Question: Why is the only daughter of English poet Lord Byron associated with computers?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Which man was not an American President? Daniel Webster, Benjamin Harrison, Franklin Pierce, Grover Cleveland, Rutherford Hayes.
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History for 10/12/2019
Birthdays: "God's Imp"King Edward VI- only son of Henry VIII, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil 1798, Helena Modjeska, Ralph Vaughn-Williams, Alastair Crowley, Luciano Pavarrotti, animator Izzy Klein, Joan Rivers, Dick Gregory, Tony Kubek, Susan Anton, Kirk Cameron, Hugh Jackman is 51

1285- 180 Jews of Munich who refused to be baptized were burned to death in their synagogue.

1492- COLUMBUS STEPS 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 Taino Indians.
We can argue about his brutalizing of the natives, but one thing is undeniable, Columbus’ landing is the first step of one of the largest migrations in human history. The migration of the European and African peoples into the Western Hemisphere.

1776- Battle of Throgg's Neck- The British amphibiously land a force behind George Washington's army in the Bronx and force the Americans to retreat to White Plains and then across the Hudson into New Jersey. Throgg'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.

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- Thoroughbred 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, but the additional expenses and poor box office ruined 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 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 Sachmo 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 arrest 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. 25 years ago 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 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 Shepards’ 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 four thousand years.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which man was not an American President? Daniel Webster, Benjamin Harrison, Franklin Pierce, Grover Cleveland, Rutherford Hayes.

Answer: Daniel Webster was a famous congressman. He once said “ I’d rather be right than president.” Which is just how it worked out.

Question: Which man was not an American President? Daniel Webster, Benjamin Harrison, Franklin Pierce, Grover Cleveland, Rutherford Hayes.

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: You all heard of Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, and Clarence Nash the voice of Donald Duck, Jack Mercer was Popeye. But who was Pinto Colvig?
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History for 10/11/2019
Birthdays: Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Heinz the Ketchup king, Jerome Robbins, Carl Hubbard, Ron Leibman, John Candy, Omar Shariff, Ben Vereen, Art Blakey, Luke Perry, Joan Cusak, Sig Ruman– the fat actor with the goatee and the over-the-top German accent in the Marx Brothers comedies.

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Bruno of Cologne, the son of Saint Matilda and King Henry the Fowler.

1303- Pope Boniface VIII died. He was the Pope who first proclaimed Papal dominance in the bull Unam Sanctam, and who used to declare crusades against Italian families he didn't like. He died a raving lunatic in the dungeons of San Angelo eating the flesh off of his own arms. Dante hated him so much, in his poem "The Inferno" he has two devils stirring a boiling cauldron of lead and calling up to the world above:" Hey Boniface! When are you coming down? It's almost ready!"

1424- Czech general John of Ziska died of plague at age 64. He had never been defeated and led battles even when almost blind. When dying, he ordered that his body be skinned, and the skin dried and used to make a drum for his army.

1492- As the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria continue sailing west, Christopher Columbus' fear crazed men began to see signs that land was close at hand: floating driftwood, a carved stick, moths, a seabird.

1531- Battle of Kappell- Civil war broke out between the Swiss cantons that were Catholic and the Protestant ones. In this battle the Catholics won. Among the killed was Ulrich Zwingli, the great Protestant theologian.

1649- Oliver Cromwell ravaged rebellious Ireland with fire and sword. Today his Ironside army captured the Irish town of Wexford and massacred the inhabitants. A month earlier when the town of Drogheda was stormed, many thought the massacre was due to the stubbornness of its defense. But the slaying of the defenders of little Wexford showed that Cromwell intended to use terror as a weapon to pacify Ireland. No pity would be shown.

1737- A huge earthquake in Bejing China killed 300,000. 1776- The Battle of Valcour Island- American patriot Benedict Arnold builds a little navy on Lake Champlain and lets himself get shot up to slow down a huge British invasion force under Canadian Governor-General Sir Guy Carleton. Because of Arnold's delaying tactics it became too late in the year to cut off Washington's army retreating from New York and crush the Revolution in it's first year. Sir Guy Carleton's force had to return to Canada and wait until April for the Spring thaw. Valcour Island sometimes is called the first action of the U.S. Navy. One of Arnold’s little boats was recovered and today is in the Smithsonian.

1779- Battle of Savannah- Polish immigrant Count Casimir Pulaski was killed leading an American cavalry attack against British positions in Georgia. He had been involved in a plot to kidnap the King of Poland, was a lover of Catherine the Great, and was in debtor's prison in Marseilles before running into Ben Franklin who sent him to America. He was the only officer to ever hold the rank in the U.S. Army of Master of Horse.

1800- The remaining French army trapped in Egypt and abandoned by Napoleon, made a deal with the Egyptians and their English allies to get evacuated back to France. One of the things that had to give up to the Brits was the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Ancient Hieroglyphics. Another thing the French troops brought back to Europe was marijuana, easily purchased in Egyptian bazaars. The old soldiers said the weed didn’t give you a hangover like drinking brandy did and made recovering from wounds easier.

1809- MERIWETHER LEWIS’ SUICIDE- Colonel Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame, shot himself -twice. He missed and wounded himself in the head the first time. He was 35. Meriwether Lewis was governor of Upper Louisiana (Missouri, Wisconsin, Montana, Illinois) and was the personal protégé of Presidents Jefferson and Monroe. It’s not inconceivable to assume that he would have been president one day.
Some contend that Lewis didn't commit suicide but was murdered, because it was at a small tavern on the Natchez Trace, he had been arguing with some men along the road, and he was found with two head wounds, and his belly slashed with a bowie knife. Another scholar recently theorized Lewis was suffering from delirium caused by advanced syphilis, which he may have contracted from a Shoshone woman while on the great trek over the Rockies.

His friends Jefferson and Captain Clark maintained Lewis was emotionally overwrought and was drinking too much. What an important United States Governor was doing riding all alone with no staff on a country road is still a mystery.

1867- General George Armstrong Custer was courts-martialed for leaving his post without permission to see his wife Libby, and ordering his men to shoot deserters and marching his troops too excessively. He was found guilty but only given a years suspension of pay.

1868- Telegraph operator Thomas Edison patented his first invention. It was a device that recorded the votes of legislators automatically. It proved unpopular with politicians because it eliminated their ability to rig votes.

1890- The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) formed. 1899- THE BOER WAR BEGAN. Ever since the British took over South Africa they had to contend with the fiercely independent German Dutch settlers called Afrikaners or Boers. Warfare flared up in 1886 but was settled temporarily.
Now egged on by the German Kaiser, and threatened by the nationalistic pressures of English speaking immigrants (Uitlanders), President Kruger of the Transvaal ("Oom Paul" -Uncle Paul) attacked the Orange Free State and the Cape Colony to throw off British domination. The Boers were defeated after three bloody years which saw the development of military barbed wire, khaki uniforms replacing redcoats (from the Persian word for dust, advocated by Arthur Conan-Doyle) and concentration camps. Twenty five thousand Boers died, of them only five thousand were soldiers, the rest were uprooted civilians stuffed into camps with inadequate sanitary conditions.
Despite his belligerent talk, the Kaiser begged off sending any aid, despite pleas from the Queen of Holland. When German-Americans asked Vice Presidential candidate Teddy Roosevelt to condemn British actions, Teddy replied: " It is right and natural that stronger nations should gobble up weaker ones!”

1906- The San Francisco Board of Education ordered children of Chinese and Japanese ancestry placed in segregated schools. This act caused great popular resentment back in Japan who thought the Americans were their friends after helping settle their war with Russia. President Teddy Roosevelt intervened and forced San Fran to rescind their law.

1910- Teddy Roosevelt becomes the first U. S. President to fly in an airplane.

1939- Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt describing the feasibility of atomic weapons, and urging the US to begin an atomic program before Hitler created an A-Bomb. Years later with atomic weapons a reality, Einstein said of his letter of Oct.11, “ It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

1942- As the Russian Army continued to collapse before the Nazi invasion, dictator Josef Stalin reacted in the best way he knew- an act of terror. This day he signed Order # 227. It ordered no further retreat and the penalty of death for cowardice. The Russian Secret Police NKVD planted troops behind the combat soldiers called blockers who machine-gunned anyone falling back. They also set up Penal Battalions of solders arrested for cowardice. The only way out of these suicide squads was to show a wound got in battle, in which case your record would read” Atoned with his own blood”.

1944-“ To Have and to Have Not,” written by Ernest Hemingway premiered. The movie paired Humphrey Bogart with a sultry Harpers model turned actress Betty Persky, now renamed Lauren Bacall. Bacall originally had a higher voice but director Howard Hawks told her to go behind the soundstage and scream for an hour every day to bring her voice down to a dusky, sexy alto. It worked on Bogart, who fell in love and married her despite his being 44 and she 20 years old. They nicknamed each other Slim and Steve after the characters in the film. “If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.”

1960- The Bugs Bunny Show premiered on TV. “Overture, hit the lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh what heights we’ll hit…..etc..”

1962- Pope John XXIII convened the 2Nd Ecumenical Council. Nicknamed Vatican II, it instituted major reforms in the Catholic Church including ordering the Mass said in the vernacular instead of Latin, and toleration of Judaism and other faiths. Many conservative Catholic splinter groups including the one Mel Gibson belonged to are still mad about Vatican II.

1967- The NY Times printed an image of a female nude by Bell Lab artists-in-residence Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton. Titled Study in Perception I, It was done on a computer as a digital mosaic of thousands of numbers. It was an early breakthrough image in CGI.

1968- Apollo 7 blasted off.

1975- NBC needed a Saturday replacement for the Best Of Carson reruns, so Lorne Michaels’ TV show SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE premiered. Featuring the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players: John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Chevy Chase, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Mike O’Donaghue. First guest host George Carlin did his opening monologue while stoned.
Albert Brooks did a short film and Andy Kaufman did his Mighty Mouse lip sync bit.
Paul Shaefer conducted the music and the show was held in NBC’s Studio 8H, which was built originally for Maestro Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony of the Air. At the last moment a sketch by young Billy Crystal was cut from the show.

The show also revived the career of announcer Don Pardo, who had trouble finding work since the original Jeopardy Show was canceled. He was the announcer for the show until his death in 2014 at age 96.

1975- Bill Clinton married Hillary Rodham.

1976- After the death of Chairman Mao, Chinese authorities arrest his widow Chiang Ching and three followers and accuse them of plotting a coup- the Gang of Four.

1978- Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Sid was too stoned to explain why he had killed the love of his life. It’s assumed they had a suicide pact. Vicious died of an overdose before his trial.

1987- The AIDS Quilt was first displayed on the National Mall in Washington.

1991- Comedian Redd Foxx was famous for doing bits like faking a heart attack. This day on the set of his new series the Royal Family, while joking with Della Reese, he clutched his chest and fell over. Everyone thought he was faking and laughed. He died at the hospital an hour later.

2001- V.S. Naipul won the Nobel Prize for literature.

2005- Andrea Merkel named Chancellor of Germany. She is the first woman to lead Germany and the first head of state from the former East Germany.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: You all heard of Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, and Clarence Nash the voice of Donald Duck, Jack Mercer was Popeye. But who was Pinto Colvig?

Answer: Colvig was the voice of Goofy, Grumpy in Snow White, and Gabby in Gulliver’s Travels. He was also one of the earliest to play Bozo the Clown.

Quiz: You all heard of Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, and Clarence Nash the voice of Donald Duck, Jack Mercer was Popeye. But who was Pinto Colvig?

Yesterday’s question answered below: My mom used to say to me,” You keep doing all that reading and drawing you’re gonna be cockeyed!” What is the origin of cockeyed?
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History for 10/10/2019
Birthdays: Martin Luther, Giuseppe Verdi, Henry Cavendish 1731- the chemist who discovered Hydrogen, Helen Hayes, Mary Blair, Louis Lumiere, Thelonius Monk, Rod Scribner, Early female animator LaVerne Harding, Boer leader Paul Kruger, Ed Wood Jr., Alberto Giacometti, Tanya Tucker, Harold Pinter, Richard Tucker, James Clavel, Jodi Benson the Little Mermaid, David Lee Roth, Bradley Whitford is 61, Sharon Osbourne is 67

1469- Renaissance master artist Fra Filippo Lippi died, probably poisoned by the family of a girl he seduced. The great painter was a major influence on Leonardo da Vinci and Massaccio, but for a monk he had an immoderate lust for women. He left one son, the artist Filipino Lippi, by his wife Lucrezia Buti, a nun he had carried off from the convent of Santa Margherita promising to use her as a model for the Madonna.

1492- According to Columbus's diary, this was the worst day of his sailor’s disaffection. Their pleas to turn around and go home almost broke out into open mutiny, but still Columbus refused to turn back.

1520- ERASMUS EXILED- The Great humanist scholar had tried to steer a neutral course between the growing feud between Catholics and Protestants. He preferred to stay a Catholic while sending Martin Luther advice, and encouraging moderation to all.

The result was both sides hated him as a traitorous heretic. On this day he was hounded out of his home in Louvain by the Papal nuncio. The archbishop of Toledo who had defended him in Rome was burned at the stake. Desiderio Erasmus, ill and elderly, wandered from Switzerland to France to Austria until he was finally allowed to die in peace in Basel -even though Protestant leader John Calvin protested.

1770- At Mission San Gabriel in Old California, a Spanish soldier killed a Chumash Indian chief who sought revenge for the rape of his wife. An uprising was put down and the Church responded with a period of forced baptisms.

1794- Battle of Mazowzse - Thaddeus Kosciuszko's attempt to bring what he learned from the American Revolution home to Poland, doesn't work against the Czar’s army.

1800- The Gabriel Prosser Slave Revolt. Gabriel Prosser was a Virginia slave who planned an organized uprising in the Richmond area. He was described by a contemporary as “a fellow of courage and intellect above his rank in life.”
His plan was to set fire to the downtown wharves as a distraction then seize guns from the armory and negotiate from strength for his followers freedom. His plan had specific instructions about who was friend or foe. He wrote: “Once armed Kill Everyone except Methodists, Quakers and Frenchmen.” Informers betrayed his plan before he could put it into action, and this day Prosser and his men were all hanged.

1842- King Frederich Wilhelm IV issued a new style of headgear to the Prussian Army, a pressed leather and metal helmet with a distinctive spike on top. The spiked helmet became famous and was called the Pickelhaube, or Pickle Sticker. It lasted until World War One in 1918.

1845- The US Naval Academy at Annapolis opened.

1846- Neptune’s moon Triton discovered by William Lassell.

1886- The first Tuxedo worn by Pierre Lorrilard at the Autumn Ball at Tuxedo Park, New York. Another story of the origin of the fashion was supposedly invented by English gentleman on safari with Bertie the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). Wanting to appear at dinner formally but because of heat and high spikey grass they cut the lower part of their long dinner jackets off.

1911- Ten-Ten National Day- Chinese demanding a republic seize the city of Wuhan and begin to march to Beijing. Their leader Dr. Sun Yat Sen was at this time in Denver soliciting funds for their cause. The Wuhan Uprising is the beginning of the final overthrow of the Manchu Emperors. One of the revolutionaries first recruits was a young Hunan man named Mao Zedong.

1953- "Winky Dink and You" show. Children were invited to place a piece of celluloid acetate on their t.v. screens from a kit and help Winky Dink through numerous adventures by drawing on their TV screens. Of course many kids didn’t wait for the acetate but just drew on their family TVs with indelible markers. The birth of Interactive T.V.

1957- RKO Studios, who produced King Kong, The John Ford Westerns and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, was sold to Desilu- the television production company owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez.

1957- President Eisenhower had to apologize to Komla Gbdemah, a diplomat from Ghana, after he was refused service at a segregated restaurant in Dover, Delaware.

1962- The BBC banned on air play of a novelty record The Monster Mash, by Bobby Picket. For some reason they considered it offensive.

1968- Jane Fonda does her zero-gravity striptease and runs into a kinky organist Duran-Duran, the film Barbarella premiered.

1971- The reconstructed London Bridge dedicated at Lake Havasu City Arizona. Moving London Bridge from the Thames to the American Southwest was the brainchild of Kirk McCullough, the chainsaw tycoon. After winning the auction of the bridge as he flew home he filled out the little customs declaration card- "Amount of goods you are bringing into the country, not to exeed $400. McCullough wrote-" One Bridge. $2,500,000.00. Antique, therefore – TARIFF EXEMPT."

1973- Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. He was under indictment for accepting bribes and pleaded no contest to one count of income tax evasion. Until Nixon picked House Minority leader Gerald Ford for veep there was a lively discussion over who would be president if Nixon fell. The House Speaker (3rd in line) was also facing charges. Lots of jokes about the under secretary of game and fisheries, etc. Lyndon Johnson had said of Jerry Ford: "Jerry's a good senator, but sometimes I think he played too much football with his helmet off."

1979-The Panama Canal Zone returned to Panamanian sovereignty.

1980- Actor William 'Billy" Thomas, also known in the Our Gang kiddie comedies as Buckwheat, died at 49. His last words weren't "O' Taay !"

1985- Orson Welles and Yul Brynner die one hour apart. They were both 70. Welles had just finished taping yet another appearance on the Merv Griffin Show. Brynner had a furious smoking habit, supposedly leaving one lit cigarette in every room of his house as he paced around thinking. When he knew he was dying of the stuff, he recorded several television spots to be aired after his death. He looked squarely at camera and said: " I smoked. -Don't."

2002- Intimidated into believing Iraq was about to attack America with nuclear weapons, and fear in the general population of another 9-11 style terrorist attack, the U.S. Congress voted overwhelming war-making powers to President George W. Bush. He pledged to us to use them only as a last resort, although we now know his team had been secretly drawing up Iraq invasion plans for months. The U.S. invasion of Iraq began the following March. And we are still there.

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Yesterday’s Question: My mom used to say to me,” You keep doing all that reading and drawing you’re gonna be cockeyed!” What is the origin of cockeyed?

Answer: “cockeyed” From the Irish and Gaelic word “caog,” meaning “wink,” especially in the compound “caogshuileach,” meaning “squint-eyed.” Originally meaning someone whose eyes are out of sync or otherwise irregular, later meaning an idea which it rash, ill-considered or wildly irregular. (Thanks, DP)

Question: My mom used to say to me,” You keep doing all that reading and drawing you’re gonna be cockeyed!” What is the origin of cockeyed?

Quiz: What is meant when you write in Blank Verse?
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History for 10/9/2019
Birthdays: Camille Saint Saens, E. Howard Hunt, Jacques Tati, Alastair Sim, Bruce Catton, Joe Pepitone, cartoonist Mike Peters, Savannah, John Lennon would be 79, his son Sean Lennon, E. Howard Hunt, Scott Bakula, Peter Tosh, Charles Rudolph Walgren-the inventor of the modern Drugstore, Guillermo Del Toro is 54, Tony Schaloub is 66, Pete Doctor is 51.

270AD- Saint Denis and several followers were sent to preach in Paris ( then Lutetia, home of a Gaulish tribe called the Parisi). The local Roman authorities had them rounded up and beheaded on a small hill north of town. The hill is today called the Hill of Martyrs, or Montmartre. The legend goes Saint Denis was so indignant at this lack of hospitality, that he picked up his head and walked out of town. Where he reached the city limits his body dropped down lifeless. This is where basilica of St. Denis (1122) stands.

1000AD- VIKINGS DISCOVER AMERICA. Viking Leif Ericsson beached his dragonships in Labrador, Canada. He calls it Vinland. There are several theories why: one was because of an abundance of grapevines he discovered. Another is that the old Norse crossed with Latin Vinland could also be described as Land of Pastures. The Vikings settled a colony in America but it didn't take, and was withdrawn for unknown reasons. Perhaps the mini-Ice Age temperatures that made it tough even for Scandinavians. The second expedition under Thorfinn Karlsefni called the Indians they met Skraelings, and claimed they met a race of one legged men.

1192- Richard the Lionheart left the Holyland. End of the Third Crusade. He planned to return in 1196 and take back Jerusalem from Saladin, but he died first.

410 Years Ago 1609- Invalid Captain John Smith is put on a ship back to England. Smith had earlier gotten stung by a stingray and almost died. This time a powder horn exploded on his hip and blew out part of his side. While Smith was leader of the Jamestown Colony he had many enemies among the jealous gentry. Some don't think he had an accident. Opinions also differ as to why the Jamestown settlers put Smith through a two month Atlantic crossing that could kill even healthy men. Some say they were hoping he wouldn't make it.
He survived but never returned to Jamestown. Nobody told Pocahontas, and when she visited camp the men told her he was dead and forget about him. She would meet him ten years later in England when she was a wife and mother of the children of settler John Rolfe.

1635- Pilgrim Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts colony for saying the government should not be involved in determining someone’s religion.

1701- Yale University chartered.

1744- Peace of Kleinschellendorf- Frederick II the Great makes peace with Maria Theresa of Austria ending Prussian participation in the War of Austrian Succession.

1779- THE LUDDITES- A movement of English peasants and tradesmen started by a man named Ned Lud who felt that all this newfangled machinery was going to cost them their jobs. The Luddites roamed the countryside smashing any looms, pistons, flywheels or other such devices they encountered. A similar movement in France. French peasants would remove their wooden clogs, called sabots, and throw them into a machine's gears to jam them, and coined the term Saboteurs.

1781- George Washington and the Comte du Rochambeau commenced the bombardment of English positions opening the Battle of Yorktown. Not much credit is given that although Rochambeau considered himself the more experienced tactician he deferred to Washington as the commander of the allied army. Privately Rocheambeau didn’t think the American rebels had much of a chance, still, when the Yankee payrolls dried up he paid the US troops out of is own fortune.

1809- The first Royal Jubilee celebrated in England. The monarchy had taken a number of hits lately. King George III was a blind, insane shut in and the Prince and Princess of Wales were separated. So an old widow named Mrs Biggs came up with the idea of a celebration of King George's 50th anniversary of his reign as a way to boost morale. It worked and it's been a custom ever since.

1855- James Stoddard patents the steam calliope.

1888- The Washington Monument finally opened to the public. Construction on it was begun in 1840 and discontinued for a decade during the Civil War. Work was also held up when Protestant workmen refused to use marble donated by Pope Pius IX.

1905- The World Series resumes after a one year haggle between the owners of the American and National leagues. A best of seven contest between the N.Y. Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics. It would continue undisturbed until 1994 with the players strike.

1938- Eugene O'Neill's play 'The Iceman Cometh' opened.

1951- RKO Pictures asked Marilyn Monroe to please wear panties while working, She was upsetting the film crew.

1963- Uganda became a republic from a British Colony.

1981- Sir Hugh Hudson’s movie Chariots of Fire, about British Olympians at the 1924 Paris Olympics became a sleeper hit. The decision to let Greek composer Vangelis score the period film with an all-electronic synthesizer soundtrack became a sensation. Soon most of the movies of that time had synthesizer tracks. People said orchestras and bands would all be obsolete.

1983- Ronald Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt was forced to resign. Watt was a former oil industry lawyer who galvanized popular anger over his views on ecology, such as what's wrong with a few MacDonald’s hamburger stands in the Grand Canyon? Yet he refused to allow the Beach Boys to perform at a public 4th of July concert in DC because he felt they attracted: ”An unsavory element”. The thing that proved Watt’s downfall was a comment he made about a government panel he had just convened. Quote Mr Watt:” We have all bases covered. We have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple!”

1986- People said there would never be more than three networks. Today the first show of the fourth network, The Fox Network's the Joan River's Show, premiered. That show didn't last, but future hits like The Simpson's, Married With Children and the X-Files made Fox a major network within ten years.

1989- First edition of Penthouse Magazine in Hebrew. Oy Vey!

2009- President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is meant when you write in Blank Verse?

Answer: Blank verse is poetry that does not rhyme, but is written in a metric pattern, usually iambic pentameter. Or as FG wrote me:

Today’s reply is not above reproach,
It has to do with rhythm and with length
With accents every other to a beat
But rhyming not in poetry or prose.

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Quiz: What is meant when you write in Blank Verse?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What does it mean when you call someone or something bourgeois?
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History for 10/8/2019
Birthdays: Eddie Rickenbacker, Rev Jesse Jackson, Juan Peron, David Carradine, Art Babbitt -the creator of Goofy would be 112, Chevy Chase is 76, Paul Hogan, Ruben Mamoulian, Edward Zwick, Johnny Ramone, Bruno Mars, Sigourney Weaver is 70, Matt Damon is 49

Today is the feast day of Saint Demetrius of Thesalonikki

451AD- The Council of Chalcedon opened.

1777- During the Revolution, British General Clinton tried to get a message through to Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne and his army trapped at Saratoga. He sent a Tory-Loyalist scout with a message rolled up and hidden in a solid silver capsule. When he was intercepted by the Americans, the loyalist swallowed the capsule before he was searched. He was given a heavy emetic "whereupon he soon produced the capsule, which he proceeded to grab and swallow again. Another emetic was administered and he produced the capsule again." The message was opened and read, then the man was hanged as a spy."

1846- Battle of Old Woman's Gun (also called The Battle of Dominguez Ranch). In 1846 During the Mexican War, United States forces had taken the pueblo of Los Angeles. But after a few weeks the first Yankee mayor, a Lt. Gillespie, was so hated, that the Mexican citizens drove them out of town. On this day the US forces came up from their fleet anchored in San Pedro Harbor and tried to re-take the town. Mexican forces led by a rancher and son of the former governor Jose Carillo routed the Yankees in part with an old 4 pound signal cannon that an old lady had buried in her front yard. She had hid the old gun when Gillespie ordered the population disarmed. The Angeleanos had no gun carriage so they lashed the old gun to a wagon harness.
Six months later, the US forces finally overcame LA resistance and the town stayed American.

1862-THE BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE- Union forces defeat General Baxton Bragg's Confederates and prevent Kentucky from joining the Confederacy. Abe Lincoln said: " I hope I have God on my side, but I Must have Kentucky." The Confederates had actually pushed the Yankees off the field and were at the edge of victory, but Bragg overestimated the enemies strength the next day and ordered a general retreat, wasting everything they gained. His second in command General Kirby Smith resigned in disgust. The commander of the Union Army Gen. Don Carlos Buell, was so distracted with other business that he was unaware that his army had fought a battle. He was soon replaced.

1871- THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE- Legend said in a shed behind 137 DeKoven St, Old Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocks over a lantern and starts a fire that burns down 17,500 buildings and kills 300 including Mayor Roswell Mason. The fire jumped the Chicago River and people rode their carriages into Lake Michigan and even jumped into open graves to escape. Eventually the firemen’s pumpers ran out of water and the Northside kept burning past Fullerton until it burned itself out when it hit open prairie. 300,000 were left homeless. One of the only downtown buildings to survive the inferno was Chicago’s beloved old water tower. The slaughter houses and grain elevators also survived so business could go on. Ironically the O'Leary house stayed intact, just the barn burned. Two journalists later admitted inventing the O’Leary cow story to sell newspapers.

1871-THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE- The most deadly fire in North American history occurred on the exact same day as the Chicago Fire, but this one was in Peshtigo Wisconsin. A forest fire started by loggers burning debris built into a firestorm (actually a flaming tornado) and destroyed a wooden town killing 1,200 in a town of 1,750, five times as many deaths as the Chicago Fire. The tornado caught dozens of people during church services. Three hundred died trying to escape across a wooden bridge that caught fire and burned from both ends. Survivors saw "people and cows stagger a few feet and go down burning brightly, like so many pieces of pitch pine." A heavy rain fell the next day. One day late.

1906- In Paris, Swiss inventor Ludwig Pressler demonstrated the first electric 'permanent -wave' hair curler.

1907- Charles Frederick Dow, one of the founders of the Wall Street Journal, started his system of charting the average performance of industrial stocks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
 
1915- The Battle of Loos. British troops release poison gas at the German lines. The wind shifts and blows it back on their own men. Doh!

1918- SERGANT YORK- simple Tennessee hillbilly Alvin York was drafted into the U.S. Army where his crack shot talents enabled him this day to shoot up an entire German regiment. When his captain asked “ What did you do Alvin? Shoot the entire German Army?” He replied “ Nossuh, just 132 of them…” He captured 300 prisoners alone with only his single shot Springfield rifle. He got the Medal of Honor and a tickertape parade. Then went back to the Ozarks where he resumed his life of making moonshine, and other rustic pursuits.

1929- British Imperial Airways shows the first in-flight movie.

1933- HOLLYWOOD ACTORS FIRST MASS PROTEST- When Franklin Roosevelt created the NRA to fix wages and prices to try and solve the Depression, he even went as far as to try to regulate Motion Picture rates and fees. The catch was the rates were drafted with the advice of friends of the studio heads.
The actors went ballistic when they saw new rules, such as a cap on actors salaries of $100,000 a year (the producers had no such cap), restriction of actors independent agents, and terms of an old salary contract could stay in effect even after the contract expired, until it was renegotiated.
This night, at the El Capitan theater, hundreds of actors met to draft a petition calling for rewriting of the codes. The activists included Paul Muni, Frederic March, Jeanette MacDonald, Bettie Davis, Groucho Marx and Boris Karloff. Earth tremors from the Long Beach Earthquake made the actors move across the street to Grauman's Chinese parking lot .
SAG president Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz) was considered politically too left to face FDR, so he stepped down in favor of comedian Eddie Cantor, who had helped Vaudeville acts unionize. Cantor went to the president's retreat at Warm Springs Georgia with the petition, and had the hated articles taken out of the code.

1935- Ozzie Nelson married Harriet.

1945- "Bloody Monday" During a big strike three hundred and fifty armed thugs club their way through picketing Warner Bros. film workers. Jack Warner had stationed sharpshooters behind the studios billboards. A logo on the studio wall said:" Better Movies through Better Citizenship", which the union folk changed to "Better Movies through Better Marksmanship". Similar scenes were happening in front of Fox and MGM.

1957- Walter O'Malley announced the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles.

1957- Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his hit Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire.

1958- Swedish Arne Laarsen received the first artificial implanted heart pacemaker. Over the years he had 17 operations and a dozen more pacemakers put in him as the designs improved. Without the pacemaker he would have died at age 40, instead he died in 2000 at age 86 of skin cancer. Arne Laarsen outlived all his original doctors.

1967- In Bolivia guerrilla leader Ernesto Che' Guevara was captured and shot. Che' started as an Argentine doctor and was wracked with asthma most of his life. He had gone to Bolivia after quarreling with Fidel Castro about whether it was more important to export Cuban revolution the rest of Latin America or concentrate on building Cuba's economy. Thirty years later in 1997 his remains were identified and returned to Cuba for burial.

1968- The movie Romeo & Juliet premiered. Director Franco Zefirelli caused a sensation by casting young people to play the young people! Olivia Hussey was 16, and Leonard Whiting was 17. Romeo & Juliet was the last time a film of a Shakespeare play was ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

1970- Dissident Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsin was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Soviet State kept him in internal exile and refused to let him travel to accept his prize. He was exiled to America in 1974 and returned to Russia after the fall of communism.

1971- John Lennon first released the song Imagine.

2004- Home decorating guru Martha Stewart began serving her 5 month prison term for perjury and insider trading.

2005- A massive earthquake in Pakistan killed 73,000.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean when you call someone or something bourgeois?

Answer: From Bourgeoisie, a French term for being Middle Class. Up from working class, but not gentry or aristocracy. Calling something bourgeois has come to mean say it denotes middle class, materialist values, lacking refined or good taste. Akin to being kitschy.