine of Aragon's marriage to him annulled. Henry's interest in multiple marriages wasn't merely a case of being horny, his father had won the throne in a bloody civil war (The War of the Roses) and it could all happen again because he couldn't produce a male child fast. Despite his efforts his Tudor dynasty was remembered for his female offspring, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

1618- THE DEFENESTRATION OF PRAGUE- The Protestant officials of Bohemia let the Catholic German Emperor know what they thought of his ultimatums by throwing his emissaries out of a window. "De-fenestrate" or to toss out a window. It was a low second floor window and a dung pile broke their fall, so only pride was injured. Catholic writers said they were saved and carried to the ground by angels.


This event started the THIRTY YEARS WAR, when Catholic and Protestant European nations who's pent up anger had been boiling for decades broke forth. They battled until nobody could remember who started the whole damn thing to begin with. Germany lost one quarter of her population, and would not see this kind of devastation again until 1945.

1701 -Captain Kidd was hanged in London for piracy, robbery, and killing a sailor with a bucket. His last letter was written to try to bribe the judge with his buried treasure. His body was coated with tar and left hanging in a cage suspended over Execution Wharf on the Thames for years after, as a warning to other pirates.

1785- Ben Franklin invented bifocal glasses.

1865- UNION VICTORY DAY-To celebrate the end of the American Civil War today was the Union Victory Parade in Washington D.C.- The massed Grand Armies of the Republic marched down Pennsylvania Ave. to celebrate their victory over the Confederacy. They passed President Andrew Johnson and Generals Grant and Sherman. Sherman refused to shake hands with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton because of Stanton's criticism of Sherman's surrender terms to the Confederate western armies. 27 year old Gen. Custer, showing off for the crowd, with his golden locks flowing, managed to pass the reviewing stand twice. He claimed his horse was skittish. Despite the fact that 180.000 African American men fought in the war no black regiments were allowed in the parade to avoid controversy. Even the Gallant 54th Mass who did the heroic attack on Fort Wagner was refused permission to march. The flags in the nation's capitol were returned to full mast for the first time since Lincoln's assassination. Union veterans later formed the first professional veterans aid association the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a forerunner of the VFW and the American Legion.

1873- The first Preakness horse race. The winner's name was Survivor.

1903- MOTHER JONES 'CHILDRENS CRUSADE- Seventy three year old activist and union organizer Mary "Mother Jones" Harris led a strike of 16,000 Philadelphia mill workers, all children under 12 years old, to demand a 55 hour workweek down from 60 hours a week. On this day she led a march of thousands of working children to President Teddy Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay New York to demand the repeal of child labor.

1911- President Taft dedicated the central branch of the New York Public Library.

1934- Young gangsters BONNIE & CLYDE were blown away in a hail of machine gunfire as they drove down a road near Gisland, Louisiana. I wonder if they read them their rights first..? The ambush was set up by legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. An estimated 107 shots were fired in less than two minutes and each body had about 28 bullets in them. Hamer smiled:" It’s a shame I had to bust the cap on a lady." Their peppered car still pops up at auto shows from time to time.



In 1948 Frank Hamer was called out of retirement to help investigate voter fraud involving the first senate race of a young congressman named Lyndon B. Johnson.

1941-Hollywood union boss George Brown and assistant Willard Bioff (also a Frank Nitti bagman) were indicted on federal racketeering charges. Brown had been a Chicago operative and it was said 'he could drink 100 bottles of beer in one day". Their main contact among the Hollywood studio heads was Nicholas Schenck, the chairman of Loews Theaters and a head of MGM. Willie Bioff had tried to help Louis B. Mayer defeat the screen actor's guild and hijack the Disney animator's union. After their jail time Bioff blew up in his car after turning government witness and Brown 'disappeared...' Schenck meanwhile was pardoned by President Truman.

1945- Reinhard Gehlen was the head of Nazi intelligence and kept numerous agents in Washington, London and Moscow. After hiding for a month after the fall of Berlin, on this day he surrendered himself to the Americans. Initially they wanted to put him on trial for war crimes, until he revealed his spies in Moscow were still on his payroll, which greatly interested General Wild Bill Donovan, who was reforming the O.S.S. for it's new cold war responsibilities. So Generalobherst Gehlen came to the U.S. and began his second career as a founder of the CIA

1945- SS leader Heinrich Himmler committed suicide by biting a cyanide capsule shortly after being captured by the British authorities. "The Bastards’ beat us!" A British army sergeant guarding him growled, when he heard the news.

1951- China formally annexed Tibet, a nation they invaded the year before.

1960- Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann was one of the architects of the Final Solution. He had been hiding in Argentina since the war ended. In 1957 a German prosecutor informed Israeli intelligence of Eichman’s whereabouts. This day Mossad agents kidnapped him in Buenos Aires and brought him to Israel for a public trial.

1969- The Who release their rock opera Tommy. He's a Pinball Wizard!

2003- In US occupied Iraq, new occupational viceroy L. Paul Bremmer overruled CIA and Army advice and disbanded the Iraqi Army, internal security, Presidential Guards and police forces, about 500,000. His explanation was he was following orders, although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed he was surprised by the move. With this one decree, thousands of angry, humiliated soldiers were unemployed, robbed of their pensions and livelihood, but allowed to keep their weapons. The Anti-American guerrilla insurgency exploded soon after.
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Yesterdays Quiz: What movie ends with the line:” Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown….”

Answer: Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) Or, beware of Polish film directors who stick a knife up your nose.

Quiz: What movie ends with the line:” Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown….”

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Name the Three Musketeers.
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History for 5/22/2009
Birthdays: Sir Lawrence Olivier, Mary Cassatt, Richard Wagner, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, T. Bone Pickens, Judith Christ, Irene Pappas, Paul Winfield, Richard Benjamin, Susan Strassberg, Paul Winchell, Tommy John, Naomi Cambell

337AD Emperor Constantine the Great, who raised Christianity from an illegal cult to the official religion of the Roman Empire, died after a ruling for 37 years. For some odd reason he himself didn't accept baptism until on his deathbed. His coins had Christ on one side and Sol Invictus, the Imperial Sun god on the other. To maintain order in the Empire until his son Constantius could be contacted and safely installed as leader in Constantinople, the embalmed corpse of Constantine continued to receive ambassadors and preside over meetings until that winter.

1276- Today is the feast day of Saint Humility of Faenza, a nun who insisted she be bricked up into her cell with only a hole cut for food, water and to hear Mass and slept on her knees. After twelve years of this she was talked out of her cell to become an abbess.

1761-The first life insurance policy issued in the U.S.

1782- In a letter to one of his officers George Washington rejected the calls to declare him King of the United States. " It pains me to hear such ideas are circulating within the army. I regard such ideas with horror and condemn it severely. It seems pregnant with the greatest misfortunes that could ever befall our country."

1800- The US Congress disbanded the US Army as being unnecessary and expensive. We would make do with militia to deal with Indians and a coast guard.

1843- Wagons Ho! The Great Emigration- One of the largest wagon trains ever formed set out from Independence Missouri to the new Oregon Territory. Thousands of settlers driving a thousand head of cattle set off along the Oregon Trail.

1854- The NEBRASKA COMPROMISE-One of many stop-gap legislative measures to try to stall the Civil War a few more years. In an attempt to keep the balance between slave states and free states entering the Union Whig Congressmen strike a deal where Kansas and Nebraska could decide for themselves whether they wanted to enter the union as free or slave states. Nobody was pleased with this deal. Guerrilla war broke out in Kansas and the Whig party disintegrated from dissent. The dissident Whig politicians like Freemont and Lincoln soon formed a new political party. At first called the Anti-Nebraska Men, they later became the Black-Republicans or simply Republicans.

1856- San Francisco City supervisor James Casey was hanged by San Francisco City Vigilance Committee for murder. Casey had sought out the editor of the Evening Bulletin James King and shot him down on the street for insulting him in print. The vigilantes of the Barbary Coast then formed and went into action.

1868- The Reno Gang rob an Indiana express train and get $96,000.

1915-The San Fernando Valley voted to become part of Los Angeles.

1920- THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT- Henry Ford was a brilliant inventor with strange opinions. He overpaid assembly line workers, gave equal raises and promotions to black and Latino workers, but he hated Jews. He had purchased the newspaper the Dearborn Independent in 1918 and ran editorials in it with no advertising, totally his own opinions. This day the Independents Anti-Semitic campaign began with the headline -"The International Jew: The World’s Problem." 119 leading prominent Christian leaders including President Woodrow Wilson signed a petition demanding the slanderous publications be stopped, but Ford just ignored them. In 1934 when American journalist for CBS, William Shirer, interviewed Chancellor Adolf Hitler in Berlin, he noticed Hitler kept translations of the Dearborn Independent on his desk.

1922-The U.S. Supreme Court rules Baseball is not a monopoly but a sport. This is the Achilles heel issue everyone jumps on when arguments about baseball owners use of salary fixes and other group actions reach crescendo.

1925- First day of shooting on Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis.

1942- In a dark basement room in Pearl Harbor the U.S. Navy Cryptographic Unit spent weeks at primitive computers breaking the Japanese radio codes. Cmdr Joe Rochefort paced the small room in his red smoking jacket downing pots of coffee and coming up with answers to riddles. This day Rochefort solved the most important riddle of his career. He deduced from intercepted radio messages that on June 4th Japan was going to feint a strike at the Aleutian Islands then launch it’s main battle fleet at Midway Island. When Admiral Nimitz received this report he had to decide whether it was a trick or the real thing before committing his own battered aircraft carriers. If Nimitz was wrong and the fleet outmaneuvered Hawaii, Australia and even the California coast could come under Japanese attack. Nimitz chose to fight at Midway and Rochefort proved to be exactly right. The Battle of Midway June 4th would be the victory to turn the tide of the Pacific War.
In the month following the victory the Chicago Tribune published the headline "Navy Breaks Jap Code" which cause Tokyo to change all their codes and the work had to start all over again.

1949- Admiral James Forrestal was a top strategist during World War Two and was serving as President Truman’s Secretary of Defense. But the pressures of command in first the World War , then the Cold War may have been too much for him. Several days after President Truman awarded a medal to Forrestal he was admitted to the Bethesda Naval Hospital for nervous exhaustion. This day he leapt out a window with his bathrobe cord knotted around his neck. It was ruled a suicide.

1954- Bob Dylan’s Bar Mitzvah. Maseltov!

1955-The Golden Age of Radio ends when after 22 years the Jack Benny show came to an end. Once the top broadcast show in the nation, Benny went on to television.

1957- A U.S. B-36 bomber accidentally drops a Hydrogen Bomb on Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bombardier, Lt. Robert Carp lost his balance in the bomb bay area and grabbed for a handle that released the Nuke. He ran back to the cockpit yelling: "I didn't touch anything! I didn't touch anything!" The bomb blew up a mesa and killed a cow but miraculously the thermonuclear triggering mechanism didn't kick in. This was a classified secret until the late 1980's.

1964- In a speech at Ann Arbor President Lyndon Johnson called for the Great Society. Johnson is remembered as the Vietnam War president but many of his Great Society social programs like Medicare and Medicaid are still in effect today.

1966- Bill Cosby became the first African-American to win an Emmy Award for starring in a television series- I-Spy.

1967- T.V. children's show Mr. Roger's Neighborhood debuted.

1969- PEOPLE’S PARK- The escalating tension between anti-war counter-culture and "the Establishment" picked an unusual item to fight over. A group of activists in Berkeley took over a 2 acre plot of land scheduled for development by the college. They planted grass and flowers and called it a "people’s park". Conservative Governor Ronald Reagan wasn’t going to tolerate any more tomfoolery and after officers and a chain link fence failed to keep out the squatters he sent in the National Guard. This day the confrontation between the bayonet wielding troops and hippies broke out into violence. One man was killed and another was blinded by riot gas. The college decided to yield the land for the park and it stays so today.

1972- The land of Ceylon declared itself the Republic of Sri Lanka.

1981- Peter Sutcliffe was convicted in the Yorkshire Ripper trial of murdering 13 women.

1985- Top Disney animation director Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman who directed the Jungle Book among other films, died in a car crash following lunch at the Smoke House in Burbank.

2001- Movie Mogul Ted Turners divorce from actress Jane Fonda became official.

2002-Ayatollahs outlaw Barbie dolls from Iran. They denounce Barbie as "agents of subversive Zionist Western propaganda."

2004- The heir to the Spanish throne Prince Felipe of Asturias married a TV news anchorwoman. The first commoner in the Spanish Royal family.

2004- Manmohar Singh was sworn in as Prime Minister of India. The first Sikh ever to hold this office. His Congress party had been led Sonya Ghandi, but she declined the job. Let me see, if my husband P.M Rajiv Ghandi was blown up by a suicide bomber, and my mother-in-law Indira was machined gunned by her own body guards, maybe this job isn't a good career move for me?
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YESTERDAY’s QUESTION: Name the Three Musketeers.

Answer: The Three Musketeers

Athos- The brainy, aristocratic one
Porthos- The physical (and womanizer) one;
Aramis- The religious (and later, bishop) one;
And the fourth, the hero and the common friend to each of them : D'Artagnan.