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The NY Times website has posted a PSA I did some quick animation on for my friend USC marine biologist Dr. Randy Olsen.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/new-weapon-against-invading-fish-the-pan/

This spot wants to make us aware of a new parasite fish that is eating up all the native fish around the Caribbean coral reefs. Check it out.

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Question: President Clinton was caught in a lie about his affair, and President George W. Bush lied about our involvement in Iraq. But who was the first President to be caught in a lie?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Who’s dying words were “ Kiss me, Hardy.”..?
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History for 10/21/2010
Birthdays: Katushika Hokusai, Dizzy Gillespie, Whitey Ford, Alfred Nobel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Carrie Fisher, Patty Davis (Ronnie Reagan's daughter), Benjamin Netanyahu, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Manfred Mann, Sir Georg Solti, Angus MacFadyen

Today is the FEAST OF SAINT URSULA AND THE ELEVEN THOUSAND VIRGINS, one of the sillier medieval legends. Supposedly on the way back from a pilgrimage to Rome the saintly daughter of a Mercian (English) king had spurned the attentions of the King of the Huns. So he had her and all eleven thousand of her handmaid put to death. Earliest accounts said she had only ten servants.

1492- San Salvador. Christopher Columbus writes on this day in his diary about the new land he is exploring: " We must have found Eden. I think men shall never see this place again as we have seen it." Within 50 years of Columbus's discovery, the Indian tribe that welcomed him on the beach, the Taino, were all but extinct.

1520- Fernand de Magellan sails into the Straights named for him to the Pacific.

1600- BATTLE OF SEKIGEHARA The final battle of Japan's feudal civil wars- Warlord Ieyasu Tokugawa defeats the Toyotomi faction and becomes paramount leader under the Emperor, called the Shogun. Ieyasu later died from eating too much tempura, but the Tokugawa family closed off Japan from all contact with foreigners and missionaries and ruled as Shoguns until 1868.

1797- The 44 gun frigate USS Constitution launched. Nicknamed Old Ironsides, it is the oldest commissioned warship in the US Navy. It saw active service until 1861, remained a training vessel and is still entertaining tourists in Boston Harbor today. In 1997 it took a spin around the harbor to show it still had what it takes.

1805- TRAFALGAR- Admiral Nelson destroyed Napoleon's naval power in one huge battle off the southwestern coast of Spain. Trafalgar is a vulgarization of the Arabic " Al-Taraff Al-Agharr" or " The Fair Point.” Nelson began the day raising the signal flags "England expects every man to do his duty." One of Nelson's toughest captains, Sir John Collingwood said: "What the devil is Nelson about ? We already know that!" In the heat of the battle the one-eyed, one armed Lord Nelson strode up and down his poop deck in his full dress uniform to inspire his men. He loved medals, he even had one that spun around. He not only inspired the English Tars but also the French sharpshooters who shot him down. He received the news of the victory as he lay dying and said:" The day is ours, kiss me Hardy." Hardy was captain of the flagship HMS Victory.
French admiral Villeneuve, whom Napoleon goaded into fighting by threatening to courts-martial him as a 'Coward, Idiot and Traitor" left the service and later committed suicide. When they took Nelson's body back to England they bent it into a brandy barrel for preservation, which has been incorrectly called a rum barrel. Which is why today rum is known as "Nelson's Blood".

1861- Battle of Balls Bluff. The only thing remembered about this Civil War skirmish was the death of President Lincoln's family friend Edward Baker. Another man wounded was a young lieutenant who would one day become a great writer and father of a Supreme Court Justice- Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes later wrote- 'sitting under a tree with two bullet wounds pouring out blood I decided to pass the time while waiting for the ambulance by beginning a debate in my mind about the existence or non-existence of the Afterlife. My final decision was -Damned if I Know !" In later years Holmes called war an “ Organized Bore.”

1879- Thomas Edison announced the invention of the Light Bulb. After experimenting with dozens of different type filaments in a vacuum Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb with carbonized cotton. He and his crew stared at the glowing bulb for 40 hours to make sure it was really worked.

1932- The film Red Dust premiered. It made stars out of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

1937- A quack medicine called sulfalitimide sold in stores poisoned dozens of people including children. It was found to have the same ingredients as antifreeze. The incident sparked the first Food and Drug legislation in the U.S. preventing medicines being released to the public without first being tested. Darn those federal regulations!

1939- Turkey enraged Hitler and Mussolini, when contrary to their participation in World War One they opted to break with the Axis and remain neutral in World War Two.

1944- BLOODY AACHEN- Aachen didn’t have much strategic value, but it was the first major German city to come under allied ground attack. It was the ancient home of Charlemagne and the First Reich. The city was quickly surrounded by the US First Army but the Germans dug in and held. For 39 days the US First Division the Big Red One did the bulk of the awful fighting- house-to-house, room by room. Finally today German Commander Gerhard von Wilke surrendered, even though he had been warned by Hitler that the Gestapo would shoot his wife and children.

1959- Six months after the death of Frank Lloyd Wright his last creation the Guggenheim Museum in New York City opened.

1967- 100,000 hippies and anti-war protesters surrounded the Pentagon in Washington and tried to do an “exorcism “ and levitate the building. This was the day of the famous images of Hippies putting flowers in the gun barrels of the National Guard troops.

1969- Beat Generation author of On the Road- Jacques Kerouac died of alcoholism and stomach bleeding, a pencil and pad on his lap. He grew bitter about how his call for youth rebellion had been reinterpreted by the 60's generation as hippies and flower power. When he came upon a gathering of kids at an anti-war rally distributing American flags to burn, Kerouac collected them all and folded them neatly.

1972- Curtis Mayfield’s soundtrack theme to the movie “Superfly” debuted at Number #1 in the Billboard charts.

1975- The Cincinnati-Boston World Series-Carleton Fisk's 12th inning homer keeps the Boston Red Sox hopes alive against Johnny Bench and the 'Big Red Machine".

1985- San Francisco Mayor George Mosconi and openly gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot dead by embittered city councilman Dan White. White was acquitted on an insanity plea using the "Twinkie Defense", that junk food raised his blood sugar to such an extent that he went nuts. He served 5 years in prison, moved to Orange County and committed suicide, which some say is redundant.

2003- The Great California Brush Fires. Hot dry wind and a lost hunter ignited the worst brush fires in California history. Ten fires from Ventura County to Tijuana Mexico burned hundreds of thousands of acres for two weeks, destroyed 3000 homes and killed 20. The smoke clouds were visible from space.

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Yesterday’s question: Who’s dying words were “ Kiss me, Hardy.”..?

Answer: See Lord Nelson at Trafalgar, above at 1805.


October 20th, 2010 weds
October 20th, 2010

Question: Who’s dying words were “ Kiss me, Hardy.”..?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: The Nazis banned the music of classical composers they considered decadent. The modern composers like Webern, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. But they also banned one classical master from the 1800s, a contemporary of Liszt and Schubert. Who was it?
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History for 10/20/2010
Birthdays: Sir Christopher Wren, Bela Lugosi (born Bela Blasgow from Lugosz), Charles Ives, Arthur Rimbaud, Black Panther Bobby Seale, Juan Marichal, Tom Petty, Art Buchwald, Arlene Francis, Grandpa Jones, Mickey Mantle, Jerry Orbach, Rex Ingram, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Michael Dunn, Snoop Dogg is 39, Viggo Mortensen is 52


1740- The Austrian Emperor Charles VI died. He leaves his daughter Maria Theresa sole heir. Maria was such a tough monarch that even when giving birth to Marie Antoinette ( one of eighteen children ) she refused to go into confinement, but sat propped up in an easy chair writing orders between contractions.

1805- NELSON'S LAST DISPATCH- Once Admiral Horatio Nelson learned that Napoleon’s Franco-Spanish Fleet had come out of Cadiz harbor he headed them off at Cape Trafalgar. Knowing the big battle would be fought on the morrow, he wrote his last log entries and letters. In one of them he begs the Admiralty to 'take care of My Poor Emma', meaning Lady Hamilton, his beautiful mistress. He wrote nothing about his wife.

1813- An incident during Napoleons evacuation of Germany. The retreating Neuchatel regiment were being harassed by pursuing Russian Cossack cavalry. Seeing a women camp follower or vivandiere, straggling behind the column, a Cossack charged her, lance in hand. It was not sure whether he wanted to kill, rob or rape her in full view of the army. The vivandiere who’s name was Rosalie, put down her bundle, pulled out her brace of pistols and shot the Cossack out of his saddle. She then proceeded to steal his horse, and rode back to the column to the cheers of the troops.

1818- America and Britain fix the western border between the US and Canada at the 49th parallel latitude.

1827- Battle of Navarino- France, England and Russia sent huge fleets to the Bay of Navarino to arbitrate the dispute between Turkey and the Greek revolutionaries. Not that anyone asked them to, but they were terribly moved by Byron's and Shelley's poems and after all, that's what Imperialist powers DID in those days. The Admiral of the British fleet was Admiral Collingwood, who was with Nelson at Trafalgar. The Allied fleet were under strict orders not to fire unless attacked, so when a Turkish gunner shot at a messenger under a white flag, BOOM, BOOM! Greek Independence.

1862- While the Civil War raged back east, Col. Patrick Connor and two regiments of US Cavalry were sent to occupy Salt Lake City. His ostensible mission was to defend the overland stage and wagon trail routes through Utah, but also he was to keep an eye on Brigham Young and his Mormon Community. Connor was not the most diplomatic choice. He called Mormons “traitors and whores” and set up his camp overlooking the town with large cannon pointed down on them. He named his army camp Fort Douglas after the late Senator Stephen Douglas who had referred to Mormonism as a “disgusting cancer”. Brigham Young had to use all his diplomatic tact and patience to deal with this hotheaded soldier. The Mormons formed a volunteer unit called the Navoo Legion to work with the army fighting hostile Shoshone and Paiute bands. Eventually everyone got along, although Connor and other federal authorities encouraged non-Mormon settlements in Utah hoping to overwhelm their community. Today Ft Douglas is the site of the University of Utah.

1890-Retired explorer Sir Richard Burton died at 69. Burton was the first Christian to enter Mecca, he went up the Nile and the Amazon, fought Indians with Kit Carson and did the first modern translation of the Arabian Nights, introducing the western world to Aladdin, Scheherazade and Sinbad the Sailor. Wherever he went in his world travels he collected documents of the sexual habits of various cultures and erotic poems. After his death his wife burned all this anthropological material in their backyard. She feared for his soul. Its considered one of the great literary crimes of the century.

1912- The First Balkan War. In case you’re keeping score, the terrible conflicts in Kossovo and Bosnia 1994-2000, historians call the Third Balkan War.

1939- Frank Capra’s film “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” opened.

1940-:” Fuehrer, we are on the march!” Mussolini told Hitler as Italy invaded Greece from Italian occupied Albania. The Greeks not only defeated his armies and drove them away, they even invaded Albania forcing Hitler to send German reinforcements. Hitler was angry at Il Duce’s move because it pulled on reinforcements he intended for the North African drive on the Middle Eastern oilfields.

1944- In Cleveland, liquid natural gas leaks from storage tanks into storm sewers and the streets, then explodes. The explosion and fire leveled 30 blocks of the city, killing 130.

1945- Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon form the Arab League.

1947- 'ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN...' Judge J. Parnell Thomas banged the gavel opening the House Committee on UnAmerican Activites investigation into Communist infiltration into the Motion Picture Business. HUAC was set up in 1938 as the Dies Committee to keep an eye on pro-Nazis groups operating in German and Italian immigrant organizations, but by 1944 it's emphasis had switched to Communist espionage. Investigations of the army or top civil servants like Dean Acheson was dull stuff, New Deal hating conservatives knew investigating Hollywood would yield the big headlines and jazz up public interest. Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney were the first in line to name names. Lucille Ball, Sterling Hayden, Zero Mostel, Ginger Rogers and Lloyd Bridges admitted they had once held communist party memberships. The anti-commie hysteria turned Hollywood inside out and the bitter feelings remained all their lives.

1955- Harry Belafonte recorded the Banana Boat Song, that made him a star- Day-o!

1963- Groundbreaking for the Hollywood Museum. Walt Disney, Rosalind Russell, Jack Warner and Gene Autry are present at the dedication. Museum was never built.

1968- Former First Lady Jackie Bouvier Kennedy shocked American society when a few months after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination she married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis on his private island of Skorpios. “They’ll knock you off your pedestal” Truman Capote warned her. But she was determined to get her children away from the violence engulfing the U.S. in the 60’s. Onassis’ employees nicknamed her “Supertanker” because they felt he spent the equivalent price of one of those ships to win her.

1973- Billy Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in straight sets in the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match.

1973- The Six Million Dollar Man with Lee Majors premiered.

1973-THE SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE- when special prosecutor Archibald Cox got too close to implicating President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal Nixon fired him without comment or explanation. Attorney General Elliot Richardson, rather than execute the order to fire Cox, himself resigned. Then deputy Attorney Gen. Donald Ruckleshaus was told to, he resigned as well. They eventually found someone in the Justice Dept. willing to fire Cox. It was that old conservative posterchild Robert Bork. Nixon sent FBI agents to immediately secure their files and records. Because of this overt act of presidential arrogance the first calls for impeachment of the President were heard, even from members of his own Republican party.

1973- Sidney Australia’s Opera House was dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II.

1977- Lynyrd Skynyrd band members Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines died when their plane crashed into a swamp while en route to a concert at Louisiana University.

1991- The Oakland California Firestorm. Drought and Diablo wind conditions fanned a blaze in the East Bay hills that destroyed 3,000 buildings and killed 25 people.

1994- President Clinton opened up the first Presidential web site and set up an office of Director of Electronic Mail. To e-mail the President you use President@whitehouse.gov or First.Lady@whitehouse.gov This may be poetic justice, but if you just use www.whitehouse.com you will get a porn site. One of the first acts of incoming President George W. Bush was to close the site down. But it’s back now.
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Yesterday’s Question: The Nazis banned the music of classical composers they considered decadent. The modern composers like Webern, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. But they also banned one classical master from the 1800s, a contemporary of Liszt and Schubert. Who was it?

Answer: Felix Mendelsson, because he was born Jewish.


October 19th, 2010 tues.
October 19th, 2010

Question: The Nazis banned the music of classical composers they considered decadent. Modern composers like Webern, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. But they also banned one classical master from the 1800s, a contemporary of Liszt and Schubert. Who was it?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Why are white people called Caucasians?
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History for 10/19/2010
Birthdays: Martha "Patsy" Jefferson, Auguste Lumiere, John Le Carre', Peter Tosh, Amy Carter, Jack Anderson, Peter Max, John Lithgow, Robert Reed of the Brady Bunch, Evander Holyfield, Patricia Ireland, Michael Gambon is 70, Trey Parker of South Park is 40, Jason Reitman is 33.

Roman festival Armilustrum, blessing of the shields of the Roman Legions. Official end of campaigning season. Ancient nations didn't wage war from Oct. to Feb. because the winter cold would cost more lives than battle. It's no wonder that the first month that's warm enough to go out and kill people is named for Mars (March).

202BC.-BATTLE OF ZAMA - Hannibal's great defeat at the hands of Publius Cornelius Scipio, who was honored by Rome with the surname "Africanis". It was said Scipio thwarted Hannibal’s dreaded elephants by frightening them away with a herd of wild pigs.

43BC- Octavian, Julius Caesars 20 year old nephew, marched four legions into Rome and seized the government. He drove out the supporters of Brutus & Cassius as well as the supporters of his erstwhile ally Mark Anthony. He had Brutus & Cassius declared Enemies of the State. Octavian would eventually defeat them all and rule Rome as the Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome.

1216- King John Lackland died, legend has it from an evil monk who pours poison from a venemous toad into his ear as he slept. There's no such thing as a poisonous toad in England, he actually died from eating too many ripe peaches and brandywine.

1453- Britain and France sign a peace treaty finally ending the Hundred Years War. The on again, off again conflict had started in 1336.

1739- England declared war on Spain. The war was called the War of Jenkins Ear because a sea captain appeared in Parliament with his ear floating in a bottle of spirits and swore a Spanish captain had done it to him on the high seas. Some thought he was a fraud but England was hot for war, and a man named James Thompson had introduced his stirring new song "Rule Britannia! Britannia Rules the Waves! Britons Never, Never, Never Shall be Slaves!

1739-The Holy Inquisition in Portugal has it’s great dramatist Antonio da Silva burned at the stake for "practicing secret Judaism". On the same day one of his plays was playing to packed houses in Lisbon.

1781- YORKTOWN- The decisive stroke that won the American Revolution. Lord Cornwallis's army was trapped in the Virginia seaport of Yorktown and forced to surrender to George Washington and the French under the Comte du Rocheambeau. At 2:00PM the redcoats marched out to lay down their arms their bands played "The World Turned Upside Down."
"...If ponies rode men, and grass ate the cows
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse...
If Summer were Spring, and the other way 'round,
Then all the World would be Upside Down."

As the disciplined troops marched between rows of Americans and Frenchmen, British sergeants ordered :"Eyes Right!" so the men would ignore the Yankees and look at the French, for whom this was just one more chapter in their ancient rivalry. Lafayette recognized the insult and ordered the colonial band to play Yankee Doodle real loud, and the Americans started giving happy Indian war whoops. One French officer wondered if the French: "would have to save our fellow Europeans from being scalped."
Back in London when Lord North received the news he "reacted like he had taken a ball in the breast.""Good God!' he shouted:" It's all over!" His government fell as a result. The government selected to sign the humiliating peace fell also.
As a final insult of fate, Lord Cornwallis on the boat home to England got captured by a French pirate ship and forced to pay ransom! The pirate was an Arcadian (Cajun) dandy, who would always dress in red. He was nicknamed " Le Joli Rouge " ( the Handsome Red One )... The nickname is the origin of the " Jolly Rogers " the skull and cross bones of the pirates' flag.

1790- HAMAR’S DEFEAT- The new US Government of President Washington had sent its first army expedition under Brigadier General Josiah Hamar to the Ohio Country to chastise the Indians raiding settlements with British help. This day near the Miami Indian village called Kekionga which would one day be Fort Wayne Indiana, Hamars force was met by a Miami-Eel chief named Meshekinoquah or Little Turtle. Despite the innocent sounding name Little Turtle was a 6 foot tall 44 year old tough warrior and a brilliant strategist. He skillfully maneuvered Hamars force into an ambush and wiped out 3/4 of their number with minimal losses of his own. Militiamen screamed "For God’s sake run, there is Indians enough to eat you all up!"

1812- Napoleon quits Moscow, the Great Retreat begins.

1845- Richard Wagners’ opera Tannhauser premiered.

1864- 'And there was Sheridan, Twenty miles Away.." Battle of Cedar Creek. In the Shenandoah Valley Confederate Jubal Early surprise attacked the Union camp and send the Yankees running. Little General Phil Sheridan, coming from a breakfast meeting in Washington, jumps on his horse Reinzi and rides to the sound of the guns. As his men see him they cheer. He yells back:" Don't just cheer me, g--damn you! Turn around and Fight!" They counterattack and win the day. Sheridans Ride was later made into a famous poem.

1899- U.S. rocket pioneer Dr. Robert Goddard mentioned today in his memoirs as the first time he started to think seriously about how man could achieve space travel.

1901- Brazilian Santos Dumont flew a small dirigible around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. This proved that a balloon could be maneuvered by a propeller motor. This was four years before the Wright Brothers. A crowd of 100,000 cheered including Jules Verne and H.G.Wells.

1907-'GENTLEMEN, YOU HAVE FIFTEEN MINTUES TO RAISE TWENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS'- THE STOCK MARKET PANIC OF 1907- The unregulated Trust bank system goes into a tailspin, pulling Wall Street with it. The Chairman of Knickerbocker Trust, William Barney, put a pistol to his head as mobs of his clients beat down the barricaded doors to withdraw their savings. The system was saved singlehandedly by the Emperor of Wall Street, J.P. Morgan. Like a general at a battle he pumped reinforcing capitol into the system and made the above statement to the assembled bank presidents.( The raised the money in ten minutes and got it to the Stock Exchange in time to save 30 brokerage houses ) He personally gave New York City $20 million to save it from default. At the close of trading J.P. Morgan got a public ovation from the stock traders assembled under his office window. Citizens were relieved, but instead of being grateful to Morgan they were not a little horrified that one man should have so much power over the U.S. economy. This realization caused the movement in Washington to create the U.S. Federal Reserve Banking System in 1913.

1917- The Silent Raid, London was bombed by 21 German Zeppelins.

1945- N.C.Wyeth, artist and father of Andrew Wyeth was struck and killed by a train.

1953 – Arthur Godfrey had one of the more popular tv variety shows at the time. One of his headliners was the singer Julius LaRosa. But Godfrey was seen to act more and more erratically and imperiously with his cast and crew. This day after a song Godfrey put his arm around LaRosa and said gently. "Julie lacks humility, So, Julie, to teach you a lesson, you’re fired!" La Rosa and the audience first thought he was kidding but he wasn’t. He had fired LaRosa live nationwide on the air.

1957- Montreal Hockey great Maurice Rocket Richard became the first player to score 500 goals.

1960- Rev Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed for holding a sit-in in Atlanta. Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy ignored his advisors and the silence of Republican Richard Nixon, by openly contacting Dr King in jail to see if he was all right.

1964- Doo Wah Diddy Diddy hit the pop charts.

1968- RUPERT MURDOCH INVADED ENGLAND. Never mind the Vikings or William the Conqueror, on this day the little Australian landed at Heathrow to begin a takeover war for his first English newspaper, the News of the World. Until now the Fleet Street press barons were a closed club of rich old gentlemen. Murdoch used Sir Robert Caro as his cover to get in and defeat a hostile takeover bid from Robert Maxwell. He then demoted Caro out of his leadership of the paper. He soon bought the London Times, the NY Post, New York Magazine and the Greenwich Village Voice. Rupert Murdoch became a U.S. citizen so he could build the Fox movie and TV empires.

1987- Black Monday, The STOCK MARKET CRASH OF '87. The Dow falls 508 points, the biggest drop since the Great Depression. It was partly blamed on the Arbitrage high speed automated stock trading system going bananas and turning a downswing . Venerable old firms like E.F. Hutton sank beneath the waves -having their chairman Bob Froman plead guilty to 22 million dollars worth of bank and mail fraud didn't help either. However in six months most of the losses were regained, some traders saying the recovery was spurred by a bronze statue of bulls placed at the foot of Wall Street.

1998- Website ClubLove.com published nude photos of conservative radio star Dr. Laura Schleisnger. She denied the photos were of her, then sued the website for copyright infringement.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why are white people called Caucasian?

Answer: In the slave markets of the Ancient World, the people of the Caucasus Mountains ( modern Georgia, Armenia and Azebaijan) were valued for their beauty and robust health. Many was the Roman purchaser who would order- “ Two Germans, Two Gauls, An African and some Caucasians.


October 18th, 2010 mon.
October 18th, 2010

Question: Why are white people called Caucasian?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Where is Pangaea?
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History for 10/18/2010
Birthdays: Cannaletto, Lotte Lenya, Wynton Marsalis, Leo G. Carroll, George C. Scott, Pierre Trudeau, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mike Dytka, Peter Boyle, Inger Stevens, Violetta Chamorro, Wendy Wasserstein, Wynton Marsalis, Martina Navratilova, Zak Efron is 23, Jean Claude Van Damme the "Muscles from Brussels" is 50

FEAST OF ST. LUKE. According to ancient sources Luke was actually a physician, but Medieval tradition made him the protector of artists. In Rome during the Renaissance Titian, Rubens and El Greco were members of the Guild of St. Luke.

1534- French King Francis I like his counterpart in England Henry VIII considered himself a Renaissance Prince who practiced toleration. He gave safe haven to Protestants fleeing Germany and was encouraged by the calls for reform of the Church. But this night an event happened to spoil it all. Zealous French Protestants hung placards on doors in Paris and Orleans denouncing Catholicism as "apostates, wolves and vermin". Francis awoke to find a placard hung on the Royal bedchamber door, with the implied threat to him and his family. Francis angrily ordered the arrests and the burning of heretics. At a solemn Mass in Notre Dame, the King swore he would behead any of his children who wanted to turn Protestant. This Affair of the Placards ruined any chance that the Reformation could grow in France peacefully.

1648-The First official union in the U.S. started, the Shoemakers Guild of Boston.

1776- A New York pub decorated with birds opened, customers ordered a drink they nicknamed a "Cocks Tail". The origin of the name.

1767- The Mason-Dixon line settled the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland. In a later generation it became the symbol of the divide between North and South.

1781- For several days British positions at Yorktown Virginia were heavily bombarded by the heavy siege guns of George Washington and his ally the Comte du Rocheambeau. No area of the town was safe from bombardment. Thomas Nelson Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence, gave permission to fire on his own house. The British Navy had given up on a rescue, and had sailed off to Martinique. Today the cannons went silent. A lone British drummer boy appeared on the high earthwork parapet beating the call to parley.

1793- Napoleon gets his first job. Sub-lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte promoted to major of artillery and posted to Toulon. He is 24. At 25 he will be a General, at 31 a dictator at 35, an Emperor, at 46 unemployed, and dead at 52.
Hmmm, sounds like a career in Hollywood.

1797- THE X,Y,Z AFFAIR- Throughout the wars between Napoleonic France and England each country tried to push the neutral United States into taking a side. This pressure came from harassing merchant trade and establishing heavy trade tariffs. This day war almost resulted between America and France when the American ambassadors in Paris were approached by three French diplomats, forever called X,Y and Z. This men said for a $250,000 cash bribe they would lift sanctions on trade. The American government was enraged, but war was averted. America finally went to war with Britain in 1812.

1861- Poet and suffragette Julia Ward Howe was staying at the Willard Hotel down the block from the White House. She awoke in the middle of the night inspired to write new words to a popular soldiers tune she heard that day "John Brown's Body". She wrote "Mine Eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord...." She called it "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"." Glory-Glory Halleluiah, His Truth is Marching On…"

1896- Joseph Pulitzer's N.Y. Journal American created the first Sunday Color Comics supplement.

1922- The British Broadcast Corp or BBC formed.

1924- College football star Red Grange scored four long yardage touchdowns in one game.

1926- In Hollywood Sid Grauman's Egyptian Theater opens.

1931- Thomas Edison died peacefully at age 84. His last words were-
"It's beautiful over there..."

1950- In an emotional showdown in the Directors Guild all motions by C.B. DeMille and Frank Capra to extend the Hollywood anti-Communist blacklist to include expulsion from the Director's Guild are defeated. Billy Wilder, John Huston, John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy supported President Joe Mankiewicz who blocked the Blacklist Motions, and they also prevented a recall vote on Mankiewicz' s presidency.

1954- Hi & Lois comic strip debuted.

1967- Walt Disney's last cartoon done under his supervision "the Jungle Book." premiered.

1974- Tobe Hooper's low budget cult film Texas Chainsaw Massacre first opened. Despite one film critic calling it " a bunch of sick crap" it became a huge hit.

1977- New York Yankee batter Reggie Jackson earned the name Mr October by slugging three home runs in one World Series Game against the LA Dodgers.

1982- President Reagan said during a radio address:" My Fellow Americans, the economy is in a helluva mess....this microphone isn't on, is it?.."

1984- Handsome young television star John Eric Hexum died after shooting himself with a prop pistol loaded with blanks. The concussion of compressed air shattered his skull at close range. He was playing at mock- Russian Roulette. His last words were "Lets see if I can do myself in this time!"
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Yesterday’s Question: Where is Pangaea?

Answer: Technically, you’re standing on it. Pangaea is the name scientists give for the prehistoric super-continent, before the continents split apart and drifted away from one another.


I had a nice day today giving a talk at the LA chapter DAR at The Hollywood Los Angeles Fire Department Museum.



It has a lot of very cool exhibits, antiques of Old Hollywood firefighting, including a hook & ladder donated by Disney animator Ward Kimball. If I had kids, I'd bring them there and watch their faces light up. Thanks to Karen and her group and Don and all the firefighters for making me feel welcome.

http://www.lafdmuseum.org/Home.html

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Question: Where is Pangaea?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What does this mean- “Soylent Green is People!”....?
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History for 10/17/2010
Birthdays: Arthur Miller, Rita Hayworth, Jean Arthur, Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Breslin, Tom Poston, Gary Puckett, Margot Kidder, Evil Knievel, Jerry Seigel (Superman co-creator), Virgil 'Vip' Partch, Charles Kraft the sliced cheese king, Beverly Garland- star of Attack of the Alligator People, George Wendt, Mike Judge, Eminem

641 A.D.- ALEXANDRIA, the "Paris of the Ancient World" fell to the advancing armies of Islam. The Byzantine Greek emperors had been persecuting the native Coptic Christians as a heresy, so the Egyptians bloodlessly opened their gates to the Arab invaders.
courtesy of 1776 Magazine
1777- SARATOGA- 'Gentleman Johnny' Burgoyne, and his British Army are surrounded in upper New York State and forced to surrender. This is seen as the turning point of the American Revolution, because the victory gave the rebels credibility in the eyes of England's traditional enemies- France, Holland and Spain. That evening General Burgoyne was invited to dinner by the American General Gates and his staff. When invited to give the first toast Burgoyne raised his glass and said:” To His Excellency George Washington!” When Burgoyne left England that spring he had wagered politician Charles Fox 50 guineas he would conquer America single handed and return by Christmas. Well, he did get home by Christmas...

1787- The US Constitution accepted and signed into law, U.S. Constitutional Convention adjourns.

1904-In San Francisco Amadeo and Giovanni Giannini opened the New Bank of Italy, which in 1930 became the Bank of America. Among the 40 or so independent banks in California Gianini’s bank grew because he encouraged immigrants to put their money in, instead of in their mattresses. After the great San Francisco earthquake Gianini they buried the records and total assets of their bank in a strongbox in their garden until their building could be rebuilt. The Bank of America grew from that garden to become the largest bank in the U.S. and a major Hollywood financier.

1928- Duke Ellington recorded The Mouche.

1943- The Burma Railway was completed by Japanese forces using prisoner of war as laborers, the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai. Contrary to the David Lean movie, the bridge was never blown up, and is still in use today.

1967- The Hippy musical “Hair” opened at the Anspacher Theatre on Broadway.

1973- THE OIL WEAPON- Arab nations of OPEC declare a crude oil embargo on any nation supporting Israel. Oil went from $12 a barrel to $79. Gas rationing and long lines appeared at gas stations in the US and England.

1989- In the late afternoon the BAY AREA EARTHQUAKE- called the Loma Prieta Quake, shook San Francisco and vicinity. For the first time since 1906 fires were seen in the Mission District. The epicenter was a little town called Watsonville. 67 people were killed. California was planning to relieve traffic pressure by building upper levels onto existing freeways systems. When one of these new doubledeckers, the Cypress Freeway, collapsed in this quake crushing motorists in a grisly concrete sandwich, all such plans were abandoned.
There was a world series baseball game under way in Candlestick Park, but miraculously no one was hurt. National TV audiences amazed that local fans laughed at the danger. They chanted to the TV cameras :"Welcome to California!".

1990-The Internet Movie Data Base(IMDB.com) started up.

2005- The Colbert Report with Steven Colbert premiered on Comedy Central. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Questions: What does this mean- “Soylent Green is People!”....?

Answer: The last line of a 1973 Sci Fi film about a dystopian world coping with severe overpopulation. Society is fed by rations of a processed nutrition cracker called Soylent Green. At the end of the film, detective Charlton Heston finds out that the cracker is made from processing human remains. He shouts this warning but is drowned out in the crowds.


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