Quiz: How many planets are between Earth and the Sun?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below:The Third World. Where is the Third World?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 8/21/2021
Birthdays: Christopher Robin Milne-1920, King Phillip II Augustus of France- 1165, King William IV of England- 1765, Aubrey Beardsley, Count Basie*, Wilt (Wilt the Stilt) Chamberlain, Friz Freleng, Kenny Rogers, Princess Margaret, Matthew Broderick, Vance Gerry, Basil Poliodouris, Steve Hillenberg the creator of Spongebob Squarepants, Peter Weir is 77, Kim Catrall is 65, Carrie Anne Moss is 54

*Count Basie's first name was William. When working in a swing band he'd often get to work late. This would make the band's director ask, “Where is that no-account Basie? “ which in his colloquial slang came out: "Where dat no' Count Basie!?" Hence the nickname.

Consualia- Roman Festival of the first Harvest

1560 –Danish scientist Tycho Brahe wrote that he had become interested in astronomy.

1561- Queen Catherine de Medici attempts to solve the bitter wrangling over Protestants and Catholics dividing France by convening a grand Estates General at Fontainbleau. Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspar Coligny presented the Petition of the Huguenots. By then 20% of the French population were Protestant (Huguenots). They declared loyalty to the crown while asking that all men be allowed to worship as they pleased. It didn’t work. Soon Catholics and Huguenots were killing each other in the streets. Coligny was murdered in the Great Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

1810- After the Swedish Royal family, the Vasas, died out, the Swedish Diet, with major arm twisting by Napoleon, voted to have French General Bernadotte, married to the daughter of one of Nappy's old girlfriends Desiree' Clary, become the new King and Queen. Napoleon saw this move as adding Sweden to his continental empire but Bernadotte later changed sides and gave Napoleon the shaft. At the end of the Napoleonic wars Bernadotte hoped the Russian Czar would reward him with the throne of France but he let him keep Norway to add to his kingdom. Two centuries later Napoleon and the Czar’s families have lost their thrones, but Bernadotte’s descendants still rule Sweden today.

1820- After Argentina and Chile had been liberated from Spain, the army of Jose San Martin embarked from Valparaiso to invade Peru.

1858- The first Lincoln-Douglas debates. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas squared off in a series of open air debates for a congressional seat for Illinois. But the main subject was the slavery issue. Douglas, the 'Little Giant" won the congressional seat, but the debates brought national attention to Lincoln. Douglas had even courted Lincoln's wife Mary before they were married. After Lincoln was in the White House, Douglas was his strong supporter.

1863- THE LAWRENCE KANSAS MASSACRE – In the Western Border States the town of Lawrence Kansas was the center of pro-Union partisans. Locals called it YankeeTown. Early in the morning this day Confederate guerrilla leader William Clark Quantrill led 450 hard-riding Missouri raiders flying black flags into town.
As the wild horsemen galloped up Massachusetts Avenue burning and looting, Quantrill stood up in his saddle and shouted “Kill! Kill! Kill all the n-loving Yankees!” There was no regular army there. They murdered 200 civilians, mostly old men and boys. A guerrilla named Rev Larkin Skaggs tore down the Stars & Stripes and dragged it behind his horse in the mud to the laughter of the troops. There were some regular Confederate officers present who were appalled at the carnage. They later showed their unfired weapons to survivors to witness that they did not take part in the crimes.
Rev. Skaggs was shot down by a Delaware Indian as he tried to ride out of town. The citizens dragged his scalped corpse up and down the main street shooting it and pelting it with stones. It was later tossed into a ravine for wild dogs to eat. Many people never recovered from the nightmare. In 1865 at the end of the Civil War, William Quantrill was brought down in a hail of bullets. Quantrill's Raiders included young pups like 17 year old Jesse James, Frank James and Cole Younger.

1878 - American Bar Association was organized at Saratoga, NY.

1887- Mighty (Dan) Casey struck out at his last at bat with the NY Giants. The poem by Ernest Lawrence Thayer was written many years later.

1888- William S. Burroughs of St Louis patented the first modern adding machine, not counting the abacus.

1897- Ransom Eli Olds opened the Olds Auto Works in Detroit. The produced a new horseless carriage he called the Oldsmobile.

1911- Café waiter Vincenzo Perugia walked into the Louvre and stole the Mona Lisa. After trying to fence it for two years, he tried to ransom it back. He was arrested and the painting recovered.

1912- Arthur Eldred of Oceanside New York became the first Eagle scout.

1921- On his first birthday, Christopher Robin Milne was given a Farrell teddy bear from Harrods. His parents first called it Edward, but when he could speak Christopher Robin named it Winnie, after Winnipeg, his favorite bear he saw at the zoo. The child would also mention the name of a swan there he liked named Pooh. This gave his dad A.A. Milne a neat idea for a new book.

1929- Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo marry.

1931- Pardon Us, the first feature length film starring Laurel & Hardy. In 1926, Hal Roach director Leo McCarey noticed the Briton Stan Laurel and Georgia born singer Oliver Hardy looked funny together, and put them in a series of shorts starting with Putting Pants on Phillip (1927). Pardon Us was their first Sound film. Laurel & Hardy became one of the iconic comedy teams in film history.

1935- Big band leader Benny Goodman was having a tough time. His band lost its radio gig when the show Let’s Dance was canceled. So he and his musicians drove across the country in a small caravan of cars playing various venues on the road. They were told in small towns to stop playing that newfangled Swing music and stick to old standards. One manager in Denver told him:” Don’t you guys know any waltzes? ” By the time they arrived in Los Angeles this day they were thoroughly demoralized. But today when they set up in the Palomar Ballroom in Hollywood the crowd was immense! And these kids wanted to jitterbug to the new Swing music! So hit it, Jackson, Awl Reet, Awl Reet!

1941- Nazi forces cut off the supplies and began the 800 day Siege of Leningrad. A directive from Berlin announced “The Fuehrer has decided to have St. Petersburg wiped off the face of the earth.” The epic siege would earn Leningrad the title of Hero-City. Dmitri Shostakovitch wrote and debuted his Leningrad symphony (#7) even as the Nazi Stukas reigned bombs down from above. He would have to take periodic breaks from composing to serve in the city fire brigade. Leningrad’s stand probably saved Moscow because it tied down troops the Germans needed for the final drive on the Russian Capitol. After Communism’s fall in 1991 Leningrad regained its original name of St. Petersburg.

1944- Moviestar James Cagney, star of Yankee Doodle Dandy, was cleared of charges of Communism. The accusations probably had less to do with Cagney's politics and more to do with his actor’s union activism, and his fighting in court the restrictive personal contracts studios put their stars under.

1959- Hawaii became the 50th state.

1961- The British colonial authorities release Kenyan nationalist leader Njomo Kenyatta from prison.

1967 –New York Mets second baseman Ken Harrelson became the first free agent.

1968- RUSSIAN TANKS CRUSH THE "PRAGUE SPRING' -Soviet forces destroyed Alexander Dubchek's experiment of "Socialism with a Human Face." 650.000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops moved on the small country from three sides. Some of the Red Army soldiers marching into Prague were from Siberia and had never seen a western city before. Carlos Casteneda, who was there for a socialist progressive conference, recalled seeing a Soviet tank crash right through a department store glass window. The driver had never seen a glass window that large and didn't think anything was there. A Czech put a sign over the window frame: "NOTHING CAN STOP THE INVINCIBLE RED ARMY !"

1972 - Grace Slick was sprayed with mace by police after one of her band called the cops pigs.

1983- Benino Aquino, chief political opponent of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, was promised no reprisals if he returned from exile in Hawaii. Stepping off the plane in Manila, an assassin immediately shot him dead. His wife Cory Aquino took over, and led the "people power" revolution that toppled Marcos.

1987- The movie Dirty Dancing opened.

1989- The Voyager II space probe flew by the planet Neptune. It was discovered Neptune had a faint ring like Saturn and rotated on its side- south-north instead of west to east. Scientists speculated the atmospheric pressure to be so great that it could actually rain diamonds.

1995- Bill Gates announced Microsoft Windows 95.

2003- A two-week heatwave in Europe killed 17,000 in France. 13,000 people dead in Germany, Italy 12,000. Most were elderly people sitting in their locked apartments without air conditioning while their families went on their august holidays. It is probably the largest heat wave death in modern times, since it took place in only a few days.

2011- Anti Khaddafi rebels push into the Libyan capitol Tripoli, completing the dictator’s overthrow.
-----------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz:The Third World. Where is the Third World?

Answer: During the Cold War, the adversaries divided the world’s nations as The First World, aka “The Free World”, the nations allied to the United States and NATO; The Second World was the Communist nations allied to the Soviet Union and Red China; and the Third World, which was everyone else, mainly the non-aligned post-colonial nations of the developing world.

Quiz: The Third World. Where is the Third World?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below:Which two nations were the leaders of the movement to create the Common Market, later called the European Union?
-------------------------------------------------------------
History for 8/20/2021
Birthdays: President Benjamin Harrison, Sukenoba Nishikawa, Bernardo O’Higgins, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, H.P. Lovecraft, Art Tatum, Issac Hayes, Connie Chung, Jacqueline Susanne, Rajiv Ghandi, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Joan Allen is 65, Fred Durst, Alan Reed -the original voice of Fred Flintstone, Slobodan Milosovic’, Amy Adams is 47

Feast day of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

480 B.C. -THE THREE HUNDRED SPARTANS- When Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece the King of Sparta Leonidas decided the best place to try and stop him was in the narrow pass of Thermopylae. But the Spartan senate and other allied Greek states refused to send troops until they completed the Olympiad festival. It was forbidden for Greeks to wage war during the Games. So Leonidas went with the 300 Spartans of his bodyguard, and a thousand more allied troops, to try and stall ten times their number. After repulsing several attacks a traitor showed Xerxes a goat path around the Spartan position. Leonidas could still have retreated but he, his three hundred and some other Greek allies decided to stand and fight to the last man. They were wiped out, but they bought enough time for the Greeks eventual victory.

Later a monument was erected over their bones: O xein angellin Lakdaimoniois hoti tede keimetha tois keinon rhemasi peithomenoi- which means "Go Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that True to their Command, Here We Lie."

636 A.D. Battle of Yarmouk- The Arab armies led by Caliph Omar defeated the Byzantine Greeks and captured Palestine and Jerusalem. The Caliph Omar received the defeated Byzantine Emperor Romanus Diogenes with a cup of fruit flavored ice called sherbat or sorbet. Omar was a very devout Moslem and spurned the vanity of a white charger, preferring to travel by donkey, as the Prophet Mohammed had done. The custom was for high-born prisoners like an emperor to be ransomed back. But the Byzantine court was so angry, they refused to pay for loser Romanus.

1191- At the siege of Acre, Richard Lionheart had 3,000 Arabs and their families slaughtered in front of Saladin just to piss him off.

1619- A Dutch ship anchored at the English colony at Jamestown Virginia and landed the first African slaves. Twenty people. By the American Revolution, three million African people had been forcibly brought to America to serve as slaves. There was white slavery as well in the form of indentured servitude, but that had mostly died out by the American Revolution. In 1809 when an international treaty was signed to outlaw the overseas slave trade, even though despots like the Czar of Russia signed it, the only nation that refused was the United States.

1648- Battle of Lens, the last battle of the Thirty Years War. Archduke Leopold defeated somebody or other. The Thirty Years war went on so long that all those who started the war in 1618 had died and by 1648 nobody remembered how the whole damn mess got started in the first place.

1672- THE DAY THE DUTCH ATE THEIR PRIME MINISTER. Jan DeWitt had governed the Netherlands as Grand Pensioner of the Republic for four terms. But by now many Dutch hated him for his weak handling of wars with England and France. They wanted the more resolute leadership of young William III of Orange. Jan De Witt resigned his offices and when his brother Cornelius was imprisoned, Jan went to his aid. A mob broke into the Gevangenpoort jail. As unsympathetic guards looked on they beat Jan and Cornelius to death and hung their bodies from a lamp-post. Some reports say the mob tore strips of flesh from their bodies and ate them.

1741-VITUS BERING DISCOVERED ALASKA and helps colonize California. Well, he didn't actually help, but for 200 years Spain had ignored it's Southwest colonies because there were no more gold-rich Inca empires there. But when Berring opened the Pacific coast to Russian colonization, the King of Spain freaked and ordered towns and missions built up the California coast. Britain also rushed its’ claims to Washington State and British Columbia. This is why Juan De Cabrillo explored the California coast in 1542, but cities like L.A. and San Francisco weren't founded until 1776.

Bering was a reluctant explorer. The Dane had heard Czar Peter the Great was giving cushy salaries to skilled European sailors. But when Bering arrived in Russia the Czar ordered him to travel 3,700 miles to Siberia, build a fleet and explore the arctic because the Czar had always wondered if America and Russia are connected. He went off and fooled around in the Arctic Sea for awhile, then went back and said it wasn't. The Czars scientists said that wasn't good enough, go back and do it again! Finally, he discovered his Bering Straights, but died of scurvy in the Aleutians before he ever got paid.

1794- Napoleon Bonaparte was released from prison at Caps d’Antibe. He was arrested with the leading Jacobins when Robespierre was overthrown. Nappy was friends with Robespierre’s brother.

1862- SECOND BATTLE OF BULL RUN or MANASSAS. Robert E. Lee maneuvered the larger Union army of General George Pope back onto the old Bull Run battlefield and smashed it, sending thousands of bluecoats running back to Washington, -again. Pope considered himself a man of action and bragged "From now on my headquarters are in the saddle!" To which one wag wrote :"It's not the first time that a general had his Headquarters where his Hindquarters should be !' Confederate General James Longstreet was nursing a foot wound so he directed the decisive attack wearing bedroom slippers instead of boots.

After three spectacular Yankee defeats in just two months, the Confederate cause was looking pretty good. In London, Prime Minister Palmerston wrote Lord Liverpool the foreign secretary that Washington or Baltimore would soon fall into rebel hands and a special steamboat was kept waiting at the navy docks to rush President Lincoln and his cabinet to safety when the capitol fell. The time may have arrived for England to offer her mediation to negotiate a ceasefire. Emperor Napoleon III of France was also offering Paris as the site of an international peace conference to oversee the final separation of North and South.

1866- One year after the Civil War ended President Andrew Johnson declared the great insurrection officially over and rescinded all remaining wartime regulations and edicts, reinstating Habeas Corpus, etc.

1882 -Peter Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" premiered in Moscow. The composer said of all his works the two pieces he liked the least were the 1812 Overture and the Nutcracker Suite. Overture 1812 was Richard Nixon’s favorite classical piece.

1896 – The Dial telephone patented. It was nicknamed the Gravediggers Dial because it was invented by funeral director Almon Strowger. His inspiration to create the automated switching system was the local telephone operator was the wife of his competitor in the funeral business. She kept sending all inquiries for an undertaker to her husband. The rotary dial and Strowger switching system was the world standard until replaced by the touchtone button system in the 1980s. Even though the dial phone is a memory, the words remain when we speak of dialing a phone number.

1913- The first successful parachute jump. French balloonists experimented with parachutes in the 1790's but this is the first practical one.

1940- In Mexico City exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky was assassinated. While writing at his desk he was hacked in the skull with a mountain-climbers pick. His murderer Ramon Mercador- alias Jules Antoine, alias Jackson, was paid by Stalin's agents. He got into Trotsky's household by dating one of the maids. It was rumored that part of the Stalinist cell in Mexico was famed painter David Siqueiros. Trotsky was having an affair with famed painter Frida Kahlo. Leon Trotsky predicted Stalin would try to get him while the world's attention was distracted by the Hitler War in Europe. When Mercador was released from a Mexican prison, Stalin presented him with the Order of Lenin.

1940- In a radio speech Winston Churchill praised the efforts of the Royal Air Force in fighting Hitler's bombers-"Never have so Many, owed so Much, to so Few.'

1953- The Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in Women first published. Alfred & Clara Kinsey’s study proved to the conservative American public that 50% of women had premarital sex, liked sex for more than just procreation, and 25% had an extramarital affair. This document following their 1948 report on sexual behavior of men revolutionized social attitudes towards sex and feminism.

1954- President Eisenhower’s intelligence chief Allan Foster Dulles presented a paper on Far East Policy in which he urged that the US support be given to the post colonial government of South Vietnam in opposition to communist Ho Chi Minh.

1971. FBI documents prove this day the Nixon White House began to covertly investigate journalist Daniel Schorr because of his anti-war editorials. President Richard Nixon kept an enemies list of people he imagined to be opponents to his administration. It began with obvious liberals like George McGovern and Ted Kennedy, then expanded as far as June Foray the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

1972- Star Hollywood directors Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin announced a partnership in a new production company called "The Director's Company". Young punks Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were also involved. The partnership lasted two years then collapsed.

1982- Ralph Bakshi's film Hey Good Lookin'.

1982- President Reagan sent the Marines into civil war torn Beirut Lebanon.

1985- Israel shipped 96 American-made shoulder held missiles to the radical Ayatollahs of Iran. This was part of the Iran-Contra scheme. When Congress had forbidden the Ronald Reagan White House to send any money to Anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua, Reagan’s people cooked up this scheme to sell the Iranians weapons for covert funds for the Nicaraguan Contras.

1989- George Adamson, who with his wife Joy were the naturalists who inspired the book Born Free, was murdered by Somali poachers with machetes in Kampi Ya Simba, game preserve. Joy had been murdered in 1980.

1994- Studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg resigned from the Walt Disney Company.

1998- THE WAG THE DOG ATTACKS- After the Al Qaeda terrorist organization bombed US embassies in Africa, the Clinton Administration looked for an opportunity to hit back. This day the CIA got word that senior Al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden were gathered in a remote Afghan camp for a meeting. President Clinton ordered a spread of cruise missiles launched to kill them. The missiles hit their target, but Osama got away. In Washington, the hostile Conservative press had a field day accusing Clinton of making the strikes only to distract public attention from the Monica Lewinsky Sex Scandal. It alluded to a popular movie out at the time called Wag the Dog, where a scandal ridden president rigs a phony crisis to distract public attention. 
Bill Clinton was stymied in any further efforts, and Osama bin Laden lived on to plan 9-11.
==================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: Which two nations were the leaders of the movement to create the Common Market, later called the European Union?

Answer: France under Charles DeGaulle, and Germany under Konrad Adenauer. Ancient enemies, their union made the concept of a united Europe possible.

Quiz:Which two nations were the leaders of the movement to create the Common Market, later called the European Union?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Why you Old Buckaroo! What IS a buckaroo anyway?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 8/19/2021
B-Days: Roman Emperor Probus (232AD), Orville Wright, Ring Lardner, Ogden Nash, Alfred Lunt, George Enesco, jockey Willie Shoemaker, Malcolm Forbes, Tipper Gore, Gene Roddenberry, Colleen Moore the It Girl, Jill St. John, Ginger Baker, Dawn Steel, John Stamos, Peter Gallagher is 65, Kyra Sedgwick is 56, Matthew Perry, Jonathan Frakes is 69, Bill Clinton is 75

480 B.C. THERMOPYLAE- The Spartan King Leonidas had gone on ahead of other Greek allies to try and slow down the gigantic Persian invasion force of Xerxes. He chose to stop them at a narrow mountain pass in Thessaly called Thermopylae or Hot Gates. He had only 300 Spartans of his royal guard and 7,000 other Greek allies to fight off 200,000 Persians.
After repulsing several attacks, this night spies told Leonidas a Greek traitor named Ephialtes had shown Xerxes a way behind his position. If he did not retreat he would be surrounded. Their priest Meistias saw in the sacrificial entrails nothing but death.
But Leonidas decided the best way to gain time, and create an example for all Greece to rally, was to stay and fight to the last man. He allowed his allies to withdraw, but 1500 warriors including his 300 Spartans stayed with him. Meistias sent away his only son to be saved, but he stayed to fight.
This night before the last battle the Spartans spent most of their time combing and oiling their hair and beards, for they did not want to enter the next world looking shabby. One Spartan warrior named Dieneces, was told when the Persian army fire their arrows they black out the sun. Dieneces replied: “Good, then we can fight them in the shade.”

14 A.D.- Elderly Emperor Augustus died after ruling the Roman Empire for 44 years. The Empress Livia had ordered the imperial villa surrounded with troops so no one but her saw his end. She said his last words were:" Have I played my part well in this great comedy called life?" But the historian Tacitus suspected Livia might have aided his shuffling off this mortal coil before he had second thoughts about leaving the empire to his stepson Tiberius, He may have said something more like: " Honey, I don't feel so good. What did you put in these figs?"

1274- King Edward I Longshanks and his Queen Eleanor of Castile crowned at Westminster Abbey. Edward was called Long-Legs because he was over 6 foot, and his constant wars and blood conquest earned him nicknames like The Hammer of the Scots, and the Great Plantagenet after his family name.

1399 - King Richard II of England surrendered his throne to his cousin Henry Bollingbroke, who became King Henry IV. Richard II is not remembered for much else but inventing the pocket-handkerchief.

1561 - Mary Queen of Scots arrives in Leith Scotland to assume her throne after spending 13 years in France. She was raised at the extremely Catholic court of Queen Catherine de Medici and had little in common with her increasingly Presbyterian Scots subjects.

1599- Spanish conquistadors capture Acoma pueblo in New Mexico, east of modern Albuquerque. The Indian village on the sheer tabletop mountain reminded the Spaniards of attacking castles back in Europe. After their victory they enslaved the population and burned the Indian chief at the stake as a heretic. According to monk Diego de Las Casas, as the chief was roasting, Las Casas started to feel guilty, so he urged the chief at his last moments to accept baptism. The chief called out through the flames:" No thank you, because then I would go to the Christian Heaven and meet even MORE of you people!"

1692- Salem Mass, The pilgrims executed four people as witches. One was a senile old woman who just looked scary like a witch, and another was a Caribbean servant named Tituba who liked to tell children ghost stories. Another, Rev George Burroughs, was a distant ancestor of Walt Disney.

1745- THE GATHERING OF THE CLANS- At Glenfinnin in the Scottish Highlands, to the thunder of drums and the skirl of massed bagpipes, Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his banner of revolt and called all Scottish clans to rally to him. Many clans stayed aloof but Clan MacDonald and Cameron wholeheartedly swelled his ranks, as did his family clan the Stuarts. His men were paid in oatmeal.

1781- George Washington started his Continental army marching from Yonkers, New York to attack Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown Virginia. At Dobbs Ferry he started ferrying his troops across the Great Northern River, as the Hudson was known then. He was amazed that the British army was only twenty miles away in New York City, yet they never stirred to attack him. Washington’s minutemen were so broke that the French general the Comte du Rocheambeau donated some of his own money to pay their wages.

1787 – British astronomer W. Herschel discovers Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Herschel also discovered Uranus and other celestial bodies.

1812- OLD IRONSIDES- During the war of 1812 The USS Constitution pounded it out with the frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia. The British captain complained his cannonballs bounced harmlessly off the Constitutions heavy New Hampshire oak hull as though it was made of iron. The nickname stuck and today Old Ironsides is the oldest commissioned ship in the US Navy. In 2012, the same USS Constitution was taken out for a cruise around Boston Harbor.

Aug 19, 1814- THE ASSAULT ON WASHINGTON BEGAN. A huge British battle fleet of 14 Ships of the Line landed an invasion force at the town of Benedict on the Pautuxent River in Maryland. Admiral Cockburn’s intent was to march on Washington D.C., and “give the Americans a Good Drubbing!” The soldiers were all hardened British regulars, fresh from defeating Napoleon in Spain. The Duke of Wellington had turned down the American expedition. He called it " Fruitless, and a waste of time".
Most of the American armies were on the frontier or north trying to invade Canada. To defend the American capitol were only some Maryland militia and a few Marines from two armed schooners hiding in the shallows of the Chesapeake.
U.S. Secretary of War Armstrong was convinced the British were faking, and their real target was Baltimore. President James Madison sent contradicting orders to Armstrong and the field commanders. Secretary of State James Monroe, a veteran of the Revolution, personally galloped about alone under British fire bringing the only reliable scouting reports.

1848- The New York Herald published a story that President Polk confirmed that gold had indeed been discovered in California.

1886- Joseph Conrad got his British citizenship. The author of Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim was born in Poland as Jozef Konrad Korzenieowski, but he went into exile when his nationalist father was arrested by the Czars police and sent to Siberia.

1891 - William Huggins described the astronomical application of the spectrum.

1895- John Wesley Hardin was one of the more famous gunfighters of the Old West. His business card read J. Wesley Hardin, Shootist. He once killed a man for snoring. Hardin did 17 years in prison for murder, got released and studied law. This day in El Paso, lawman John Selman came up behind Hardin and shot him in the back of the head. After he collapsed on the floor he pumped a few more rounds into him to make sure he was dead. John Wesley Hardin was 42.

1909- The Brickyard is born. The first Indianapolis 500 autorace.

1929- the Amos and Andy show premiered on radio.

1942- The Dieppe Raid- Allied commanders were under pressure from Stalin to prove that they were doing something to open a second front in the west to take the pressure off Russia. So they sent a Canadian division in what amounted to the largest commando operation of World War II. These Canadians had to attack a large U-Boat base on the channel and ram a destroyer full of explosives into the dry docks. The Germans were waiting and it became a suicide mission. The Canadians suffered over 60% casualties.

1945- Four days after the Japanese surrender, Ho Chi Minh seized power in French Indochina and declared the Republic of Vietnam. Uncle Ho had been supported by the CIA’s forerunner the OSS in his struggle against the Japanese. This day Ho ordered a reading aloud of his declaration, heavily borrowed from the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Even though FDR's personal representative Avriel Harriman advised that the U.S. recognize Ho's government, we decided to support the French and British in trying to keep their tottering colonial empires. The British flew in French paratroops, and the stage is set for the Vietnam wars of the next 30 years.

1953- Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown and the Shah assumed absolute power. All with the cooperation of the American CIA. The popular Mossadegh was trying to steer Iran into a nonaligned status between the cold war superpowers and had nationalized the Iranian oil industry. So to Washington he was a threat. Eisenhower advisor Allen Foster Dulles considered Mossadegh a dangerous lunatic for not wanting American support. The Shah Reza Pahlevi II ruled for the next 25 years until overthrown by the Moslem fundamentalists under the Ayatollah Khomeni. The CIA did not admit their role in this until 2011.

1953- The Israeli Knesset voted to create a huge memorial to Jews killed in the Holocaust called Yad Vashem.

1955 - WINS radio, announces it will not play "copy" white cover versions of black R&B. DJs must play Fats Domino's "Ain't It A Shame," not Pat Boone's. In 1957 Little Richards “Tuttie-Fruitie” never got higher than 17th in the Billboard Charts while Pat Boones version, by his own admission awful, went to number one.

1957- The NY Giants baseball team voted to move to San Francisco.

1960- The Russians launched a Sputnik capsule into space with two dogs- Belka and Strelka, 2 rats and 40 mice. They recovered this orbiting zoo the next day. The first sending of life into space and returning them safely.

1973 - Kris Kristofferson wed Rita Coolidge.

1977- Groucho Marx, the last surviving Marx Brother, died at age 86. In his final years Groucho had rewrote his will in favor of his young personal secretary Erin Fleming. This spawned a furious legal battle between Fleming and the Marx family.

1988- The Iran-Iraq war ended after 8 bloody years.

1989- The Polish Communist regime resigned and turned over power to the Solidarity trade union movement. Poland is the first Communist Warsaw Pact government to collapse.

1991-THE AUGUST COUP. Communist hardliners in a final attempt to stop the fall of the Soviet Union, try to overthrow leader Mikhail Gorbachov. They try to do it the way they did it to Nikita Khruschev in 1964, arresting Gorbachov while he was at his vacation dacha or cottage. The coup failed several days later when Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin climbed on top of a tank and called for a "people-power" style rising to support the democratic elements of the government.

2000- Scientists report water at the North Pole for the first time in 50 million years.

2004- Google stock first went public on the stock market.

2012- Director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Days of Thunder) jumped to his death off a bridge in Los Angeles. He was 68.

2335 – According to Star Trek the Next Generation, this is the birthday of William T Riker, in Valdez Alaska, first officer of the Enterprise.
====================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: Why you Old Buckaroo! What IS a buckaroo anyway?

Answer: A buckaroo is cowboy slang. A mispronunciation of the Spanish word for cowboy, “vaquero”. The way “vamoose” is a mispronunciation of the Spanish “ vamos” (thanks NB)

Quiz: Why you Old Buckaroo! What IS a buckaroo anyway?

Yesterday’s Question answered below:Quiz: Whats in a name?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
HISTORY FOR 8/18/2021
Birthdays: Meriwether Lewis, Austrian Emperor Franz Josef II, Leo Slezak, Shelly Winters, Roberto Clemente, Rafer Johnson, Enoch Light, Coco Channel, Roman Polanski is 87, Patrick Swayze, Madeleine Stowe, Christian Slater, Edward Norton is 53, Martin Mull, Denis Leary is 64, Robert Redford, born Charles Robert Redford Jr, is 85

325AD. Today is the Feast of Saint Helena. A Roman innkeeper's daughter in Eboracum- modern York England. There she happened to catch the roving eye of General Constantius Chlorus (The Pale). They married and their son Constantine made himself Caesar and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman World. It's debatable exactly when she was baptized, but she undoubtedly had a great influence on her son's decision. She was also instrumental in researching and defining the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. She started the Christian fascination with collecting holy relics.

1503-Pope Alexander VI the Borgia died. Some say he died of malaria, others that he poisoned himself accidentally, while trying to poison someone else. The Borgia's enemies then took over the Vatican drove out Caesar & Lucretzia Borgia. The 72 year old Pope had seven children and at the time was sleeping with 16 year old Giulia Farnese whom he had painted as the Virgin Mary. People said Pope Alexander had sold his soul to the devil, because at his death an ape appeared on his windowsill and water boiled in his mouth. Hmmm- proof enough for me. His 300 lb. corpse was so swollen with corruption that it had to be pounded into a coffin with big wooden mallets used for wine-corking.

1573- In a vain attempt to cement a peace between French Catholics and Protestants, old Queen Mother Catherine De Medici married her youngest daughter Margot to the Protestant Prince Henry of Navarre. Paris filled with Protestants and Catholics for the wedding. Street fighting and massacre broke out soon after. Henry survived and eventually became King Henry IV. Surprisingly, although Margot was dazzlingly beautiful and Henry was one of the horniest princes in Christendom, they were never attracted to one another. They kept separate courts and lovers, stayed friends and divorced amicably in 1605.

1587- Virginia Dare was born, the first English child in America. She was in the Roanoke Colony, the fabled "Lost Colony" who all disappeared a year later.

1840 - Organization of American Society of Dental Surgeons founded (NY).

1850- Honore' Balzac died after drinking too much coffee. He was overweight, seldom bathed and picked his nose in public, but women still found him irresistible.

Mr. Gale Borden patented condensed milk. It became popular during the Civil War when it was used by the army, then it spawned the process food industry. When Borden died, he left instructions that his tombstone be shaped like a milk can.

1862- THE DAKOTA WAR, also called the Great Santee Sioux Uprising- Minnesota Sioux tribes called Dakota-Allies, had agreed to sell their land and settle on reservations and learn farming. Once removed from their land, they starved while waiting for food and money held up by corrupt government agents. When Chief Little Crow –Taoyateduta, demanded food he knew was being stockpiled in warehouses, Indian Agent Andrew J. Myrick responded “Let your people eat grass!” This day the Sioux exploded across the prairie from New Ulm to Fort Snelling (Minneapolis)- 200 whites were killed, including Indian Agent Myrick, whose body was found with grass stuffed in his mouth.

1872 - 1st mail-order catalog issued by A M Ward.

1896- 200 outlaws gather at Hole-In-The-Wall to form the "Wild Bunch".
They never went all to the same heist, it was more like a gunfighters guild.

1914- Pres. Woodrow Wilson finally emerged from mourning his first wife, to declare that the United States would remain neutral, and not get involved in new war breaking out in Europe (World War I).

1919- Tennessee becomes the last state needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution giving women the vote. The legislature was deadlocked but the tie was broken by one state senator, Harry Burn, who changed his mind. He wanted to please his mother.

1937- The Toyota Automobile Company was established as an offshoot of the Toyoda Motorized Loom Works. They changed the name Toyoda to Toyota because a Shinto priest told them the name would be luckier.

1939- The movie The Wizard of Oz released and made a star of Judy Garland. Frank Morgan, the actor playing the Wizard, needed to wear a shabby old coat so a studio costume designer went through some L.A. thrift stores until she found the good candidate. When Morgan looked in the lining he discovered the coat was previously owned by L.Frank Baum, creator of the Oz stories. Lyricist Yip Harburg (Somewhere over the Rainbow ) was later blacklisted as a communist. "And yer little dog, too!!"

1947- Hewlett-Packard file papers to incorporate their electronics company. They began doing business in 1937.

1950- Battle of the Bowling Alley- The US and South Korean Armies pushed up against the Pusan Perimeter score their first victory against North Korean regulars. It got it’s name because the North Korean tanks bottled up into narrow defiles by the land made excellent targets for waiting anti-tank artillery, bazooka and aircraft. Eyewitnesses said it looked like a “Bowling Alley in Hell.”

1953- The first MacDonalds franchise restaurant opened in Downey California.

1955- Folksinger Pete Seeger appeared before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He refused to cooperate, and was blacklisted. But he still managed to have a successful career on the folk scene, and appeared on TV in 1967.

1956- Actress Vivien Leigh suffered a mental breakdown after a miscarriage.

1958 - "Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov, published. The novel was rejected by four publishers before Putnam picked it up. It became a best seller and allowed Nabokov to quit teaching and focus on writing.

1958 – The TV Game Show Scandal investigation began. Allegations that popular quiz shows like 21 were rigged turned out to be true.

1962 - Peter, Paul & Mary release their famous folk song "If I Had a Hammer".

1966- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SLURPEE! The Ice Slurpee was invented by two Dallas engineers for a failing Oklahoma ice cream store.

1969- Woody Allen’s first movie “ Take the Money and Run”, opened.

1969- The closing day of the Woodstock Rock Concert, Jimmy Hendrix did his famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Of the original 500,000 attendees, many were already headed home. Only 30,000 stragglers were left to hear him. Originally scheduled instead of Hendrix , was old cowboy Roy Rogers, to sing his signature tune “ Happy Trails to You..” But Roy never made it there.

1974- The Xerox Company decided not to seriously market the Alto, the first personal computer that had a GUI, ethernet and mouse, long before anyone else. Xerox decided to stick with copying machines and let go of many of their Palo Alto development team Xerox PARC. Most of their breakthroughs wound up in other computers like the Lisa, Macintosh and the IBM PC.

1977- The rock band the Police make their debut in a Birmingham nightclub. The lead singer Gordon Sumner started to get the nickname Sting, from the black & yellow striped jumper he habitually wore.

1989- Publishing Tycoon Malcolm Forbes flew 800 guests to Tangiers to celebrate his birthday. His birthday party cost $2 million. The soiree' came to symbolize 1980's wealth excess.

1990- 510 animators pay tribute to Betty Boop creator Grim Natwick on his 100th Birthday. It was the last big gathering of the artists of the Golden Age Hollywood Animation. Chuck Jones, June Foray, Walter Lantz, Disney’s Nine Old Men, Mae Questel, Friz Freleng.

1999- TV psychic Kriswell predicted that day would be the End of the World.

======================================================
Yesterday’s Question: Quiz: Whats in a name?

Answer: In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Romeo reflects on the thing keeping Juliet and he apart are their family names.

Quiz: Whats in a name? Who said it first?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below:In ancient Rome, who was the Sibyl?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 8/17/2021
Birthdays: Davy Crocket, Mae West, Marcus Garvey, Sam Goldwyn- born Schmuel Gelbfisz, Harry Hopkins, Monte Wooley, Boog Powell, Belinda Carlisle, Guillermo Vilas, V.S. Naipul, Jim Courier, Donnie Wahlberg, Belinda Carlisle, Maureen O’Hara, Sean Penn is 61, Martha Coolidge is 76, Robert DeNiro is 78

1661- THE PARTY. Nicholas Fouquet, the first minister of Louis XIV (the Sun King), had his coat of arms read "To what heights may I aspire?" He decided to throw the ultimate party for his royal master. Fouquet's chateau Vaux le Vicomte was so lavish, the dinner for 6,000 guests so exquisite, the gardens so beautiful and the entertainment was provided by the playwright Moliere. Everything was so all around superior, that the King wanted Fouquet thrown in a dungeon. It seems King Louis didn't like being upstaged by his servants. But the king’s mother didn’t want to spoil such a nice party. So the King waited two weeks, then sent his chief of musketeers, D’Artagnan, to arrest him. The king's new minister Colbert, was much more discreet in his entertaining.

1676- In Massachusetts, the conflict ended between the Pilgrims and local Indians called King Phillip’s War. This day Pilgrims placed the severed head of Wampanoag Chief Metacomet, or King Phillip, on a pole in front of the Plymouth settlement. Metacomet’s father Massacoit was the one who saved the Pilgrims from starving, and celebrated the first Thanksgiving.

1806- After two years trekking across the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean and back, Lewis and Clark finally returned to their starting point at the mouth of the Missouri. This day they paid off and said goodbye to guide Jean Charbonnau and his wife Sacajewea. That same day Private John Colter asked to be released early from service, because he desired to go back and explore some more. So while Lewis and Clark continued east to Washington City, John Colter went back into the Rocky Mountains to become the first American “Mountain Man”. Colter would discoverer Yellowstone Park. Captain Clark’s black slave York asked for equal wages as the other men because he shared all their labor and dangers. Captain Clark not only refused, he told him to never bring that up again, else he’d sell him.

1870- Battle of Gravellotte-St. Privat- The French and Prussians battle to a draw but the French Marshal Bazaine retreated anyway, to the amazement of the enemy.

1876- Richard Wagner’s 4 hour opera Gotterdamerung- the Twilight of the Gods, premiered.

1877- Billy the Kid killed his first man.

1908- D.W. Griffith signed a contract to begin directing movies for Biograph Pictures. He was paid $50 dollars a week plus royalties.

1908- The premiere of the first fully animated film, Emile Cohl's "Fantasmagorie".

1914- Battle of Tannenburg. The Russian steamroller was stopped by Gen. Paul von Hindenburg in East Prussia. Hindenburg and his brilliant aide Ludendorf divided the Russian army into two pieces separated by a salt marsh and defeated each piece in turn. The fighting was so fierce that German gunners aimed their cannons by looking right through the barrel and firing directly into the thick masses of Russian soldiers. After the battle, Russian comander Gen. Samsonov walked off into the forest and shot himself.

1941- EL GRUPO- Walt Disney and his artists arrive in Rio on a ten week goodwill tour of South America, underwritten by a $70,000 government grant. President Franklin Roosevelt was worried that some South American countries might be sympathetic to the Nazis, forcing the U.S. to worry about her backdoor. So FDR sent Nelson Rockefeller to give the Latin American countries whatever they wanted to keep them out of the world war. One of the things they wanted was Donald Duck. Back in LA the federal mediator Stanley White had worked out with Roy Disney that if they got Walt out of town, they could settle the Disney animators strike. The name comes from hotel footmen in Buenos Aires paging the artists as “ El Grupo Disney! Your bus is here.” The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos result.

1942- Carlson’s Raiders attack Japanese held Makin Island. Before the war, Marine Lt. Colonel Evan Carlson served as an observer of Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist army. He was impressed with General Chu Teh’s development of guerrilla tactics. Carlson became such a fan of their hit & run tactics, he was called “Commie-Carlson”.

1943- General Patton and his Seventh Army won the “Race to Messina” and completed the conquest of Sicily.

1945- This was supposed to be the scheduled date for the Japanese Navy to attack the Panama Canal. The Japanese had built a fleet of new I-400 class long-distance submarines that could carry 3-5 kamikaze bombers each. The crews had to surface and get their planes in the air in 17 minutes. They targeted a key lock in the canal, that once destroyed would paralyze the entire system. But when the Japanese home islands were under threat of invasion, the Imperial High Command canceled the plan.

1945- Upon hearing of the Japanese surrender, Sukarno declared the Independence of Indonesia from Holland.

1954- Walt Disney’s True Life Adventure, “ The Vanishing Prairie”, directed by James Algar, opened in theaters.

1962- The Beatles replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr. One of the reason’s they decided on Ringo was that he came with his own car.

1984- The Walt Disney Company informed its chairman Ron Miller that they wanted his resignation. Disney had fallen to 14th in film box office by then. Miller had been Walt’s son-in-law and he was he was once a tight end for the LA Rams. Within two years of Michael Eisner taking power Disney was number one.

1985- The Hormel Meat Packing Strike, severely threatening the worlds supply of SPAM.

1986- Pixar short Luxo Jr, premiered at Siggraph ’86 Dallas.

1987-Nazi Rudolph Hess found hanged in his cell by an electric light cord. He was 93 years old and had been in prison for 46 years. His body was burned and his prison Spandau was leveled, to prevent it from being made a shrine by Neo-Nazis

1988- Mohammed Zia Al Haq, the president of Pakistan, died in a plane crash.

1992- Famed film director Woody Allen admitted he was having an affair with Soon Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his long time lover Mia Farrow. He was 60 and she was 21. But as the unrepentant Allen states: “The Heart wants what it wants.” They’ve been together ever since.

1994 The Great Baseball Players Strike- canceled out the season and the 1994 World Series. It was the longest strike in sports history until the NBA lockout of 1998.

1998- President Bill Clinton admitted to a grand jury that he had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. This is only the second time in history that a sitting President allowed himself to be put under oath. The precedent was set by Ronald Reagan testifying he “couldn’t recall” anything about Iran-Contra. But this session is when Clinton, aka Slick Willy, defended his infidelity with the amazing argument that oral sex was not intercourse in the truest sense, and therefore he did not lie when he said on nationwide television that he did not have sex with Ms. Lewinsky. Part of his legal wriggling was a dissertation on the meaning of the word “is”.

2009- Police arrest Albert Gonzales for hacking into credit card company computers and stealing 134 million credit card numbers! He was an informant for the FBI on credit card crime, and was playing a double agent, still committing crimes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: In ancient Rome, who was the Sibyl?

Answer: The Sibyl of Cumae was a powerful oracle of the god Apollo, who was as important to the Romans as the Oracle of Delphi was to the Greeks. She kept the Sybilline Books of Prophesy, called the History of the Future. She tricked Apollo into letting her live for a thousand years, but Apollos revenge was to let her body age as she lived. Roman comedians made a lot of jokes about “go kiss a Sibyl.” But they took her predictions seriously.