Quiz: When we answer a party invitation, it is with an rsvp. What does RSVP stand for?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Where is the Patagonian Coast? Can you order flannel shirts there?
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History for 9/1/2019
Welcome to September from Septembrius Mensis, After August the Romans ran out of names for months. Septembrius means month number 7, March being the first month of the Roman Calendar. Birthdays: Joachim Pachebel, Gentleman Jim Corbet, Sir Roger Casement, Seiji Ozawa, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Walter Reuther founder of the United Auto Workers, Englebert Humperdinck- the 19th century composer, Conway Twitty, Jack Hawkins, Leonard Slatkin, Yvonne DeCarlo, Gloria Estefan, Mike Lah, Boxcar Willie, Richard Farnsworth, Lily Tomlin is 80
338BC- BATTLE OF CHAERONEA. Phillip of Macedon, with his son Alexander the Great, defeated the combined armies of the Greek citystates. The Macedonian victory united Greece for the first time under their rule. It was said that night Phillip celebrated by getting roaring drunk, then going out on the battlefield and dancing on the bodies of the slain. The elite corps of the Theban army was the Sacred Band, a unit where every warrior was married to the man next to him. This way you are less likely to run away from a battle if your lover is next to you rather than a stranger. The system worked, none broke ranks, the Sacred Band fought and died to the last man.
1642- THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR BEGAN- Charles I of England, tired of arguing with his Parliament over money, religion and legislative power, set up his standard at Nottingham and called for the nobles of the Realm to bring troops to put down his saucy subjects.

1661- King Charles II introduced England to a sport he picked up in Holland, Yacht racing. Yacght is Dutch for little ship. This day in front of the court the King and his brother James raced each other down the Thames. 1715- French King Louis XIV, the Sun King, died at 76. He said: "Idiots! Did you think I would live forever?" later " Hmmm, I thought dying would be harder." His mistress Madame DeMaintenon once complained to the Archbishop that the king still insisted on sex every day and at 68 she was tired. He replied: "It is all our duty to obey the king." 1730- Benjamin Franklin married Deborah Regan, the mother of his illegitimate son William. William nursed a lasting hatred of his father for his shoddy treatment of him. When the revolution broke out William Franklin was the Royalist Governor of New Jersey. When Ben Franklin died he left nothing in his will to his son: " It is as much as he would have left me were the roles reversed."

1772- The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa founded in California.

1774- EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE LEXINGTON AND CONCORD- Royal Governor in Boston General Thomas Gage had been ordered by London to get tough with these unruly colonials. This day he sent a force of redcoats to Cambridge to confiscate a store of gunpowder he believed would be used against him. The word spread that the troops were coming and the rumors grew to wild proportions. All the way in Connecticut and New York the rumor was Gage's men were burning farms and bayoneting innocent people in their beds.
As the redcoat troops marched off they noticed hundreds of heavily armed farmers emerging from the woods, only dispersing after hearing that the atrocity stories were false. An army of Minutemen had materialized with hours before the British officer’s eyes and disappeared as quickly. Gage wrote London that things were getting out of hand. 1775- British King George III asks Czarina Catherine the Great for 20,000 Russian troops to put down the American rebellion. She declined, but later said: "If I were my cousin George, rather than give up my American colonies I would sooner put a pistol to my head." The British crown did buy mercenaries from the Elector of Hess, the famous Hessians. The cost England for ten pounds, ten penny a man. The elector became very rich exporting his subjects, he received an extra charge whenever one was killed or wounded. Frederick the Great of Prussia charged cattle tax when they were transported over his territory. The Rothschild Bank was founded to handle the expenses. Of the 15,000 Hessians sent to America, only 5,000 ever returned. The rest weren't all killed, most decided to stay, settle down and become Americans.

1785 - Mozart publishes 6 string quartet Opus 10 in Vienna.

1799 - The Manhattan Company chartered. This was a clever bit of maneuvering by Aaron Burr to move in on the banking trade dominated by Alexander Hamilton’s rival The Bank of New York. The Manhattan Company was proposed as a concern to finance the building of new sources of fresh water. New York City’s mushrooming population was constantly beset by diseases of poor sanitation- yellow fever, dysentery, typhus. Hamilton controlled the State Legislature, but saw nothing wrong in building aqueducts. So the company was granted a charter.
Deep in the companies boiler plate text was an amendment allowing it to open a bank as well. Much to Hamilton’s chagrin the Manhattan Bank opened. The Manhattan Bank in 1840 dropped its water projects and united with the Chase Bank to form the Chase Manhattan Bank. This was another thing that annoyed Hamilton about Burr. They would settle their argument with pistols in 1804, but Chase is still around today.

1802 – The Aurora, a scandalous newspaper, first accused President Thomas Jefferson of having an 'improper relationship' with his slave Sally Hemmings. “Dusky Sally” was the child of Jefferson’s own father in law and his slave that Jefferson had inherited. When they met in 1786 he was in his late forties and she was fourteen. Friends said they lived together like man and wife for 38 years. In 1998 DNA testing of descendants proved Jefferson indeed created offspring with his servant Ms. Hemmings, although outraged Jefferson apologists are still trying to blame the paternity on a cousin. 1807- Chief Justice John Marshall finds former Vice President Aaron Burr not guilty of treason against the United States. President Thomas Jefferson was so mad that Marshall let his old enemy off the hook that he tried to have the chief justice impeached and had Burr's defense attorney, Luther Martin, put in jail. Burr always maintained his real purpose was the conquest of Texas. He lived long enough to see Texas independence and remarked” I was right! Only thirty years too soon”.

1836- A wagon train of Presbyterian missionaries reached the site of Walla-Walla Washington. One member of the party Narcissa Whitman, was the first white woman to cross the Rockies.

1836- In Jerusalem, Rabbi Judah Hasid began to build his synagogue and his reform movement- Hasidim. 1852-The Hot Dog or Frankfurter was invented by a group of butchers in Frankfurt, Germany. It didn't catch on in the U.S until it was served at the opening the Coney Island Exhibition in 1894, where it was billed as a Vienna Sausage or Red Hots. Dog was one newspaper's speculation upon the origins of the meat. It was first served at a baseball game in 1910.

1859- The first Pullman sleeping car train went into service.

1864- After Sherman threatened his last escape route at Decatur, General John Bell Hood abandoned the City of Atlanta to the Yankees. By now the 34 year old Texas born General Hood had his arm amputated at Gettysburg and a leg blown off a Chickamagua. He required straps to hold him up in his saddle. Yet he survived the Civil War, became a US senator and fathered nine children.
1870- THE BATTLE OF SEDAN. French Emperor Napoleon III lost his Empire losing to the Prussians and gets captured to boot. He had allowed himself to be bottled up in a fortress and pounded on all sides by new long distance German steel cannon. French General LaCroix wrote: " We are caught in a chamberpot and here comes la merde." When it came time to surrender the generals couldn't bear the humiliation, so they sent LaCroix out to do the honors.

1885- Mrs. Emma Nutt became the first telephone switchboard operator. At first telephone companies used telegraph errand boys to connect calls, but switched to women after customers complained of the boys saucy wisecracks and rude attitude on the phone.

1897- The Boston T-train opened. Between Park St and Boylston. The first subway line in the U.S.

1901 - Construction began on NY Stock Exchange.

1905-The Canadian territories of Prince Rupertland become the Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

1913 - George Bernard Shaw’s play "Androcles & the Lion," premieres in London.

1916- The Keating-Owen act banned child labor from interstate commerce. 100 Years Ago 1919- Pat Sullivan's 'Feline Follies" cartoon staring Felix the Cat. Felix is the first true animated star, not depended on a previous newspaper comic strip. His body prototype, a black peanut shape with four fingers, will be the standard for years to come. By 1926 he was the most popular star in Hollywood after Chaplin and Valentino. Lindbergh had a Felix doll in his plane and it has been speculated that Groucho Marx copied his famous strut. The first television image broadcast by scientists in 1926 was of a Felix doll.

1923- The Kanto Earthquake. Tokyo and Yokohama are destroyed by the largest earthquake recorded in the twentieth century. 100,000 died.

1928- Paul Terry premiered his sound cartoon RCA Photophone system for a short called "Dinner Time". Young studio head Walt Disney came by train out from Los Angeles to see it. He telephoned his brother Roy back in L.A." My Gosh, Terrible! A Lot of Racket and Nothing Else!" He said they could continue completing their first sound cartoon "Steamboat Willie". 1932-Mayor Jimmy Walker resigned as Mayor of New York. The corrupt but colorful Walker was a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote a hit song "Will you love me in September like you do in May.?" and flouted his chorus girl mistress at social functions. The man who served out Walker’s term was John P. ”Boo-Boo” O’Brian, another Tamany machine politician who was so inept that when a reporter asked who he planned to name as the new Sewer Commissioner O’Brian said “A decision hasn’t been given me yet..” 1939- FIRST CANNES FILM FESTIVAL- The premiere film event in Europe had been the Venice Film Festival but western democracies tired of the bias of the judges for Fascist and Nazi films. For example Walt Disney was annoyed his Snow White, the box office and critical champ of 1938, lost out to Leni Reifenstahl's Olympia. So the little French Riviera city was chosen as the site for a new festival. Two days after opening World War II was declared and the festival shut down until 1946. 1939- WORLD WAR II BEGAN. The Nazi Army blitzkriegs into Poland. Britain and France declared war two days later. Blitzkrieg meant Lightning War- heavy motorized tanks and troops moving at full speed into an enemies interior while the airforce destroyed most of the Polish air force still on the ground. The outdated Polish Army still fought with cavalry. The Nazis propaganda Ministry rigged up a border incident to claim Polish troops had fired first. They put dead concentration camp victims in German uniforms in a plan called Operation Canned Goods. So all through the massive invasion the operation was referred to in the German media as the “Counter Offensive”

1939- Hitler ordered the mentally ill sent to concentration camps.

1939 – The Physics Review published the first paper on a celestial phenomena called "black holes".

1941- Hitler passed a law ordering Jews in Nazi occupied countries to wear yellow stars on their clothing for identification. The King of Denmark reacted by donning a yellow star. 1942- Battle of Alam Halfa. Rommel the Desert Fox’s final flanking push to try to reach Cairo and the Suez Canal was stopped by Montgomery’s Eighth Army. Rommel had no further petrol for any more attacks. He now dug in and awaited Montgomery’s counter assault.

1947-In early 1947 the British Government turned over the problem of Palestine and Jewish statehood to the UN. The UN High Commission on Palestine UNSCOM studied the matter and on this day recommended to the General Assembly that two separate states, one Jewish, one Palestinian Arab be set up.

1955- Phillip Loeb was a TV star, playing Papa on the show The Goldbergs on radio and television. But the book Red Channels listed him as a Communist. He was blacklisted and the show dropped by CBS and NBC. This day Loeb checked into the Hotel Taft and swallowed a bottle full of sleeping pills.

1956- Elvis Presley bought his momma a pink Cadillac.

1967- After Israel’s big victory in the Six Day War she put out a diplomatic feeler. They offered to return the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai Desert in return for Arab recognition of Israel and stable borders. Today at a meeting of the Arab League in Khartoum Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan said a resounding no. No peace, no recognition, no deals. President Nasser said, “What was lost in war can only be recovered by war.”

1969- Col. Mohammar el Khaddafi seized power in Libya after deposing King Idris. He held power until the Arab Spring Revolution overthrew him in 2011.

1972 - Bobby Fischer (US) defeated Boris Spassky (USSR) for the world chess title.
The young eccentric genius Fischer was the Tiger Woods of chess and for a time a pop icon. He would after a few years of fame drop out of competition at the height of his powers and go into seclusion.

1977 - 1st TRS-80 Model I computer sold

1978 - Last broadcast of "Columbo" on NBC.

1979- The fantasy book The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende first published.

1979 – An LA Court ordered retired TV star Clayton Moore to stop wearing his Lone Ranger mask in public appearances. Paramount was pushing it’s remake the Legend of the Lone Ranger starring Klinton Spillsbury, so they wanted the old man to stop competing for the spotlight. Today that 1979 movie, as well as the 2013 movie are forgotten, while many still fondly remember the old TV show,

1982 - Max US speedometer reading mandated at 85 MPH.

1983- A Korean KAL 747 passenger airliner had strayed into Russian airspace over the Sakhalin islands. Soviet authorities had the 747 shot down, killing 269 innocent people including 60 Americans and a US congressman. President Reagan decried this “barbarous act” and called for sanctions. Truth be told US and Korean allied intelligence did play games of chicken with the commies using civilian airliners. Also KAL pilots were given monetary bonuses if they got to their destinations ahead of time, so this pilot used the Sakhalin shortcut. Passengers were kept unaware of these dangerous games.

1995 – The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened in Cleveland Ohio.

1998- The Wild Thornberries TV series premiered.

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Yesterday’s Question: Where is the Patagonian Coast? Can you order flannel shirts there?

Answer: The South-Eastern coast of Argentina down to the Cape of Good Hope.

Question: Where is the Patagonian Coast? Can you order flannel shirts there?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What two nations constitute the island of Hispaniola?
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History for 8/31/2019
Birthdays: Caligula 12AD*, Commodus 161AD**, Amilcare Ponchielli, Eldridge Cleaver, Buddy Hackett, James Coburn, Itshak Perleman is 72, Van Morrison, Arthur Godfrey, Richard Baseheart, Rocky Marciano. Alan J. Lerner, Hugh Harman, Maria Montressori (of the Montressori Method of education), William Saroyan, Richard Gere is 69, Chris Tucker is 46.

• Caligula was a nickname. His real name was Gaius, but as a child in his dad's army camp the troops dressed him up in his own little uniform. An army issued boot in Latin was a caligae, so they called him Caligula, or Little Boots. As Emperor if you called him that to his face he'd have you killed.

** Commodus was yet another mad Roman Emperor . He'd have you killed if you reminded him that he had the same birthday as Caligula. Romans refused to believe such a loser as Commodus could be the son of the great philosopher Marcus Aurelius. The rumor was the empress coupled with a gladiator while Marcus was away in Germany. When Marcus found out he was …uh…philosophical.

1422- King Henry V of England had settled the Hundred Years War in England’s favor after the great victory of Agincourt. But this day he died of dysentery at age 35 before the peace could hold. Had he lived, the Hundred Years War would have been the 90 Years War.

1535- Pope Paul II excommunicated English King Henry VIII for this Protestant –Reformation thing he was doing.

1798- Haitian leader Touissaint L’Overture signed a secret peace treaty with British General Maitland. In it the British and Spanish resolved to stop trying to invade Haiti and in turn Touissaint promised to not spread his revolution to the slaves of British Jamaica.

1829- Giaconda’s Opera Guglielmo Tell debuted in Paris. The William Tell overture was heard for the first time- Hi Ho Silver!

1837- Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his American Scholar speech in Cambridge Mass. “Our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands is drawing to a close.” People called it an intellectual declaration of independence.

1879- THE RETREAT TO KANDAHAR- The British hold on Afghanistan and the Khyber Pass was difficult and dangerous. After a British force was wiped out by Ayub Khan at Maiwand, General Primrose reported he was surrounded at Kandahar. Lord Roberts, or “Lil’ Bobs” conducted his army on an epic march from Kabul to Kandahar fighting off heavy attacks on all sides from Afghan tribesmen. Once there he discovered to his annoyance that Primrose had overreacted, and the Kandahar garrison wasn’t in any real danger. Roberts proceeded to defeat the forces of Ayub Khan and later was also victorious in the Boer War.
He received the thanks of Parliament and was made Lord Roberts of Kandahar. Even his horse received a medal. Kipling wrote a poem in his honor “Our Bobs”. Roberts was five foot three, blind in one eye and liked to sip champagne while directing a battle.

1881- The first men’s singles competition in tennis was held in Newport Rhode Island. The winner was Richard Sears.

1887- Thomas Edison patented the plans for a Kinetoscope, his original version of Motion Pictures using George Eastman’s new celluloid roll film. Most of the actual work was done by Canadian scientist W.K.L. Dickson. He drove himself sick designing, building and improving the device as well as the camera and studio, but Edison took all the credit. Edison wrote Edweard Muybridge at the time that he doubted the Kinetoscope would have much commercial value beyond the science lab.

1888-THE FIRST JACK THE RIPPER MURDER. Then called the Whitechapel Murders. The unique detail was that the Ripper killed his victim Mary Ann Nichols with a simple throat cut, then proceeded to remove her internal organs with the precision of a surgeon. Was the sadist murderer the syphilitic Duke of Clarence? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle suggested it was a woman, a psychotic midwife. An anti-Semitic issue appeared when a cryptic clue at the murder scene was interpreted by some to think the Ripper was Jewish. Then the message was thought to be a freemasons symbol.

After six ghastly killings the murders stopped as mysteriously as they had started. In 1891 an Australian-born abortionist named Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was hanged for poisoning a prostitute. As he dropped through the trapdoor and the rope snapped he shouted: "I AM JAC-...!"

1907- Russia and the British Empire sign an entente or alliance. Russia and England had not been allies since the Age of Napoleon. They had fought a war against each other in 1854, competed over Afghanistan and almost went to war again in 1877. When World War I started, the Russian diplomat Isvolsky proudly boasted: " This is MY War !!"

1909- A geologist named Walcott hiking in the Canadian Rockies discovered the Burgess Shale. The first fossilized proof of the period before the dinosaurs called the Cambrian Era.

1919- The American Communist Party founded in Chicago with John Reed and Carlos Tresca. This was distinct from Socialist Party tickets. Socialists had been active for years before and around 1912 Socialist Eugene Debs polled over a million votes in his run at the Presidency. Reed died in Russia and Tresca was murdered on a NYC street by agents of either Mussolini or Stalin. In 1945 the CP/USA was outlawed, but reinstated in the 1960s. Black militant professor Angela Davis once ran for president on the Communist ticket. She didn’t win.

1928- In Berlin, The ThreePenny Opera premiered, music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Bertholdt Brecht with Lotte Lenya as Pirate Jenny. Mackie Messer or Mack the Knife was born.

1930 -Detroit radio station is 1st to broadcast a news program on the air.

1914- The Battle of Tannenberg ended. The Russian assault, called the great Russian Steamroller, was stymied in the forests of Prussia by an old General named Hindenberg who had been reactivated out of retirement.

1935- Disney cartoon Plutos’ Judgement Day.

1938- Walt Disney put ten thousand dollars down to buy 51 acres on Buena Vista Street in Burbank. He would build his modern studio there.

1939- Adolph Hitler sent out "Wartime Order #1-Force White" calling for the attack on Poland to begin on schedule and war to commence without a formal declaration. It also told all German ships at sea to be on alert for the news of hostilities with Britain and France.

1939- In Saint Moritz, exiled King of Spain Alfonso XI doubted there was going to be a world war. Even if one did break out, he predicted, it will all be over within a year.

1941 –The Great Gildersleeve, a spin-off of Fibber McGee & Molly debuts on NBC radio. The voice of Gildersleeve later narrated the UPA cartoon Gerald McBoing Boing.

1946- Looney Toon short 'Walky Talky Hawky' the first Foghorn Leghorn and Henery Hawk. The Foghorn character was based on a Fred Allen radio character Senator Beauregard Claghorn, that mocked bombastic Southern congressmen.

1948- Disney's 'Melody Time' premiered.

1948- Movie star Robert Mitchum was busted for smoking pot with a blonde in the Hollywood Hills. This would have normally smoked his career. Mitchum was so convinced his career was over that when asked by the police to state his occupation he said, "Former actor." But the new, postwar outlaw, noir attitude was in vogue. So bad-boy Mitchum emerged from county jail more popular than ever. When asked what he thought of being in jail, he said it's not much different than being free....but you meet a better clientele of people IN jail.

1950- Heaviest North Korean attacks on the Pusan Perimeter, a last stand line of the South Koreans and Americans only 23 miles long and 200 miles deep. General Bulldog Walker told his men:” This will not be another Dunkirk or Bataan, There is no further retreat, it is a fight to the finish!” While Walker and his men held on at Pusan, Douglas MacArthur prepared the amphibious counterattack behind the Koreans at Inchon.

1955 - 1st microwave TV station operated in Lufkin, Texas.

1955-1st sun-powered automobile demonstrated, Chicago, Ill.

1954- Make a note of it, the US Census Bureau founded.

1957- Malaysia gained independence from Britain.

1964 - Ground is broken for Anaheim Stadium, future home of the California Angels.

1964- Young comedian Richard Pryor made his first appearance on TV. He did some of his standup on Rudy Vallee’s Broadway Tonight Show.

1969- Former Heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano died in a plane crash in Newton Iowa. He had been hurrying home to attend a birthday party in his honor. He was 45.

1972- Russian Olga Korbut won a gold medal in gymnastics at the Olympics. She was the first of the cute little 15 year old girl gymnasts with the bright smile to catch the world’s attention.

1997- PRINCESS DIANA OF WALES died in a high speed car crash in a Paris traffic tunnel. Her Mercedes had been trying to avoid paparazzi hounding her and her current boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed, the son of the Egyptian tycoon owner of Harrods. The drivers body tested above normal for alcohol and drugs. Princess Di was 36. Britain reacted with an outpouring of grief not seen since the death of Nelson. The rapacious British press worked overtime to absolve themselves of hounding the woman to death. Press baron Rupert Murdoch personally flew to London to direct the spin campaign defending his papers.

2001- The NY Stock Exchange tries to avoid a Recession and bolster growth, by getting Michael Jackson and Jerry Lewis to ceremonially open trading sessions. Didn’t work.
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Yesterday’s Question: What two nations constitute the island of Hispaniola?

Answer: Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Question: What two nations constitute the island of Hispaniola?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is meant by an Elephant’s Graveyard?
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History for 8/30/2019
Birthdays: Mary Shelley, Jacques Louis David, Huey Long, Fred MacMurray, Raymond Massey, Ted Williams, John Blondell, Timothy Bottoms, Jean-Claude Killy, Shirley Booth, John Landis, Tug McGraw, R. Crumb is 76, Lewis Black is 71, Cameron Diaz is 47

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Fiacre, the Patron Saint of Gardeners.

30 BC- Cleopatra committed suicide at age 39. Some accounts have her allowing herself to be bitten by a poison asp concealed in a basket, another said she took poison concealed on a hairpin. It was said she killed herself to join her lover Marc Anthony, more likely it was because the victorious Augustus planned to have her dragged through the streets of Rome in a cage while the mob laughed and threw trash at her, then quietly strangled. The snakebite was thought by Egyptians to bestow immortality.

After Julius Caesar's murder, Marc Anthony and Augustus had divided up the Roman Empire east and west. Cleopatra fell in love with Anthony and governed with him from 41 to 31BC. Augustus defeated them in the naval battle of Actium. Octavian Augustus was only Julius Caesar's nephew. Cleopatra had borne Caesar a natural son, Caesarion. Augustus discovered the boy during this turmoil and had him quietly killed. Octavia, Anthony’s jilted wife, took Cleo’s two other children by Anthony and raised them as her own.

304 AD-Today is the feast of Saints Felix and Adauctus. Felix was sentenced to be beheaded when a voice in the crowd called out :"I too believe in what this man confesses! Take me too!" So the Romans beheaded both of them, but forgot first to get the other guy's name. Adauctus means "That other guy". So, it's Saint Felix and Saint Whats-His-Name.

1483- French King Louis XI, “the Spider King” died.

1721- The Treaty of Nystad ending the Great Northern War. The twenty-year struggle ended Sweden’s status as a butt kicking world power and the coming of Russia as a major player. The aging Czar Peter returned to his new capitol Saint Petersburg to cries of Mir Mir!- Peace! He was being called Pyotr Vyelke- Peter the Great.

1784- The Empress of China, a fast sailing American clipper ship established trade between New England and China. Far East trade had been cut off by the British since the Revolution broke out.

1813- The Fort Mims Massacre- Red Eagle and his Creek warriors kill and scalp 500 whites. This was the pretext for the U.S. army driving the Creek Nation out of Alabama and Mississippi. Red Eagle eventually was defeated by Andy Jackson at Horseshoe Bend and changed his name to William Weatherford and became a Methodist.

1850- Honolulu became a city.

1861- Western explorer William Freemont was given the Civil War command of the department of the west. This included the embattled states of Missouri and Kansas. The Missouri Governor and most of the legislature were pro-Southern. Freemont declared that all slaves that fell into his hands would be set free and all citizens caught in arms against the United States would be executed. President Lincoln made him rescind these orders. He was not ready to free the slaves…just yet.

1873- The Royal Canadian Mounted Police- The Mounties formed.

1867- At the University of Göttingen, Albert Niemann isolated the chemical elements of the Columbian coca plant and named the powdery substance Cocaine.

1880- Diablo, chief of the Cibecue Apache, was killed fighting the White Mountain Apache.

1919- THE RED TERROR- Think of the famous assassins of history- Brutus, John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Fanny Kaplan…..Fanny Kaplan? Yep, on this day in Moscow, Socialist Fanya Kaplan fired several bullets into Lenin. Several hours before this attack the head of the Saint Petersburg secret police Moishe Uritsky was assassinated. Uritsky was from an Orthodox Jewish family but joined the Communists like many Jews who hated the Anti-Semitic regime of the Czar.
Lenin survived, Fanny was executed and the Communist police terror destroyed all remaining critics of the Bolshevik Revolution. Founder of the Communist Secret police Felix Derzhinsky said: Our purpose is not to find justice, but to mete out retribution!”
In twenty months they jailed and executed more Russians than the Tsar’s police did in the entire Nineteenth Century.
A defining moment in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was when Russians pulled down the huge statue of Derzhinsky in front of KGB headquarters.

1935- “Top Hat” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers premiered.

1936- First newspaper comic strip entirely devoted to Donald Duck.

1939- The last peacetime voyage of the HMS Queen Mary evacuated Americans fleeing the impending war in Europe. Among the crowd was a large contingent of Hollywood stars like Bob Hope and Jack Warner who planned to attend the first Cannes Film Festival (postponed until 1946). The Queen Mary kept radio silence across the ocean to hide from U-Boats. This was a wise, because her sister ship HMS Athenia was torpedoed.

1945- THE AMERICAN SHOGUN- Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed on mainland Japan as their military governor.
After the ceasefire was announced, there still was a lot of distrust on both sides, and in the streets of Japan gangs of outraged youths and kamikaze pilots fought loyal troops trying to restart the war. Into this turmoil General MacArthur and his staff flew in alone ahead of any other allied occupying troops. He even ordered his staff to leave their pistols behind to show their fearlessness to the Japanese. He also wanted to get there before Admiral Nimitz and the Navy got there first and stole his spotlight.
In a sight that alarmed his staff as MacArthur drove to Yokohama the road was lined on both sides with 30,000 crack Japanese troops standing silent with fixed bayonets.
They were not threatening but saluting their new Shogun. They even faced backwards from the road not looking at MacArthur, a gesture of respect reserved only for the Emperor.
While the still new Truman administration concentrated on Europe, MacArthur was left with a free hand to reshape Japanese society as he saw fit. He used the power of unquestioning Japanese social discipline to give women the vote, form labor unions and rewrite their constitution, setting the basis of Japanese democracy.

1963- The HOT LINE is set up between the White House and the Kremlin.
It was never really a red telephone, more a coded teletype machine. It was to prevent misunderstandings like the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1986 they became a fax machine, and since 2008 a secure e-mail link.
We know now that in 1973 Nixon had put U.S. forces on red alert war footing to prevent the Soviets from intervening in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War. In 1980 the Fail Safe system failed and reported 12,000 Soviet missiles were coming at us over the North Pole. Jimmy Carter had 5 minutes to decide whether it was a mistake or the dreaded first strike warranting our full retaliation. We're all still here, so I guess you know how Carter chose.

1968- The first 7-11 store opened in Palmdale California. Have a Slurpee !

1975- Ralph Bakshi's film "Coonskin". Bad boy Bakshi's portrayal of African-American urban violence was deemed so offensive that it caused the first ever riot at the Museum of Modern Art, and it died at the box office. The film was retitled on video "Streetfight".
When Ralph resurfaced, he turned his attention to Sword & Fantasy films.

1979- President Jimmy Carter claimed that while boating on vacation in Georgia he was attacked by an enraged rabbit.

1980- Willie Nelson released his hit “On the Road Again.”

1983- Lt. Guion Bluford, the first African American in Space, went up on the Challenger spaceshuttle.

1993- The David Letterman Show premiered on CBS. Letterman was wooed away from NBC for $42 million bucks.

2012- At the Republican Presidential convention, venerable 80 year old filmmaker Clint Eastwood made a fool out of himself by improvising a rambling dialogue with an empty chair that he meant to be the absent Pres. Obama. Eastwood was supposed to introduce candidate Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, but his bizarre performance upstaged anything Romney said. This followed the keynote speech by New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who talked only about himself for 16 minutes before he ever mentioned Romney. For this and many other reasons, Romney lost by a landslide.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is meant by an Elephant’s Graveyard?

Answer: The Elephants' Graveyard was a legend that hidden deep within the jungles of Africa elephants instinctively went to die at one sacred place. The idea was that the graveyard was filled with untold riches (ie: ivory) there for the taking for those that could find it.

A modern meaning of Elephants' Graveyard is where powerful political and business leaders go when they leave their positions, especially due to ineffectiveness or scandal, and are no longer influential. A darker version of being “put out to pasture.”

Question: What are jujubes?

Yesterday’s Answer Below: Donald Trump is the fattest US president since….?
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History for 8/28/2019
Birthdays: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leo Tolstoy, George Villiers the Duke of Buckingham- minister of James I, Sean O'Flagherty, Donald O'Connor, Charles Boyer, Karl Boehm, Bruno Bettleheim, Disney designer Ferdinand Horvath, Ben Gazzara, Janet Evans, Ron 'Louisiana Lightning' Guidry, Nancy Kulp, Daniel Stern, Shania Twain, anim historian Charles Solomon, Jack Black is 50, Rita Coolidge is 58. Jack "King" Kirby.

In Hong Kong, today is the Festival is the Festival of Hungry Ghosts.

29BC- In ancient Rome, dedication of the altar to Victory.

79AD- POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM DESTROYED-The great volcano Versuvius erupted, burying the two Roman cities. The Emperor Titus rushed a fleet commanded by the natural scientist Pliny to rescue as many as he could. Pliny was overcome by the sulphurous fumes and died. His son, Pliny the Younger, eyewitnesses it all and wrote a moving account of the tragedy in his 'letters'. Scientists have been digging at the site of Pompeii since it's rediscovery in 1726, but estimates are there's as many as 30,000 skeletons still buried.

390AD-This was the Feast of Saint Augustine of Hippo. He was the Saint who tried every weird cult he could find before converting to Christianity, He drove his mother Saint Monica crazy but his experiences helped him develop an answer to every anti-Christian argument. His famous book was "the City of God". For a Saint he could have done stand-up. He was famous for one liners like when someone asked him "What did God do before he created the world?" Augustine answered: "He made a hell for people who ask stupid questions!" His other great motto was "Lord, Make me Chaste- but not just yet..."

476AD- The Last Roman Emperor of the West, the boy Romulus Augustulus, was deposed. It was done by his counselor and actual power behind the throne, the barbarian warlord named Odoacer. Odoacer sent the Imperial diadem and insignia to the Zeno the Emperor of the East in Constantinople and declared himself King of the Germans in Italy.

1296- The Ragman Roll- Scottish nobles in Parliament were called upon to pledge allegiance to King Edward I of England, or else. Edward Longshanks dropped his pretense of protection of the Scottish crown and instead moved for direct annexation to England. The only resistance came from peasant born leader William Wallace. The ceremony went on for so long such it coined a term for long inane formalities- Rigamarole.

1526- Battle of Mohacs. The Turkish Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent defeated the Hungarian army of Jan Hunyadi the "White Knight of Christendom", and pushed the borders of the Moslem World right up to the gates of Vienna Austria.

1565 - Oldest city in the US, St Augustine Fla, established.

1609- Henry Hudson explored Delaware Bay.

1678- THE POPISH PLOT- A man named Titus Oates came before King Charles II and the Parliament and declared he had uncovered a plot by English Catholics, Jesuits, the Bishop of Armaugh, and the Pope to kill King Charles, enthrone his Catholic brother James, burn London and land an army of mercenaries to force the English people back into Roman Church by force! Odds Fish! King Charles laughed it off but the public took him seriously.

There may have been one or two forlorn Catholic schemes but nothing on the scale Oates described, yet England went crazy for the next several months executing anybody accused. Titus Oates became very rich, but he finally was caught in his lies and sent to prison. When a mob of anti-Catholic Londoners attacked the carriage of the kings mistress Nell Gywnn thinking it was one of Charles’ French tootsies, Nell poked her head out of the carriage and cried: ” Peace be with you Good Citizens! I am the PROTESTANT Whore!” the mob then cheered.

1776 – The day after George Washington’s Army was defeated by the British in Brooklyn this day heavy rain and fog canceled any actions. After the battle the British pushed the colonials up against the East River and could have brought their fleet up from Staten Island, captured Washington’s army, and destroyed the Revolution while the ink was still wet on the Declaration of Independence.
But they hesitated. Was it contrary winds in New York Harbor? Was it British memories of Bunker Hill preventing them from assaulting fixed colonial positions? Maybe it was because the English commanders Lord William Howe and his brother Admiral Richard 'Black Dick" Howe were Whigs in political opposition to the Tories in London. They saw a decisive military victory in America as a justification of the Lord North Government's policies.
So Howe hesitated finishing off the rebels and requested peace talks. If he could succeed in pacifying the colonies he would have the credit to run for Prime Minister. Washington stalled him and while they exchanged polite notes, the rebels slowly escaped by boat across the East River to fight on.

1830 - 1st locomotive in US, "Tom Thumb," runs from Baltimore to Ellicotts Mill.
.By 1835, the B &O was exclusively a steam affair.

1837 - Pharmacists John Leah & William Perrins invent Worcestershire Sauce. A gentleman returning from the Raj asked them to recreate a favorite Indian condiment from a recipe he gave them. The result proved inedible and disgusting. The bottles lay forgotten in their cellar for a few years. Upon rediscovery it proved to have matured into the wonderful comestible that we enjoy today.

1850- Lohengrin, the first opera written by Richard Wagner, premiered in Weimar. The Third Act chorus “Treulich Gefuhrt” became famous for weddings as “Here Comes the Bride, All Dressed in White”. Wagner asked his friend Franz Liszt to produce the opera because he was in exile for his political views. Wagner himself did not see Lohengrin performed until 1861.

1859-In Titusville Pennsylvania, the first U.S. oil well struck oil. Before the industrial revolution crude oil or coal tar was considered a smelly nuisance. It was called Indian-Oil because Indians wore it as black warpaint, it was great for tarring and feathering rapscallions. Some entrepreneurs even tried to bottle it as health tonic. By this era it was refined into kerosene which was seen as a cheap plentiful substitute for whale-oil lamps. Unemployed railroad conductor Edwin Drake built the first oil well drilling apparatus out of components of a steam engine. By 1939 America exported 80% of the world’s crude oil.

1867- The U.S. Navy annexed Midway Island out in the Pacific.

1907- UPS small package delivery service started in Seattle.

1922- The first broadcast commercial on radio. It was for a real estate firm Queensboro Realty lasting ten minutes, and cost $100 dollars. The firm selling suburban homes in Queens NY immediately did $100,000 worth of business. The business world took note of this new method of advertising.

1934-Writer Upton Sinclair was nominated for Governor of California on the Democratic ticket by over half a million votes. This shocked the California power-elite because Sinclair was a radical whose grass roots organization EPIC (End Poverty in California) advocated socialist solutions to the Depression. Even FDR kept his distance from Sinclair.
Powerful forces enlisted Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and other Hollywood conservatives to ensure Sinclair's defeat by creating the first modern negative media campaign. This included phony newsreels of actors dressed as hobos saying how they're going to California to sponge off the taxpayers. Walt Disney's lawyer, Gunther Lessing, demanded Ward Kimball take the "Sinclair for Governor" sign off his car window.

Governor Frank Merriam who earlier that year had ordered troops to shoot down striking San Francisco longshoremen and their families won re-election.

1937- The Nazis began mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses.

1938- Northwestern University conferred an honorary degree upon the ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy- Edgar Bergen’s famed dummy. The Dean of the School of Speech conferred a Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback upon the wooden celebrity.

1941- Rudolf Lichtenburg, pastor of St. Hedwig's Church the largest Lutheran congregation in Berlin, attacked the Nazi regime in an open letter to Dr. Leonardo Conti, Chief Reich Physician: "As a Human Being, As a Christian, a priest and a German I demand you answer for your crimes, which will call forth the Judgement of God upon the heads of the German People!" He was arrested by the Gestapo and died in Dachau.

1945- Chinese Communist Mao Tse Tung or Mao Zse Dong, conferred with Generalissimo Chiang Kai Chek over how to keep the Civil War from starting up again now that the War with Japan was over. The meeting was arranged by American Ambassador Patrick Hurley, an Oklahoma senator who greeted Mao and the Chiang with a loud Indian war whoop. We don’t know what Mao and Chiang thought of this curious form of welcome, but they couldn’t stand one another. Almost as soon as their conference was over the Chinese Civil War began again. Mao defeated Chiang and drove him to Taiwan in 1949.

1953- Between the Israeli War of Independence and the Suez War guerrilla violence raged in small border settlements with terrorism killing innocent civilians. The Israeli Army tried forming a secret commando team called Unit 101 to stop Arab attacks on Israeli settlers by committing their own acts of terror “an-eye-for-an-eye”. After one raid this day Unit 101 went into action, shooting up a Palestinian refugee camp in Egyptian Gaza, and killed a number of women and children. The attack was so cold-blooded that the unit was soon disbanded by an embarrassed government. The young officer in command of Unit 101 was future Prime Minister Arial Sharon.

1955- Emmet Till was a 14 year old black child in Mississippi who was beaten and lynched by white vigilantes because a white woman said he “looked” at her in an inappropriate manner. His mother asked his funeral be public, and his casket open so people could see what brutality was committed on him. Even in 2018, plaques set up in his memory have been shot up by white supremacists.

1963- Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the climax of the first ' Poor People's March 'on Washington”. Organizer A. Phillip Randolph conceived a poor people’s march taking weeks not unlike the Bonus Marchers of 1929. The sympathetic John F. Kennedy administration prevailed upon them to keep it to one day to reduce the chance of violence and maximize media exposure. They had planned for 100,000 but they got 400,000. Movie stars like Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, James Garner, and Charlton Heston attended.

1968- THE CHICAGO DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION- While thousands of anti-war hippie and yippie protestors battled the Chicago Police in Grant Park, the Democrats nominated Hubert Horatio Humphrey, the "Happy Warrior" their candidate to replace the assassinated Bobby Kennedy. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the Yippie and SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) leaders tried to get a live 100 pound pig into the convention and get it nominated for President. The Chairman of the DNC decried Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's "Gestapo Tactics" from the rostrum. Ironically Boss Daley opposed the Vietnam War, but he would not tolerate kids making him look bad on national TV.
Newsman Dan Rather was gut-punched by a Chicago cop on camera on the convention floor. My friend writer John Culhane was clubbed down by police despite wearing all his press credentials and a baby blue army helmet with Newsweek painted on it. While the police and demonstrators battled poet Alan Ginsburg and Timothy Leary grabbed a loudspeaker and chanted the Buddhist "Ohhhmmmmm" to calm people down. The student leaders -the Chicago 7 in reality 8, were put on trial for incitement to riot but after a year long media circus all the charges were overturned. Republican Richard Nixon won the election. The Democrats wouldn't go near Chicago again for thirty years.

1990- Computer pioneer Sandy Lerner was fired from the company she founded- Cisco Systems.

1996- The Prince and Princess of Wales Charles & Diana got divorced. This was the first Royal divorce since Henry VIII annulled Anne of Cleves in the 1530's, not counting George IV's secret marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert, which was hushed up, and his later cavorting with Lady Cunningham who was nicknamed "the Vice-Queen", and Edward VII's sleeping with every woman in Europe but his wife, etc.

2007- Conservative “Family Values” Senator Larry Craig of Idaho was arrested for soliciting gay sex in a men’s room in the Minneapolis Airport. Craig vigorously maintained that he had a wide stance in his stall, but older gay men said “toe-tapping” was a standard way then to signal a liaison. Larry Craig soon resigned from the Senate.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Donald Trump is the fattest US president since….?

Answer: William Howard Taft was the fattest US President.

Quiz: Donald Trump is the fattest US president since….?

Question: All through the 1930s, one play Walt Disney wanted to get the movie rights to was Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland. But he lost out. Who was it who made Babes in Toyland first?

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HISTORY FOR 8/27/2019
Birthdays: Man Ray, Martha Ray, LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson), Hegel, C.S. Forester, Hannibal Hamlin- Abe Lincolns first term vice president, Barbara Bach, Theodore Dreiser, Lady Antonia Fraser, Tommy Sands, Tuesday Weld is 76, Mangesuthu Buthelezi, Paul Rubens-aka Pee Wee Herman is 67

1506- Pope Julius II attacks Perugia and Bologna for Holy Mother Church. After their conquest, Julius has Michelangelo cast a nine foot statue of him to remind the Perugians who kicked their butts. Michelangelo created his largest free-standing bronze caste, but we don't have it anymore. In 1512 Julius's enemies liberated Perugia, and the happy people melted down the statue and cast it into a big cannon they nicknamed: "La Julia".

1660- Poet John Milton's books were publicly burned on Tyburn hill. It wasn't because of any great suppression of humanist ideas. Milton was an outspoken supporter of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan regime that had governed England. But now the King was back on the throne and unimpressed with his writings.

1664- NIEUW AMSTERDAAM BECOMES NEW YORK. The English had disputed Holland's stake in America based on the early exploration of John Cabot. Now with the growth of the New England and Virginia colonies, and the English Civil War over, England sent a large battle fleet under Colonel Rollins to New Amsterdam to demand the surrender of the colony.
The Dutch governor was an old one-legged mercenary named Peter Stuyvesant. He wanted to make a fight of it and had even set up a battery of cannon on -where else? the Battery. However his city council were men of commerce, not soldiers. They told him if he wanted to fight he should do it himself because they were surrendering. Even his own son was against fighting. Stuyvesant in a rage shouted at the burghers:" Keep to your shovels and barrows!" The governor hobbled up to the cannon pointed at the British fleet and lit a match to fire the first shot. He paused and noticed the cold, silent stares of all those around him. The chaplain of the colony, Dominie Megapolensis, silently took Stuyvesant by the hand down from the fort. Stuyvesant signed the surrender.

He was allowed to keep his large farm, or in Dutch, his Bouwerie -the Bowery. Five years later the English named renamed the city after King Charles II's brother the Duke of York for his birthday. The Duke of York's protection kept Long Island from being made part of Connecticut. The first English colony planted after the conquest was named for the only part of Britain to remain loyal to King Charles during the Cromwell period, the Isle of Jersey (New Jersey). Charles main supporter was James Leslie, Baron Newark. (Newark N.J.) and his son the Duke of Monmouth. Still the old Dutch roots were deep and even in George Washington's time Dutch was the predominant language on New York's streets. In 1832 Martin Van Buren became our first knickerbocker President.

1667- The first record in English of a Hurricane, this one striking near Jamestown Virginia. Of course the Spanish in the Caribbean had been seeing hurricanes since Columbus’s third voyage in 1503.

1776- THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND, also called the Battle of Brooklyn Heights. British regiments destroy George Washington’s army in Brooklyn while he was still in Manhattan waiting for the main attack. Washington sent two generals to command, Generals Sullivan and William Alexander, who insisted everyone call him Lord Stirling in memory of some Scottish inheritance he claimed he was cheated out of.

The British General Henry Clinton marched down the Kings Highway to Jamaica then found a secret path behind Yankee lines, guarded by only 5 militiamen. Clinton had walked these paths when he was a young officer stationed in NY. His superior Lord William Howe at first refused the idea- he said it smacked of the German School of Tactics. He felt the Americans were too stupid to panic when they saw their flank was turned. But the Yankees did panic and Lord Howe won a great victory.
The British had gotten over their shock of the American’s Indian style of guerrilla fighting. They countered by using German jaeger battalions, professional hunters turned soldier who were accustomed to shooting from behind rocks and trees. Generals Sullivan and Lord Stirling were forced to surrender after furious fighting around the Cortelyou House. One redcoat officer wrote: “Multitudes of retreating Americans who attempted to escape across the Gowanus River were drowned or suffocated in the morasses- a proper punishment for Rebels!”
1789- The French Revolutionaries publish THE DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN. They wanted the American ambassador Thomas Jefferson to help them write it, but he worried it would compromise his diplomatic immunity. So he agreed to look over their shoulder during revisions. Most foreign ambassadors had fled Paris. But the French radicals considered America a fellow Republic.

1813- BATTLE OF DRESDEN. After the retreat from Moscow the previous year, Napoleon is attacked by Austria, Russia, Sweden, Prussia, and just about everybody else in Europe but the Spice Girls. In reorganizing his army Napoleon ordered a stripped down staff and no more dessert served at the dinner table. War is Hell.
Napoleon whupped the Allies in this first battle at Dresden, and a famous French turncoat general named Moreau was killed by a cannonball. Moreau had been counseling the Russians on how best to kill his countrymen. His death was seen as a sign of Divine Justice by both sides. During a temporary truce Napoleon was offered by the Allies the chance to negotiate a peace. World history would have been different, but he refused. When he asked Polish Prince Poniatowski what he would do, the Prince replied: 'I would make peace now, to wage war better later.' But Napoleon countered :"I'd rather make war now to win a better peace." He lost.

1814- President James Madison and the remains of the U.S. Government came out of hiding in the forests of Arlington and re-entered the burned out remains of Washington D.C.. It had been left by the British Army after being put to the torch. Looters scampered over the smoldering remains of the White House and Capitol Hill. Secretary of War Armstrong, who inadequately defended the capitol, resigned after blaming everyone but himself. Mayor Blakes’ biggest fear upon his return was of a rumored slave insurrection, so he armed every available white male for police duty. Meanwhile the exhausted inhabitants of Washington could hear the British cross the Potomac loot and burn the town of Alexandria, given up without a fight.

1814- As the British invaders roamed the Maryland countryside an elderly Scottish immigrant doctor named Beanes was dragged out of his house by Royal Marines and packed off to the flagship off shore. He was accused of mistreating captured British soldiers. Since he was born in Scotland he could face a charge of treason. When local residents petitions to have Dr Beanes released were refused, an appeal was made to a respected Georgetown attorney named Francis Scott Key to go try and win his release. Key showed up at the ship with written affidavits from the incarcerated British wounded affirming Dr. Beanes innocence. Admiral Cockburn agreed to release them both, but only after their big assault on Baltimore. This is why Key was on the British warship in time to watch the Rockets Red Glare, the Bombs Bursting in Air, etc.

1814- Meanwhile in England poet Percy Shelley eloped with Mary, the only daughter of John Godwin and Mary Wollenstonecraft. Godwin had objected to Shelley’s proposal for his daughters hand because he was an opium addict, a sexual libertine, an atheist and already married with a baby daughter! Yeah, but besides all that, what’s your objection? They ran off followed by Mary’s stepsister Claire who started sleeping with Lord Byron. Mary of course was the author of Frankenstein. If I knew all this maybe I would have paid more attention in English Lit 101.

1910- The first radio message sent from an airplane.

1912- Edgar Rice Burroughs first published Tarzan of the Apes in The All-Story magazine.

1915- Italy declared war on Germany and Austria and entered World War I.

1917- Straight Shooting, the first film directed by John Ford released.

1927- Warner Bros began recording the soundtrack for Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer.

1930- Lon Chaney Sr. died of bronchial lung cancer. It was claimed then that during filming of a remake of The Unholy Three a wind machine blew an artificial gypsum snowflake into Chaney's mouth - it caused an irritation that became a tumor. He was 47.

1941- Japan’s Prime Minister Prince Konoye requested a summit meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt to try and avoid war. Konoye was an anti-fascist and foresaw the coming holocaust but he couldn’t control Japans military. Ironically when the war ended in 1945 Prince Konoye was arrested by US authorities for war crimes. The anti-war statesman committed hari-kiri.

1942- Stalin called Marshal Zhukov, the hero of Leningrad, to go to Stalingrad and assume command there before the Nazis captured the city.

1955- The first Guinness Book of World Records published.

1950- NBC and General Foods abruptly canceled the second season premiere of the television show “the Aldrich Family” when a publication called Red Channels accused Jean Muir, one of the show’s stars, of being a communist. This signaled that the Hollywood Blacklist was now turning its attention eastward towards NY theater and television. Jean Muir’s career (1937 Midsummer Nights Dream) never fully recovered.

1953- The film Roman Holiday introduced a new young actress from Holland named Audrey Hepburn.

1964- The movie version of Mary Poppins premiered.

1967- The Beatles first manager Brian Epstein overdosed on sleeping pills.

1979- Retired Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed by the IRA, from a bomb on board his yacht.

1968- Former master animator Bill Tytla's request to return to Disney was turned down. The artist who animated Grumpy the Dwarf, Dumbo and the Devil on Bald Mountain even offered to do a free "trial animation test" to show he still had it. Disney exec W.H. Anderson wrote him:" We really have only enough animation for our present staff."
Tytla died later that year.

1990- Guitar great Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash outside Alpine Valley Wisconsin, after an "All Stars of the Blues" show. Stevie Ray took the last remaining seat on the helicopter, after Eric Clapton got off, claiming he'd rather take a limo back to Chicago, which was about an hour away.

2008- Barack Obama nominated for President of the United States. The first African American candidate from a major party.
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Yesterday’s Question: All through the 1930s, one play Walt Disney wanted to get the movie rights to was Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland. But he lost out. Who was it who made Babes in Toyland first?

Answer: Hal Roach won the rights to Babes In Toyland and produced it in 1934, featuring studio stars Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy. Over the years, versions of the film have been released with an alternate title, March Of The Wooden Soldiers. Walt Disney eventually got the rights for a re-make, released in 1961.

Interesting bit of trivia: Walt Disney was a fan of the show and apparently liked Stan, Ollie and Roach so much that he allowed the use of the musical refrain of “Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf” from his Three Little Pigs cartoon. He also allowed a Mickey Mouse character (actually a monkey in a costume) to show up as one of the denizens of Toyland. I think this was one of only two times that Walt ever allowed Mickey be portrayed in other than a Disney film.