Quiz: Thanks to the RAF in the Battle of Britain, Hitler never got to invade England. But there was one part of the United Kingdom that was invaded and occupied by the German Army. What was it?

Yesterday’s quiz answered below: What side was Missouri on in the Civil War? North or South?
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History for 1/28/2019
Birthdays: King Henry VII Tudor, Jose Marti, Colette, Jackson Pollack, Claus Oldenburg, Arthur Rubenstein, Ernst Lubitsch, Connie Rasinski, Susan Sontag, Barbie Benton, General George Pickett, William Burroughs (1855) the inventor of the calculator, Mo Rocca, Alan Alda is 83, Elijah Wood is 39

1393- DANSE MACABRE- (Bal des Ardents) At a masquerade ball given at the French court King Charles VI 'the mad' and several of his closest friends dressed up as 'wild men' to amuse the court. They had fur and hair attached to their bodies with tar.
While everyone was enjoying the capering of these strange anonymous creatures, a torch touched their tar covered bodies and the group exploded into flame. While the court watched these beings writhe in agony, The Duchess de Berry screamed" Oh My God! That's the King!" King Charles was saved when that same duchess smothered his flames in her skirts. Another duke saved himself by diving headlong into a vat of Beaujolais, but the others roasted to death.
The common people weren't sympathetic. One duke liked to step on your neck while sneering 'Down Peasant!". As his barbecued remains were carried through Paris, people laughed and sang and chanted 'Down Monseigneur!" Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story called “Hop Frog” about the incident. Roger Corman put it into his 1964 film- Masque of the Red Death.

1547- English Henry VIII died, leaving his ten year-old sickly-son Edward VI "Gods Imp" king. He was 55 years old but his hard living had aged him early. Increasingly suspicious of all around him as he aged, one of his last acts was to have the Earl of Surrey beheaded for changing the coat of arms of his father the Duke of York into something more like a Royal Heir-Apparent. The Duke was also scheduled to be executed but was saved when the old king died first.

1596- Sir Francis Drake died at sea off the coast of Nicaragua while trying to mount one more big raid on the Spanish Main. The Devonshire preacher's son had raided there as a young man. But by now, the Spaniards had learned his tricks so they were prepared. The trip was a failure and he died on deck of yellow fever in late middle age.

1782- The Congress called for the use of the Great Seal of the United States, even though no one had designed one yet. But the British had one and so..uh,we had to have one too !

1829- BURKE & HARE- In the early nineteenth century scientific experiments on cadavers were still outlawed as desecration of the dead so doctors secretly hired grave robbers to get them specimens to experiment on. Burke & Hare were the most infamous of Edinburgh's "resurrectionists" because they didn't always wait for the subject to die, but murdered them in their boardinghouse. To Burke someone became slang for suffocating them. Doctors and later police became suspicious of the freshness of their specimens and Hare finked on Burke to save himself.
On this day Burke was hanged before a crowd of thousands and his body later medically dissected. The notoriety of this case helped pass laws allowing doctors more legal use of mortal remains. Their story was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's story "The Body Snatcher."

1863- Ulysses Grant arrived at Vicksburg to begin the epic campaign that would end on July 4th with the capture of the 'Gibraltar of the Confederacy'.

1878- First commercial telephone switchboard.

1884- A British relief force reached the city of Khartoum just two days too late. After a one year siege, the Sudanese Dervishes had sacked the city and massacred all the inhabitants including General Gordon, dancing with their heads on spears. The desert relief force was held up until all their supplies were complete, including 20,000 black umbrellas, apricot jam, and cricket bats. Mad Dogs and Englishmen….

1902- Andrew Carnegie was a rough crude tycoon with a ruthless streak that saw him ruin his competitors and pay vigilantes to murder his striking employees and their families. But after all the rough and tumble of the Gilded Age business world, he showed a new side of his character in retirement. He set up the Carnegie Institute in Washington and resolved to give away the bulk of his $350 million dollar fortune in philanthropic causes. The reason why so many colleges, hospitals and concert halls in America today are named Carnegie. He declared “A man who dies rich dies disgraced!”

1915- The U.S. Coast Guard born, combining the Lifesaving Service and the Revenue Cutter patrol. In 2002 the Coast Guard was folded into the Cabinet office Department of Homeland Security.

1916- President Woodrow Wilson nominated Judge Lewis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Brandeis was the first Jewish American to be so honored.

1917- After 11 months fruitlessly chasing Pancho Villa through Mexico and skirmishing with the Mexican army, Pres. Wilson ordered General John Pershing’s army home.

1918- In Germany a million industrial workers fed up with the endless carnage of World War One went on strike, paralyzing factories nationwide.

1926- Composer Kurt Weill married his Pirate Jenny- Lotte Lenya.

1930- Warner Brothers Cartoons Born. Leon Schlesinger, the head of Pacific Art and Title, signed a deal with several unemployed Disney animators who had left Walt to form their own studio to draw Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but had been stiffed by their contacts. Schlesinger had connections with the Warner Bros. since he helped them get funding for the 'Jazz Singer'. They created Leon Schlesinger's Studio Looney Tunes, in imitation of Disney's Silly Symphonies. Their first character was Bosko, but eventually they would create Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Pepe LePew and more.

1949- The Admiral Broadway Review premiered on television. The one and a half hour comedy review starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. The show was so popular Admiral was swamped for orders for new televisions and ironically was forced to cancel the show to focus on their production needs. The show was revived as Your Show of Shows, one of the great shows of early television.

1956- Young singer Elvis Presley first appeared to television audiences on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show.

1958- Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella paralyzed in an auto wreck. He spent the rest of his life as a spokesman for the rights of the handicapped.

1978- Premiere of Hanna-Barbera's the Three Robonic Stooges.

1982- Danny DeVito married Rhea Perlman.

1986- THE CHALLENGER DISASTER- As the world watched the Space shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds after takeoff killing all twelve crew members. They included New Hampshire schoolteacher Christie McAuliffe who had won the space ride in a contest. It was blamed on defective O-rings in the rocket booster.

2003- President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address said that he had proof that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had sent agents to the African nation of Niger to buy uranium yellowcake, a component to make atomic bombs. It is one of the major excuses for the war with Iraq. This was later proved to be a complete lie. Bush blamed the intelligence service, after giving the head of the CIA George Tenent the Medal of Freedom. When special CIA envoy Joseph Wilson, who knew Niger, tried to point out the falsehood, the Bush White House destroyed his career and outed the cover of his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. She had been working on exposing the Iranian Nuclear program.
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Yesterday’s Question: What side was Missouri on in the Civil War? North or South?

Answer: Missouri was considered neutral because the population split on slavery. The Governor and farmers were pro-Southern, the state legislature and townspeople were Pro-Union. The state fell apart into warring paramilitary militias, Bushwhackers vs. Jayhawkers. Ten percent of the state’s population was uprooted by the fighting.

QUIZ: What side was Missouri on in the Civil War? North or South?

Yesterdays question answered below: “40 acres and a mule.” where does that come from.?
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History for Jan. 27, 2019
Birthdays-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Charles Dodgson-better known as Lewis Carroll, Eduard Lalo, William Randolph Hearst, Samuel Gompers, Jerome Kern, Skitch Henderson, Donna Reed, Bridgette Fonda, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kate Wolf, Ross Bagdasarian a.k.a. David Seville- creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, James Cromwell is 79, Mimi Rogers, Keith Olbermann, Frank Miller is 62, Patton Oswalt is 50

Today is celebrated as Thomas Crapper Day 1910, the inventor of the indoor flush toilet. Besides making life more comfortable, his systems of valves and vents preventing waste odors and germs from re-entering the home. This did a lot to combat disease in the 19th century. When American troops were in Britain during WWII, they kept seeing his name on all the toilets, so they started calling them The Crapper.

98AD- Roman General Trajan was serving on the German frontier. This day his aide Hadrian came with the news that the Emperor Nerva had died and had designated him as the next Emperor of Rome. Trajan was such a no–nonsense soldier that he delayed several months in Germany to settle the affairs of the province, before leaving to rule in Rome.

1307- Dante Alighieri got kicked out of Florence. Being exiled from politics left his mind free to concentrate on his poetry, like writing the Divine Comedy.

1431- German King Louis of Bavaria entered Rome in triumph to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. It had been custom since Charlemagne for the German Emperor to be called King of the Romans until the Pope crowned him. But Louis was arguing with the Pope in Avignon over several issues so rather than wait Louis expected the people of Rome to declare him Emperor. The German electors later reserved that right for themselves in Frankfurt. By successfully challenging the right of the Pope over him Louis of Bavaria was unwittingly aiding the coming of the Reformation seventy years in the future.

1535- Today is the Feast of Saint Angela Merci, founder of the Ursuline Nuns.

1649- King Charles I of England was convicted by trial in Parliament and sentenced to be beheaded.

1671- Buccaneer Henry Morgan and his pirates cross the Isthmus of Darien and attack Panama City by land. Morgan the Pirate looted the city, despite the Spaniards stampeding a herd of bulls at him. However the attack wasn't much of a surprise and most of the population had already fled with their valuables. I guess a coupla' hundred Englishmen with peg legs and patch eyes growling "Arrr Mateys!" isn't a common sight in the Equatorial rainforest.

1775- In London Secretary of State for the Americas Lord Dartmouth sends the Lord Governor of the colony of Massachusetts General Thomas Gage explicit orders to stop shilly-shallying with these uppity Yankees. He should just clap them in prison and confiscate any illegal weapons.
General Gage will get his instructions two months later -that how long it took news to cross the Atlantic by sailing ship. It will cause his redcoats in April to march to Lexington and Concord, which will ignite the American Revolution. Ironically Old Tom Gage liked America and had a good friend in Virginia named George Washington.

1863- THE BEAR RIVER MASSACRE- The Shoshone Indians along with the Bannocks and Utes had been raiding wagon trains through Utah and Nevada. Col Patrick Connor led 300 US cavalry in subzero cold to attack Chief Bear Hunter’s winter camp in a hot-springs ravine near present day Preston, Idaho. After a daylong battle, 224 warriors were killed. The soldiers went berserk destroying tepees and raping the Indian women. Chief Bear Hunter was shot, beaten, whipped, and when he still would not die, a red-hot bayonet was rammed through his head via his ear. A soldier called it “A frolic”. The Shoshone, Utes and Bannocks, who a generation earlier had helped Lewis & Clark, now asked for peace.

1888- The first magazine published of the National Geographic Society.

1900- Italian opera composer Guiseppi Verdi died. On his instructions no music was played at his funeral.

1918- Warner Bros. Pictures incorporated. The Brothers Warner (originally Wonkolasser)- Sam Albert, Harry and Jack were the sons of Jewish immigrants who had moved from Poland in 1882 and after some time in Canada, set up a bicycle repair shop in Ohio. In 1903 Albert and Harry bought a movie theater and began showing flickers. After their move to Hollywood, their first movie was Five Years in Germany. Throughout the 1920’s their little studio survived making pictures with dog star Rin Tin Tin. They called him The Mortgage Lifter, because the profits from his pictures paid their bills. Later they bought Vitagraph from animator James Stewart Blackton, and gambled on the new Sound technology. When they made The Jazz Singer with Jolson, Warner Bros became a major studio.

1918- The first Tarzan movie premiered. A silent film, the first Tarzan was named Elmo Lincoln.

1925- IDITEROD- THE SERUM RUN BEGAN- At this time Nome Alaska was totally depended on supplies brought by sled dog teams. When a serious outbreak of diphtheria threatened to become a major epidemic, Alaska had only two airplanes, and they were boxed up for the winter. Governor Scott C. Bone decided to get the vaccination serum to Nome by a relay of twenty mushers in the depth of winter, temperatures averaging around -40 degrees. This day the serum arrived by train at Nenana sealed in a metal cylinder wrapped in furs and was loaded onto the first dog sled. Wild Bill Shannon called out to his malamutes and mushed down the frozen Tanana River into history. The lead dog was named Balto. It normally took a dog sled 20 days to cover the 650 miles, but these men did it in 5 days, 7 hours, limiting the epidemic to only 5 deaths.
The Iditarod dog race runs in memory of this.

1926- Scotsman John Logie Baird demonstrated his televiser system- the first true television image. The image was too small, and resolution too weak and fuzzy to yet be more than a scientific curiosity. More potential was seen in American Philo Farnsworth’s system of radio-transmitted scan line images.

1927- Charlie Chaplin’s short comedy The Circus premiered.

1932- The Mukden Incident- Japanese troops rig up a provocation at a railway junction so they can invade Manchuria. If you are counting this little railway junction is the real beginning of World War II, which would rage until 1945. Apologists for Japanese Emperor Hirohito say he was not even informed of this attack and tried to order its recall, but was overruled by the military planners.

1943- US 8th Air Force conducted its’ first daylight bombing raid on Germany, attacking Wilhelmshaven. The air-Battle of Germany would continue to until May 1945.

1944- The Red Army breaks through to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and lifts the 800 day Nazi siege.

1944- WAS WALT A RED? Walt Disney donated money and may have attended a tribute to cartoonist Art Young in New York who had died three weeks before. Art Young was a political lefty and a close friend of John Reed and Louise Bryant, founders of the American Communist Party. The F.B.I. noted the memorial to Young was sponsored by the socialist newspaper The New Masses and other attendees included progressives like Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg.
Walt was already a founding member of the Hollywood Society for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group of conservative Hollywood celebrities meant to counteract the rampant Hollywood Liberals. Disney later became an F.B.I. informant, but like Reagan, it may have been after the F.B.I. reminded him of his attendance at this little soiree'....

1945- The Soviet Red Army finally liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The first soldier to reach the camp was a Mongolian scout on a horse. This led one Jewish survivor to wonder if the Nazis now had intended to hand them over to the Japanese! The Russians hanged Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoess in front of the villa in camp he and his family lived in. He was not the Rudolph Hess who flew to London in 1941 and died in Spandau Prison. Rescued survivors include the future Nobel Laureate Primo Levi, and the founder of Commodore Computers, Jack Trammel.

1948- The Wireway Company announced the first tape recorder for sale using the new magnetic tape. It cost $150.

1951- Test Ranger Abel. Because atomic tests in the Pacific were getting expensive, the US Air Force starts using the Nevada Test Site to drop their nuclear bombs.

1967- Three Apollo I astronauts Gus Grissom (pilot of the third Gemini flight), Ed Young and Roger Chafee died in a flash fire in their capsule. In those days the hatchways were literally screwed on from the outside and there was no way to open it from the inside. The fire occurred during a routine rehearsal probably from static electricity igniting an atmosphere of pure oxygen and feeding on velcro. The three men burned to death while engineers frantically struggled with the hatch. After this episode the future Apollo capsules were fitted with a hatch with exploding bolts. Grissom had once said: “If we die people must accept it. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

1973- Henry Kissinger and Li Duc To signed the Paris Peace Accords ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. President Nixon hailed the agreement as Peace with Honor but the defeat traumatized a generation of Americans and confused the public as to just what the American role in the world really was. Kissinger and Li Duc To won the Nobel Peace Prize for that year. Li Duc refused to accept it because his country was still at war. “if there's no peace, it would be hypocritical to receive a prize for it!" Henry the K didn’t have a problem accepting it and went to Oslo. North Vietnam overran South Vietnam two years later.

1992- Presidential candidate Bill Clinton was denounced by a woman named Jennifer Flowers of having a 12 year extramarital affair with her when governor of Arkansas. He goes on 60 Minutes with Hillary and called her a liar. Of course we now know they did have an affair, but hey, that’s politics.

Jan 27, 1994- The very first Marc Davis Lecture given at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. Marc and Alice established a fund to sponsor an annual talk about the art and development of animation. Marc gave this first talk himself.

1997- First day shooting on the Cohen Bros. film The Big Lebowski- The Dude Abides.
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Yesterday’s question:“ 40 acres and a mule.” where does that come from.?

Answer: Jan 26, 1865-Despite his Civil War victories General William T Sherman had been criticized for having a hard attitude towards black slaves, This day he answered his critics by issuing his General Order # 15, stating that every freed African-American has the right to "40 acres and a mule".

Quiz: “40 acres and a mule.” where does that come from.?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who wrote the opera about Mini the Girl of the Golden West?
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History for 1/26/2019
Birthdays: First Lady Julia Dent Grant, General Douglas MacArthur, Stephan Grappelli, Angela Davis, Maria Von Trapp, Wayne Gretsky, Eartha Kitt, Paul Newman, Charles Lane, Roger Vadim, Jules Feiffer is 90, Henry Jaglom, Anita Baker, Edward Abbey, Scott Glenn, David Straitharn, Randy Rhodes, Ellen DeGeneres is 61

404 A.D. Today is the Feast of Saint Paula, who built the first abbey and monastery where all the monks and nuns wore identical uniform sackcloth, demonstrating that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

1500- Captain Vincente Pinzon, who had once commanded the Nina for Columbus, discovered the coast of Brazil while serving the Portuguese navy.

1536- English King Henry VIII was a very active and virile 44 years old. This day he was participating in a joust, when his opponent knocked him off his horse. Not only did he hit the ground in full armor, but his horse rolled on top of him. He sustained a deep gash in his leg that never fully healed. It marked the end of his active life. He became sedentary and very fat. His leg gave him pain for the rest of his life. Many noted the king became more moody and irascible after the accident. Off with his head!

1758 - French troops burn at the stake the Haitian rebel slave leader Mackandal. A practitioner of Voodoo, his followers believed that at the moment of death he transformed himself into a mosquito and brought the Yellow Fever sickness to kill all the Europeans. Haitian Independence was achieved a generation later under Toussaint l'Overture and Dessalines. Mackandal's dance, done at all his rallies and voodoo religious ceremonies was the 'marenga".

1787- SHAY’S REBELLION- Just four years after the Revolutionary War ended, New England farmers rebelled against unfairly heavy taxes and a confused local government. Daniel Shays led 1,200 Massachusetts farmers in an attack on an armory that quickly fell apart, but the shock of the incident scared the Founding Fathers to convene a special Constitutional Convention to create a stronger central government.

1788- AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL DAY, A small fleet of ships carrying 700 convicts and 200 soldiers and families lands in Australia at Sydney Cove. The aboriginal people met them on the beach with calls of "Warra-warra!" which meant "Go Away!" Eventually 50,000 convicts were sent there. After a century Australians began to form their unique character. The Aussie nickname name for British people is Poms or Pommies. This was for the initials printed on British prison shirts POM- or Prisoner Of his Majesty. Another version has it that British sailors regularly picked the pomegranate trees clean of fruit to ward off scurvy.

1799- Thomas Jefferson wrote to Elbridge Gerry “I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.”

1815- Congress votes to purchase Thomas Jefferson's book collection to replace the fledgling Library of Congress that was burnt by the British in the War of 1812.

1837- Michigan became a state.

1865- Despite his Civil War victories, General William T Sherman had been criticized for having a biased attitude towards black slaves. This day he answered his critics by issuing his General Order # 15, stating that every freed African-American had the right to "40 acres and a mule". Many former slaves took this to mean they would take ownership of the lands they tended parceled from the great plantations where they lived. Alas, corruption and racism of local white authorities during Reconstruction ensured this became an empty promise.

1875- Late at night, Pinkerton detectives on the trail of Jesse James threw a bomb into the window of the James family home. The explosion killed Jesses’ younger, mentally slow stepbrother, who had nothing to do with the outlaws, and blew the right arm off his mother. The James Gang were nowhere near the farm that night.

1884- The Sundanese capitol Khartoum fell to the forces of messianic leader the Mahdi. The Liberal Government of William Gladstone had sent the famous Victorian general Charles 'Chinese' Gordon to oversee the British evacuation of the Sudan. Gordon was a courageous eccentric who instead of evacuating the Sudan barricaded himself into Khartoum and resolved to fight it out to the end. "We are all pianos" he once said:" And events play upon us".

1911- Richard Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier premiered in Vienna. Kaiser Wilhelm was offended by the E.T. Hoffman story about aristocrats sleeping around with their servants. He called it "A dirty little play".

1924- The Russian city of Saint Petersburg was also called Petrograd. This day the Bolshevik Government changed its name in honor of Lenin to Leningrad. In 1991 they changed the name back to Saint Petersburg.

1934- Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz to develop into a movie. Walt Disney and Hal Roach were trying to get it also.

1939- Generalissimo Franco’s Fascist troops capture Barcelona, winning the Spanish Civil War.

1939- The first day of shooting on the film Gone With the Wind.

1950- In India today is Constitution Day, when the Indian Constitution went into effect.

1962- Mob boss Charles Lucky Lucciano dropped dead of a heart attack at Naples airport as he was about to shake hands with an author who had arrived from the U.S. to write his biography. Lucky Lucciano was the criminal genius that converted gangsters from storefront street gangs to corporate syndicates with ties to legitimate business and government. He also imported the Sicilian system of La Mafia- family clan allegiance and code of honor, to supplant the Irish-Jewish gangsters. Lucky was deported to Italy in the 1950’s and retired when his appeals to return were all denied.

1967- THE BIG SNOW- The people of Chicago pride themselves on their ability to handle the toughest winters. But this day was one of the worst- 23 inches of snow in 27 hours, driven by 50 mile an hour cyclonic winds brought the city to a total standstill.

1979- Former Vice President of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller, was found dead in his office" en flagrante delicto" with Meghan Marshak, his young director of the Rockefeller Foundation. His second wife Happy Rockefeller had also been one of his office staff once. The method of the 70-year-old billionaire’s death was an open secret in New York City. The legend was fueled by the fact that Ms. Marshak's first call was not to 911 or the cops, but to her friend, local TV newswoman, Ponchitta Pierce. Pierce made the call to summon help nearly an hour after Rocky was cold.
I had a friend at art school at the time who was a receptionist for a Park Ave. doctor who was Rocky's physician. She said the paramedics found him with his pants down but his tie still in place. His will left $50,000 and a Manhattan townhouse to Ms Marshak.

1979- The Dukes of Hazard TV show premiered. Catharine Bach’s cutoff jeans became thereafter known for her character- Daisy Dukes.

1983- The software LOTUS 1-2-3 premiered that helped make IBM’s PC into the most popular business computers in the US.

1984- HELP ME TITO! During the filming of a Pepsi commercial at LA’s Shrine Auditorium, a magnesium flash ignited singer Michael Jackson’s Jeri curl hair gel causing him 3rd degree burns on his scalp.

1988- Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera premiered.

1996- First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies to a grand jury, the first "first lady" to do so. The only earlier incident that comes to mind was in 1862 when a senate committee convened to investigate whether Mary Todd Lincoln was a Confederate spy.
Mrs Clinton was Secretary of State in the Obama administration, and so was the frequent target of vengeful Republican investigations. Before the last Republican House adjourned at New Years 2018, their last order of business was to bring in former FBI director James Comey and question him about….what else? Hillary Clinton.

1998- The Japanese town of Ito was attacked by berserk monkeys, injuring 26.
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Yesterday’s question: Who wrote the opera about Mini the Girl of the Golden West?

Answer: Giacomo Puccini wrote an opera based on a popular David Belasco play he saw, The Girl of the Golden West in 1910. So, La Fanciulla del West.
]

Quiz: Who wrote the opera about Mini the Girl of the Golden West?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What does it mean to be in a quixotic state?

History for 1/25/2019
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Birthdays: Genghis Khan, Byzantine Emperor Leo IV the Khazar, Robert Burns, Somerset Maugham, Virginia Woolf, Vice Pres Charles “Goodtime Charlie” Curtis, Edwin Newman, Jean Image, Dean Jones, Ava Gardner, Etta James, Corazon Aquino, Anita Pallenberg, Tobe Hooper

Happy National Bubble Wrap Day.
36 AD (-?) THE CONVERSION of ST PAUL. There was a Jewish Pharisee named Saul who on the road to Damascus had a blinding vision. He changed his name to Paul and became the most zealous of Christians. Scholars speculate that Paul may had studied philosophical disciplines like Greek Stoicism and the Jewish Essene movement, because elements of these faiths seem to influence Paul's structuring of his new religion.
Paul is responsible for things like ladies keep their heads covered, men's heads uncovered in Church, etc. He made a point of going to Athens to preach the new religion in Plato's Philosophical Academy. He was also instrumental in bringing Gentiles into the religion, causing an early split in the faithful, when James the brother of Jesus felt that they should stay a reform movement within Judaism. That group eventually died out.

49AD- Claudius declared emperor of Rome.

1077- HENRY AT CANOSSA- One of the hottest arguments of the Middle Ages was whether Kings could boss around Popes or visa-versa. Ever since Pope Leo had crowned Charlemagne in 800, Popes held that no monarch in Europe could rule legitimately without the Church’s official blessing.
In 1077 German Emperor Henry IV told Pope Gregory VII, the Fiery Hildebrandt, that he could appoint or fire German bishops with or without Rome’s permission. The feud grew as Gregory excommunicated Henry and released all his subjects from allegiance to him; Henry declared Gregory “a licentious false monk” and appointed another Pope.
But the superstitious fear of the common people and the ambition of rebellious German nobles brought Henry’s kingdom to a standstill. This day witnessed one of the most dramatic scenes in Medieval History: At the Italian town of Canossa, Emperor Henry in hairshirt and barefoot stood in the snow waiting at the locked door of the Pope to beg forgiveness. Gregory forgave him, but a year later they were at it again, and Henry chased Gregory out of Rome with an army and Gregory excommunicated him again.
Luigi Pirandello wrote a play about Henry IV in the 1920s.

1327- Edward III, the Great Plantagenet, became King of England.

1483- Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition Peter de Arbules was beaten to death while at prayers at the Cathedral of Saragossa. Tradition states that years later the blood on the spot of his death stayed liquid. He was made a saint in 1867. 1533- Henry VIII secretly married Lady Anne Boleyn, already pregnant with the future Queen Elizabeth. Anne Boleyn was later called a sorceress because she had six fingers on one hand. Lusty King Henry had also slept with Anne’s mother and her older sister Mary Boleyn. And yer little dog, too!

1669- THE SECRET TREATY OF DOVER- King Charles II had at last gotten the British throne back from Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans, but he ruled over a kingdom bankrupt and ravaged by civil war. So on this day Charles signed a secret treaty with the richest country in Europe- Louis XIV's France. In it King Charles pledged to return England to the Roman Catholic Faith, and himself convert to Catholicism, in return for heavy subsidies of French gold.
Charles lived in a grand baroque style and may have converted on his deathbed, but said nothing in public, so England stayed Anglican. His brother James II who was openly Catholic was overthrown. The British parliament then passed a law that a Catholic can never again be King of Great Britain.

1755- The King of France appointed the Marquis de Montcalm to command all French forces facing the British in North America.

1814- France invaded by five separate armies, Napoleon said goodbye to his wife Marie Louise and his three year old son. He would never see either of them ever again. After Waterloo, his father-in-law the Austrian Emperor Francis II kept Marie Louise from joining Napoleon in exile and gave her a handsome Austrian duke as a lover. Napoleons son was renamed the Duke du Reichstadt and raised as an Austrian, until he died of tuberculosis at age 21.
1824- Artist Theodore Gericault was famous for his paintings of horses. This day he died, from a fall off a horse. 1858- Queen Victoria & Albert's eldest child, Victoria the Princess Royal (Vicky), married Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (Fritzy) in a lavish ceremony. They will sire the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, Victoria’s first grandchild and England’s great enemy. At this wedding, for the first time the "Wedding March" of Felix Mendelssohn from his "Midsummer's Night Dream" was used as the processional. Like everything Victoria and Albert did, it soon became a custom.
1863- Lincoln fired his army commander Ambrose Burnside and replaced him with General Fighting Joe Hooker. Burnside, whose mutton chop whiskers named the style "sideburns" was a military hard luck case. He lost the battle of Fredericksburg so badly that even the enemy was embarrassed. His replacement "Fighting Joe" Hooker was so fond of "ladies of the evening" that he brought them on campaign in their own tent and cavalry escort. They were called "Hooker's Girls" hence the term-"hookers".
1890- Newspaper reporter Nelly Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) of the New York World is welcomed home after traveling around the world in 72 days. The stunt was inspired by the Jules Verne story Around the World in 80 days, which had become a hit stage play.

1900- In the Boer War the Boers had surrounded a British garrison in the town of Ladysmith. After many attacks the siege of Ladysmith was broken by a relief force that had in its’ ranks a young officer named Winston Churchill.

1924- The first Winter Olympics held in Charmonix, France. Winter sports were celebrated as early as 1901 as the Nordic Games in Scandinavia. Trying to hedge their bets the International Olympic Committee originally styled the Charmonix games the Winter Sports Week. It was so successful that in 1928 the IOC designed the games at St. Moritz the Second Winter Olympiad. These games did a lot to raise the public interest in the sport of ski running, now simply called skiing.

1938- Walt Disney attempted to head off the rising tide of unionizing workers in Hollywood by forming a dummy company union called the Federation of Screen Cartoonists. No other artists but Disney employees joined, and Disney's chief attorney Gunther Lessing could veto any vote management did not like.

1939- President Franklin Roosevelt designated the fossil rich Badlands area of South Dakota a National Monument. 1945- The Rock Creek Report recommends mass additives of fluoride into American drinking water supplies. Tooth decay drops by 50%, however many right wing fringe groups like the John Birch Society saw floridation as an insidious Commie-Jewish plot.

1947- Mobster Al Capone died in seclusion at his home in Biscayne Bay Florida at age 48. He was released from Alcatraz Prison early because of ill health, his mind was slowly destroyed by untreated syphilis. When another gangster was asked if Capone would resume leadership of the Chicago rackets, he replied:” Big Al is nuttier than a fruitcake.”

1949- The first Emmy Awards ceremony was held at the LA Athletic Club. Five awards were given out for shows like Mabel’s Fables, and Treasures of Literature. Rudy Vallee hosted. Tickets were $5 each.Mayor Fletcher Bowron declared it “ TV Day” in LA.
1959- American Airlines sets up the first jetliner passenger service across the U.S. 1959- VATICAN II- Pope John XXIII called for the creation of a Second Vatican Council to initiate reforms in the Roman Catholic Church. This was called Vatican II and it’s sweeping ideas changed the Church forever. Latin Masses replaced with native language, the priest does the Eucharist ceremony facing you instead of with his back to you, Folk Masses with guitars, etc.

1960- Actress Diana Barrymore, the daughter of John Barrymore, overdosed on sleeping pills. The Barrymore family that had dominated the American theater since the 1850’s had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Ancestor after ancestor drank themselves to death. Current leader of the family Drew Barrymore recovered after seeking rehab at age 12. 1961- John F. Kennedy has the first televised Presidential press conference.

1961- Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians premiered. “ Cruella, Cruella da Ville,.. “

1970- Robert Altman’s groovy movie M*A*S*H premiered.

1971- Charles Manson and his followers convicted of 27 counts of murder. They were all sentenced to the Gas Chamber, but the death penalty had been abolished in California.

1971- Idi Amin seized power in Uganda.

1984- The widow of Mao tse Tung, Chiang Ching, was sentenced to death for conspiring against the Chinese state. Madam Chiang was one of the leaders of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and her accomplices were called The Gang of Four.

1995- Moscow radar detected a nuclear missile launch from Norway headed right for them. Russian President Boris Yeltsin had five minutes to decide if this was a mistake, or the dreaded First Strike, warranting a full retaliatory launching of all Russian nukes at the USA. He decided it was a mistake, and it turned out the missile was only a Norwegian weather satellite being shot into orbit. Similar nail biting incidents happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 and off the US coast in 1986.

2011- The Arab Spring pro-democracy protests that began in Tunisia spread to Egypt, the world’s largest Arab country. Huge protests began in Cairo against long time president Hosni Mubarak. Eventually they forced his overthrow.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to be in a quixotic state?

Answer: To be like Don Quixote, to have idealistic motives, but be unrealistically impractical and dreamy.

Question: What does it mean to be in a quixotic state?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: The opera The Marriage of Figaro is about Figaro the Barbera of Seville Spain. It is written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What language did he write it in?
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History for 1/24/2019
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Hadrian AD117, Frederick the Great, Farinelli the Castrato-1707, Pierre De Beaumarchais, Swedish King Gustavus III, Edith Wharton, German Field Marshal Model, Sharon Tate, Ernest Borgnine, Mary Lou Rhetton, John Belushi, Disney director Wilfred Jackson, Warren Zevon, Yakov Smirnoff, Daniel Auteuil is 68, Orel Roberts, Natassia Kinski is 60

41AD- CALIGULA ASSASSINATED- The psychotic Roman Emperor left a gladiator bout to have lunch when in an isolated hallway of the amphitheater his own bodyguards turned on him. His chief assailant was the captain of the watch Chaerea. After two sword thrusts the bleeding emperor shouted: " I still live! Strike again!" Which they did until he was finally dead. They threw Caligulas’ corpse in a hole in the Lamian gardens. It was said his ghost continued to scare people there for years afterwards.
Realizing that without an Emperor an Emperor's Guard isn't much use, the guards looked about for a member of the Imperial family that hadn’t already been butchered. They dragged Caligula's simple old uncle Claudius out from under a table and made him Caesar. He immediately gave them a heavy bribe.

1075- In a direct challenge to Papal authority German Emperor Henry IV held an ecclesiastical council at Worms where he declared Pope Gregory VII to be a “licentious false monk” and ordered him deposed. The Pope responded by excommunicating Henry. What happened? See tomorrow.

1848- James W. Marshall discovers Gold at Sutter's Mill, California. This event will spark the first big gold rush the following year, the '49 ers. John Sutter had bought the land from the last Russian settlers and set up his town while under Mexican rule. Ironically the gold rush ruined him. Thousands of prospectors ignored his jurisdiction claims, trampled his crops and slaughtered his herds for food. Within a year or two he was broke and spent the rest of his life trying to get the US Government to reimburse him.

1863- Arizona Territory is formed out of New Mexico. The Southern Confederacy at one time tried to make it one of their states.

1865- The Pioneer Oil Company set up to prospect for petroleum in the L.A. area.

1874- Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Gudunov premiered in Saint Petersburg.

1875- Camille Saint-Saens orchestral work Danse Macabre premiered in Paris.

1900- Battle of Spion Kop. (Boer Woer) The British Army rush an enemy position on top of a small hill, take it, and after the cheering noticed they are alone on the bald hill completely surrounded by the enemy. OOPS! It was said that the British commander was a much better watercolorist than a military strategist. One of the stretcher-bearers bravely running up and down the hill saving wounded men was an Indian law student –Mohandas K. Gandhi.

1901- Activist Emily Hobhouse toured one of Lord Kitchener’s “concentration camps” that the British were using to corral in the Boer guerrillas in South Africa. This one was near Bloemfontein. Her reporting of the poor sanitation conditions and hardships of the Boer civilians there caused a scandal back home. Four out of five South Africans killed in the Boer War were civilians.

1902- Denmark sold the Virgin Islands to the USA.

1916- The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the federal Income Tax.

1927- The Pleasure Garden premiered, the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

1936- The first motion picture of a solar eclipse taken from a dirigible, The Los Angeles.

1942- Producer David O. Selznick signed young star Jennifer Jones. He became infatuated with her and left his wife Irene, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, to marry Jones.

1961- Warner Bros. cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc had a terrible auto crash. He lingered in a coma for several weeks. The way the doctor brought him around was to say: “Hey Bugs Bunny! How are we today?” Blanc replied in character:” Ehhh…fine, doc!”

1965- Winston Churchill died at 90. His last words were "Oh, I'm so bored of it all..." At 75 Churchill said :"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter." David Lloyd George once quipped of how Churchill would behave in Heaven: "Winston would go up to his Creator and say he would very much like to meet His Son, about whom he has heard a great deal."

1972- Japanese soldier Soichi Yokoi was found in the jungles of Guam unaware that World War Two had ended 27 years earlier. He had stolen a radio and listened to the news. But he thought the stories of Americans in Korea and Vietnam were just propaganda. He was returned to Japan a healthy, if somewhat confused hero.
He died peacefully in 1997.

1983- Hulk Hogan pinned the Iron Sheik to win his first World Wrestling Federation title.

1986 –The Voyager 2 space probe flew by Uranus. So far the only spaceprobe to ever visit that planet. It discovered it’s unusual rotation and that it had rings like Saturn, but they are thin and dark grey, due to the weak light of the sun.

1989- Serial killer Ted Bundy was executed by electrocution.

2000- The entire computer system of the super-secret National Security Agency crashed and was down for several days. No explanation given.

2006- The Walt Disney Company acquired CG animation studio Pixar. Apple and Pixar head Steve Jobs got a seat on Disney Board, Ed Catmull was named head of the studio, and director John Lasseter became its creative head.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The opera The Marriage of Figaro is about Figaro the Barbera of Seville Spain. It is written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What language did he write it in?

Answer: Italian.