Quiz: What is meant by a Catch-22 situation?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What famous book began “Gaul is divided into three parts….”
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History for 6/25/2023
Birthday: George Orwell, Marc Charpentier, Lord Louis Mountbatten, General Hap Arnold, Cajun musician Clifton Chenier, Sidney Lumet, Walter Brennan, Willis Reed, George Abbott, Carly Simon, June Lockhart, Alex Toth, Peyo (the creator of the Smurfs), Patrick Macnee, Jimmy Dyne-no-Mite Walker, George Michaels, Anthony Bourdain, Justice Sonya Sotomayor, Mike Myers is 60, Ricky Gervais is 62.

841- Charlemagne had made all Europe from Spain to Hungary the Frankish Empire. But the grandchildren of Charlemagne divided the empire according to Frankish custom. Instead of the eldest son inheriting everything (primogeniture), all the sons got an equal share. This ensured civil wars to reunite and consolidate power. After knocking off their brother Lothar, Charles the Bald & Louis the German fixed the borders for a final division of their kingdoms. These would become France and Germany.

1630 – The fork was introduced to American dining by Plymouth Gov Winthrop.

1673- The Dutch open their dikes and flood the land around Amsterdam to stop an invading French army.

1744- The first Methodist conference convened, in London.

1789- This day representatives from the Revolutionary National Assembly went to Paris city hall and told King Louis’ royal administrators to get lost. They would now run Paris.

1815- After Waterloo and Napoleon’s abdication, now it that it was safe, King Louis XVIII returned to France. He was the younger brother of the Louis XVI guillotined in the Revolution. The slow, rotund Louis XVIII, called Dix-Huit -Deez-Hweet in French, was nicknamed "Louis Biscuit" by the British because he rode into to Paris with the supply wagons of Wellington’s army. The French called him Louis Dix-Huitres meaning Louis Ten Oysters. One British officer called him "A French Falstaff, a Fat Disgrace."

1835- Antoine Baron Gros was a celebrated painter under Napoleon and a friend of David and Ingres. But politics and tastes change. In a royalist postwar France dominated by Delacroix and Gericault, Baron Gros lived on forgotten and melancholy. This day the 64 year old artist drowned himself in the Seine.

1857- Writer Gustav Flaubert went on trial for “immorality” for his first novel Madame Bovary. He was acquitted and went on to write his next book Salammbo the Carthaginian princess who strangled herself with her own hair. Don’t try this at home ladies!

1863- During the Civil War siege of Vicksburg, Yankee engineers dug a tunnel under the rebel positions and filled it with gunpowder. The huge blast accomplished little, but blew a black cook named Abraham up through the air and over into Union lines. Abraham was badly frightened by his strange flight to freedom, but miraculously unhurt. Soldiers of an Iowa regiment immediately put him in a tent and charged people five cents to come look at him.

1867 Barbed wire patented by Lucien B Smith of Ohio. It was considered the perfect tool to protect crops from free-range cattle and other marauders. During the Boer War in 1898 South Africa the Boers got the novel idea of stringing the stuff in front of the attacking British regiments. It’s been used as a tool to herd humans ever since,

1876- CUSTER'S LAST STAND called by the Sioux the Battle of the Greasy Grass- George Armstrong Custer and 300 of his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the combined Sioux, Cheyenne nations (approximately 1,700 warriors).
There had been defeats of the whites like this before: Fetterman's Massacre, The Little Rosebud Battle, but nothing captures the imagination like the Little Big Horn. And for Native-Americans it marks the last coming together of the tribes and the last great victory. The Ogalala Sioux, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne all united to resist the violation of their sacred Black Hills. No U.S. Army commander ever expected so many different tribes could unite and field thousands of warriors at once.
Custer trusted in his audacity. "Custer's Luck". The boy general –just 23 years old in the Civil War, he was always at the head of his men in costly, reckless attacks yet personally suffered nothing more severe than the flu. Now at age 36 his luck ran out.

Accounts by natives were sketchy and no one is sure just how Custer died. The last white soldier who saw him alive was a courier sent away with a message " Benteen, come up quick. Big Village. Bring packs". The courier was an Italian immigrant named Giuseppe Martini who couldn’t speak English. The famous image of Custer standing to the last with Old Glory in hand was made up by an artist named Paxton for an Anheuser-Busch beer advertisement in 1877. One Crow Indian scout who escaped said Custer was the first casualty, and that his being shot down panicked the troopers. Others say the last they saw of Custer he was crawling on all fours with blood trickling down his mouth. He was found in a pile of bodies with a bullet wound in the left side and one in the temple. The Sioux didn’t even know they had killed Yellow Hair until told days later.

The tribes afterwards dispersed and headed for Canada. The only 7th Cavalry survivor was Commanche, Capt. Mile’s Keough's horse. He was treated with honor by the army and fed a bucket of beer every payday for the rest of his life. Custer was hallowed with martyrdom. Ulysses Grant was quiet about the affair but privately thought it a badly botched operation. Sitting Bull was more blunt- "The soldiers were fools, they rode to their deaths."

Mrs. Libby Custer lived until 1933 and met FDR. The last living eyewitness of the battle, Mrs. Kate Bighead of the Cheyenne who was taken on the battlefield by her mother as a young child, died in 1959.

1870- Richard Wagner's opera Die Walkure (The Valkyrie) premiered in Munich.

1906- Famed New York architect Stanford White was having dinner at Madison Square Garden (back when it was still a garden, still on Madison Ave., and still square) when he was shot to death by millionaire Harry Thaw, the husband of his mistress Evelyn Nesbitt. The eccentric Thaw was obsessed by White, hiring detectives to follow the artist, and report his amorous pursuits. He would only date women who had dated White first. Thaw’s defense attorney’s got him acquitted of murder by reason of temporary insanity.
So instead of the hangman noose, Harry Thaw spent a few years in a mental home living on squab and champagne. The crowd cheered him when he was freed. The key defense witness was 22 year old Mrs. Evelyn Nesbitt-Thaw, one of the beautiful "Gibson Girls’. She gave juicy details of her kinky relationship with White, like the red velvet swing she would ride in the nude over the admiring architect’s head. After Thaw was released, they divorced. Before Evelyn Nesbitt died of old age in 1967, she admitted Stanford White was the only man she ever really loved. The incident was the basis for E.L. Doctorow's novel and movie "Ragtime".

1910- First performance of Stravinsky's ballet "Firebird" by Diagheilev and his Ballet Russe. Stravinsky used to refer to the dancers as "A bunch of knock-kneed Lolitas".

1910- Congress passed the Mann Act, sometimes called the White Slave Trafficking Act. It stated you couldn’t coerce a woman across state borders for immoral purposes. Penalties are doubled for legal minors, but the law says nothing about boys.

1934- Milt Kahl's first day at the Walt Disney Studios. It was said he was the first artist to ever show Walt a real portfolio of drawings to get hired.

1940- Young actor, and liberal labor activist Ronald Reagan married his first wife, actress Jane Wyman.

1942- A staff officer named Dwight Eisenhower was named by General George Marshall to overall command of all US forces in Europe. Picked over 400 other officers Eisenhower was chosen for his organizational skills, although up until then he had never actually led troops in combat.

1944- Three weeks after the D-Day landings with 650,000 Allied troops now in France, German Western Front army commander Von Rundstedt still believed the main allied invasion hadn’t arrived yet.

1945- This day President Truman wrote in his diary about his conflict how to end the war with Japan ” Should I invade, or bomb, and blockade? This is the hardest decision I ever had to make...” Truman knew about the atomic bomb but didn’t know if it would work until July 16th.

1949- Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short “Longhaired Hare” premiered. “Leopold!”

1951- After losing a power struggle to Dory Schary, Louis B. Mayer announced he was stepping down as head of MGM. Mayer in his time was the most powerful man in Hollywood. He kept an all white office modeled after Mussolini’s in Rome.

1951 - 1st color TV broadcast-CBS' Arthur Godfrey from NYC to 4 cities.

70th Anniversary 1953- The film Robot Monster premiered. It has attained cult film status as being one of the worst movies ever made. The lead actor only got the part of the monster because he owned a gorilla suit. After reading the reviews, the director Phil Tucker tried to kill himself.

1956- The last Packard automobile was produced.

1967- The "Our World" Beatles concert, the first television event to attempt a worldwide satellite linkup. They sing and record "All You Need is Love" live in front of an audience of 400.

1968- Pierre Elliot Trudeau elected Prime Minister of Canada. For the next twenty-five years he and his flower-child wife Margaret will be one of Canada’s most colorful leaders.

1973- White House counsel John Dean testifies to the Congressional Watergate Committee "There is a Cancer on the Presidency." For the first time one of President Nixon's closest advisers hinted publicly that the President himself was personally involved in the Watergate scandal.

1978- The Rainbow Flag, symbolizing LGBTQ rights first flown.

1980- Disney’s film Herbie Goes Bananas, premiered.

1981- Bill Gates and Paul Allen file papers to incorporate their company Microsoft.

1982- Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film Blade Runner opened.

1991-The Fifth Balkan War- also called the Yugoslav Civil Wars began. After the death of aged Communist dictator Josef Tito, the union of South Slavs called Yugoslavia started to come apart. This day Slovenia & Croatia declared their independence. Serbia had allocated to itself the bulk of the armaments of the former Yugoslav army and attacked them with it.
During these wars it was almost impossible to tell Serbs, Bosnian-Moslems or Croats apart. At times they killed each other based on what their automobile license plate read.

1997- Disney's animated film Hercules opened in theaters.

2009- Singer Michael Jackson, called the King of Pop, died after his personal physician Dr. Conrad Murray administered a powerful sedative named Propofol to help him sleep and it stopped his heart instead. He was 50 and been performing on stage since the age of 5.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What famous book began “ Gaul is divided into three parts….”

Answer: That was the way Julius Caesar began his famous memoir De Bellum Gallicum. The Gallic Wars. Gaul was the ancient name for France.

Quiz: What famous book began, “Gaul is divided into three parts….”

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: So what was the big deal about Charlemagne? What did he do?
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History for 6/24/2023
Birthdays: Earl Kitchener, the Sirdar of Omdurman, Roy O. Disney, E.I. Dupont, Ambrose Bierce, Jack Dempsey, John Ciardi, Mick Fleetwood, Phil Harris- singer and voice of Baloo in Disney’s Jungle Book, Billy Casper, Michelle Lee, Claude Chabrol, Chief Dan George, Pete Hamill, Peter Weller, Sherry Springfield

Happy St. John the Baptist or St. Jean Baptiste’s Day.

1203- The armies and fleets of the Fourth Crusade arrive before the Walls of Constantinople. The knights of Europe had signed on to fight Moslems for the Holy City of Jerusalem but Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo convinced them to help him destroy the Byzantine Greeks first. This was a purely economic act because the Byzantine Greeks were Venice’s chief competition for Mediterranean trade.

1219- Pope Innocent III set today as the deadline for deadbeat knights who volunteered to go on Crusade to get off their ironclad butts and get going. Knights had an economic incentive to taking the Crusading vow: no one could collect a bad debt from you, and you couldn't be imprisoned for owing money. So, some knights would take the vow to Crusade, but then stalled actually making the dangerous trip to the Middle East, where two out of three never returned.

1324- THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN- Scottish King Robert the Bruce defeated the invading army of King Edward II of England and secured the crown of Scotland for the next 300 years. The Bruce fought in the midst of his troops, hacking down Sir Hugh de Bohun in single combat with his battle-axe. Edward’s father, Edwards Longshanks, had developed winning tactics of using Welsh archers to shoot up an enemy before the mounted knights charged. But Edward II’s bad generalship bungled the system. Knights and footmen scrabbled to get at the Scots not allowing the bowmen a clear target.

1374- In the French town of Aix la Chapelle was the first recorded outbreak of St. John’s Dance. Groups of people frothing at the mouth danced madly around uncontrollably until they fell over dead from exhaustion.

1441- Eton College created by King Henry VI of England.

1488-The PIED PIPER OF HAMLIN-The story is a romantic fairy tale but on this day one version of the story has the real man doing something more like Jeffrey Dahmer. Because the town fathers refused to pay his salary, he spirited a hundred children out of Hamlin, and they all disappeared. People later found young body parts. These fairy tales, like Red Riding Hood and others were for peasants more warnings of peril than amusements.

1497- English explorer John Cabot discovered Canada -Eh!

1534- Swiss medical pioneer Paracelsus led a mass burning of medical textbooks at Basel University. Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus von Hohenheim was an eccentric scholar who took frequent sips of laudanum (a heavy opiate he developed) from a container in the hollow handle of his sword. He pioneered the use of minerals in medicine and invented the term Tartar for teeth.
He also practiced Astrology and would never give an enema during the full moon. With this book-burning stunt Paracelsus claimed that all medical text before him was quackery. Burning in St. John’s Fire was the least it deserved. Truth be told he was right. His middle name Bombast became a synonym for bragging.

1535- The Anabaptists, a radical religious sect, had driven out the Bishop of the German city of Munster and established a commune like city-state they called the New Jerusalem. This day after a long siege, a spy opened a gate to the German Imperial soldiers and the city was captured with a horrible massacre. The Anabaptist sect was suppressed in Cologne, Trier, Amsterdam, and Leyden. The Anabaptist leader John of Leyden, who had lived like an Old Testament King with a harem of wives, was tied to a stake and clawed with red-hot pincers. His tongue was torn out with pliers. Finally, when they couldn’t think of any more ways to torture him a dagger was pounded into his heart and his body burned. His charcoaled remains were displayed on the facade of Munster Cathedral until 1945!

1675- King Phillips War began. The Massachusetts Pilgrims repaid the hospitality of the Wampanoag Indians with whom they spent the first Thanksgiving by wiping them out. King Phillip was the Christian name of the chief who was the son of Massacoit, the Wampanoag who welcomed the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.

1571- Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Lagazpi founded the city of Manila. The town already existed for centuries, he just told them they were now part of Spain, whether they liked it or not. The name is from the Filipino word for city- Maynila.

1668- Margaret Brent entered the legislature of the colony of Maryland and demanded the right to vote. She was chased out of the building.

1812- NAPOLEON INVADED RUSSIA with the largest army then yet assembled.
Around 600,000. By December, barely 30,000 came out alive. This day while inspecting the troops Napoleon’s horse stepped in a rabbit hole and threw him on his butt. This was taken as a bad omen.

1853- Joaquin Murietta was an outlaw who ranged up and down the California midlands. Called The Terror of the Stanislaus. He and his friend Three-Fingered Jack were finally hunted down and killed in a shootout by Marshal Harry Love. This day Murietta’s head and Jack’s three-fingered hand in a jar of spirits went on display in front of the Stockton Cal jailhouse.

1876- CUSTER APPROACHES THE LITTLE BIG HORN- General Custer's scouts reported a large Indian camp at the Little Big Horn River. Custer decides to attack tomorrow without waiting for the other army columns to catch up. Through his interpreter Mitch Boyer, he told his Indian scouts that after he has destroyed the Sioux, he would go back east and become the Great White Father. The Republican presidential nominating convention was next month.
The Crow and Mandan scouts were troubled by the signs and began to sing their death-songs. Embedded N.Y. Herald reporter Mark Kellogg made a final entry in his diary: "I go to ride with Custer and will be there at the death...”
In the dawn's light a survivor from Major Reno’s command overheard chief Mandan scout Bloody Knife tell Custer: " You and I are going Home today -but by a different path."

1889- The Bank of Telluride Colorado was robbed by a lapsed Mormon miner named Robert Parker, who now called himself Butch Cassidy.

1901- The first exhibit in a Paris salon on the Rue Lafitte of a Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso.

1924- As the Zionist Jews labored to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, disagreements arose between Ultra-Orthodox and more secular Jews. The orthodox objected to the founding of a Jewish State before the coming of the Mossiach or Messiah, they objected to the everyday use of Hebrew, which they considered a sacred tongue.
This day an Ultra Orthodox leader named Rabbi Israel Dehar was assassinated by the Hagenah, the Israeli underground. Rabbi Dehar had just had meetings with the Sheik of Trans-Jordan and had announced he was going to go to London to demand the British authorities create a separate protectorate for Orthodox Jews that would not be under the rule of the mainstream Jewish community.
Even though many Zionist leaders like Abba Eban felt the killing of a fellow Jew was wrong, they could not endure such a fracturing of the Jewish position. So, Rabbi Dehar had to be stopped.

1930- The first test of radar to detect an airplane, this test over Anacostia flats near Washington DC.

1939- Pan-Am airlines began regular transatlantic passenger flights from New York to London.

1944- Three Jews escaped Auschwitz, traveled via Switzerland to bring evidence of the Holocaust to London and Washington. American and British Jewish leaders demanded bombing the rail links to the concentration camps. A shocked Winston Churchill wrote RAF Air Marshal Tedder: "Get anything out of the air force you can." Strangely, nothing ever happened. The plans were always stalled in lower echelons.
Three times U.S. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy wrote, "Kill this plan.” While massed Allied bombers were reducing German cities to ruins, there was never one single air attack ever made on a concentration camp. The gas chambers and crematoriums worked uninterrupted until they were finally overrun by the land armies. It's one of the war's more shameful mysteries.

1945- The Russian Victory Parade over the German Third Reich. Moscow rejoiced as thousands of Red Army troops marched in Red Square and tossed captured Nazi flags at the foot of Lenin’s tomb. This in imitation of their ancestors who tossed Napoleon’s battle flags in a heap on the steps of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. There, next to Stalin stood future President Dwight Eisenhower representing the United States.
Top military genius Marshal Gyorgi Zhukov, the victor of Stalingrad and Berlin, was allowed to review the troops on a prancing white horse. This display aroused jealousy in Stalin who was suspicious of rivals and not anxious to share the credit. Within a year of the victory, Stalin had Zhukov disgraced and sent to Mongolia, and the heads of the Soviet Navy and Airforce demoted and tortured. Stalin then awarded all the top war medals to himself.

1945- Meet the Press debuted on radio. Two years later it moved to television and it remains TV’s longest running program.

1947-The Berlin Airlift- Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was furious when the western powers decided to unify their sections of defeated Germany back into an independent country and top Nazis supporters like industrialist Gottfried Krupp were being let out of jail and put back into positions of power. He decided to strike back at isolated Berlin.
When Stalin ordered all land routes to West Berlin sealed off hoping to starve the city into submission, U.S. President Truman ordered the city supplied by round the clock air flights. The planes brought 4 thousand tons of supplies a day. A plane landed every three minutes. The Germans called them "candy-bombers" because they dropped candy on the children from above.

1947- THE FIRST MODERN UFO SIGHTING. A commercial airline pilot flying out of Seattle notices 6 silver disc shaped objects hovering over Mt. Reynier near Seattle. They then shot off at terrific speed. They are never identified nor explained. The pilot, Kenneth Arnold had impeccable credentials as an ex-combat Marine pilot and chamber of commerce member. The government response was to hit him with an IRS audit. The "flying-saucer" craze, with allegorical overtones to postwar atomic paranoia, sweeps the American imagination throughout the 1950’s.

1949 - "Hopalong Cassidy" became the first network western on television-NBC.

1950- THE KOREAN WAR BEGAN- June 25th in some records because of the International Date Line- 30 North Korea divisions armed with heavy Soviet tanks and artillery crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. The attack was a complete surprise and most South Korean officers were at a party dedicating a new Officer’s Club. The US had deliberately kept the Korean Army lightly armed to diffuse Cold War tension. Mao and Stalin were equally surprised by Kim Il Sung’s offensive. Declassified wire messages between Beijing and Moscow read “ Did you tell him to do that?” I thought you did…?”

That previous January, Secretary of State Acheson had said during a conference that the US "was not interested in the Korean Peninsula." But when President Harry Truman was informed of the invasion he responded in typical Truman fashion:" We gotta stop those Sons of Bitches!" At this time there were only 500 US troops in Korea called KMAG, for Korean Military Advisory Group, which one Yank changed to Kiss My Ass Goodbye! This is considered the first war fought by the United Nations, since Truman pushed through a resolution sending troops under the UN banner. The Russians were boycotting the Security Council over its refusal to seat Red China, so they were not there to veto the resolution.

1963 - 1st demonstration of a home video recorder, at BBC Studios, London

1970 – The Mike Nichols movie "Catch 22" opened in movie theaters.

1973- Eamon de Valera resigned as President of the Irish Republic at age ninety. The American-born Irish patriot had been a guerrilla in the 1916 Easter Sunday Uprising and was president since 1932.

1994- Walt Disney’s The Lion King opened in regular theaters.

1997- Brian Keith, actor (Family Affair, The Parent Trap), shot himself at 75. He was suffering from incurable emphysema and lung cancer and tired of fighting the disease.

2004- On the Senate floor during a routine Congressional group photo, the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, told the Democratic Senate Minority leader, Patrick Leahy, “Go F**k Yourself!” Republican Majority Leader, Senator Tom Delay, said the Vice President “was having a hard day”. The Vice President never apologized for this vulgar breach of etiquette, like he never really apologized for anything.

2022- The Dodd Decision. Supreme Court repealed the 1972 Roe vs.Wade decision on abortion. Saying states could now ban abortion no matter the circumstances.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: So what was the big deal about Charlemagne? What did he do?

Answer: Deep in the Dark Ages Charlemagne consolidated the Frankish Empire and built the largest state in Europe since the Roman Empire. He named the days of the week, and his thumb was the measure for the inch, and his foot is the foot.

Quiz: So what was the big deal about Charlemagne? What did he do?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: So why is the number 666 considered evil, or satanic?
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History for 6/23/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Augustus, Josephine Bonaparte, Alan Turing, Bob Fosse, James Levine, Dan Ogilvy of Ogilvy & Mather, Joss Whedon, Dr. Alfred Kinsey the sex researcher, Edward VIII, aka the Duke of Windsor, Selma Blair, Justice Clarence Thomas, Josh Whedon is 60, Frances MacDormand is 63

1565- Siege of Malta -the fortress of St. Elmo fell to Turkish assaults. Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent was shocked at how many good troops he lost to take the smaller of two forts defending Valetta, the capital of Malta. He could imagine the cost to take the larger fort, St. George. So Sulieman gave up the siege. The victorious Knights of St. John Hospitaller, looking for a home since the Crusades, would now be the Knights of Malta. Their emblem, the Maltese Cross, is four barbed arrowheads forming a cross.

1611- In Hudson’s Bay, Canada, Henry Hudson's crew mutinied and set him and his son adrift in a rowboat. They were never seen again. When back in Holland the mutineers were never charged because they claimed to have discovered the Northwest Passage to the Indies, which luckily for them they never had to actually prove.

1683- William Penn signed a treaty with the Lenni-Lenapi Indians at Shackamaxon under the Treaty Elm to start his new Quaker colony called Pennsylvania. Penn wrote of the Indians: "Their language is narrow, yet lofty like the Hebrew…one word suffices in place of three."

1757- Battle of Plassey- Sir Robert Clive with 900 English and 1300 Indians defeated an army of 50,000 under Siraj-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Bengal who perpetrated the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta. Daula was killed, and the victory assured the British domination of India for the next two hundred years.

1789- Since June 20th, when the French Estates General had adjourned to a Tennis Court and declared itself the National Assembly, everyone wondered what King Louis XVI would do. This day the King held a Royal Levee with the legislators and court to announce his decision.
From his golden throne Louis said that while he agreed to most of their political reforms, but the idea that a regularly sitting Parliament of common people could overrule royal authority he declared was "illegal and void". He would stay an absolute monarch, answerable only to God, thank you.
After the King ended the meeting, his Royal Herald called upon the legislators in his tennis court to go home. The orator Mirabeau cried" We shall not leave this hall except by the power of the bayonet!" When told this, the King sighed "Oh... to the Devil with them. Let them stay." The standoff persisted until July 14th when the attack on the Bastille began the French Revolution.

1793- During the French Revolution, Josephine De Beauharnais is condemned to be guillotined. In a prison filled with nobles and intellectuals she found her first husband Alexandre the Vicomte du Beauharnais. They had been estranged for years and she had become quite a scandalous woman. When the jailer read out the names to go to the blade that day he read: "DeBeauharnais!" without specifying which of them was to go. The husband stepped forward and said: "Madame, just this once allow me to go first." When the Reign of Terror was overthrown she was released and she became the great love of Napoleon.

1810- The Pacific Fur Company was set up by John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant. His ambition was to set up a string of fur trading posts along the route traveled by Lewis & Clark. It is the beginning of the great Astor fortune.

1815 –A week after his defeat at Waterloo. Napoleon abdicated for good. He abdicated to his son 4-year-old Napoleon II then being held in Austria, but everyone ignored that wish.

1859- Battle of Solferino- Garabaldi and Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army. This victory and the next battle of Magenta freed Milan and the Po Valley. All Italy is united for the first time since the Roman Empire. The completion of the unification process Italians called The Irredenta. In return, Italy gave France the city of Nice.
After the carnage of the battle the suffering of the wounded was so pitiable that a Swiss volunteer doctor named Dr. Henry Dunant was inspired to found the International Society of the Red Cross. He was soon bankrupt and forgotten but his organization was taken up at the first Geneva Convention in 1864 and made international law.

1865- Partially as a result of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Secret Service was set up.

1865- Two months after Lee surrendered to Grant, at Fort Towson in Indian Territory, General Stand Watiee, aka De-Ga-Ta-Ga, surrendered his Cherokees. This is the last Confederate force in the Civil War. Confederate Jo Shelby rather than give up, rode his Iron Legion of rebel cavalry across the Rio Grande into Mexico. After two years exile he returned and accepted the Yankee amnesty.

1868- Christopher Latham Scholes patented the typewriter. In 1873, he sold his patent to the Remington Company, who up till now had only made rifles.

1940- HITLER THE TOURIST. After the defeat of France, Adolph Hitler made his one vacation trip out of Germany. A plane flew him to Paris in the early morning and he was driven around to see the sites. While his Mercedes was waiting at a traffic light, a newsboy, not realizing who he was, thrust a morning newspaper under his nose yelling "le Matin! Le Matin!” Hitler was back in Berlin that evening.

1944- Disney short Springtime for Pluto released.

1944- Franklin Roosevelt's last fireside chat on the radio.

1953- 81 year-old Prime Minister Winston Churchill suffered a stroke during a dinner for the Italian Prime Minister. By agreement with the Fleet St press barons, it was all kept secret from the nation and the world. Churchill recovered quickly and was soon back wheeling and dealing by the end of the summer.

1963- In Disneyland the Enchanted Tiki Room opened with the first animatronics (the birds).

1971- Three Soyuz 11 cosmonauts were found dead in their space capsule upon landing. The capsule must have had a pressure leak upon re-entry. Soviet accidents in space were kept secret until after the fall of communism in 1990.

1972- Title IX passed by the US Government. It called for women’s collegiate sports to be funded equally as the men’s sports.

1976- Work completed on Toronto’s CN Tower. Called then the world’s tallest free-standing structure.

1979- The Knack released the single My Sharona.

1989- Tim Burton’s film " Batman" opened.

1989- Disney’s Honey I Shrank the Kids opened with the Roger Rabbit short Tummy Trouble.

1992- Head of the New York Mafia John Gotti was sentenced to life in prison for murder and racketeering. It had been so hard to pin anything on Gotti that he was nicknamed the Teflon Don. Finally, city prosecutor Rudy Giuliani secured the testimony of the Dons top henchman Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano. For turning informant, Sammy dodged any penalties himself, despite admitting killing 32 people, including his own brother in law, whose body parts he buried in his backyard. John Gotti died in prison in 2002. Gotti’s personal attorney was Roy Cohn, who was Donald Trump’s mentor.

1993- Lorena Bobbit had tired of her abusive husband John Wayne Bobbit. So this night while he was drunk, she severed his penis and drove off, casually tossing it into a nearby field. Doctors recovered the free willy and reattached it, starting a media sensation. They divorced and John Bobbitt for a while became a porn star.

1995- Walt Disney’s Pocahontas went into general release.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: So why is the number 666 considered evil, or satanic?

Answer: St. John of Patmos, who wrote the Book of Revelations, while probably doing a lot of ergot herb (LSD) on a beach in Greece. Revelations 13:18, “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six." Some argue the number is just a mistranslation of the Greek text. As for “Mark of the Beast”, mark in Greek could also translate as your seal, as in the personal seal of Emperor Nero.

Question: Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is New York City called the Big Apple?

Yesterday’s Question: ipso-facto.
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History for 6/21/2023
Birthdays: Martha Washington, Alexander Pope, Berkeley Breathed, Al Hirschfeld, Al Martinez, Jean-Paul Sartre, Judy Holliday, Benazir Bhutto, Jane Russell, Mariette Hartley, Bernie Koppel, Rick Sutcliffe, Maureen Stapleton, Joe Flagherty, Juliet Lewis, Tony Scott, Chris Pratt is 42, Prince William the Duke of Cambridge is 41.

217BC- Hannibal defeated a Roman army on the shore of Lake Trasimenio in central Italy.

1527- Political theorist Niccolò' Machiavelli died at age 58 - His last words were:
"I hope I shall go to Hell, for there I shall consort with kings, popes and princes.
In Heaven, one can only meet beggars, monks and apostles."

1582- Japanese warlord Nobunaga Oda assassinated. Called the first of Japan’s Unifiers. He was the most pro-western of Japan's feudal lords and in western Japan, a folk hero, sort of a samurai Robin Hood. Under his protection the Catholic missionaries flourished, and Oda liked to parade around in his western-imported suit of armor. His enemy Tokugawa Ieyasu later became Shogun and banned all contact with the outside world.

1789- RATIFICATION OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION- New Hampshire becomes the 9th state to ratify the new document giving the majority of two thirds of the states. This despite angry anti-federalist sentiment from critics like Patrick Henry and John Hancock. They felt the new system was too centralized and could be tyrannical. Copies of the constitution were burned by mobs in Albany and Williamsburg. But eventually everyone got behind the system. Benjamin Rush noted: "We are now a Nation."

1791- THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES- After the fall of the Bastille in 1789, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette tried to work things out as constitutional monarchs but moderates like Mirabeau and Lafayette were losing control of the angry people, exploited in medieval poverty for so long. So this night the royal family decided to sneak away and escape across the border.
The escape plot was organized by Count Axel Fersen, a lover of Queen Marie Antoinette. They slipped away in the dead of night and traveled 150 miles to the Belgian border before they were stopped. At Varennes they were recognized and brought back to Paris by the city's fishwives led by Jean-Baptiste Drouet, the postmaster of Ste. Menehould. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were eventually both guillotined and their son Louis XVII died rotting in prison. Ironically, a troop of loyalist cavalry, who were to meet them on the road and escort them, got lost a quarter mile away.

1791- The first Ledger entry.

1813- Battle of Vittoria- Wellington defeated the French in Spain to end the Peninsular War and Beethoven wrote a really silly overture to celebrate it. The Overture to Wellington's Victory has musical scoring for cannons and musket volleys. It was commissioned by a mechanical calliope inventor named Wilhelm Dietzel. It actually made Beethoven more money than anything else he ever wrote.

1815- Napoleon reached Paris after his defeat at Waterloo. Napoleon had regained power in France with the understanding he would rule as a constitutional monarch. As enemy armies closed in around Paris, the Chamber of Deputies now voted itself in permanent session and began arguing his fate. Royalists and the old Marquis De Lafayette called for his abdication.
Napoleon still had 100,000 men in the field, and the common people were with him. Napoleon’s brother Lucien advised him to ignore the Deputies and rule as a dictator. But curiously enough, despite his reputation as a warmonger, Napoleon never could bring himself to start a civil war. He said “ The fate of one man is not worth drenching Paris in French blood.” Waterloo seemed to have broken his self-confidence and will to go on.

1854 -During service in the Baltic in the Crimean War –Ships Mate C D Lucas, Royal Navy, HMS Heraclea, received a new medal called the Victoria Cross, or VC.

1864- FATHER ABRAHAM- President Abraham Lincoln visited General Grant’s Union army attacking Lee in Petersburg, Virginia. One highlight of the tour was when Lincoln was shown the 18th corps, a unit of black soldiers. General Grant complimented their excellent discipline and courage under fire. The black troops broke ranks and cheered wildly for Lincoln, their liberator. Hundreds strained just to touch his coat. One said: Now I know I shall go to Heaven, for I have seen Father Abraham, he that hath struck off my chains, and the Day of Jubilee is nigh!” For Lincoln it was a cathartic moment. Whatever his real motives for freeing the slaves, political expediency or moral obligation, he was deeply moved by the demonstration. Tears flowed freely down his face and for once he was speechless.

1866- First recorded train robbery by Jesse James.

1871- The Los Angeles Star newspaper announced the first trainload of pretzels had reached town!

1877-10 members of the Molly Maguires hanged. Irish immigrants in the Pennsylvania coal mines formed secret societies to combat inhuman working conditions and prejudice. At one point they went on strike to reduce their working day to 13 hours! The Molly Maguires was the name of a supposed terrorist fringe that assassinated company men and informers.

1879 - F W Woolworth opens his 1st five and ten cent store.

1893- The FERRIS WHEEL -George Washington Ferris, Jr. decided that the Columbia Exhibition, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery, needed to surpass the French Eiffel Tower (introduced in 1889 during the centennial celebration of the French Revolution). So he created his wheel so each compartment could hold 12 people plus a butler in a parlor-like atmosphere and rotate them 250 feet in the air. People were afraid they would gasp for oxygen up so high but it was a big hit anyway.

1907 - E W Scripps founded United Press Agency.

1913 - Tiny Broadwick is the 1st woman to parachute from an airplane.

1916- General Blackjack Pershing had violated Mexican territory with US troops to hunt down Pancho Villa. This day the diplomatic mess got worse when Pershing’s troops were attacked by regular Mexican army troops at Carrizal. Pershing never did catch Villa and US troops were withdrawn in Jan 1917 because World War I in Europe beckoned.

1919- After WWI ended, in Scapa Flow, Scotland, German Admiral Von Reuter deliberately sank 21 of his interned battleships rather than turn them over to the Allies. On shore, vacationing Scottish schoolchildren cheered, thinking it was a fireworks display for their benefit.

1939- Eugene O’Neill’s wife Carlotta wrote in her diary- “Gene kept me up all night talking about his outline for a new play about his family”- The Long Days Journey into Night. It took him two years to write, and it almost killed him.

1940- In a theatrical act of revenge Adolph Hitler forced France to sign her surrender in the same railroad car in Compiegne that the Germans surrendered in 1918. They broke into a museum to pry loose the exact same Wagon-Lit train car so it could be moved to the exact spot. The treaty meant half of France was occupied by Germany while the other half was French governed from the mineral water spa town of Vichy by a puppet government led by old Marshal Petain.

1948- THE ATALENA INCIDENT- THE ISRAELI CIVIL WAR- Before the Independence of Israel there were two underground militia groups fighting for a Jewish homeland- the Hagenah and the more violent Irgun. After the State of Israel was declared, Leader David Ben Gurion ordered both to form the new Israeli Defense Force. But the Irgun resisted assimilation. While a tenuous four-week truce with the Arabs held, the Irgun filled a ship the Atalena, with weapons and fighters in France and this day it arrived off the coast of Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion gave a direct order to turn over the weapons to the Army and assimilate the fighters, but Irgun leader Menachem Begin refused.
When Israeli troops converged on the beached ship to unload it, the Irgun opened fire on them with machine guns. In the gun battle, Jews killed Jews in front of Tel Aviv. Begin screamed he wanted to go down with the ship. The captain replied that that was unlikely since the ship had already stuck on the beach. The ship caught fire and the captain had the cargo of high explosives dumped overboard. When Begin became hysterical the captain had him, too, dumped into the sea. After several deaths, the Irgun surrendered and agreed to cooperate.
Ben Gurion called them all traitors but was compelled to be lenient because of the greater threat of the Arab armies. Menachem Begin was rehabilitated, formed the Likud Party and eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize.

1947- To silence a jeering crowd of racists at a Brooklyn Dodgers-Cincinnati game, Kentucky native PeeWee Reese put his arm around Jackie Robinson.

1948- The Mark I computer, built at the Victoria University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program this day. The first computer that could store a program and re-open it.

1948- The last Japanese holdout defenders surrendered on Okinawa, unaware that the war had been over for three years.

1948- Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3-rpm long playing record, the LP. Inventor Peter Goldmark was annoyed that he had to change his 78 rpm records several times to hear just one Brahms Symphony. He decided to invent a way to fit all of a symphony on one side of a record. His immediate supervisors told him to stop it because people would not throw away all their 78 rpm records to replace them with his. So Goldmark went over their heads to CBS chief William Paley and Paley loved the idea. RCA and David Sarnoff tried to compete with the 45-rpm record, but all it was good for was singles. The 33 1/3 dominated recording until replaced by the Compact Disc in the 1980’s.

1964- In Mississippi, Ku Klux Klansmen murdered three Civil Rights volunteers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schermer and dumped their bodies in a swamp. The subsequent FBI investigation and trials further pushed the rural south towards desegregation. The mastermind behind the murders, Edgar Ray Killen, was not convicted until 2005.

1965- The Byrds release record Hey Mr. Tambourine Man.

1978 - Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's musical "Evita," premieres in London.

1982- John Hinkley was found innocent by reason of insanity in the assassination attempt on President Reagan.

1988- Who Framed Roger Rabbit? premiered at Radio City Music Hall. It opened generally three days later.

1989- The Supreme Court rules in the case Texas vs. Johnson that burning a US flag is a form of free speech and is so legally protected under the First Amendment. While more important issues are at hand, the conservative dominated Congress spent the next few years in repeated fruitless attempts to amend the Constitution. This is when modern politicians were criticized for not sporting a flag pin in their lapels. Pundits joked that the next constitutional amendment they would demand would be that cheeseburgers only have American cheese on them.

1991- Disney’s The Rocketeer premiered. Based on Dave Stevens comic book.

1996- Walt Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame opened in theaters.

1998- Paleontologists in Canada announced the discovery of the largest Tyrannosaurus turd ever found. The search intensified for a T-Rex with a relaxed look on his face.

2004- The first flight in the privatization of Space. Bert Routans’ company financed by Microsoft head, Paul Allen, sent SpaceShip 1 up to the edge of the atmosphere. Test pilot Mike Nelvil was the first civilian astronaut.

2008- Pixar’s WALL-E premiered at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.
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Yesterday’s Question: ipso-facto.

Answer: Ipso-facto is Latin for “by the very fact”, which is used to mean that something is a fact by its very nature. For example, Saturn is a planet that revolves around the same sun as Earth, so, ipso-facto, Saturn is a planet in our solar system.

Question: ipso-facto.

Yesterdays Question answered below: Sometimes the followers of a famous person are called Myrmidons. Who were the Myrmidons?
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History for 6/20/2023
Birthdays: Wolf Tone, Jacques Offenbach, Lillian Hellman, Errol Flynn, Audie Murphy,
Andre Watts, Cyndee Lauper, Bob Vila, Chet Atkins, Stephen Frears, Brian Wilson, Robert Rodriquez, John Goodman, Martin Landau, John Mahoney, Nicole Kidman is 55

1389 -Battle of Kosovo Polje, where a coalition of Serbs, Croats, Bulgars and
Albanians under Prince Lazar I of Serbia were annihilated by the Ottoman Turkish army under young Sultan Bajazet, called Ilderim- Lightning. The Sultan was presented with King Lazar’s head on a spear. The Ottoman Turkish Empire would rule in the Balkans for 500 years.

1397- The Union of Kalmar unites Sweden, Norway and Denmark under one crown.

1605-The False Dmitri invaded Russia. A defrocked Lithuanian priest named Grishka declared himself the dead infant son of Czar Ivan the Terrible grown up and convinced a powerful Polish noble family, The Mniszechs, to back him. Historians wrongly call this a Polish-Russian War but in actuality it was a privately run freelance invasion.
Dmitri succeeded in toppling Czar Boris Gudunov and occupying Moscow. When the Polish Army went home the Russians killed him, burned his body, mixed the ashes with gunpowder, stuffed it in a cannon and fired it back in the direction of Poland.

1747- Persian King Nadir Shah had seized the throne and led armies across Central Asia in a march of conquest not seen since the days of Tamerlane. He conquered Iraq, Uzbekizatan, Afghanistan, Northern India and Yerevan. He forced the Indian Moguls to give him the fabulous Peacock Throne. But as he grew older he got increasingly paranoid, blinding his eldest son and executing hundreds. Finally, this day, his own bodyguards stabbed him, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

1756- THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA- Bengal Rajah Siraj ud Daula stuffed 146 captured British officers in a tiny cell. Most died of asphyxiation by morning. Only 23 survived.

1782- The American Revolution now over, and the peace treaties being signed, Angry Continental soldiers, who had not been paid for months, surrounded the U.S. Congress at Independence Hall, Philadelphia. They pounded their muskets on the locked doors and threatened violence if they weren’t paid. Congressmen ran out the back door to Trenton to reconvene. Shortly before they ran away, Congress approved the final design of the Great Seal of the United States, choosing the Bald Eagle over the Wild Turkey as the symbol of America, to the annoyance of Ben Franklin.

1789- THE TENNIS COURT OATH- French King Louis XVI got annoyed with his parliament or Estates General for constantly asking for permanent power and the right to rule by laws. On this day he told them to disband. Of the Estates three divisions the First Estate- Nobility and the Second Estate – Clergy quietly obey and go home. But the Third Estate -the common folk- refused and when they were turned out of their meeting hall by the guards they reconvened in the Royal tennis court. There the members pledged not to disband until Liberty was established. "Go tell your master that here the People rule!"- Said Mirabeau to the royal herald.

1790- THE US CAPITOL CONCEIVED- In the then American capitol, New York City, Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, went over to have dinner with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Senator James Madison. There were no real American political parties yet, but Jefferson had been leading the opposition to Hamilton’s plan for the US Government to assume all the debt incurred by the individual states in the Revolution. This act would strengthen the central government at the expense of the states. Everyone knew Jefferson worked through Madison but he presented this dinner as his arbitrating a peace between Madison and Hamilton!
No one recorded what was said at the meal or if they sang any Broadway songs, but it is assumed Hamilton proposed a deal in exchange for the debt assumption- to move the American capitol south. This night they agreed to move the planned US capitol to a new site on land suggested by President Washington near his Mount Vernon estate. Midway between North and South. It would become Washington, DC. It was also possibly the last time Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison ever agreed on anything ever again.

1815- NATHAN ROTHSCHILD'S BIG SCORE. -When The Battle of Waterloo happened in Belgium no one in England knew who had won for 72 anxious hours. The House of Rothschild Bank had a Dutch agent at the battlefield who galloped to Ostend then crossed the Channel to tell Rothschild before the official news arrived. This morning, Nathan Rothschild walked into the London Stock Exchange and took his usual stance by his favorite pillar.
Everyone was sure Rothschild knew something. He said nothing himself but his agents started to sell off Government bonds. Day traders took this as a sign that the Napoleon had won, so the price of Government securities plummeted in panic sales. When the prices had fallen low enough Rothschild gave the signal to start buying. By the time the real news that Wellington had beaten Napoleon arrived, Nathan Rothschild had made a fortune. He later became the first of the Jewish faith to enter the House of Lords.

1819- The first steam powered ship successfully crossed the Atlantic. The SS Savannah made it to Liverpool after a trip of 27 days.

1837- QUEEN VICTORIA-Upon the death of her uncle King William IV, little 19 year old Princess Victoria becomes Queen of the British Empire. She will rule 64 years, until 1901 and give her name to the era, Victorian.
She came to the throne when veterans of the American Revolution and Waterloo were still alive, and she lived long enough to use electric lights, telephones and watch a movie. Before Victoria, the British Royals were never considered examples of morality. It was said her grandfather King George III was insane, her uncle King George IV a bigamist, her other uncle, King William IV, a glutton and her mother the Duchess of Kent was living openly with an Irish adventurer named James Conroy. If you wanted to meet the great men of the nation you had to look in the gambling houses or brothels. Victoria changed all that.
She and her husband Prince Albert made the pursuit of morality and family the highest standard of polite society. Also Christmas trees, white bridal gowns and tuxedos.

1862- In the middle of a Civil War, The U.S. Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act, allowing funds for the transcontinental railroad.

1863- Several Virginia counties whose people opposed the Confederacy and slavery re-entered the Union as the new state of West Virginia.

1900- THE BOXER REBELLION- In Beijing, the Boxer Rebellion trapped the foreign diplomatic corps in their compound in the Forbidden City. The Chinese mobs were led by martial arts societies like the I Ho Chu Huan- The Righteous and Harmonius Fists. They wanted to drive out the hated foreigners who were ruining China the way they had carved up Africa and India.
The German ambassador Baron Von Kettler, who liked to shoot at Chinese children from his balcony for fun, was murdered in the street, and the Japanese ambassador was pulled out of his sedan chair and beheaded. Women in western clothing were doused with gasoline and set ablaze. The Chinese Manchu Dowager Empress Cixi ordered the Chinese Army to support the Boxers.
At first the besieged delegations didn't get along well, the British and Japanese didn't trust the Russians, the Germans were cut off from their big new brewery in Tsing-Tao. And nobody liked the Americans with their constant preaching that they weren't out to annex new colonies, while their gunboats and Marines prowled the Yangtze. But under the leadership of British attache’, Sir Archibald MacDonald, the diplomats soon learned to work together. They held out until an international force rescued them- the "55 days in Peking".

1910- Longtime President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, unsuccessfully tried to stop the Revolution breaking out by declaring martial law and arresting hundreds.

1927- THE RED TENT- Italian polar explorer, General Nobile, had reached the North Pole in his zeppelin, the Norge, the year before. He was the hero of Mussolini’s Italy and the world. But in his second expedition, his zeppelin, the Italia, crashed and the men were stranded on the arctic ice. They dyed their shelter tent red to be seen.
An international rescue effort was launched to try to save them and the great Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen, died in the attempt. On this day, a Swedish plane reached the Red Tent. There was not room on the plane for everyone so Nobile went aboard to safety before the rest. He said he did so to better organize the saving of his men. But because he didn’t stay behind until all were saved Nobile was branded a coward. Remember this was just a few weeks after Lindbergh, so ‘hero’ standards were pretty high. Mussolini and the rest of the world would have nothing more to do with him. General Nobile spent the rest of his long life regretting he ever left the Red Tent.

1936- Mickey short Moving Day premiered.

1940- Thirty thousand people gathered at the Hollywood Bowl for an America First rally. There they listened to isolationist celebrities like Lillian Gish and Charles Lindbergh protest President Franklin Roosevelt’s plans to help Britain.” It is obvious that Britain will lose the war…. It is not freedom when one fifth the country can drag four fifths into a war it does not want!” Students like future President Gerald Ford were in the audience. When former President Trump addressed the G-7 in 2017, he referenced America First.

1940- Peruvian Artist Alberto Vargas signed a contract with Esquire Magazine to paint the ‘Vargas Girls’, glamour pin ups that made the magazine famous. He replaced artist George Petty who was demanding $1,500 a week. Vargas was paid $75 a week. When Esquire cut him loose, Hugh Hefner put him on salary at Playboy until he retired in 1978. Today an original Vargas goes for $350,000.

1941- Two days before Hitler’s invasion of Russia, Richard Zorga, a Russian spy in the German Embassy in Tokyo, sent to Moscow microfilm with complete information on the attack. He even revealed its codename- Operation Barbarossa. A Russian agent in Hungary, code-named “Lucy”, and the Chinese agents of Mao Zedong confirmed his information. Yet despite all these warnings, Soviet leader Josef Stalin refused to believe it. On June 22, the Nazis attacked, and Stalin was taken completely by surprise.

1941-Walt Disney's "the Reluctant Dragon" premiered, with cartoonist's pickets around the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Police actually have to close part of Hollywood Blvd. out of concern for what the rampaging animators might do. Future UPA producer Steve Bosustow drove up in a limo and picketed in tuxedo and top hat. His chauffeur was Maurice Noble, the designer of the Road Runner cartoons. Ironically the movie was part documentary about how wonderful life was working at the Disney studio.

1943- Martial law was declared in Detroit when race riots killed 28. New Sherman tanks just completed in the auto plants of Dearborn, were driven into town to help restore order.

1947- Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, the gangster creator of modern Las Vegas, was murdered while reading his evening paper in his Beverly Hills home. He had bought the mansion from opera singer George London for his girlfriend actress Virginia Hill. The order to whack Bugsy was probably given by his old friend Mayer Lansky. The Mob was fed up with Bugsy’s cost overruns to build Las Vegas. The second owner of his Flamingo casino, Gus Greenbaum, had his throat cut with a butcher knife. Despite all, The Flamingo and the Las Vegas Strip went on to become a great success.

1948- The TV show "Toast of the Town" later to be “the Ed Sullivan Show” premiered. Sullivan's show was the showcase that brought new acts like Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Senor Wences and the Rolling Stones into the average American living room. Prior to this, Ed Sullivan was a columnist and radio show personality.

1972- In the first reaction to the news of the Watergate Break in, Nixon Presidential spokesman Ron Zeigler dismissed it: “It is not for the White House to comment on the investigation of a third-rate burglary”. The Third-Rate Burglary drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

1972- THE SMOKING GUN- All through the Watergate scandal the big question was how involved was President Richard Nixon? A conversation in the Oval office was taped this day between Nixon and his aide H.R. Haldeman. Whatever was said on this tape it took two years of lawsuits and a Supreme Court ruling to get Nixon to surrender it. This tape for June 20th had 18 missing minutes.
Experts say five separate manual erasures caused the gap. After a feeble attempt to blame it on the fumble fingers of Nixon’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, it’s generally believed, although never admitted, that Nixon himself probably erased the incriminating parts of the tape. It was called the “smoking gun”. Three days after the tape was made public in 1974, President Nixon resigned. If Nixon had simply popped this tape into the White House incinerator, he may have completed his presidency.

1974- Roman Polanski’s film Chinatown opened.

1975- Steven Spielberg’s movie Jaws opened, bringing back the monster-hit summer event movie. Universal called that summer, “The Summer of the Shark.”

1977- The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline began flowing.

2022- The Dodd Decision. The conservative Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Roe vs. Wade decision that guaranteed American women right to an abortion.
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Yesterday’s Question: Sometimes the followers of a famous person are called Myrmidons. Who were the Myrmidons?

Answer: According to the Iliad of Homer, the hero Achilles was King of the Myrmidons. His followers were famous for their fanatical loyalty to him.