Hey, I wrote a new book and it is out now. Eat Drink Animate is the first cookbook about animators by animators. Recipes and stories from your favorite animation artists. Check it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Drink-Animate-Animators-Cookbook/dp/0815399766/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3Q3YQ442IIO32&keywords=eat+drink+animate&qid=1556948533&s=books&sprefix=Eat+Drink+Animate%2Cstripbooks%2C191&sr=1-1-catcorr

Question: The Whole megillah. What is a megillah? A cartoon ape?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is potash?
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History for 5/3/2019
Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Bing Crosby, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70’s singer Englebert Humperdinck, Dule Hill

Happy World Press Freedom Day.

328 A.D.- Discovery of the True Cross-According to medieval legend St. Helena the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine, unearthed three old crosses on the Mount of Calvary. She tested it out by crucifying someone on it who gets up after three days. After all, it might have been someone else's cross! Ick!
Byzantine Emperors carried the True Cross around and into battle like a flag until it was thought to be too precious to lose, so it was broken up and the wood distributed to the kings of Christendom. By Luther's time it was said so much of the Good Wood or Holy-Rood was around that if you got it all together you could build a nice house. The custom of saying "Knock on Wood" comes from touching the True Cross for luck.

1494- Columbus discovered the island of Jamaica. He called it St. Iago.

1536- Huron Indian chief Donnaconna noticed that the French explorer Jacques Cartier and the other white men got excited whenever he mentioned gold or riches. So Donnaconna made up fantastic stories about a powerful kingdom upriver called Sanguenay, about where present day Ottawa is. He said the people were fabulously wealthy and had no anus's so they could only drink fluids. Cartier not only swallowed the gag this but he was so impressed he had poor Donnaconna kidnapped and brought to France to tell his stories to the king. The old chief never saw home again.

1559- At Perth Scotland, Presbyterian preacher John Knox delivered his first sermon openly calling for the Scottish Church to throw off the authority of the Vatican.

1675- Massachusetts Puritans passed a law that church doors be locked during Sunday services. Too many people were leaving during long, boring sermons.

1702- William Hyde, aka Lord Cornbury arrived from England to be Royal Governor of colonial New York. This English aristocrat surprised the solid Dutch Calvinists of former Nieu Amsterdaam by his eccentric behavior. His favorite pastime was dressing up in ladies clothing and jumping out at people at night and pulling their ears. When in drag he bore an odd resemblance to England’s Queen Anne. He later explained he only dressed this way so the colonists could see what their queen in England looked like. Of course, nobody believed him.
There is today a painting of the Lord Governor in drag at the New York Historical Society. It was alleged that he was a fence for pirates and once asked the New York City council for money to repel a fictitious French attack, which he pocketed and bought the land today called Hyde Park.

1791- Polish Constitution of 3rd of May. This radical document was inspired by the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. But being situated in between autocratic monarchies Russia and Prussia who were unimpressed and crushed the Poles.

1812- A new poem called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1848- Working people of Saxony revolt against their king. Leo Bakunin the father of anarchism and the composer Richard Wagner were two of the leaders. The Prussian army was sent to help put down the workers and Wagner fled into Switzerland, but not before he had the pleasure of burning down the Leipzig Opera House.

1851- San Francisco burned down.

1863-2nd Day Battle of Chancellorsville-Lee sent Stonewall Jackson 12 miles swinging around the Yankee Army flank to attack them from behind. O.O. Howard, the Union General in charge of that area wouldn’t believe the scouts reports of an imminent attack. When a German immigrant officer demanded he prepare, Howard accused him of being drunk. Then Jackson’s men burst out of the woods and sent the Yankees running.

The fighting lasted well into the evening and confusion reigned in the darkness. General Daniel Sickles division got into a vicious three way firefight with a Confederate division shooting at him from one side and his own reinforcements shooting at him from the other.

Stonewall Jackson and his staff had ridden out beyond his lines to observe the Yankee preparations for tomorrow. He was riding back towards his own lines when a shot or two rang out. General A.P. Hill called out " Don't shoot! Were Southerners! ". But the Mississippi colonel in charge had been surprised once already that night by enemy cavalry:" It's a Yankee trick! Pour it into them!" A volley hit Jackson and several other officers." My boys, my own boys!" Jackson groaned. He died two weeks later.

1864- The day before his armies were set to move Union General Ulysses Grant laid out final plans for his campaign against the Confederacy. In a drawing room in Culpepper Virginia he told his staff that up till now union armies had acted independently like a bad team of horses that won’t pull together. He would now coordinate five armies attacking simultaneously from Washington to Atlanta to Shreveport Louisiana. Their goal would not be the taking of Richmond but the destruction of the main Confederate field armies like Robert E Lee’s. Grants plan was to hold Lee down near Richmond while the armies of Sherman, Banks and Butler completed the destruction of the Confederacy.

1888- The Poem "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer first published.

1906- British controlled Egypt seized the Sinai Peninsula from the faltering Turkish Empire.

1917- The Great French Military Mutinies. During World War I, after three years of appalling conditions and being slain by the thousands in suicidal charges against machine guns, the average French "poilus" soldier nickname like G.I., had enough. Whole regiments refused to go to the front. The mutiny was so bad that to this day official records are vague as to just how many men were involved. A safe estimate is at least 100,000 men.

1933- Fritz Lang’s movie M released in the US. It made a star of Peter Lorre.

1936- Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio first game for the New York Yankees. He got three hits.

1938- The Vatican recognized Generalissimo Franco’s fascist regime in Spain.

1941- Battle of Amba Alagi. Britain vs Italy for Ethiopia.

1948-THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theater chains had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature. Many people were starting to become interested in that new television machine, anyway.

1952, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma stepped out of a plane and walked to the exact North Pole, the first known person to do so. Commander Robert Peary claimed to have reached the Pole in 1909 as did others, but modern scholars think they were all off by several degrees.

1963- Birmingham police attack Civil Rights marchers with attack dogs, clubs and high powered hoses. The brutality was captured on nationwide TV. The images shocked the nation and President Kennedy, who had been assured by Governor George Wallace by phone that everything was under control. JFK resolved to fast track the Civil Rights Act through Congress.

1968- THE PARIS '68 REVOLT- Police are sent into the Sorbonne University in Paris to break up student demonstrations. The grounds of the university had never been violated by police, even during the Nazi occupation. This act enraged the student leaders who are joined by labor unions and there is fighting in the streets of Paris for the next three weeks that eventually brought down the DeGaulle government.
All night political meetings center in the Odeon theatre as the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and John Luc Goddard make intellectual manifestations of aesthetic freedom. "The More I make Love, the More I make Revolution!" One of the student leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bedit "Danny the Red". Conservative media tried to draw attention to Cohn-Bendit’s Jewish foreign background. This caused an even larger, angrier, march of Parisians shouting: "We are all Jews!"

1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts.

1971- National Public Radio’s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first national news program with women news anchors like Susan Stanberg.

1971- President Nixon’s administration arrested 13,000 anti-war protestors in one week.

1973- Chicago’s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the tallest office building in the U.S.A.

1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time, so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once. So thank Gary that you get endless messages like "Nigerian Bank Trustee offers you $10 million."

1979- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. The green grocer’s daughter called the Iron Lady dominated British politics for the next twenty years.

1985- The White House confirmed rumors that President Reagan would occasionally adjust his schedule when Nancy would seek the advice of a San Francisco astrologer.

1991- Steve Jobs agreed to the deal between Walt Disney and Pixar to create the film Toy Story.

1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company James J. Morgan testified to a congressional committee that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears candy.

1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is potash?

Answer: A form of potassium (Everybody needs potassium. Have a banana!) used mostly in animal feed and fertilizer.

Quiz: What is potash?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Which side was Athens on in the Trojan War?
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History for 5/2/2019
Birthdays: Czarina Catherine the Great, Domenico Scarlatti, Manfred Von Richthofen the Red Baron, Bing Crosby, Dr. Benjamin Spock the Baby Doctor, Vernon Castle, Lorenzo Music, Theodore Bikel, Lesley Gore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Satyajit Ray, Pinky Lee, Link Wray of the Wraymen, Christine Baranski, Doug Wildey, Dwayne Johnson The Rock is 47

1349- The Kings of England and France are forced to declare a ten-year truce in their Hundred Years War because of the ravages of the Black Plague. After all, how can anyone be expected to have a good war, when everyone was already dead?

1519- Leonardo Da Vinci died at the chateau of Amboise in the arms of King Francis I. He had accepted the offer of the French King of a stable retirement (even then artists worried about that kinda stuff). Two hundred and eighty years later during the French Revolution peasants broke into his tomb to get the lead lining for cannonballs and threw his bones into a trash pile. So no one is sure where he's buried.

1670- The Hudson's Bay Company is chartered by King Charles II. At one point the Honorable Company was responsible for the administration of most of western Canada, called Prince Rupert's land, the largest land mass in history ever under the control of a board of directors. It's CEO, Sir George Simpson was nicknamed "the Emperor".

1797- One of the marvels of Europe today is the preservation of the City of Venice. Beyond an occasional flood Venice never had a great fire or destruction by war. Many of the buildings are as old as Notre Dame. Venice was a naval power so all of her wars were fought out at sea. Venice was besieged once by Pepin the son of Charlemagne in 967AD, this day in 1797 Napoleon, pursuing his conquest of Italy, declared war on the Venetian Republic. They immediately surrendered.

1808- Spanish Independence Day- Napoleon had invaded Spain and put his older brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. The Spanish called him "Pepe Bottaglia" (Joey Bottles-due to his fondness for drink) and bitterly hated the French occupation. Reacting to the occupation of Madrid, the Spanish people riot in the Playa Del Sol and cut up all the French soldiers they can find. The French arrest and shoot them. Francisco Goya does lots of neat drawings and paintings. The Spanish invention of organized small scale partisan actions they will give the name "guerilla" warfare.

1813- Battle of Lutzen- Napoleon whups the Prussians.

1863- Battle of Chancellorsville - Robert E. Lee is surrounded by the superior Union army of "Fighting Joe" Hooker. Hooker bragged: "God have mercy on General Lee, for I shall have none!". Lincoln was more realistic: "The hen is the wisest of all animal creation. She does not cackle until AFTER her egg is laid." Lee gets out of the trap and defeats Hooker.

1865- A $100,000 reward was offered for the arrest of former president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, now a fugitive on the run from Union armies.

1885- First Good Housekeeping Magazine.

1920 –The Negro National League, the first successful all-Black baseball league, held its first game in Indianapolis. The league was founded earlier that same year by legendary baseball player, Andrew "Rube" Foster, and featured teams such as the Chicago American Giants, Chicago Giants, Cuban Stars, Dayton Marcos, Indianapolis ABCs, Kansas City Monarchs and St. Louis Giants in its first season.

1921- Chicago’s Field Museum opened to the public. It was housed in the building originally called the Hall of Fine Arts in the Great Chicago Exhibition of 1893.

1927- Buck vs. Bell. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled states have the right to mandatory enforced sterilization of the “unfit and incompetent”. These included low IQ and epileptics. This was a result of the Eugenics Movement, that felt America’s gene pool would be swamped by “lesser races”. A court could order you sterilized against your will. The Nazis said they learned much from study of these American laws. Even today, there are still sterilization laws on the books in 20 States.

1930- Little ten year old Phillip of Greece came home from school to find his mother Princess Alice von Battenburg had been packed off to an insane asylum, and his father Prince Andrew of Greece intending to send him to an Scottish boarding school so he could move in with his mistress. The boy would grow up to marry Queen Elizabeth II and become Prince Phillip of Edinburgh.

1932- Jack Benny's Radio Show debuts. Oh Rochester! Mel Blanc the voice of Bugs Bunny did many characters and voices on the show, including the engine of Jacks’ old Maxwell automobile.

1933- Hitler's stormtroopers raid all union offices in Germany. They seize their accounts and cart the labor leaders off to concentration camps. Hitler had said" Democracy and Free Enterprise cannot co-exist in the same state, and one of the evilest forms Democracy can take is Trade Unionism".

1933- The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. The Inverness Courier published an account of a couple that sighted Nessie and offered a reward for proof.

1936- Ethiopian Emperor Rastafari Halie Selassie the Lion of Judah fled Addis Ababa in advance of Mussolini's invading armies.

1945-As General Weidling surrendered what was left of Berlin to the Russians, Admiral Doenitz, then head of government, ordered his Foreign Minister, Schwerin von Krosigk to broadcast to the German people advising them to flee west," The Iron Curtain in the east moves closer and closer; all those people caught in the mighty hands of the Bolsheviks are being destroyed." Beating Churchill to the term Iron Curtain by a couple years.

1945- After the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the German ambassador to Dublin was summoned to President Eamon De Valera's office. He was given an official note of condolence on the loss of their head of state. The neutral Irish Republic became the only nation on Earth to send The Third Reich a sympathy card.

1945- All the remaining Axis forces in Italy surrendered. Meanwhile on this day in Bavaria, the top German rocket scientists led by Dr. Werner Von Braun gave themselves up to the Americans. On Braun’s worktable were plans for a missile that could travel 4,200 miles, far enough to reach the U.S. East Coast.

1952- The British Airline B.O.A.C. began the first trans-Atlantic jet plane service. This began the class of globetrotting rich partygoers named Jet-Setters. BOAC later became British Air.

1957- Mafia don Frank Costello had taken over the Lucciano New York crime family after Lucky Lucciano had been deported to Sicily. Another Lucciano triggerman named Vito Genovese felt he had been passed over. This day Frank Costello was crossing the lobby of his apartment on Central Park West, when Vinny " the Chin" Gigante came up behind him: "Hey Frank, this is for you!" and started shooting. Costello was left for dead but Vinny bungled his job- Costello was only grazed in the skull. He recovered, but wisely decided to retire from racketeering. Costello’s job went to Carlo Gambino.

1957- Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Commie Hunter, died in an asylum from hepatitis, alcohol delirium and cirrhosis of the liver.

1964- Disney’s audio- animatronic Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln opened at the NY World’s Fair.

1967-" Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud!" The Black Panther Party announced it’s armed militancy to the US and the world by trying to break in with shotguns on the California State assembly during a vote. This caused Gov. Ronald Reagan to pass the first assault weapons ban in the U.S. The media would ring with the militant words and images of Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton.

1972- J. EDGAR HOOVER DIED. He had been F.B.I. director since 1934. Despite his numerous achievements like neutralizing Nazi espionage and the Ku Klux Klan, he never seemed willing to attack the Mafia. While the FBI chased lone criminals like Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde, the big crime syndicates in Chicago and New York functioned unmolested. Some speculate it was because he knew they would expose the FBI chiefs secret lifestyle. Hoover lived in a long-term relationship with his second in command Clyde Tolson. That didn’t stop him from outing high profile gays in the Truman and Johnson administrations when it suited him. When Hoover was buried at Arlington, the Marine guard handed Tolson the folded flag from the coffin, something only the widow gets.
J. Edgar said he needed his secrecy to pursue his high profile war on "American Immorality". When Lyndon Johnson was asked why he still kept the ancient F.B.I. director around, he replied:" I’d rather keep that old bastard on the inside of my tent a pissing out, than on the outside pissing in.".

1972- First day shooting on Steven Spielberg’s film JAWS. The giant mechanical shark used as a prop was nicknamed "Bruce" after Spielberg’s lawyer.

1982- During the Falkland's War a British helicopter equipped with Exocet missiles sank Argentina's largest battleship, the Belgrano. London tabloids ran as the headline over the burning ship- "Gotcha !" Interestingly, the Belgrano was a refitted 45 year old American battleship, the U.S.S. Phoenix, that had survived the Pearl Harbor attack.

1982- The 24 hour Weather Channel started.

1983- Microsoft introduced the three-button mouse.

1997- Movie star Eddie Murphy was busted for picking up trans hooker Artisone Seiuli at 4:45 in the morning on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. Murphy said he was just being a good Samaritan and giving the young lady a ride home.

2011- In the middle of the night American Navy Seal Team 6 flew into Pakistan and killed Osama Ben Laden. It turned out Osama had been living in a large compound just a few blocks from the Pakistani version of West Point. (Because of the time difference, it was still May 1st back in US).
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which side was Athens on in the Trojan War?

Answer: Neither. Athens did not exist yet. If it did, it was no more than a village.

Quiz: What is a Honky-Tonk?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Is it true that Vikings never wore horns on their helmets?
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History for 4/30/2018
Birthdays: Elector Johann-Frederich the Magnanimous, Franz Lehar, Joachim Von Ribbentropp, Max Skladanowsky, Jaroslav Hasek, Eve Arden, Jill Clayburgh, Alice B. Toklas, Isaiah Thomas, Cloris Leachman is 93, Jane Campion, Al Lewis, Bill Plympton is 72, Lars von Trier, Burt Young, Kirsten Dunst is 37, Gal Gadot is 34.

In ancient Egypt today was Wake up and Smell the Breeze Day, The first known Spring Festival in history. As part of the holiday, Egyptians ate a small dried fermented fish called Fessig, which they thought prevented diseases blown in by the desert.

WALPURGISNACHT- In the Hartz Mountains of Germany the eve the Feast Day of St. Walpurga the demon chaser is a Halloween kind of party, when the Devil can romp for a night. It's part of the inspiration for Mussorgsky’s "Night on Bald Mountain".

535A.D. STRANGULATION OF ARMALASUNTHA, queen of the Ostrogoth’s. One hundred years after the fall of Rome, the nomadic Gothic peoples had settled in Southern Europe. The West-Goths or Visigoths across southern France and Spain, the East Goths or Ostrogoth’s across central Italy under their leader Totila.
But Totilla had now died and his Vandal wife Armalasuntha was trying to fend off rivals to her throne. She had concluded and alliance with the Byzantine Emperor Justinian just before she was overthrown and killed by Totilla’s brother Witimer. She was supposedly strangled in her bath, the latest fad among barbarians (baths I mean, they always had strangulation).
Justinian used her death as the pretext to invade Italy and try and recover the western half of the old Roman Empire. The Ostrogothic nation was at last destroyed by the Byzantine general Narses, who was a eunuch-little person. But the Roman Empire was not recovered and stayed fallen.

1524- The Chevalier Bayard, called the Knight without Equal and above Reproach, was killed covering the French rearguard after the battle of Romagnano. Bayard was considered the last of the great Knights of the Realm. France used his death to count as the End of the Middle Ages. Fittingly the armored knight was shot by a rifle- a harquebus to be exact. When the fatal bullet struck him Bayard drew his sword and kissed the handle skyward as a sign of the Cross.
As the Chevalier’s remains were brought out of Italy to Grenoble, simple peasants came out to carry the coffin aloft from hand to hand for miles. At a time when nobles were despised, Bayard was beloved of all people.

1598-Conquistador Don Juan de Onate claims for Spain all of "New Mexico", a province comprising all of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and California. He began an aggressive colonization policy among the Pueblo Indians.

1789-FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES-wearing a suit of Connecticut homespun and a sword on his hip, George Washington was inaugurated on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York as the first President.
John Hancock and John Adams were always annoyed that they weren't made first president before him. Thomas Jefferson originally thought the position of elected ruler ridiculous "So they've saddled us with a Polish King." (The Kings of Poland at the time were elected figureheads with little power). Jefferson was made first Secretary of State and felt the position was so useless since we had no foreign policy, he asked to also be made attorney general so he could do something else to pass the time. Alexander Hamilton wanted to be first Secretary of the Treasury so he could manipulate it into something resembling a Prime Minister. This was the way the Exchequer had evolved in England. At the same time Vice President Adams was hoping for the same kind of power.

But Washington had his own ideas. His animosity with Adams may explain why the Vice Presidency evolved into the useless position it is. And Congress set up the Ways and Means Committee to curb the autocratic methods of Hamilton's Treasury Department. It's amazing that despite all this intrigue the system worked out the way it did....

1803- THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE - Spain had governed Louisiana since the French defeat in the Seven Years War. At first Napoleon Bonaparte dreamt of rebuilding France’s colonial empire. But after his naval defeats and the long war against rebels in Haiti, he soured on the idea. He had duped the King of Spain into giving him back Louisiana in exchange for the Italian Duchy of Parma. The King of Spain’s only stipulation was that should France ever wish to unload Louisiana it must come back to Spain. Napoleon said:" Trust Me!" Then figured he could do the British most damage by selling it to the Yankees. Spain never did get Parma.
The US wanted to buy New Orleans from France the way they bought Alabama from Spain and Maine from England. America's nightmare was England taking Louisiana from France the way they took away Canada in 1759. Then American expansion would be permanently confined to the east coast and the U.S. would be a one time zone country. Napoleon decided not jut to sell them The Big Easy but the entire Deep South and Midwest up to Montana! At the stroke of a pen the land mass of the United States doubled. Such a deal!
Napoleon later wrote: "I have confirmed the might of the United States and in her raised a Rival to England, that will one day Humble her Pride!"

1859- CAMARONE DAY- National Holiday of the French Foreign Legion.
It commemorates a battle during the French Empire in Mexico. 175 legionaries were attacked at a little ranchero called Camarone by thousands of Juaristas. The legionaries fought until only 12 were left alive with no more bullets. When the Mexican commander called upon them to surrender, Capt. Danjou ordered "Fix bayonets and Charge!"

Today the wooden hand of Capt. Danjou is a relic at the Legions headquarters outside Marseilles. Since then to do a gutsy action in Legion parlance is a Camarone. In 1951 in Korea when the Foreign Legion rose from their trenches to fight hand to hand with massed human wave attacks of Red Chinese soldiers, their cry was "Camarone! "

1897- English Professor J.J Thompson discovered a subatomic particle 100 times smaller than a proton. He called it a 'corpusle' but later changed it to ' The Electron'.

1900- John Luther Jones, called CASEY JONES died in a spectacular train crash near Vaughn Mississippi. Jones' freight train was running 75 minutes late so he stoked up his engine to 100 mph. Suddenly a switching error put a passenger train in his path. Jones stayed at the controls trying to stop the train while his crew jumped to safety. There was a head on collision but because of Jone’s bravery his was the only death. A brakeman later wrote the famous folksong.
Union activists prefer to remember that Jones was a strikebreaker running his train recklessly in defiance of a strike to impress his employers. The union still paid his widow his $3000 dollar life insurance. Folksinger Joe Hill in his song "Casey Jones the Union Scab." tells how when he went to heaven, the Angel’s Union Local #23 "fired Casey down the Golden Stair."

1905- At Evansville Illinois, future baseball umpire Cy Rigler began the practice of raising his right arm to indicate strikes, so that friends in the outfield could distinguish calls.

1916- The Chicago Cubs played their first game in Wrigley Field, then called Weegman Park.

1934- In Berlin hotel, Chancellor Adolf Hitler met Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, who showed him the plans for a cheap inexpensive car the average German worker could afford. A people’s car or VolksWagen. It would become the VW beetle.

1939- The 1939 World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows, NY. The Trylon & Perisphere presided over the gleaming Art-Deco paean to optimism, even as the world waited nervously for Hitler’s next move. With President Franklin D. Roosevelt in attendance the NBC network began regular television broadcasting. It only went to a few homes. Experts were not optimistic." It requires a darkened room and constant attention." one said.

1943- During WWII this day the dead body of an American Major named Martin washed up on a beach in Italy. On the intelligence officer’s body was found sensitive documents outline the coming Allied Invasion of Italy through Sardinia. It was all an elaborate hoax set up by the OSS to fool Nazi strategists on Allied intentions. The body used was an unidentified corpse. It worked. In July when the Anglo-American forces invaded Sicily many of the German heavy forces were far away in Sardinia.

1945- BERLIN FALLS. Sergeants Yegorov and Kantariya raise the red flag over the Reichstag as the last Nazi resistance in the capitol was stamped out. After a late supper of spaghetti and a tossed salad Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun bit down on cyanide capsules and Hitler put a Walthur PPK pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Dr. Josef Goebbels and his family took poison but secretary Martin Bormann decided to take his chances making a run for it. For years it was thought he had made it to Latin America, but in the late 1980's excavations in Berlin found his skeleton under a collapsed building crouching behind a tank.

Hitler even left instructions to have his Alsatian dog Blondi poisoned. The bodies were taken out to a ditch and burned with gasoline. A famous photo of a dead man with a Hitler mustache, was in reality a body double shown to the Russians to throw them off the track. Today, Adolf Hitlers’ skull is sitting in a filing cabinet in Moscow somewhere.
When Marshal Zhukov informed Soviet leader Josef Stalin by telephone of Hitler's death, Uncle Joe said:" Doigralsya, podlets!" So, that's the end of the bastard!"

Soviet troops found in Hitler’s office that he did possess a large world globe like Charlie Chaplin’s film the Great Dictator. The globe had arrows drawn in red pen pointed at England and the United States with Hitler’s handwritten scribbles "Look out! Here I come!". Russians covered the Reich Chancellery building with graffiti- the most popular being "Svenia went to Berlin" a version of the American "Kilroy was Here".

1945- "Arthur Godfrey Time" debuts on CBS radio. Godfrey was a local Washington D.C. deejay who gained nationwide fame for his emotional coverage of the funeral of FDR. He then went from radio to television, hosting the first regularly successful television entertainment program. Godfrey in later life got increasingly hard on his employees and in an infamous incident actually fired singer Julius LaRosa live on the air.

1948- The first civilian Land Rover automobiles produced.

1948- David Ben-Gurion read the declaration of independence of the State of Israel to a cheering crowd in Tel Aviv.

1952- Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on television. Over one million kits will be sold in the first year! Originally invented by George Lerner in 1949 to stuck faces on real vegetables, Mr. Potato Head was sold to brothers Henry and Merrill Hassenfeld in 1951 (the creators of the toy company Hasbro). In 2000 Rhode Island declared itself the Mr Potato Head State. The Hasbro Toy Company is headquartered in Pawtucket, a city just outside of Providence.

1961- In Moscow, Lee Harvey Oswald married Marina Prusakova. He later moved back to the US and became the assassin of President John Kennedy.

1970- President Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The announcement from a President who ran on a Peace platform was greeted by an explosion of nationwide anti-war protests, climaxing in the Kent State murders.

1973- The Saturday Night Massacre. As the Watergate Scandal accelerates, President Nixon tells all his senior White House Staff- H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Nicholas Katzenbach and attorney general John Mitchell that they were all fired.

1975 -SAIGON FELL. As Huey helicopters lifted the last panic stricken evacuees off of the US embassy roof, the South Vietnamese capitol city Saigon was taken by the Communist North Vietnamese army. Over 7000 people were lifted out by helicopter to the U.S. fleet, the largest helicopter evacuation ever.
One of the last out was US ambassador William Martin, with the Stars & Stripes folded under his jacket. As North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Thin accepted the surrender of the city he told acting South Vietnamese President Big Minh “ Do not be sad. Only the Americans are defeated. Consider this a moment of Joy.” The Vietnam War, which had been raging on and off for 25 years, finally ended.
Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

1976- Great Disney animator Milt Kahl retired.

1980- Bert Lance, White House budget director for President Jimmy Carter was cleared of nine charges of fraud. Lance had once explained the economy thus: " Think of the Inflationary Spiral as a giant Corkscrew, and think of yourselves as the Cork."

1988- Tom Hanks married actress Rita Wilson.

1992- BERN, the Geneva particle lab where the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, declared that WWW, aka The Web, would be open and free to all with no restrictions or royalties to be paid to them.

1993- In Hamburg, young tennis star Monica Seles had just completed a match when lunatic fan named Gunter Parche jumped out of the crowd and stabbed her in the back with a knife. He didn’t want Monica to overtake Stephy Graff, whom he was stalking. Monica Seles recovered and resumed competition but never again regained her world championship poise. Parche spent a little time in prison but was soon released. Stephy Graff did stay the number one seed.

1993- The Walt Disney Company announced its’ purchase of top independent film producer Miramax. They produced films like The Crying Game. Ten years later a feud with Michael Eisner caused Miramax founders the Weinsteins to leave and form another company. The Weinstein Company went on to produce more hit movies. By the time Miramax was sold off in 2010, it was a shadow of its former self.

1997- In the last show of the season, comedian Ellen Degenere’s character Ellen admits to Laura Dern that she’s gay. Disney promptly canceled the Ellen Show. Ellen returns with a talk show that became even more popular.

2011- At the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, President Obama kept the mood light by making fun of Donald Trump’s hints he might run for president. Trump never cracked a smile, bur resolved there and then he would run for President.

2012- The Freedom Tower, was the building made to replace the destroyed World Trade Center. This day it’s height surpassed that of the Empire State Building, to be the tallest building in New York.
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Yesterday’s Question: Is it true that Vikings never wore horns on their helmets?

Answer: No. The horns were a device added in the 1800s by opera designers and historians who simply wondered what Vikings looked like. No one has ever found any archaeological proof.

Question: Is it true that Vikings never wore horns on their helmets?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What was the old name Sri Lanka was called before 1972?
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History for 4/29/2019
Birthdays: Emperor Hirohito, Duke Ellington, Duke Wellington, Sir Thomas Beacham, Zuben Mehta is 83, Tom Ewell, Rod McKuen, Fred Zinnemann, Jerry Seinfeld is 65, Michelle Pfeiffer is 61, Daniel Day Lewis is 62, Uma Thurman is 49, Willie Nelson

Today is the feast day of the Patron Saint of Italy, no, not Frank Sinatra, Saint Catherine of Sienna.

1429- At around 8:00PM, the Royal French Army entered the City of Orleans surrounded on three sides by the besieging English. The torchlight glinted off the armor of the great warriors like the Duke Du Alencon, Giles Des Rais, Etienne LaVignoles” the Angry-One”. But all eyes were on their warchief, a little 17 year old peasant girl in white armor- Joan La Pucelle, Joan the Maid. Since she was illiterate she immediately dictated a letter to the English army: “Surrender to the Maid, sent by God the King of Heaven, the keys to all the French towns you have despoiled and go home!”

1749- In Philadelphia inventor Ben Franklin hosted a dinner party where he used his new battery to electrocute the turkeys to be roasted for the amusement of his guests. .

1771- Artist Benjamin West unveils his painting of the “Death of General Wolfe” at the Royal Academy in London. Wolfe was killed in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which decided that Canada would be English. West’s portrayal of Wolfe in his actual uniform instead an idealized Grecian god was considered scandalously realistic and revolutionized painting.

1786- The day before his opera THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO was to premiere, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sat down after dinner and wrote the famous overture. Friends said he liked to think while playing billiards.

1818- The ARBUTHNOT & ARMBRUISTER INCIDENT- Henry Arbuthnot was a 70 year old British merchant who sympathized with the Seminole Indians of Florida. Together with a former Major Armbruister they aided this tribe in its struggle with the expanding United States. When U.S. Gen. Andy Jackson invaded Spanish Florida in 1818 he captured these men. Jackson nursed a hatred of English people since as a young boy in the Revolution his home was burned and he was slashed with a saber by a redcoat officer. Jackson’s mother and older brother died in an English prison.

So Jackson was not interested in hearing about native rights or the eccentricities of Britishers. He executed them on the spot, hanging old Arbuthnot from the mast of his own schooner. This mistreatment of foreign nationals proved an embarrassment to President Monroe and earned Jackson a reputation for cruelty that would follow him to his own presidential runs.

1861- "All we wish is to be left alone." In a speech Southern President Jefferson Davis spells out the policy of the Confederacy with regard to the war with the United States. The speech was aimed at Britain and France for international support. Davis was adopting the traditional defensive strategy of insurgents, that not being crushed out of existence is a victory in itself. However by yielding the initiative and not occupying Washington D.C. after the U.S. army was destroyed at Bull Run, the rebels probably lost their best chance to win the Civil War.

1862- Admiral Farragut captured New Orleans. Farragut was a Southerner so at first the War Department doubted his loyalty. He was only able to swing a fleet command through his father-in-law, Admiral David Dixon Porter.

1863- General Stonewall Jackson had spent the last three weeks peacefully enjoying the company of his wife Ann and his baby boy. They had celebrated his 38th birthday together. On this day Jackson received word that the Yankee Army was on the move. He said good bye to his family and rode off. When Ann saw him next, he was dying.

1914- THE SILENT PROTEST- Writer Upton Sinclair gained national prominence as an activist by standing with other intellectuals silently in front of the Standard Oil headquarters in Washington D.C. The protest was to accuse the company of the infamous Ludlow Massacre, when company hired vigilantes set upon a camp of striking unionists and murdered them and their families including 11 children. When loud protests in front of Standard Oil’s office were outlawed by DC marshals, Sinclair resorted to this silent protest.

1916- The phase of World War I in Mesopotamia (Iraq) effectively ended when Lord Townshend surrendered his Anglo-Indian invasion force to the Turks after being surrounded at the Iraqi city of Kut.

1929- The film "All's Quiet on the Western Front" premiered. The world war one battlefield was constructed on a California ranch and dozens of real veterans hired to be extras. When the antiwar film debuted in Germany, Nazis agitators were sent out to Berlin theaters to release rats, skunks and snakes in the theaters to scare people away. The star of the movie Lew Ayres ruined his career when he declared himself a conscientious objector during World War II.

1939- It’s strangely ironic that Adolf Hitler’s Government while murdering millions also waged the first campaigns against smoking. This day the Nazi Party officially banned smoking in all their offices because of health concerns. The rest of the world wouldn’t even begin to think of linking cancer with cigarette smoking until the 1960’s.

1944- Dancing Romeos, the last Our Gang comedy short was produced by MGM, which had bought the franchise in 1938 from Hal Roach.

1945- ADOLPH AND EVA'S WEDDING- With the Red Army knocking on the door, Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun get married in their bunker. They celebrate by having dinner of spaghetti and a small green salad and then commit suicide.

1945- DACHAU liberated- American combat troops of the 45th Rainbow Division shot their way into the concentration camp and liberated 32,000 survivors like future Nobel Laureate Eli Weisel.
The Americans were so horrified by the nightmare they found, including 30 railroad cars packed with decomposing corpses, that when a clean cut, blonde haired SS commander surrendered by snapping a crisp Sieg-Heil salute, the American major he had directed it to pulled out his pistol and shot him dead on the spot. 346 SS guards were killed by the U.S. troops and camp survivors.

Many of the U.S. troops there were African American and Nisei (Japanese American) so when the newsreels sent back images back home, they were careful to film the backs of their helmets so you didn't see their faces.

1949- MGM chief Louis B. Mayer fired Frank Sinatra for making a joke about him. Mayer had hurt his hip riding, and Sinatra joked he got hurt not from falling off his horse, but falling off Jean Howard, a young actress Mayer was chasing.

1962- President John Kennedy hosted a dinner for a group of Nobel Prize winners at the White House. Kennedy said: “ I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined here alone.”

1975- In the wee hours of the morning Communist North Vietnamese began their final assault on the South Vietnamese capitol of Saigon. Missiles struck the runway at Tahn Sun Nhut Airport, so the big Air Force C-130 cargo planes could not land. The evacuation out to the US 7th Fleet offshore would be done all by helicopters. It was the biggest helicopter airlift in history. The signal on the radio to begin the air evacuation was Saigon radio began broadcasting Bing Crosby’s recording of White Christmas.

1981-Marylin Barnett “outs” tennis champion Mrs. Billy Jean King, the most famous American female athlete of her time. She said they had a lesbian affair for seven years.

1986- Los Angeles Central Library burns down. A lot of the costs of rebuilding was raised by private donation, much raised by a wild local televangelist named Dr. Gene Scott. Scott would preach his own strange brand of Bible study while smoking a cigar and wearing funny hats on camera. He also liked to laugh at other evangelists.

1988- On this day many Midwestern evangelicals awaited the Rapture and Apocalypse that the Bible foretold within one generation of the restoration of the Temple -- which
they took to mean within forty years of the re-institution of the Nation of
Israel... and guess what? We're still here.

1992- THE GREAT LOS ANGELES RIOT- Los Angeleanos go berserk after an all white jury in Simi Valley acquitted four policemen who beat up drunk motorist Rodney King while being videotaped. 63 killed, 2500 businesses destroyed, $1.5 billion dollars in damage, 13,200 arrests and large sections of Los Angeles put under martial law. Even Rodney King was moved to go on TV and proclaim: " Can't we all just get along?"
Part of the reason the disturbance spun out of control was the autocratic chief of the LAPD, Darryl Gates, was incommunicado for several hours at the beginning of the crisis at a fundraising party in Bel Air to get money to fund his quarrel with Mayor Tom Bradley. One irony was the loot-crazed mob ran right past the L.A. County Art Museum to sack a Mays department store on the next corner. I guess they felt that there was nothing of value in it, which is in agreement with many art critics. The Beverly Hills Police, a separate entity, kept the peace by simply arresting everyone they saw.

2001- Pioneer 10 was a space probe launched to the outer planets in 1972. After sending the first photos of Jupiter and Pluto in 1973, Pioneer 10 left our solar system and headed for deep space in 1997. It is aimed at the Constellation Taurus. On this day 7 billion miles away Pioneer 10 phoned home to say it was fine. Its last message was received in 2003. I wonder if it asked if Richard Nixon was still president?

2004- The last Oldsmobile made, ending the 106 year old line.

2011- Prince William married Catherine (Cate) Middleton in Westminster Abbey.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was the old name Sri Lanka was called before 1972?

Answer: Ceylon.