Question: Know your Roman numerals? Tell me something that happened in the XVIII Century.

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In opera, what is a heldentenor?
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History for 10/17/2022
Birthdays: Arthur Miller, Rita Hayworth, Jean Arthur, Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Breslin, Tom Poston, Gary Puckett, Margot Kidder, Evil Knievel, Jerry Siegel (Superman co-creator), Virgil 'Vip' Partch, Charles Kraft the sliced cheese king, Beverly Garland- star of Attack of the Alligator People, George Wendt, Cameron Mackintosh, Mike Judge is 60, Eminem is 50

641 A.D.- ALEXANDRIA, the "Paris of the Ancient World" fell to the advancing armies of Islam. The Byzantine emperors had been persecuting the native Coptic Christians as a heresy, so the Egyptians didn’t mind opening their gates to the Arab invaders.

1777- SARATOGA- 'Gentleman Johnny' Burgoyne, and his British Army were surrounded in upper New York State and forced to surrender. This is seen as the turning point of the Revolution, because the victory gave the American rebels credibility in the eyes of England's traditional European rivals- France, Holland and Spain.
When Burgoyne left England that spring, he had wagered politician Charles Fox 50 guineas he would conquer America singlehanded and return by Christmas. Well, he did get home by Christmas...

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

1805- THE BATTLE OF ULM- Napoleon maneuvered his regiments around an entire Austrian army and captured it while it sat waiting for their Russian allies. Nobody in the Austrian command realized that the Russian's Julian calendar date for their rendezvous was two weeks different then the Western Calendar. The last they heard, Napoleon's army was at the English Channel. Napoleon sent his army in five columns racing across Europe to suddenly appear in Austria. He piled soldiers in wagons to create the first motorized infantry.
When the Austrian defeat seemed certain the honorary commander of the army the Emperor’s brother Archduke Ferdinand ran for the hills and left the actual commander General Mack to take the consequences. When Mack was brought before Napoleon to surrender he exclaimed: "Behold the Unfortunate Mack !" Before the war Mack taught strategy and tactics. Not only did the Austrian Emperor order Mack court-martialed and sacked, but I’ll betchya a lot of students must have dropped his class.

1814- In London a large beer vat burst and drowned nine people.

1815- Napoleon was landed on his final island of exile, St. Helena, off the coast of sub equatorial Africa. The humid climate was considered by the British so unhealthy that they rotated the garrison every year. Napoleon spent the voyage learning English and became such good friends with his physician Dr. O'Meara (who was Irish) that the doctor was reprimanded. Napoleon loved to poke fun at doctors, he first addressed O'Meara- "So you are a doctor ? Well I am a general. How many men have you killed? I wager more than me ! “

1904- In San Francisco, Amadeo & 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, Giannini’s bank grew because they encouraged immigrants to put their money in, when Anglo bankers refused to deal with foreigners. After the great San Francisco earthquake, they buried the banks total assets 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, the Fly.

1938- The radio show Captain Midnight premiered on WGN Chicago. In 1940, sponsor Ovaltine dropped its decade old show Little Orphan Annie in favor of making Captain Midnight a nationwide broadcast.

1943- The Burma Railway was completed by occupying Japanese forces using British prisoners 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.

1965- After a two-year run, the New York Worlds Fair in Flushing Queens officially closed.

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

1973- Arab nations of OPEC declared a crude oil embargo on any nation supporting Israel. Oil went from $12 a barrel to $79. Called “ The Oil Weapon”, it made Gas rationing and long lines appear 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 double deckers, the Cypress Freeway, collapsed, crushing motorists, 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- William Stieg published his children’s book Shrek.

1990- IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Data Base started up.

2005- A spinoff from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, The Colbert Report with Steven Colbert premiered on Comedy Central.
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Yesterday’s Question: In opera, what is a heldentenor?

Answer: A heldentenor or heroic tenor is a male opera singer who specialized in Germanic roles, like Wagner operas. As opposed to Italian or French operas.

Question: In opera, what is a heldentenor?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: It was said Walt Disney was raised on Horatio Alger Stories. What are those?
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History for 10/16/2022
Birthdays: Lord Cardigan, Eugene O'Neill, Noah Webster, Dave DeBusschere, David Ben-Gurion, Disney animator Ham Luske, Angela Lansbury, Gunter Grass, Linda Darnell, Charles Colson, Susanne Somers is 76, David Zucker, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tim Robbins is 64.

Happy National Bosses Day (begun in 1958)

Today is the Feast of Saint Hedwig, who was married to a German Duke at 12 years old. They had six children and when they were grown, she went to a cloister, and her husband took a vow to never shave or bathe again. He was called Henry the Bearded.

1689- Seventeen year old Peter the Great entered Moscow to assume supreme power in Russia. Czar Peter had to push aside two rivals, his older half-brother Ivan who may have been autistic or impaired, and his half-sister Sophia who was angry that as a woman she couldn’t hold power. Ivan stepped aside for Peter and Sophia was shipped off to a convent at the Arctic Circle. From then until 1725, Peter reformed Russian society and made it a world power. He even made Russian society liberal enough to accept female rulers like Catherine the Great.

1746- Peace of Aix la Chapelle- Ended the War of Austrian Succession. Part of the treaty stated France would stop supporting the exiled Stuart Dynasty trying to get back the English throne. So Bonnie Prince Charlie would have to leave Paris. To celebrate the peace Georg Frederich Handel wrote the Royal Fireworks Music. When performed in Green Park London, the fireworks set fire to a pavilion and caused a panic.

1793- French Queen Marie Antoinette guillotined. She followed her husband King Louis XVI who was beheaded the previous January. The crowd in the Paris streets didn't have much sympathy for the foreign born queen. They called her "'la Chienne d'Autriche' '-the Austrian Bitch. Her last words were as she ascended the scaffold, she stepped on the toe of the executioner. 'Excuse me." she said.

1813- BATTLE OF THE NATIONS- First day of Leipzig- Napoleon's army was overwhelmed by the combined armies of Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, German states. There were British and Swiss advisors, and Napoleons French army had Poles, Dutch and Italian contingents as well. United Europe, in a way. At the height of the furious house to house fighting in the burning city, Napoleon was seen walking the streets calming whistling to himself Malbrouk s'en-va-t-en Guerre ("For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow") a popular song of the day.

1817- Giovanni Belzoni discovered the great tomb of Pharaoh Seti I in the Valley of the Kings. He discovered 8 more ancient royal tombs in the valley as well as the inner chambers of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, making the world aware of the Valley of the Kings.

1829- The Tremont Hotel opened in Boston. Called the first modern hotel in America, it had luxurious 170 rooms, and 4 meals a day. All for an extravagant $2 a night.

1834- The British House of Parliament caught fire and burnt to the ground in a horrific conflagration. Luckily artists William Turner and John Constable were around watching the blaze from the south bank of the Thames, so at least we got a few neat paintings out of it...

1846- At Massachusetts General Hospital Dr. John Warren performed the first operation on a patient under anesthesia. A Georgia doctor named Morton extracted a tooth using ether two years earlier and there was a fracas as to who invented it first. But the new was groundbreaking. Until then surgeons were considered social inferiors to doctors because all surgeons really needed in their work was strong arms to hold people down while sawing on them.

1847- Jane Eyre, an Autobiography first published. Writer Charlotte Bronte’ did it under the pen-name Currier Bell.

1859- HARPERS FERRY- Kansas abolitionist John Brown led a group of followers and slaves to seize the large U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. They planned to use the weapons to begin a general slave uprising throughout the South. Brown had declared: "the Sins of this Nation are so great that they cannot be expunged but by a great effusion of blood!" Harriet Tubman wanted to be present but for an illness. Brown and his men were surrounded by the army and forced to surrender after a gun battle in which two of Brown's sons were killed.
The slaves did not rise in revolt. Present at the army operation were U.S. army officers Robert E. Lee and a Virginia National guard reservist, actor John Wilkes Booth. Brown was later hanged. Northerners considered John Brown a hero and martyr, Southerners thought him a dangerous lunatic who would murder them in their beds. Frederic Douglas thought Brown’s action reckless but his final praise was unstinting: "I have lived my life for my people. But John Brown died for my people. " One surviving son of John Brown who was at the battle changed his name and moved the family to Pasadena California, dying an old man in 1893.

1860- Olivia Bedel, a little girl from NY, wrote a fan letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, where she suggested that he grow a beard. Abe took her advice.

1901- One of the first acts of new President Teddy Roosevelt was to invite Dr. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute to an official dinner. It was the first time a black American was ever invited to dine with the President. The South roared in loud protest. Teddy roared back:” In my veins flow the blood of both North and South, and such nonsense must end!” His mother was a Southerner. But he never openly invited another black leader again.

1916- THE FIRST BIRTH CONTROL CLINIC opens in the U.S. It was set up on 46 Amboy St in Brooklyn, by feminist Margaret Sanger. Police closed it down 9 days later and imprisoned Ms. Sanger for 30 days. She spent her time in jail lecturing women convicts about family planning. Margaret Sanger also hired bootleggers to smuggle French diaphragms into the U.S. disguised as innocent cases of illegal booze. Mrs. Sanger later married the owner of the Three-In-One Oil company, and smuggled spermicide into the U.S. in oil cans. In the 1930’s Margaret Sanger was invited on CBS radio. When CBS chief Bill Paley worried if Sanger would say something controversial he was reassured "don’t worry, she says she’s just going to read nursery rhymes". She began "There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. She Had So Many Children, Because She Didn’t Know What to Do!" CBS cut off her microphone.

1918- As the defeat in World War I loomed, young Emperor Michael of the Austrian Hungarian Empire struggled to keep his tottering empire together. This day he asked for a cease-fire from the allies and declared Austria-Hungary would become a federation of independent peoples. This was all too late as the Yugoslavs, Czechs, Poles and even Austrians were already declaring themselves independent states without his permission.

1923- Walt Disney Studios Born. 22 year old Walt and his older brother Roy signed a deal with M.J. Winkler for six "Alice in Cartoonland" short cartoons. Budget-$1,500 each. At first called The Disney Bros. Studio.

1929- New York City skyscraper the Chrysler Building completed. It won a race with the Bank of Manhattan Company to become the world’s tallest building but it only held the title for a few months because the Empire State Building was going up.

1929- The frosted light bulb patented.

1933- In Tampa Florida, a man named Victor Licata took an axe and murdered his family. He was declared criminally insane, but what the Federal government picked up on was he had a habit of smoking marijuana. Turns out he was always psychotic, but the Feds played up his pot smoking to push the idea of marijuana as a “Demon-Weed”, the basis for criminalizing it.

1940- The Nazi occupying forces order Jews around Warsaw to move into a small quarter of the town and it is bricked up by a high wall. The Warsaw Ghetto.

1940- Despite being technically neutral, the U.S. began a draft of young men into the army.

1941- General Hideki Tojo became Japanese Prime Minister. While we have this image of Tojo as the paramount war leader like Churchill, Stalin or Hitler, he was only Prime Minister from 1941-1943. The Japanese government went through several administrations, however the military general staff remained constant and manipulated politics from behind the scenes, vetoing measures in the Diet and assassinating critics of it's policy of military expansion. By 1937 all outspoken peace advocates like Prince Konoye and Premier Inokai had been murdered.

1941-Nazi panzer tanks closed in around Moscow. Even though his staff were all waiting in a private armored train Russian leader Josef Stalin changed his mind about evacuating the Kremlin and fleeing east. He resolved to stay in the city.

1943- Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly dedicated the new subway system.

1945- World War II over, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer bade farewell to the Los Alamos nuclear facility to work for Cal Tech University. After laudatory speeches and plaques Oppy warned his fellow scientists : " If nuclear weapons become a regular part of the arsenals of other countries, then the time may come when the people of the world will curse the name of Hiroshima and Los Alamos."

1946- After the embarrassment of Herman Goring committing suicide under Allied noses the night before, the remaining Nazis war criminals tried at Nuremberg- Keitel, Jodl, Ribbentrop, Streicher, Kalternbrunner, and Franck were hanged. Executioner US Army Master Sergeant John C. Wood said some like von Ribbentrop had lost so much weight in prison he had to jump on the swinging body adding his weight to theirs and break their necks. Afterwards their bodies are driven in secret to Dachau concentration camp crematorium and burned in the same ovens they used on Jews in the Holocaust. Then the ashes are scattered in secret so no Nazi shrine could ever be erected.

1952- Charlie Chaplin’s film "Limelight" premiered in London. Chaplin had shot the film in Hollywood but released it in Europe because he had been driven into exile by McCarthyite Red Baiters.

1955- Ann Landers published her first column.

1964- Red China exploded it's first nuclear bomb.

1968- During the Mexico City Olympics- African American gold and bronze track medalists Tom Smith and John Carlos shocked the world by giving the Black Power raised fist salute during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. Despite being the fastest men on earth, their medals were taken away and they were kicked off the US Olympic Team. Even the Silver medalist, Peter Norman of Australia, a white athlete, was banned and ostracized for saying he supported them.

1969- The Miracle Mets. The New York Mets, then possessing some of the worst records in baseball history, defied all 100-1 odds and won the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles in 5 games. Tom Seaver, Cleon Jones, Nolan Ryan. Rusty Staub. Thousands of fans at Shea went crazy and danced and partied on the field with the players. My brother recalled in the parking lot cars were covered with turf because the fans had stolen the bases and ripped up the sod for souvenirs.

1973- President Anwar El Sadat of Egypt asked the Soviet Union to call a meeting of the United Nations to call a ceasefire to end the Yom Kippur War.

1976- Disco Duck by Rick Dees became #1 on the pop charts.

1978- Polish cardinal Karol Woytila elected as Pope John Paul II. First non-Italian pope in 450 years, since Dutchman Adrian IV in 1513. Dying in 2005 JPII had the longest reign of any pope in the twentieth century and had created more saints than any other pope.

1992- The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson filed a $1.4 million dollar lawsuit against a French tabloid for publishing photos of her topless and her boyfriend Texas millionaire John Bryan sucking her toes.

1995- The Million Man March - One million African-American men converged on Washington D.C. to protest black-on-black violence and promote family values.

1997- According to the writers of the 1965 television show 'Lost in Space', this was the date the Jupiter-2 with Will, Penny, Dr. Smith and the Robot took off to colonize deep space. "Danger! Danger! Spare me your insolence, you mechanical ninny..."
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Yesterday’s Question: It was said Walt Disney was raised on Horatio Alger Stories. What are those?

Answer: Horatio Alger was a 19th century writer who specialized in stories of poor young boys who, through moral turpitude and chance, perform a heroic act, persevere and are eventually rewarded for their selfless deeds; generally by being able to leave their meager circumstances behind and achieve middle class respectability. Alger’s books were popular from the late 1800’s through the early 1920’s. (Thanks FG)

Question: It was said Walt Disney was raised on Horatio Alger Stories. What are those?

Quiz: What does it mean if you are unguiculate?
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History for 10/15/2022
Birthdays: Quintus Virgilius-Virgil 70 BC, Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great 1542, Oscar Wilde, Fredrich Nietszche, Mikail Lermontov, John L. Sullivan, Jane Darnell, Burt Gillett, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Trout, Klaus Barbie the Butcher of Lyon, P.G. Wodehouse, Penny Marshall, Mario Puzo, Sarah Ferguson-Fergie' the former Duchess of York, Chef Emeril LeGasse, Chuck Berry
Ancient Roman Festival of the Ides, a chariot race where the winning team of horses was then sacrificed to Mars the Avenger.

1564- Great doctor and medical scholar Andreas Versalius died of exposure after his ship was wrecked off the coast of Zante, Greece. Versalius specialty was anatomy, he described the lobes of the liver, the bones of the jaw and finally got modern medicine to stop following the conclusions of the Roman doctor Galen on faith and go experiment for themselves. Versalius was so passionate about anatomical dissection that he would sneak out to the hangman’s tree outside town and pull the bodies down for study.
1582- THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR took effect- Julius Caesar’s 366 day calendar was losing 11 minutes every year since 45 BC. Medieval scientists like Dennis Exiguus ( the man responsible for B.C.-A.D. counting), Averroes (Ibn Ruhsd), and Roger Bacon noticed something was wrong. By 1582, the calendar was 11 days off the solar year. Pope Gregory XI had scientist Dionysius Ingratius revise the calendar of Julian Calendar by using a 400 year cycle of 365 days with a leap day every four years and no leap year when it occurred every fourth century. So 2000 was a leap year while 1900,1800 and 1700 were not.
On this day people had gone to sleep on Oct. 5th and woke up on Oct.15th !
The calendar at first wasn't accepted universally. At first only Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland changed over. France and the Protestant countries took 70-100 years to change and England not until 1752! China adopted the western calendar in 1949. Because a lot of history happened during the interim, sloppy historians can confuse the 11day difference in the calendars (so if you disagree with any of my dates, That's My Excuse, Hah Harr!!) For instance, we celebrate Columbus Day on the 12th of October when Columbus himself thought he had landed on the 22nd Old Style.
1757- Prussian King Frederick the Great took time out from fighting wars to try and convince German poet Johann Gottsched to stop trying to write poetry in German. “So many guttural explosions, so many consonants- Klop, Knap, Krotz, Krok! How could you make melody in such a language?” Frederick spoke French exclusively and switched to German only to address servants and soldiers. Ironically, the fame of his court sparked a renaissance of music, poetry and philosophy- all in German. 1764- While wandering through the ruins of the Roman Forum, British writer Edward Gibbon was inspired to write "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".

1781- Climactic actions of the Siege of Yorktown when Franco-American assault teams in the dead of night stormed three important British strong points. This allowed Washington and Rochambeau’s heavy guns to be brought close enough to bombard the center of Yorktown and hastened Lord Cornwallis’ surrender.
The American assault teams were personally led by Marquis de Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton, who threw a childish temper tantrum when at first Washington refused to risk such a good staff officer in such a dangerous assignment. The attack troops were not allowed to waste time loading and firing, they just had to run in the dark and win using the cold bayonet. In Lafayette’s troops was a young captain Berthier, who would one day be Napoleon’s chief of staff.

1794-The First silver dollars minted by the U.S. Government. Before that individual states printed money. British pounds, wampum, old colonial script called Continental Eagles, Spanish pieces of Eight and corn whiskey all had circulated as currency. 1796- Napoleon wins a battle at the bridge of Arcola, grabbing a flag and leading the final charge himself. In twenty years of constant war he was only hurt once, a slight graze in the foot. At Arcola he was even temporarily immobilized when he got stuck in mud under heavy fire but still no one could hit him. His colleague General Massena’ commented, “You know, that little bastard scares me sometimes…”
1806 -German philosopher Hegel met Napoleon on the street. Hegel was going to his publisher to publish his "Phremonology", Napoleon was on his way to take Berlin. Hegel later referred to Napoleon as “The World Soul on Horseback.”
1858- The last Lincoln-Douglas debate. Lincoln scored major moral points on the slavery issue but Douglas "the Little Giant" won the election to Congress anyway. After the Civil War began although Douglas was a Democrat he was a very strong Lincoln supporter and pro-union man. Douglas had also once dated Mary Lincoln before she married old Abe.

1880- Vitorio, a leader of the Chiracua Apaches as famous as Geronimo, was finally hunted down and killed south of El Paso by a combined force of US and Mexican Army troops. 1905- First Little Nemo comic strip by Winsor McCay premiered in the NY Herald. McCay modeled the child on his own son Robert, and name Nemo came from a Latin root meaning no one.

1905- Premiere of Claude Debussy’s tone poem La Mer- the Sea.
1917- MATA HARI- 41 year old beautiful erotic dancer and German spy H21, was shot by firing squad. Her real name was Gertrude Zelle from Holland, she made up a new identity as an Indian princess with the name Mata Hari- The Light of Day in Malay. She would use her sexual charms to seduce top enemy officers and pass information on to German High Command. But she was finally caught, tried and shot at the Chateau Vincennes outside Paris. She refused to wear a blindfold and blew a kiss at the French firing squad. She still elicited enough sympathy, that out of a 12 soldier squad, only four bullets were found in her body.

1927- Iraq strikes it's first gusher of oil. The gusher was so large it took 8 days to bring under control.

1929- The Canadian Parliament passed a resolution declaring women to be people, too.

1930- Duke Ellington first recorded Mood Indigo.

1934- THE LONG MARCH- During the Chinese civil war, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai’s Communist armies broke out of a ring of encircling Kuomintang (Nationalist) armies and began an epic 6,000 mile march to the safety of Shaanxi and Yenan in Northwest China. 100,000 people fought battles, internal divisions, starved and marched until in October 1935 only 8,000 survivors reached their destination. Mao’s two children and younger brother died but he emerged as the supreme leader of the Communist forces. Their example inspired thousands of young men to enlist in their cause. In 1993 Premier Ly Pung succeeded Deng Zhao Ping, one of the last surviving veterans of the Long March. 2003 the first Chinese astronaut Wang Liwei went into orbit on the anniversary of the Long March.

1940- Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator premiered.

1942- The Nazi-dominated Vichy Government of France declared a ban on the importation of all American and British movies. 1946- HERMANN GORING CHEATED THE HANGMAN On the day before he was to hang for war crimes, Nazi Reichmarshall Herman Goring bit on a glass potassium-cyanide capsule. Goring was convinced that the Allies would need him to control postwar Germany. So he was surprised and indignant at the death sentence. The condemned prisoners were closely watched by guards so suicides couldn't happen. Even the furniture in their cells were made rickety so you couldn't stand upon it to hang yourself and guards looked in on you through a peephole every hour.

1950- THE WAKE ISLAND CONFERENCE- President Harry Truman flew to Wake Island to confer with General Douglas MacArthur about the Korean War. There was a story that MacArthur kept Truman waiting at the airport. This is incorrect, but he was disrespectful to his commander in chief in other ways, like neglecting to salute him and brushing off the President’s invitation to lunch.
When Truman asked MacArthur if there was any chance of the Red Chinese joining in the war, MacArthur assured him there was no possibility. This same day in Beijing Mao Zedong was ordering General Lin Piao to move 300,000 troops to Korea. At one point Truman and MacArthur joked about Dwight Eisenhower thinking he could run for president. Truman said Ike didn’t know anything about politics and his administration would be more corrupt than Ulysses Grants’. Eisenhower did win election and his two terms were well run and scandal free.

1951- THE FIRST I LOVE LUCY SHOW- The successful family sitcom began its pilot episode this night. CBS and sponsor Phillip Morris had wanted Lucille Ball to transfer her popular radio show-“My Favorite Husband” to television. The story of the family life of Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban immigrant nightclub bandleader, his daffy wife Lucy, and their landlord friends Fred and Ethel Murtz became an overnight sensation.
The show was shot on film instead of live TV, and it was produced in Los Angeles instead of New York City because Lucy and Desi Arnez refused to relocate back east. Lucy also refused the networks request that Desi be replaced with a more Anglo husband. The show also pioneered the three camera shooting system for sitcoms, still used to this day. Developed by Desi and Karl Freund, the cameraman behind Metropolis and The Mummy. When Lucille Ball was off being pregnant, the show proved re-runs could be just as popular as first time showings. The January 1953 episode of little Ricky’s birth drew more viewers than the inauguration of President Eisenhower.

1959- Twentieth Century Fox signed Elizabeth Taylor to star in their new movie Cleopatra. The first time an actor was paid a million dollars for one movie. By the time production wrapped, she had earned $7 million.

1965- The first large scale peace protests over U.S. involvement in Vietnam began in Oakland California. David Miller is the first young man to burn his draft card, followed by many others. Chants of “One, Two, Three, Four, We don’t want your F**king War! Uncle Sam, Drop the Bomb! We Don’t Wanna Go to Nam!”

1969- THE MORATORIUM- 250,000 people gathered in Washington to protest the War in Vietnam. Richard Nixon had run as a peace candidate but once in office escalated the Vietnam conflict to include Cambodia and Laos. President Nixon came to regard the young student protestors as the chief enemies of his administration. In Chicago, young student John Belushi was hit in the chest with a tear gas shell and had to be dragged to safety.
Nixon appealed to the Silent Majority, staged stunts like the Hard Hat Luncheon-an event thrown for conservative construction workers. According to John Dean, by 1971 Nixon had a bunker built under the executive offices where aide John Ehrlichman monitored protests from a battery of television monitors. Nixon stalwart G. Gordon Liddy pitched preposterous schemes like infiltrating the students with mercenaries who would at a signal beat up people, and strategic commando style kidnapping of protest leaders. These schemes were never implemented.

1969- The musical Paint Your Wagon opened. Lerner & Lowe, Paddy Chayevsky, Andre Previn, Jean Seberg, Nelson Riddle, Josh Logan, with Clint Eastwood singing!

1970- Height of the Canadian October Crisis. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sent in army troops into Quebec to quell separatist riots and arrest terrorists of the FLQ.

1976- What’s Love got to do with it? Ike and Tina Turner break up.

1988- Bottom of the 9th, old, injured, Kirk Gibson came off the bench and hit the game winning home run to give the LA Dodgers victory over the Oakland A’s.

1989- Wayne Gretsky surpassed Gordie Howe’s all time record of scored points in hockey-1,850. The Great One went on to set a new record of 2,837 points before his retirement.

1991- After weeks of bitter hearings Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court to take the seat of Civil Rights pioneer Thurgood Marshall. The Anti-Affirmative Action Black Republican’s appointment was challenged by allegations that he sexually harassed one of his female staff, a Professor named Anita Hill.

2003- On the anniversary of the Long March, Wang Lee Wei became the first Chinese astronaut to go into space.

2018- Sears Roebuck, once the largest store chain in America, declared bankruptcy.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean if you are unguiculate?

Answer: Most mammals, including humans, are unguiculate. It is an adjective that means you have claws or nails.

Quiz: What does it mean if you are unguiculate?

Yesterday’s Answer below: What was the first U.S. political party?
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History for 10/14/2022
B-Days: William Penn-1644, King James II Stuart, Joseph Plateau, Sword master Masoaka Shiki 1867, Dwight Eisenhower, Lillian Gish, Ralph Lauren, Eamon De Valera, e.e. cummings, Mobutu Sese Seko, C. Everet Koop, John Dean III, Cliff Richards, Jack Arnold the director of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ralph Lauren- real name Ralph Lifshitz, Roger Moore.

Feast of St Theresa of Avila

Happy National Desert Day.
1066-WHEN WILLIAM ROSE AND HAROLD FELL- BATTLE OF HASTINGS- The Norman army of William the Bastard defeated and killed King Harold Godwinson of the Anglo-Saxons. The occupation and settlement of Norman French into England had a dramatic effect on the language ensuring the language you are now speaking would become English, instead of something between Dutch and Danish. The Normans also introduced the English to the concept of surnames- Wulf the Tailor yielding to Robert Beauceant and William Longchamps. Duke William, who was never fond of the title 'Bastard", became King William the Conqueror.

1318- When Scottish King Robert the Bruce won Scots independence, he sent his younger brother Edward to Ireland to organize their resistance. After 4 years of fighting , Edward de Brus was killed by the English at the Battle of Faughart. It is generally accepted that he left Ireland in worse shape than as he found it.

1492- Columbus and his men left San Salvador to continue west and look for Cipango- their name for Japan. 1529- WESTERN EUROPE DISCOVERED COFFEE- The first Turkish Siege of Vienna ended. Despite Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent telling his troops that if they didn't win, he would fill the Danube with their genitals, the Turkish army gave up the siege and fell back into Hungary. As the Viennese went through the Turkish camp, they found large quantities of black beans that tasted awful. A Polish mercenary named Adam Kolschitsky had lived in Turkey and knew what to do with them. He opened the first Viennese coffeehouse, the KolschitskyDom. He is also credited with inventing the coffee filter, which made the strong Turkish java palatable to Europeans. The Viennese commemorated their victory with a pastry shaped like the Turkish battle ensign, the crescent, or the Croissant.

1670-At a performance before King Louis XIV the Sun King at the Chateau of Chambord Moliere’s satire “Le Bourgeouis Gentilhomme” premiered. Lully wrote the music. 1806- BATTLE OF JENA- Napoleon's army destroyed the Prussian (German) army and occupied Berlin in only six weeks. The Prussian army had been considered the finest in the world but by this time the legendary regiments of Frederick the Great were led by old men and a timid king. The average age of the sergeants was 50 and the generals 75! The night before the battle the Prussians gave up the strategic high ground to the French because it was too chilly for most of the old men to sleep in the open. Also, they had built their camp facing in the opposite direction from the enemy to be out of the wind. Shortly before they were hit from the fire of three hundred cannons, Prince Hohenlohe was telling his outposts to get some more sleep as there probably would be no battle that day. One other psychological tactic Napoleon used was he lined up 250 regimental bands so their combined musical power would augment the cannon in blowing the Germans out of their beds. A contemporary German analyst said; "The Prussian Army had to be very clever to lose that badly, for it had all the advantages." The embarrassing campaign caused major reform in the army and for the remainder of the 1800's Europe would fear French Militarism, not German.

1873- MY NAME IS MUYBRIDGE. One night a carriage drove up from San Francisco to the Yellow Jacket Mine near Calistoga in the north Napa Valley. A man asked for the foreman Major Harry Larkyns. When Larkyns answered the door the man quietly said to him: ”Good Evening, Major. My name is Muybridge. Here is the answer to the message you sent my wife earlier. “ He drew a pistol and shot Larkyns through the heart, killing him instantly. He then dropped his weapon and waited for the sheriff.
The murderer was the famous Photographer and Motion Picture Pioneer Edweard Muybridge. Muybridges’ young wife Flora had been having an affair while he was working on his Motion Studies Series in Palo Alto. Muybridge discovered the son she bore him was not his. They were even calling him Little Harry behind his back.
The jury that convened in Napa did not hang the artist-inventor. In the Code of the Old West, proven adultery was considered a justifiable homicide. Plus, Governor Leyland Stanford was paying for Muybridge’s experiments. So, he was acquitted. Flora Muybridge divorced him in 1875 and after her early death two years later, Muybridge gave Little Harry to a San Francisco Orphans Asylum and refused to pay for his upkeep.

1908- The Chicago Cubs defeated the Detroit Lions for their first World Series championship. The next time they won a World Series was 2016.

1912- While going to give a political speech in Milwaukee, a lunatic named William Shrenck shot Teddy Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet was slowed down tearing through his clothes, speech notes and tin eyeglasses case, and missed any important organs. Bleeding from his side Teddy spat in his hand to see if there was blood in his spittle, which would mean internal damage. Seeing there was none, he went ahead and gave his 90 minute speech before going to a hospital. -Bully!

1926- A.A. Milne’s first book of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Christopher Robin debuted this day.

1934- The Lux Radio Theater premiered.

1940- While the Blitz raged above them, 14 year old Princess Elizabeth, The future Queen Elizabeth II, made her first radio address- to the evacuated children living away from their families.
1943- The Sobibor Uprising. At the Sobibor Concentration Camp the Jewish inmates launched a surprise attack on their guards. They were led by several Jews who were Red Army veterans and understood the use of weapons. After killing 16 SS guards, 365 inmates escaped into the countryside. Most were hunted down and killed but 47 survived.
1944- Field Marshal Ervin Rommel, the "Desert Fox", was forced by the Nazis to commit suicide by taking poison. He was a key figure in the July Generals Plot to assassinate Hitler, and stop the war. At first Rommel demanded a public trial, but reluctantly accepted the quiet way in exchange for the Nazi's pledge not to hurt his family. This way Berlin could claim Germany's greatest soldier succumbed to his war wounds, instead of trying to revolt.

1944- British Paratroops liberated the city of Athens from the Nazis. 1947- Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and achieved Mach I in the Bell XS-1 Glamorous Glennis.

1950- The LAPD raided a house party of gay men, which was illegal back then. One of the men arrested was future movie star Tab Hunter. This was kept secret until in 1955, when an angry agent Hunter dumped leaked the story to Confidential Magazine. “ Tab Hunter Busted at Limp-Wristed Pajama Party!” It soon blew over and Tab Hunter went on to have a full movie career.

1954- First day of shooting on Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of the Ten Commandments staring Charlton Heston out in the Egyptian desert. It was so brutally hot that Anne Baxter joked to Vincent Price “ Vin, who do I have to sleep with to get OFF this movie?”

1955- Actor Zero Mostel testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Zero made jokes at the committee’s expense, and even made some of them laugh, but was still blacklisted. In a playful mood, he told the Committee that he was employed by "19th Century-Fox." Zero denied he was a Communist, but refused to name names. He told the Committee that he would gladly discuss his own conduct, but was prohibited by religious convictions from naming others. Consequently, he was blacklisted during the 1950s. Shut out from the movies, he also lost many lucrative nightclub gigs, and he had to make due by playing gigs for meager salaries and by selling his paintings until the mid 1960s.

1959- Errol Flynn died of a heart attack in Vancouver. Exhausted by overindulgence in his favorite vices, doctors said the 50 year old movie star had the body of a 70 year old. A descendant of one of the Bounty mutineers, the Tasmanian born actor's last film was ' Cuban Rebel Girls'. 1962- THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS BEGAN- President John F. Kennedy was first shown top secret U-2 photos of Russian nuclear missile pads being constructed 90 miles away in Cuba. This meant instead of a 30 minute warning time a Soviet H-Bomb could hit New York or Washington in 7-10 minutes. Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked CIA operative Richard Helms: “Dick, is it true there are Russian missiles in Cuba?” When Helms replied there were, the normally erudite RFK reacted: “ OH, SH*T!!” For the next 14 days the world came close to nuclear Armageddon.

1964- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr won the Nobel Peace Prize.

1964-IT’S FUN TO PLAY AT THE Y-M-C-A! Just three weeks before the presidential election, Lyndon Baines Johnson’s re-election was almost derailed by a gay sex scandal. One of LBJ’s closest aides Walter Jenkins, whom LBJ called My Vice President of Almost Everything, was busted by DC police for having a tryst with a Turkish diplomat in the YMCA locker room! He had been arrested for the same thing five years before.

This day Walter Jenkins announced his resignation from the Johnson White House and was sent to a mental hospital. Lyndon Johnson distanced himself from Jenkins and the press was strong-armed to bury the story until after the election. Republican challenger Barry Goldwater was warned by the FBI that if he tried to use this story, they had plenty of info on the Arizona senator patronizing prostitutes. The story never effected the election. Barry Goldwater remarked:” Communists and c*cksuckers, what a way to win an election!”

1968- French Canadians who wanted independence from English Canada form a political party called the Parti-Quebecois.

1972 - KUNG FU, starring David Carradine, premiered on ABC TV.
In her memoirs, Bruce Lee's widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, asserts that Lee created the concept for the series. There is circumstantial evidence for this in a December 8, 1971 television interview that Bruce Lee gave on The Pierre Berton Show. In the interview, Lee stated that he had developed a concept for a television series called THE WARRIOR, meant to star himself, about a martial artist in the American Old West (the same concept as KUNG FU, which aired the following year), but that he was having trouble pitching it to Warner Brothers and Paramount. Show creator and producer Ed Spielman denied taking Bruce Lees idea. He claimed he had been working on it on the East Coast long before. The show’s star David Carradine was a “ gweilo”-Cantonese for white foreigner, pretending to be Chinese.

1972- Joe Cocker and his backup band were busted in Australia for drug possession.

1973- The Yom Kippur War between Arabs and Israelis almost drag the superpowers in as well. Russia had been supplying Egypt and Syria with their latest weapons. When Israeli tanks approached Damascus the Soviets warned Israel that if they attacked the Syrian capitol they would intervene with two Red Army airborne divisions. Israeli diplomat Yigail Allon said “From the way the Russians reacted you’d think they were protecting Stalingrad, rather than Damascus!”
Prior to this time Israel would buy weapons on the international market, paying cash, but now the US refitted the Israeli military directly. This day President Nixon warned Moscow that any attempt to intervene in the Middle East would be matched by American ground forces. Both sides cooled off and the superpower confrontation was kept a secret until the 1990s. Ironically the early founders of Israel were Socialists.

1978- Lover Scott Thorsten “outs” pianist Liberace by filing a palimony suit.

1979- Wayne Gretsky scored his first goal.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was the first U.S. political party?

Answer: The Federalist Party.

Question: Friends close to Marylin Monroe called her Norma-Jean. Friends of Lauren Bacall called her Bettie. Friends of Curly Howard of the Three Stooges called him Jerry. What famous comedic actor was called by his friends Babe?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Which is further East? The Ozarks or the Appalachian Mountains?
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History for 10/12/2022
Birthdays: King Edward VI- only son of Henry VIII called God’s Imp”, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil 1798, Helena Modjeska, Ralph Vaughn-Williams, Alastair Crowley, Luciano Pavarrotti, animator Izzy Klein, animator Corny Cole, Joan Rivers, Dick Gregory, Tony Kubek, Susan Anton, Kirk Cameron, Hugh Jackman is 54

1285- 180 Jews of Munich who refused to be baptized were burned to death in their synagogue.
1492- COLUMBUS STEPPED ASHORE IN AMERICA. The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria drop anchor off San Salvador in the Bahamas after sighting land around 2:10am, Oct 22nd Old Style. It was a full moon. Columbus had offered a reward for the first man to see land. Juan de Boromeo aboard the Pinta sighted land first, but Columbus claimed he did and kept the money- cheap bugger. Expecting to meet Chinese people, Columbus brought with him a translator who could speak Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish and Hebrew. He also carried a letter from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to the Great Khan of Cathay. None of these were much help speaking with the indigenous Taino natives.i
We can debate who was first, or his brutalizing of the natives, Columbus wrote his king that the peoples he found “will make excellent slaves.” But one thing is undeniable, Columbus’ landing is the first step of one of the largest migrations in human history. The mass migration of European and African peoples into the Western Hemisphere.

1762- Catherine the Great got vaccinated for smallpox in front of her entire court, to prove to them there was nothing to be afraid of.
1776- Battle of Throg's Neck- The British amphibiously land a force behind George Washington's army in the Bronx and force the Americans to fall back to White Plains and then across the Hudson into New Jersey. Throg's Neck is a Dutch form of 'frog's neck'.

1800- The Independent Chronicle reported the national debt of the United States was around $70 million dollars. The Bank of the United States refused any additional loans to the government to help complete construction of Washington D.C. Today the debt of the United States is over three trillion.

1886- Beginning of Sherlock Holmes story:” Adventure of the Second Stain”.

1915- British nurse Edith Cavell was put up against a wall and shot by a German firing squad. She remained behind when allied armies retreated and was accused of espionage for helping wounded soldiers escape to neutral Holland. The execution of a 49 year old English matron, non-combatant outraged opinion in Britain and the US, and was played up by the press to drum up enthusiasm for the war.

1920- Champion racehorse Man O’ War won his last race.

1928- The Winnie the Pooh stories featuring Tigger are first published. 1937- Under pressure from parent Paramount Studio, Max Fleischer signed the first animation union contract and settled the cartoonist strike begun May 8th. A year later Fleischer tried to escape unions by moving his studio to Right-To-Work State Florida, where the governor bragged “ All the union organizers here are hanging from trees.” The additional expense and poor box office helped ruin his studio. 1940- Retired movie star Tom Mix “The King of the Cowboys” died in auto crash outside of Florence, Arizona. The 60 year old actor ignored signs that a bridge was out and drove into a dry gulley. A large overpacked suitcase popped out of his back seat, hit him in the back and broke his neck. The “Suitcase of Death” is preserved along with Tony the Wonder Horse at the Tom Mix Museum in Oklahoma.

1942- Louis Armstrong married his second wife, singer Lucille Watson. She made a home for him in a suburban neighborhood in Queens New York that Satchmo always returned to after traveling the world. 1960- During a long loud debate on colonialism during a speech by the Philippine Ambassador, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev got the attention of the U.N. General Assembly by taking off his shoe and banging it on the table. This caused an uproar so uncontrollable that the Secretary General U-Thant broke his gavel trying to restore order.

1964- Adding to their string of success in the Space Race, the Soviets launched Vokshod 1, the first capsule with a multi-person crew and the first ship where Cosmonauts didn’t need to wear their space suits inside.

1966- Sammy Davis Jr. appeared on the Batman TV Show. Sock-it-to-me!

1969- Police arrested Charles Manson inside Death Valley National Park.

1971-Weber & Rice’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger theater.

1977- Script completed for the classic film comedy Animal House. 1994- Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg announce their new studio would be named Dreamworks SKG.

1997- 53 year old singer John Denver died when he crashed his ultra-light Long E-Z plane into the ocean near Monterrey California. Later reports showed he was flying inebriated. An open sixpack of beer was found next to him. The impact was so great his body had to be identified by fingerprints.

1998- Matthew Shepard, an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming, was taken out to a field by a gang of other boys, tied to a rail fence and beaten savagely with a pistol. His assailants left him tied to the fence all night with no way to call for help. He was dead by morning. Matthew Shepard’s death caused a wave of revulsion nationwide against anti-gay violence.

2000- A suicide bomber in a speed boat blew a hole in the USN destroyer Cole in a harbor in Yemen, killing 16 American sailors. The attack was done by Al Qaeda, the same terrorist group that did the World Trade Center attack.

2001- After the 9-11 attack, NATO AWAC planes began patrolling the East Coast of the US. This is the first foreign aid for America since Lafayette helped General Washington in the American Revolution.

2005- Chinese archaeologists near the Yellow River discover the world’s oldest bowl of noodles. Someone’s fossilized noodle lunch from a bowl that tipped over in 2,000BC, and remained that way for 4,000 years.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which is further East? The Ozarks or the Appalachian Mountains?

Answer: The Ozarks are west of the Appalachians.