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Nov 16, 2017
November 16th, 2017

Question: What famous modern American franchise store is named for a character in a XIX Century novel?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What does it mean to “ turn the tables” on someone?
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History for 11/16/2017
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Tiberius 42BC, Paul Hindemith, George S. Kaufmann, W.C. Handy, Burgess Meredith, Daws Butler, Bob Watson, Zina Garrison, Dwight Gooden, Maggie Gylenhall is 40

HAPPY SADIE HAWKINS DAY! Fictional hillbilly footrace race made famous by Al Kapp in his comic strip Little Abner.

1532- THE MASSACRE OF CAJAMARCA- with promises of peace talks, Francisco Pizzarro tricked the Inca Emperor Athahualpa and his court into a narrow corral apart from their massive army. The monk Fra Francisco Valverde gave a bible to the Great Inca, declaring 'this is the voice of the Living God!" Athahualpa, who had never seen a book or European writing before, examined it a minute. "It says nothing to me" he said, and dropped it in the dust. Fra Valverde signaled and the Spaniards rushed out from all sides, slaughtering 9,000. Athahualpa was captured and later executed. Fra Valverde became Archbishop of Lima, supervised the destruction of much of Inca culture, until he was finally eaten by cannibals.

1632- BATTLE OF LUTZEN- Largest battle of the Thirty Years War, the great conflict where Protestant and Catholic countries chose up sides and battled for the dominance of Europe. The Catholic German-Spanish army of Archduke Wallenstein and the Protestant German-Swedes and of King Gustavus Adolphus pound each other all day. Gustavus had been shot out of his saddle while leading an attack and surrounded by Croat cavalry. Recognizing a leader they said:" Who are you?” Gustavus answered:" I am the King of Sweden, who do seal the religion and freedom of all Germany with my blood!"

Thereupon the Croats stabbed him to death. Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar assumed command and the revengeful Swedes swept all from their path. After the battle ,Wallenstein continued to lead the German Emperor's armies until his boss the Emperor assassinated him. The Thirty Years War continued until Catholic France joined the Protestant side, the Protestant Germans fought the Protestant Swedes, and everyone who started it died. Finally nobody could remember what it was all about to begin with.

1776-THE FIRST SALUTE -The U.S.N. Andrea Doria - not the famous Italian ocean liner but a US brig of war- entered the harbor of Saint Eustachius in the Dutch West Indies. It was a trading center that today we would call an international arms market. When the Andea Doria fired the customary salvo saluting her host's flag the Governor Johannes DeGraff returned the salute to the Stars and Stripes. So in effect Holland became the first nation to recognize the United States of America as an independent country.

1776- FORT WASHINGTON- When George Washington’s minuteman army was driven out of New York City in August, a rearguard force volunteered to stay behind and try to stall the British advance. They fortified themselves in Fort Washington, a little stronghold in the wild country of North Manhattan approximately where the George Washington Bridge now is. When called upon to surrender, Colonel Magaw refused, saying that Americans had "joined to fight in the most glorious cause mankind has ever known!"
After three months of holding off superior British forces, this day Fort Washington fell. 3,000 Yankees surrendered to Hessian General Knyphausen. General Washington was criticized for indecisiveness over whether to evacuate the forts defenders until it was too late.
Today for some strange reason the park where the fort stood is named Fort Tryon Park, after the Tory governor of New York who was so hated by the populace he had to administer his colony from a British warship anchored in New York Harbor.

1788- KING GEORGE III COLLAPSES IN CONVULSIONS, the first signs of mental illness that would make him a blind shut-in for the last years of his reign. His condition is now known as a rare blood disorder called Porpheria, but then it had no known cure. Bleeding and ice water dowsing was the standard 18th century medical treatments. He recovered for a time but the last ten years of his reign are called Regency Period, because even though he still was king his son the Prince of Wales ruled for him. George III's aides sensed something was not right with the King when while riding in his carriage in Hyde Park, George leapt out and greeted a large oak tree as the King of Prussia. He embraced the tree and shouted in French: "Aah, Le Roi du Prusse!"

1801- The first issue of the New York Post. Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists wanted a paper to print their views. Editor James Coleman once had to kill a man in a duel that morning and get back to the office to get the afternoon edition out.

1821-William Becknell reached Santa Fe New Mexico from Independence Missouri, proving it was a faster and easier land route than traveling from Mexico City. His route became a primary path for wagon trains and stagecoaches- the Santa Fe Trail.

1863- THE MARCH TO THE SEA- After burning the City of Atlanta to the ground, General William Tecumseh Sherman turned his 50,000 Yankee army eastward for his epic March to the Sea. His men cut a wide swath through the rich farm country of Georgia, burning homes, crops, looting, killing livestock and freeing thousands of slaves. He was mostly unopposed, Confederate forces off in Virginia and Tennessee could only watch helplessly.
It was the first time since the Thirty Years War, two hundred years earlier, that an army made war solely on civilians. Sherman spared civilian lives but destroyed everything else. The discovery of skeletal Northerners POWs escaped from Andersonville Prison only increased the rage of the men to commit acts of destruction. The psychological effects of the march left deep scars on Southerners for decades to come.

1906- Opera superstar Enrico Caruso was charged for pinching a ladies bottom while visiting the Bronx Zoo. Caruso claimed a monkey did it.

1907- Oklahoma and Indian territories became a state.

1915-BIRTH OF THE COKE BOTTLE- The owners of Coca Cola were concerned that the success of their soft drink was being subverted by all the various cheap imitations. They decided if they had a distinctive bottle people would recognize genuine Coca Cola. This day the first Coca-Cola appeared in their distinctive curved little green bottles, created by the Ross Glass Co. of Indiana.

1922- In the Crimea after Trotsky’s Red Army breached his defenses on the Turkish Wall, Baron Wrangel evacuated 150,000 anti-communist Russian soldiers and their dependents by sea to exile in Turkey. The end of the Russian Civil War.

1924- THE MURDER OF THOMAS INCE- Thomas Ince was a film director and early Hollywood studio owner whose property later became the site of MGM. This day he boarded William Randolph Hearst’s yacht Oneida for a birthday party in his honor. On the boat among the guests was Charlie Chaplin and Hearsts’ mistress Marion Davies. When the boat docked Ince was dead and everyone very troubled. The official cause of death was a heart attack but there was no autopsy or investigation and the Hearst press quickly hushed things up. The legend goes Hearst discovered Chaplin and Davies in flagrante-delicto and in a jealous rage shot Ince when he came between them. We’ll never know for sure.

1932- VAUDEVILLE DIED- Vaudeville was the generic name for one admission to a showcase of short theatrical acts- singers, comics, jugglers, trained animals, etc. Vaudeville gave their first opportunities to many great twentieth century performers like Chaplin, Jolson, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Gypsy Rose Lee and W.C. Fields. But it was slowly supplanted by more modern forms of entertainment like Movies and Radio. If you asked experts to pinpoint a date for the official end of the popular venue, many it would say it was this date, when the New York Palace Theater on Broadway, a premiere palace for Vaudeville, switched from live acts to purely Movies.

1943- Six British agents were dropped into Nazi occupied France near Angers. Three were arrested by the Gestapo before they reached Paris. The remaining three established contact with the French resistance and organized the "Vic" pipeline to smuggle shot down airmen and other allied POWs out to England. One of the resistance contacts was Francois Mitterand, who in 1981 became President of France.

1946- The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences founded. Fred Allen once said: "We call television a Medium because nothing on it is Rare, or Well Done."

1952- The first time in a Peanuts comic strip where Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown was attempting to kick it.

1960- CLARK GABLE DIED- The 59 year old star had just completed the film the Misfits, a film in which director John Huston demanded a great deal of physical exertion. He had told his agent that the unprofessional antics of his moody co-star Marilyn Monroe had driven him so nuts they were going to give him a heart attack. Gable had one after shooting, and on this day while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital reading a magazine, a second heart attack killed him. He wrote his own epitaph, but it was never used- " Oh Well, Back to Silents."

1977- Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in theaters.

1981- Actor William Holden died. The star of such classics as Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17 and Network, was told as a young actor to take a few drinks to calm the pre-camera jitters. But by now he was a hopeless alcoholic. This night at home alone and drunk, he fell and hit his head on a table edge. Too inebriated to call for help, he dabbed his forehead with bunches of Kleenex tissues until he bled to death.

1990- Disney’s feature film the Rescuers Down Under premiered. The first traditionally animated film to be painted digitally on computer instead of acetate cels and paints.

1996- Warner Bros Space Jam, where Bugs Bunny met NBA star Michael Jordan.

2001- The film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered to great fanfare and massive box office. Harry Potter’s creator J.K. Rowling had been so poor she at one time had been on the dole, now she was one of the richest women in the world. In England second only to Madonna and the Queen.

2002-The mysterious flu like disease SAARS first reported in Kwantung China. The epidemic spread around the world killing hundreds but was contained by the following summer.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to “ turn the tables” on someone?

Answer: In some ancient board games like Backgammon, one maneuver allows you to turn the board around so you play your opponents winning pieces, and he suddenly is at your mercy. The earliest use of the term “ the tables have turned” can be traced to the 1630s.


Nov 15, 2017 Weds.
November 15th, 2017

Question: What does it mean to “ turn the tables” on someone?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Which one of these celebrities never worked in animation? A) Jack Nicholson, B) Roger Moore, C) Marlon Brando D) Beverly D’Angelo
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History for 11/15/2017
B-Days: Georgia O'Keefe, Bill Melendez, Irvin Rommel the "Desert Fox", Avrial Harriman, Daniel Barenboim, George Bolet, William Pitt the Elder, Veronica Lake, Beverly D'Angelo is 65, Mantovanni, Ed Asner is 88, Sam Waterson is 77, Otis Armstrong, Petula Clark is 85

64 AD-THE ROMAN EMPIRE OUTLAWED CHRISTIANITY- It's hard to believe today, but the Roman Empire was proud of it's religious toleration. There was a harmony to the pagan world, A Goth knew his god Odin or Wotan was called Jove in Rome and Zeus in Athens and Mithra in Persia. So the Judeo-Christian concept of One God exclusively just didn't quite fit in.
The only other religion persecuted as vigorously as Christianity was the Druids, but that was because the Druids preached rebellion to Roman rule. The Romans dispersed the Jews as a nation, but Julius Caesar left strict laws about never violating Jewish dietary or Sabbath Laws.
Anti-Semites claim Messalina the wife of Nero was a Jewish convert and convinced her husband to ban the Christian cult, but the answer goes deeper than that. Secrecy and fear of its alien practices bred suspicion that would last 300 years.

1532- After marching his Spanish conquistadors for six months through steaming jungles and over tall mountains Francisco Pizarro reached the border of the mysterious Inca Empire. At the little border town of Cajamarca his 200 men suddenly found themselves face to face with 40,000 Inca warriors. The Imperial Inca Army was outfitted in gold armor, and “they shined like the sun!”

1754- First use of the modern trombone. It was played at a child's funeral.

1777- The ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION passed by Congress. An early attempt at a U.S. Constitution that gave all real power to the individual states, similar to the provincial system in Canada. It required a majority vote of 9 out of 13 states to get anything done and had no president. With rules like that, indeed nothing did get done. There were no laws regulating national commerce so goods travelling state to state paid tariffs like they were going through foreign countries!
By 1787 the Articles were junked for the more centralized U.S. Constitution but States Rights supporters would resurrect it later for their Southern Cause, hence the Confederacy.

1828- Author Victor Hugo signed a contract with Gosselin's Publishing House to write a story about the cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris. He was paid 4,000 francs in advance, The HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME was the result.

1849- In Rome, Vatican lay government minister Count Pelligrino Rossi was stabbed and as he walked through a crowd of Italian nationalists. Italians desiring the unification of Rome to the newly forming State of Italy rioted and looted the Popes Palace. Pope Pius IX,” Pio Nono” had to flee disguised as a plain priest. He returned a year later with a French army to reinstate the Papal States. Rome was annexed into Italy in 1870.
Pius IX came to power professing liberal reforms but soon went back on his word and threatened excommunication against “Treasonous Democracy”. In Italy another name for a liar was a Pio Nono.

1860- Shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s election as president a large meteor was seen in the skies over the Eastern U.S. Most took this as a bad omen of troubles to come.

1864- SHERMAN BURNED ATLANTA- Atlanta was the economic center of the South, an enormous industrial depot far from the front with railroad tracks linking all the coastal ports. William Tecumseh Sherman drove out the civilian population of the city at bayonet point and torched it. He claimed his men were only destroying military stores, but he didn’t stop them burning everything.
When his Confederate opponent complained what he was doing was barbaric, Sherman replied" You might as well protest to a thunderstorm, and against these terrible hardships of war. War is all cruelty. and the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."
Sherman had an army band serenade him beneath his window, playing the "Miserere'" from Verdi's "Il Trovatore", while he watched the city burning, impatiently chewing on an unlit cigar.

1881- The American Federation of Labor AF of L formed under the leadership of former cigar-maker Samuel Gompers. In 1951 they merged with the CIO.

1889- Emperor Pedro II abdicated, the Republic of Brazil is declared.

1907- The comic strip Mutt & Jeff debuted. The strip was so popular that it’s creator Harry “Bud “ Fisher became a celebrity and negotiated the first large backend deal.

1920- The League of Nations held it’s first meeting in Geneva.

1926- FIRST NETWORK BROADCAST- NBC hooks up 20 cities across America and Canada for a radio program "The Steinway Hour" with Arthur Rubinstein. It came from the Steinway building penthouse on 57th St. in Manhattan.

1934- Animator Bill Tytla started work at Walt Disney's on a trial basis for $150 a week. He would create Grumpy the Dwarf, The Devil in Fantasia and Dumbo.

1937- The U.S. Congress gets air-conditioning.

1941- Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordering the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of all homosexuals and gypsies.

1957- Patriarch Ignatius Yacoub III established the Archdiocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the U.S. and Canada.

1958- Movie star Tyrone Power was filming a sword duel with George Sanders on the film Solomon and Sheba. He paused and told the director “ I have to stop, I don’t feel well”. He then dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 44. His father Tyrone Power Sr. had also died on a Hollywood movie set in 1931 of a heart attack,

1965- Walt Disney announced he planned to build a second Disneyland, this time in Orlando Florida.

1977- The BeeGees soundtrack for the film Saturday Night Fever came out.

1979- ABC news announced they would broadcast a daily update of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The late night show became Nightline.

1989- Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid opened.

1990- It was revealed that the Grammy winning pop group Milli Vanilli didn’t sing on their own album but lip synced to the music.

1995- According to the Starr report, President Clinton had his first sexual tryst with intern Monica Lewinsky. At one point he was on the phone to a member of Congress while getting serviced by the chubby chick from Beverly Hills High.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which one of these celebrities never worked in animation? A) Jack Nicholson, B) Roger Moore, C) Marlon Brando D) Beverly D’Angelo

Answer: C) Marlon Brando. Jack Nicholson was a production assistant for Hanna & Barbera, Roger Moore was an assistant animator, and Beverly D’Angelo was a cel painter.


Nov 12, 2017 sun
November 12th, 2017

Question: Why is Seattle called Seattle?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a trousseau?
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History for 11/12/2017
Birthdays: Auguste Rodin, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Bahi-ullah 1817 founder of the Bahii faith, Elizabeth Cadie -Stanton, Cecil B. DeMille, Grace Kelly, Edward G. Robinson, Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, Shamus Culhane, Charles Manson, Neil Young, Edvard Munch, Nadia Comenici, Tanya Harding, Wally Shaw, Megan Mullally is 59, Anne Hathaway is 35, Ryan Gosling is 37, David Brain.

1035- Canute the Great died. He was the Viking King of Denmark and England simultaneously. It was Canute who once tried to command the ocean tide to go out.
He got his feet wet.

1623- In Vilnius Lithuania, Catholic priest St. Joseph of Polotsk was torn apart by an angry mob. Polish Catholic legislators led by chancellor Jan Zamoyski tried to reconcile the practices of their Ukrainian and Belarus subjects by creating the Church of the Uniate Rite. Clergy could keep their Eastern Orthodox rituals and wives, but acknowledge the Pope. This compromise didn't suit all tempers, and such acts of violence broke out into the Great Cossack Revolt of 1648.

1792- The Revolutionary French Republic issued a declaration that any other European kingdom that wants to overthrow their king and chop his head off, is welcome to come join the fun and France would help.

1859- The first trapeze act was demonstrated at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris. The act caused such a sensation that the daredevil was immortalized by his tights becoming a fashion named in his honor- Jules Leotard.

1861- THE CURRAUGH CAMP AFFAIR- When 20 year old Edward the Prince of Wales went to Oxford he was kept on a short leash by his worried parents Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They expected his college life to be- well, Victorian. He was to reside off campus, limited his diet to bland foods and soda water, and absolutely no smoking or carousing with women! This draconian regimen only stiffened Bertie’s rebellious nature.

When allowed to attend maneuvers in Ireland and bunk with a company of hard drinking cavalry officers, he was at last free to go wild. By unfortunate coincidence the gossip about the Prince’s all night drinking binges and bedding actresses reached his father just as Albert was showing the first signs of the typhoid fever that would kill him. For years afterwards, Queen Victoria blamed her son for contributing to his father's death by breaking his heart. In his adult years King Edward VII was never without a cigar in his teeth, a girl on his lap and a drink in his hand.

1912- SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC- in the Antarctic this day the frozen bodies of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and his men were found. He had lost his race to find the South Pole to Norwegian Piers Ammundsen then was stranded by a blizzard only 30 miles from his base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf. His last diary entry (March 29th ) said "We are showing that Englishmen can still have a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end. This diary and our dead bodies will be the proof. I should like to write more but I haven't the strength..."

1917- At the first meeting of the Russian Duma since the Bolshevik Revolution Lenin and Trotsky revealed their radical plan to reform Russian Society into a Communist Worker’s State dominated by the Soviets -workers and peasants councils.

1918- The day after the Armistice ended World War I, dozens of German army regiments against orders, began to march back across their border in perfect order. Then, defying the shouts and threats of their officers, the men threw away their helmets and guns, and simply walked home.

1918- With their Hapsburg emperor fled, Austria declared itself a republic.

1920- In the wake of the "Black Sox" Baseball scandal, the first rigged World Series, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was elected first Commissioner of Baseball. He ordered all those involved in the scandal including Shoeless Joe Jackson permanently banned from baseball, even though they had been acquitted in a civil trial.

1923- In Clarksburg West Virginia a man shot his wife for smoking a cigarette. After World War I the psychologist nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edmund Bernayz left the office of war propaganda and went into the advertising business. He later bragged that it was he who created the campaign equating woman’s emancipation and voting rights with smoking cigarettes. He created ad campaign calling cigarettes "Freedom Sticks".

1927- The Holland Tunnel completed. It runs under the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey. It’s not named for the Netherlands, but for the engineer Clifford Holland, who died shortly before its completion.

1933- Hugh Gray of the British Aluminum Company takes the first photographs of what he claimed was a monster in Loch Ness. He would be the first of many to have claimed to have seen Nessie.

1937- Alan Turing delivered his famous paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" at Kings College, Cambridge.
In it he postulated on the ability to create a "universal machine" that used numbers to solve problems and could be re-programable for different tasks. In his day they were called Turing Machines, but we know them now as Computers.

1938- The Madagascar Plan. Nazi Herman Goring announced a new plan to create a homeland for European Jews in French Madagascar off the coast of Africa. It sounds goofy but they got it from an idea of 19th century Zionist leader Theodore Herzl and the just concluded international conference at Evian France showed the reluctance of the western democracies to take in large amounts of refugees. The idea went nowhere.

1944- THE BATTLESHIP TIRPITZ is sunk. After the big battle with the Bismarck, Nazi admirals built an even bigger superbattleship, the Tirpitz. The allies however, found out through intelligence when it would sail and attacked this one as soon as it left it's harbor. They pounded it with bomber and torpedo planes and midget submarines day and night until it rolled over and sank. Survivors recalled as the ship was sinking they could hear through the hull the sound of the doomed sailors singing "Deutschland Uber Alles".
This caused a British Admiral to remark:" It's tragic that such men follow such a cause."

1946- Disney's "Song of the South" with James Baskett as Uncle Remus.

1946- The Exchange Bank in Chicago opened the first drive in bank.

1948- After World War II, Japanese leaders were sentenced for war crimes by a world court like the top Nazis leaders were at Nuremberg. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, Generals Homma and Yamashita and 900 others were executed or imprisoned for crimes against humanity and genocide, including waterboarding American prisoners.

1975- Portland Oregon had a large dead gray whale on its beach. It decided it would be easier to dispose if they blew it up. As an audience watched they stuffed it with half a ton of dynamite. The explosion drew cheers from the audience, then everyone ran for cover as they were showered by falling 50 pound chunks of stinky blubber and guts.

1981- The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for the second time. First reusable spacecraft.

1990- Akihito became Emperor of Japan.

2014- The European Space Agency successfully landed the first satellite Philae on a moving comet. Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It had been launched ten years before and had taken this long to reach it.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a trousseau?

Answer: A collection of clothes, accessories and often household goods collected by a bride-to-be in anticipation of her marriage. A wardrobe especially assembled for a specific season or event.
From the Old French word trousse, meaning to wrap up things in a bundle for carrying.


Nov 11, 2017 Veterans Day
November 11th, 2017

Question: What is a trousseau?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What town name was NOT originally an Indian name? a. Chicago, b. Cincinnati, c. Miami, d. Poughkeepsi NY

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History for 11/11/2017
Birthdays: Abigail Adams, Alexander Borodin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gen. George Patton, Pat O’Brien, Kurt Vonnegut, Rene Clair, Carlos Fuentes, Jonathan Winters, Stubby Kay, Demi Moore is 55, Leonardo di Caprio is 43

Today in the Middles Ages this was "Martinmass" the feast of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of France.

Happy Veterans Day in the U.S., Memorial Day in many European countries.

1534- The Parliament voted the Act of Supremacy, confirming that the King of England would be henceforth the Supreme Head of the Church in England, and no longer beholding to the Catholic Church in Rome. They called it The Church of England.

1572- Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe noted that he observed a bright new star in the region of Cassiopea. It was brighter in the sky than Venus, but after 16 months it disappeared. Not until 2008 did scientists determine that what Tycho saw was a White Dwarf exploding into a Supernova.

1647- King Charles I had been defeated in the English Civil War and was held a prisoner at Hampton Court. On this day, he gave his jailers the slip and escaped to the Isle of Wight to raise troops for what some historians call the Second English Civil War. His actions, not only of lying to escape but also of persuading a Scottish army to invade England on the promise to the Scots that he would forcibly convert England to Presbyterianism, as well as trying to raise a Catholic Army in Ireland, offended his few remaining friends. Oliver Cromwell concluded there was no use negotiating with a king who saw peace talks only as a delaying tactic. They must have the head of this 'Man of Blood"

1668- Mademoiselle Du Parc was a beautiful actress who dumped Moliere and his comic company to become the mistress of the tragic playwright Racine, causing Moliere and Racine’s friendship to break. Plus Racine didn’t like the way Moliere’s actors performed his plays. Three years later this day Mlle. Du Parc died under mysterious circumstances. Racine gave up his wild ways, got married and had a big family. In 1679 a notorious poisoner Madame Monvoisin claimed that Racine hired her to off his girlfriend! Was the French Shakespeare a Bluebeard or was La Voisin paid to slander him? The authorities considered arresting him, but King Louis XIV quashed the investigation because it would implicate the King’s favorite, Madame de Montespan.

1673- Battle of Cochim - Polish Hetman Sobieski and his "Winged Hussars" defeat a Turkish invasion in the Ukraine. The heavily armored Hussar cavalry wore wooden wings decorated with feathers like something out of a Christmas pageant, but the effect on enemies was terrifying. The flutter and hiss they made during their attack made them seem like warrior angels.

1807- The British Admiralty announced that all neutral commercial ships passing through European waters must put in to an English port and pay tax or be subject to attack and seizure by the British Navy. Britain further reserved the right to stop ships to search for deserters from the British Navy. By 1812 and estimated four thousand American sailors had been taken off ships on the high seas and imprisoned or impressed into English service. Because America desired to remain neutral in the Napoleonic Wars this was one of the roots of her declaring war on England in 1812.

1831- Nat Turner, who led the last large slave uprising before the Civil War, was hanged in Jerusalem Virginia. He confessed but expressed no regrets.

1858-John Landis Mason invents the Mason Jar.

1865- Mary Edward Walker, Union army surgeon became the first woman awarded the Medal of Honor. It was taken away from her in 1885 and only restored recently.

1887- THE HAYMARKET EXECUTIONS- Four leaders of an early American labor movement The Knights of Labor are hanged after being charged with responsibility for a bomb tossed at police during a demonstration in Chicago. Samuel Fielden, Adolphe Fischer, August Spies and Albert Parsons. It was never proven they actually had thrown the bomb, aww but they were a bunch of reds anyway...A later Chicago mayor ruined his political career when he proved publicly that the Haymarket defendants were innocent. Albert Parsons shouted as he dropped through the trapdoor:" Oh men of America, Let the Voice of the People be Heard!" They were demanding unheard of concessions like a six day work week and an eight hour day down from twelve to fourteen. A monument was erected in Haymarket not to Parsons but to the police. Hippies blew it up in 1968.

1889- Washington State admitted into the union.

1914- Sultan Mehmed V of Turkey who was also the last Caliph, honoring his alliance with Germany in World War I, declared a Grand Jihad on the allies. He said it was the duty of all good Moslems to fight the Christians, unless of course they were Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians or Austrians. Historians say the effect of his declaration of Holy War was met in the Moslem world with resounding indifference. About the only one who listened was the Khedive of Egypt, who was promptly replaced by the British.

1918- ARMISTICE DAY- World War I ended. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns of the Great War fall silent. It sounds poetic but it was just a coincidence, the opposing sides had been negotiating since the 8th. In many countries this is the traditional Memorial Day, the American one in May is in honor of our Civil War. In a strange kind of salute when the word went down the battlelines that the ceasefire would take effect at 11:00AM, one minute before, thousands of cannons on both sides fired one last round simultaneously.

World War I's final tally was 22 million dead, almost 20% of the young male population in the opposing countries. In only 7 months of actual fighting 200,000 American died – as opposed to 5,000 after a decade in Iraq. This also marks the turning point of the Old World into the Twentieth Century: ethnic republics arose out of dying monarchies. The British, German, and French colonial empires were fatally wounded. Independence desires stirred in 3rd world colonies and the United States became a major global power and world financier.

1918- TOMMY GUNS- Sitting on a New York wharf, forgotten and ignored, was the first shipment of Thompson submachine guns, built for a war just ended. John Thompson was an inventor who tried to solve the problem of close hand-to-hand fighting in trenches by inventing a light mobile machine gun that could be a “trench-broom” –spewing 800 bullets a minute. Because it fired small pistol bullets, it was called a “sub-machine gun”.
But the Great War was over and the U.S. Army wasn’t interested anymore, neither were most police departments. So in 1921 the Thompson Submachine Gun went on sale to the public as a “great home defense system”. The people who did buy them were the Mafia and the IRA. They nicknamed them Choppers, Chicago Typewriters and Tommy Guns. Al Capone invented the novelty of hiding one in a violin case. John Dillinger was very proud of his.
Old John Thompson was shocked that his creation was being used by violent hoodlums to make incidents like the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre possible. He died in 1940, just weeks before the US Army would order tens of thousands Tommy Guns to fight World War II.

1920- On the second anniversary of the Armistice, the British entomb an Unknown Soldier to represent all war dead “A Soldier Whose Name is Known Only to God”. The French do it and the Americans think this a neat idea so do their own at Arlington in 1932. Bavarian corporal Adolph Hitler called himself the Unknown soldier of Germany, Now because of DNA identification identities of war dead will no longer be unknown. In 1998 the identity of the Unknown of the Vietnam War was discovered and the remains moved upon request of his family.

1925- Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong did the first recordings of his band the Hot Five. These records lift him from a local talent in Chicago and New Orleans to international stardom.
According to close friends Sachmo was a lifelong marijuana smoker. He called Pot his “antidote to racism”. Gives new meaning to the song “Laughing Louie”.

1925- The Nazis formed a second para-military force to augment their stormtroopers called the Schutz-Staffel or SS. Its leader was a one time chicken farmer named Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was heavily into the occult. He built officer training centers in a castle made up to look like King Arthur's round table. He also encouraged Germans to conceive children in graveyards, so the unborn could absorb the spirits of dead German heroes. The SS published a list of suitable graveyards for assignations.

1926- Work began building Route 66, the first interstate highway built for automobiles in the U.S. It will get finished in 1932. The world's first road exclusively for automobiles was opened in 1921, the Avus in suburban Berlin, followed by the Via Fiore Imperiali in Rome (1927).

1932- The Girls Scouts first offered freshly baked cookies for sale. The proceeds went to purchase camping gear. In 1936, the Girls Scouts signed a contract with Keebler to bake and package the cookies.

1937- Animation production wrapped on Disney’s first feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

1938- GOD BLESS AMERICA- Irving Berlin's song God Bless America sung for the first time by chubby chanteuse Kate Smith. Berlin had written the song in 1918 for a Broadway show, but it didn’t fit in. So he threw it in a file cabinet and forgot about it. Twenty years later, he revived the song for the effort to combat the Depression. It became a huge hit.

1938- TYPHOID MARY- On this day 68 year old Mary Mallon died in an asylum. She was a carrier of the disease typhoid fever and, in 1910, while being a cook in a hotel resort she infected 1,000 people. Released from jail a few years later, she had promised not to resume her former profession. But soon she was in the kitchen again. She started the typhoid epidemic of 1915 and was arrested again. She herself never contracted the disease.

1938- The first day of shooting on the film 'The Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland met 125 little people hired to be the Munchkins. Judy's energy was fading under the heavy work schedule so L.B. Mayer ordered her put on Benzadrine (speed) every morning and Valium pills to sleep. June Alysson, another young MGM actress at the time said: "The studio nurse would give it to you and tell you it was vitamins." Judy Garland became a heavy drug addict and died of an overdose in 1969 at 47 years old.

1940- The Birth of the Jeep. The army introduces its first General Purpose vehicle-G.P. or Jeep, a name coinciding with a character in E.C. Segar's Popeye cartoons.

1940- Battle of Taranto (Italy) The RAF attacked the Mussolini’s fleet in port using torpedo planes. Convention wisdom of the time was plane-launched torpedoes wouldn't work in the shallow waters of a harbor. The British solved this by equipping their torpedoes with little fins that gave them greater buoyancy. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto said he wouldn't have attempted Pearl Harbor, if the British hadn't proved at Taranto that such torpedo runs were possible.

1941- On the night before mobster Abe Reles, alias Kid Twist, was due to testify what he knew of the Mafia, he was thrown out of a Coney Island hotel window to his death. He was under Federal protection. In 1962, Joe Valachi testified mobster Frank Costello had raised $100,000 to bribe NYPD cops to do the deed themselves. A popular toast around Brooklyn those days was: “ Here’s to Abe Reles, a canary who could sing but not fly.”

1954- Tolkein’s second book of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, first published.

1966- Gemini XII spacecraft went up into orbit. It was the last flight of the Gemini program and the first spaceflight of Buzz Aldrin who would later be the second man to walk on the moon.

1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol, Groucho Marx.

1980- 'Heaven's Gate" Michael Cimino's $44 million dollar flop opened. Cimino originally said he could do the film for $8 million. Critic Pauline Kael said: "It's the kind of movie you want to deface. You want to draw mustaches all over it."

1992- Premiere of Walt Disney’s Aladdin.
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Yesterday’s Question: What town name was NOT originally an Indian name?
a. Chicago, b. Cincinnati, c. Miami, d. Poughkeepsi NY

Answer: b. Cincinnati. Named for a legendary Roman statesman who put loyalty to country above personal gain.


Nov 10, 2017
November 10th, 2017

Question: What town name was NOT originally an Indian name?
a. Chicago, b. Cincinnati, c. Miami, d. Poughkeepsi NY

Question: Who was Holden Caulfield?
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History for 11/10/2017
Birthdays: Mohammad, Martin Luther, William Hogarth, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Francois Couperin, King George II of England, Frederick Schiller, Claude Rains, Carl Stalling, Tim Rice, Richard Burton, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, MacKenzie Phillips, Russell Means, Sinbad, Brittany Murphy, George Fenneman-Groucho Marx’s TV announcer, Sue Kroyer, Tracey Morgan is 48

Today is the feast of Saint Leo the Great, the Pope who scared Attila the Hun away from Rome by playing on his superstitions about the invisible power of the Christian god.

1610- THE NIGHT OF DUPES- Cardinal Richelieu ruled France with a centralized authority that made him admired by King Louis XIII, but hated by just about everyone else. When the king was gravely ill, the Queen Mother nursed him back to health. In return she asked as her payment- the Cardinals head! She wanted him replaced by keeper of the seals Jean de Mariac. This day in the Luxembourg Palace, Mom told Louis "It’s either Richelieu or me!" On cue, the gaunt cardinal emerged from a secret door. The King made his choice- Bye Bye Mom. Oh and uh.,. Jean de Mariac was beheaded.

1766- In New Brunswick New Jersey Queens College was founded. It later changed its name to Rutgers University.

1770- Voltaire said:" If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

1775- The U.S. Marine Corps founded by Congress. Marines were originally the sharpshooters who climb up ships rigging during a sea battle and shoot down on the enemy decks. They have the nickname Leathernecks because part of their early uniform was a stiff leather collar worn under their cravat to ward off cutlass blows and "keep in the head up in a good military bearing."

1778- John Paul Jones had been beached in France for nine months. At the height of the American Revolution he had been told to send away his ship USS Ranger to await a bigger, better one from the French. But delay and red tape was making him crazy. Today his agents found him a new command- a fat, old, run down East India merchant tub named L’Duc du Durras. Jones fixed it up, and renamed her the USS BonHomme Richard after Ben Franklin’s bestselling book. The frigate BonHomme Richard became the most famous ship in the young American Navy.

1782- English King George III wrote his Prime Minister Lord Shelburne about the recently lost American Revolution: " I should be miserable indeed if no blame for the dismemberment of America from this Empire not be laid at my door, however knowing that Knavery is so much a striking feature of it’s Inhabitants, it may Not in the end be such an Evil that they are now aliens to this kingdom."

1793- FESTIVAL OF THE GODDESS OF REASON- The radical French Revolutionaries had done away with the Catholic religion as a collaborator in tyranny, but they knew the common people wanted the consolation of religion. So they now substituted the worship of Reason in its place. Today was the first festival of the Goddess of Reason held at Notre Dame, with an actress personifying the new deity and chants and hymns and such silliness. It didn't last, it's inventor Pierre Chaumette was guillotined for not being radical enough. When Napoleon came to power he restored normal Catholic worship, although the French army permitted no chaplains.

1865- During the Civil War Swiss immigrant Henry Wirz was the Confederate commander of the infamous prison Andersonville where thousands of Yankee prisoners starved and perished. On this day he became the first military officer ever hanged for war crimes. He was also the first person to use the excuse "I was only following orders."

1871- STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTON- No one in England had heard from the famous African explorer-missionary Dr David Livingston for three years and he was feared dead. Henry Morton Stanley undertook the expedition partly as a publicity stunt funded by the Josef Pulitizer’s New York World newspaper. After one year of wandering through the jungle Stanley came upon the old missionary on the shores of Lake Tanganyika near Ujiji. Stanley introduced himself by saying: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley also proved Speeckes theory of the source of the Nile River as Lake Victoria Nyanzaa.

1880- Ex Civil War general and New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace got his first novel published, and it came out pretty good- Ben Hur.

1885- Gottfried Daimler invented the first motorcycle.

1917- The Voting Rights for Women Movement or Suffragettes began a dramatic all day protest in front of the White House. Every time a protester was arrested and dragged off another would take her place. By the days end 41 women were arrested.

1918- After abdicating the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm decided he didn't want to stick around and end up shot like his cousin Nicky the Russian Czar. So, in the middle of night the German Imperial family slipped away by secret train and crossed the border into neutral Holland. The Hohenzollern Family, which had ruled since 1685, was now gone. Wilhelm’s first words when reaching the Castle of Daun were : "I should now like a strong hot cup of English tea."

1918- The Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary and Empress Zita abdicate. Elderly Emperor Franz-Joseph II helped start World War I and then he conveniently died. His young grandnephew Karl tried to handle a bad situation he had no control over. He even attempted a peace overture behind the Kaiser's back as early as 1916. Ironically the Austro-German High Command helped to fund Russian revolutionaries like Lenin. German money paid the printing costs for Pravda.

After taking power in Petersburg Lenin immediately had soviet-style revolutionary cells set up in Vienna and Berlin. Like in Germany riots convulsed Austrian cities and whole regiments were quiting their trenches and walking home. The Imperial Hapsburg family, which had reigned in Europe uninterrupted since 1265, piled into limousines and sped off for Switzerland before the Viennese Workers Soviet Committee could arrest them. Like the Kaiser, they too had heard how the Russian Czar and his whole family had been put up against the wall and shot. So they preferred not to suffer a similar fate. The Republics of Austria and Hungary were declared. In 2004 Pope John Paul II made Kaiser Karl I a Saint. Their son Crown Prince Otto lived to age 98 and died in 2011.

1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman and Katnip cartoon.

1951- The first long distance telephone call without needing an operator to make the connection.

1953- Disney’s short “ Toot Whistle, Plunk and Boom” released.

1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper.

1971- The US table tennis team arrived in Red China for a tour. Ping-Pong became an unlikely diplomatic tactic to begin the warming of relations between China and the US.

1975- S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sinks at Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, drowning all 29 crew members and causing a famous 1970's folk song to happen.

1977- Pope Paul VI announced that Catholics who remarried or married Protestants were no longer automatically excommunicated.

1981- Innovative French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen movie Napoleon restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow and produced by Francis Ford Coppola with a live audience. At Radio City Music Hall, Brownlow stretched a telephone cord out on stage so the old man could hear the wild cheers of the NY audience.

1982- The Vietnam Veterans Wall designed by Maia Lin opened to the public in Washington D.C,

1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many Arnold Schwarzenegger hits like "Total Recall" declared bankruptcy after producing $115 million dollar megaflop "Cutthroat Island".

2008- Just a few days after Pres. Barack Obama was first elected, Republican Georgia Congressmen Paul Broun was already calling him a “Marxist-Nazi” This set the tone for the hysterical conservative hatred of the first black president for the next eight years.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who is Holden Caulfield?

Answer: He was the main character in J.D. Salinger’s classic novel The Catcher in the Rye.


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