Question: Which is further East? The Ozarks or the Appalachian Mountains?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who is Orinthal James Simpson, and what is he known for?
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History for 10/11/2022
Birthdays: Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Heinz the Ketchup king, Jerome Robbins, Carl Hubbard, Ron Leibman, John Candy, Omar Shariff, Ben Vereen, Art Blakey, Luke Perry, Joan Cusak, Sig Ruman– the fat actor with the goatee and the over-the-top German accent in the Marx Brothers comedies.

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

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

1424- Czech general John of Ziska died of plague at age 64. He had never been defeated and led battles even when almost blind. When dying, he ordered that his body be skinned, and the skin dried and used to make a drum for his army. Tough Czech.
1492- As the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria continue sailing west, Christopher Columbus' fear crazed men began to see signs that land was close at hand: floating driftwood, a carved stick, moths, a seabird.

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

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

1737- A huge earthquake in Bejing China killed 300,000. 1776- The Battle of Valcour Island- American patriot Benedict Arnold built a little navy on Lake Champlain and let himself get shot up to slow down a huge British invasion force under Canadian Governor-General Sir Guy Carleton. Because of Arnold's delaying tactics it became too late in the year to cut off Washington's army retreating from New York and crush the Revolution in it's first year. Sir Guy Carleton's force had to return to Canada and wait until April for the Spring thaw. Valcour Island sometimes is called the first action of the U.S. Navy. One of Arnold’s little boats was recovered and today is in the Smithsonian.
1779- Battle of Savannah- During the Revolution, Polish immigrant Count Casimir Pulaski was killed leading a cavalry attack against British positions. He had been involved in a plot to kidnap the King of Poland, was a lover of Catherine the Great, and was in debtor's prison in Marseilles before running into Ben Franklin who sent him to America. He was the only officer to ever hold the rank in the U.S. Army of Master of Horse.

1800- The remaining French army trapped in Egypt and abandoned by Napoleon, made a deal with the Egyptians and their English allies to get evacuated back to France. One of the things that had to give up to the Brits was the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Ancient Hieroglyphics. Another thing the French troops brought back to Europe was marijuana, easily purchased in Egyptian bazaars. The old soldiers said the weed didn’t give you a hangover like drinking brandy did and made recovering from wounds easier.
1809- MERIWETHER LEWIS’ SUICIDE- Colonel Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame, shot himself -twice. He missed and wounded himself in the head the first time. He was 35. Meriwether Lewis was governor of Upper Louisiana (Missouri, Wisconsin, Montana, Illinois) and was the personal protégé of Presidents Jefferson and Monroe. It’s not inconceivable to assume that he would have been president one day.
Some contend that Lewis didn't commit suicide but was murdered, because it was at a small tavern on the Natchez Trace, he had been arguing with some men along the road, and he was found with two head wounds, and his belly slashed with a bowie knife. Another scholar recently theorized Lewis was suffering from delirium caused by advanced syphilis, which he may have contracted from a Shoshone woman while on the great trek over the Rockies. His friends Thomas Jefferson and Captain Clark maintained Lewis was emotionally overwrought and was drinking too much. Back then drink was not considered as bad a vice as venereal indiscretions. What an important United States Governor was doing riding all alone with no staff on a country road is still a mystery.

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

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

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

1906- The San Francisco Board of Education ordered children of Chinese and Japanese ancestry placed in segregated schools. This act caused great popular resentment back in Japan who thought the Americans were their friends after helping settle their war with Russia. President Teddy Roosevelt intervened and forced San Fran to rescind their law.
1910- Teddy Roosevelt becomes the first U. S. President to fly in an airplane.

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

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

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

1956- The Muppets first appeared on national TV, on the Steve Allen Show.

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

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

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

1968- Apollo 7 blasted off.
1975- NBC needed a Saturday replacement for the Best Of Carson reruns, so Lorne Michaels’ TV show SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE premiered. Featuring the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players: John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Chevy Chase, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Mike O’Donaghue. First guest host George Carlin did his opening monologue while stoned.
Albert Brooks did a short film and Andy Kaufman did his Mighty Mouse lip sync bit.
Paul Shaefer conducted the music and the show was held in NBC’s Studio 8H, which was built originally for Maestro Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony of the Air. At the last moment a sketch by young Billy Crystal was cut from the show.
The show also revived the career of announcer Don Pardo, who had trouble finding work since the original Jeopardy quiz show was canceled. He was the announcer for the show until his death in 2014 at age 96.

1975- Bill Clinton married Hillary Rodham.

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

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

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

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

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

2005- Angela Merkel named Chancellor of Germany. She is the first woman to lead Germany and the first head of state from the former East Germany.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who is Orinthal James Simpson, and what is he known for?

Answer: O.J. Simpson was an all-star football player, Heisman Trophy winner, who acted in movies and was involved in the scandalous murder case of his second wife Nicole.

Question: Acronym trouble: What is worse? ACL or ALS?

Quiz: What is meant by the Indo-European family of Languages? Where did the Indo European people come from?
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History for 10/9/2022
Birthdays: Camille Saint Saens, E. Howard Hunt, Jacques Tati, Alastair Sim, Bruce Catton, Joe Pepitone, cartoonist Mike Peters, Savannah, John Lennon would be 81, his son Sean Lennon, E. Howard Hunt, Scott Bakula, Peter Tosh, Charles Rudolph Walgren-the inventor of the modern Drugstore, Guillermo Del Toro is 57, Tony Schaloub is 69, Pete Doctor is 54.

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

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

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

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

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

1701- Yale University chartered.

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

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

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

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

1855- James Stoddard patents the steam calliope.

1888- The Washington Monument finally opened to the public. Construction on it was begun in 1840 and discontinued for a decade during the Civil War. Work was also held up when Protestant workmen refused to use marble donated by Pope Pius IX. It was dedicated the previous year by President Arthur. But he did it in February, and only 300 people showed up in the cold.

1899- Chicago writer L. Frank Baum noted he had just finished a new book called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. “It is the best thing I’ve written, so they tell me. We’ll see if the queer and fickle public will like it.” It became a huge bestseller.

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

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

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

1963- Uganda became a republic from a British Colony.

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

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

1986- People said there would never be more than three networks. Today the first show of the fourth network, The Fox Network's the Late Show with Joan River's, premiered. That show failed, but future hits like The Simpson's, Married With Children and the X-Files made Fox a major network within ten years.

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

2009- President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is meant by the Indo-European family of Languages? Where did the Indo European people come from?

Answer: In the 1700s a scientific search for a common language root to most European languages theorized a Neolithic migration of peoples from the Ukraine area down into Europe. Around 3,000 BCE. At first it was thought they came out of India, since Indo-European is the root of their languages too, but currently its thought the Indo Europeans moved down into India as well.

Question: Are the people of Lithuania ethnically Slavs, or Germanic people?

Quiz: Russian Cossacks. They’re not really Russian. Some cossacks come from the Ukraine and some from the Zaporozshe regions. Where did Cossacks originally come from?
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History for 10/7/2022
Birthdays: Hans Holbein, Heinrich Himmler, Caesar Rodney, Joe Hill, Andy Devine, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Henry Wallace, June Allyson, Al Martino, Neils Bohr, Ameil Buraka, Johnny Cougar Mellencamp, Toni Braxton, Yo Yo Ma, Vladimir Putin is 69.

312 BC- THE SUCCESSORS- Seleucus Nicator – (pronounced Se-le-u-kos)- conquered Babylon and set up his Syrian-Greek kingdom. One of the generals of the recently dead Alexander the Great, he divided up Alexander's Empire along with fellow generals like Ptolomey, who became Pharoah of Egypt, Perdiccas, Antigonus One-Eye, who controlled mainland Greece, and Demetrius Destroyer of Cities (Poliocretes.
Called Diodochi or The Successors, they descendants warred and conspired with each other until the rising Roman Empire knocked them all off. Seleucus and his heirs figure prominently in the last parts of the Old Testament. The Israelites did well under the Persians and Alexander, but the later Greeks attempted to force pagan worship on them. King Antiochus Theos Epiphanes –Antiochus” God Made Manifest”, plundered Solomon’s Temple and ordered Jews to eat pork and worship Zeus on pain of death. Many Jews were martyred until an uprising led by Judas Maccabeus restored the Hebrew Kingdom.

1337- King Edward III of England decides he's not only King of England but King of France as well- the HUNDRED YEARS WAR begins. It was actually 111 years, until 1446. Ironically it was around this time that the English language began to emerge as the common mother tongue of Britons, blending the Norman French of the nobility with the Anglo Saxon of the common folks.

1571- BATTLE OF LEPANTO- Great naval engagement in which the ships of Venice, Spain, Genoa and the Papacy defeat the Grand Turks navy led by Ali Pasha. The last great battle fought with war galleys rowed by teams of rowers. The admiral in charge was the bastard brother of Phillip II, Don John of Austria, a military hero who was supposed to have led the Spanish Armada against England, had he not succumbed to an early fever.
The battle raged from ship to ship until Don Johns ship overran Ali Pasha’s flagship and hoisted his severed head to the top of their mainmast. Among the common sailors in the battle were future writers like Lope De Vega and Miguel de Cervantes, who lost his right hand:" For the greater glory of my left" he joked.

1763- THE ROYAL PROCLAMATION TO NORTH AMERICA- The British Colonial Ministry, trying to reward its Indian allies in the French and Indian War and kill two birds with one stone, told the Americans that any further western colonization to the Mississippi was forbidden, but they were invited to go north and settle in Quebec. This would hopefully mean the outnumbering and eventual assimilation of the French Canadians.
Neither happened, and it only angered the Americans who were never consulted about this idea. The British even toyed with making the Illinois and Michigan territories part of Canada.

1777- SECOND BATTLE OF BEMIS HEIGHTS-British General Johnny Burgoyne trying to break out of a trap, smashed his army against the American defenses in a heavy rain. The defense works were built by Polish patriot Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Washington spelled his name 11 different ways in dispatches, the men just called him " Colonel Koz".
Burgoyne had snubbed his superior officers since his arrival in America, saying he only answered to the War office in London. Now, surrounded in the forest by overwhelming odds he snuck out a message to General Guy Carleton in Canada "I await your Lordship's orders." Carelton recognized this weenie attempt to shift blame and ignored him.

The hero of this battle was Benedict Arnold. Arnold was everywhere, rallying minutemen brigades and crashing them into the enemy without waiting for his commander’s orders. The U.S. commander Horatio Gates spent most of the battle in the rear entertaining captured British officers and discussing the futility of the American cause. The battle only ended when someone shot Arnold in the leg. After Arnold’s treason, Washington decreed that no monument to Arnold ever be allowed. So the grateful locals raised a statue….to his leg.

1780- BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN- In the later stages of the American Revolution the British Army command shifted from a strategy of using overwhelming conventional force in New England to going South and encouraging American Loyalists to fight a civil war. At Kings Mountain in North Carolina The “Over the Mountain Men”, an army of Scots-Irish frontiersmen under Issac Shelby defeated a Loyalist militia under the command of Col. Patrick Ferguson. Ferguson, who was killed in the fight, was an unconventional Scots Highlander who taught his men to fight American Indian style.

1783- The Virginia House of Burgesses votes to grant freedom to all slaves who fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

1799- Napoleon returns from his Egyptian Campaign without his army but with a new appreciation for antiquities.

1849- Writer Edgar Allen Poe was found sprawled over a barrel in a Baltimore street, dressed in someone else's clothing. He was taken to a hospital where he died raving at the walls. He was 40. It was thought he died from heavy alcohol abuse. Recently scholars theorize he may have died from a brain tumor or diabetes impacted by alcohol sensitivity, which would explain the violent mood swings, and that he drank heavily to deaden the pain. Another scholar also theorized that the symptoms strongly point to rabies. Poe loved cats and there were no rabies shot or test at the time.
Still another theory on Edgar Allan Poe's death has to do with voter fraud. People voted in taverns in those days. Poe was completely sober (he had given up alcohol years before) when he left two friends after a good dinner. He was scheduled to go to Philadelphia to meet the Mother-in-law of his late wife (also his aunt.) He bought the ticket; it was found on his person. Cooping was a type of voter fraud wherein people who could read were kidnapped and held in pens. They were forced an overabundance of alcohol to knock them out of their senses, then forced to vote under alias names they were given. All night they were pushed to vote again and again. They were made to change clothes (so they wouldn't be recognized) and out to vote again. So Poe may have died of died of alcohol poisoning. He was buried in a pauper's grave.

1851- THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.- Several top bishops of the Church of England stunned Victorian High Society by announcing their conversion to Roman Catholicism. Bishop John Newman was the first, followed today by the Archbishop Manning of Chichester. Manning eventually became the Catholic cardinal primate of England and was listed in Lytton Straychey’s book the Eminent Victorians. Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 made Newman a saint.

1855- THE BORDER WAR- John Brown arrived in Kansas help organize anti-slave men to fight pro-slavers, called the Border-Ruffians. For several years before the Civil War broke out Missouri and Kansas were torn by private gangs of militias murdering each other. The Southern extremists were called Bushwhackers, the pro-Unionists called Jayhawkers or Redlegs.

1861- In the Indian Territory –near what will one day be Tulsa Oklahoma, the councils of the Chickasaw, Cherokee and Choctaw Indian Nations signed an alliance with the Confederate States, smoke the war pipe and renounce any ties to the United States. The Comanche people announced they would stop raids on Texas. Pro-Northern Indians then broke with their tribal brothers and there were mini-Civil Wars among the tribes. The pro-Northern Indians were forced to march with their families in winter snows to the protection of Pro-Northern Kansas. In 1865 the last Confederate General to lay down his arms was Cherokee Chief Stand Watie.

1864- General Grant received a secret letter from Sherman in Atlanta. In it Sherman told Grant that he intended not to worry about his supply lines but cut his lines of communication and march through Georgia, totally living off the land, until he reached Savannah on the ocean where he could be resupplied by sea.

1868- After a season of raids by hostile Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors on Kansas settlers, Generals Sherman and Sheridan met with President Grant to draft a 'final solution' to the American Indian. They would no longer chase scattered bands of braves, but introduce their brand of ruthless "Total War". These tactics burned Atlanta and the Shenandoah Valley to end the Civil War. They ordered the US Army to attack villages, kill women & children, burn crops and shoot ponies. Sherman openly described it as a 'Race War". He said." a few savages must no longer be allowed to impede the March of Anglo Saxon Civilization!" They made a policy of attacking villages in winter, just before dawn, because then Indian war parties stayed close to home and were less mobile.

1897-A group of Russian Jews, disgusted by the state sanctioned anti-Semitism of the Czars, formed the Jewish Socialist Bund. They broke with Theodore Herzl and the Zionists who wanted Jews to move to Palestine. The Socialist Bund advocated political reform within Russia. Leon Trotsky, himself Jewish, made fun of the Bund, calling them “Zionists afraid of getting sea-sick”.

1916- The German submarine U-53 boldly sailed into Newport Bay Rhode Island and docked alongside American warships. America was still technically neutral in WWI. Kapitan Hans Rose let civilian women and children tour the sub all day. Irish-Americans, angry at the English crushing the Easter Sunday Rebellion the previous Spring, presented Captain Rose with an Irish Republican flag. But the good will didn’t last long. That evening, U-53 submerged off the coast of Nantucket and sank six ships including a British liner with Americans on board.

1918- The Polish army contingents of the crumbling Russian, Austrian and German empires band together in Warsaw to set up a native government, declaring themselves the Republic of Poland. The Polish State that had disappeared in 1799 was now reborn. World famous concert pianist Jan Paderewski was named president.

1923- Baseball pitching legend Christy Matthewson died of complications from inhaling poison gas in World War I.

1927- Sam Warner, the Warner Brother most responsible for committing the studio to gambling on a talking picture process, died just as the 'Jazz Singer 'opened and made Warner-Vitaphone a major Hollywood power. Jack Warner had earlier said "Who the heck wants to hear actors talk?"

1939- Benito Mussolini's Fascist government adopts anti-Semitic laws in line with the Nazis. All Jews were excluded from public office, banking, teaching and the military.

1941- Two months before Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt announced that in view of stepped up activity by Nazi U-boats, the United States Navy and Coast Guard had been issued a shoot-on-sight order against any hostile craft.

1947- The Actor's Studio opened, teaching the Stanislavski Method, sometimes called Method Acting. The movement later suffered a feud between it’s two top teachers-Lee Strassberg and Stella Adler and Sandy Meisner. Ask any actor if they were with Lee or Sandy, odds were they sided with one and hated the other.

1955- THE BEATS- Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The reading was intended to promote the new gallery. The poet Kenneth Rexroth organized the reading, and in preparation, he introduced Gary Snyder to Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg introduced everyone to Jack Kerouac, and they became the core of the group of writers known as the Beats. Ginsberg was the second to the last to read, and he started at about 11 p.m. He was 29 years old, and he had never participated in a poetry reading before. He started off in a quiet voice. But as he read, he found his rhythm, and he took a deep breath before each of the long lines in "Howl" and then said each line in one breath. Jack Kerouac chanted "Go, go, go" in rhythm while Ginsberg read, and the audience went wild. When the Russian satellite Sputnik was in the news, people who adopted the Beat lifestyle were dubbed by the press Beatniks. Like cool, daddy-o.

1957-Dick Clark’s T.V. show American Bandstand debuts.

1959- MARIO LANZA . Philadelphia born Italian–American Lanza was a pop icon opera singer long before there were three tenors in concert. With moviestar good looks and a velvety voice, his records and movies sold millions. But he was temperamental and had angered most of the powers that be in Hollywood, climaxing with skipping a $250,000 promise to perform in Las Vegas. This day in Italy he was found dead at age 38.
For years there were rumors that he was actually done in by the Mafia for offending Lucky Lucciano, but in the 1990s a forensic investigation by his son proved his brutal regimen of binge eating and furious dieting wore out his heart. He would attempt to drop 50 pounds in three weeks, then put it back just as quickly until it gave him a heart attack. He literally dieted himself to death.

1959- Young assassins sent by the dissident Ba’ath Party made an attempt on the life of the Prime Minister of Iraq Sherif Al Kassim. The plotters failed but they sneaked back into the country later. One of them would be one day the ruler of Iraq- Saddam Hussein.

1960- The movie Spartacus opened. Producer/star Kirk Douglas had been using blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo for the script, smuggling him in and out of the lot for story meetings. Finally Douglas got fed up and ordered Trumbo to be brought out in the open as the movie's true author. This was considered the official end of the Hollywood Blacklist era, which had been going on since 1947. After director Anthony Mann left the project, Douglas hired Stanley Kubrick, who had such a hard time he left Hollywood afterward, never to return.

1964- ITS FUN TO PLAY AT THE Y-M-C-A! The only big sex scandal of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Walter Jenkins was a top LBJ aide and confidant. Johnson called Jenkins “My vice president of almost everything.” This day Walter Jenkins was busted for lewd behavior with a Turkish diplomat in a pay toilet at the YMCA just two blocks from the White House. Jenkins claimed he was just dehydrated.

1965- The film, The Agony and the Ecstasy opened in theaters. Sir Carol Reed adapted Irving Stone’s historical novel about the painting of the Sistine Chapel, with Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II, and Charlton Heston as Michelangelo. For the first time movie makers were allowed to film in the Vatican and Sistine.

1971- Walt Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks premiered in London.

1974- THE TIDAL BASIN BOMBSHELL- At 2:00 AM Washington DC police stopped a car driving near the White House with its lights off. Inside police discovered powerful Congressman Wilbur Mills, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, drunk as a skunk with an Argentine stripper named Fannie Fox. Mills broke away from the cops and he and Fannie began to cavort in the Tidal Basin pool near the Jefferson Memorial. They were fished out by police. Mills’ sexual escapades had been hushed up by politicos before, but this was just too much. The subsequent publicity brought about hearings and Mills resignation.

1982- London musical 'Cats' opened on Broadway.

1985- Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian Mediterranean cruise ship Achille Lauro. They murdered an elderly Jewish American tourist named Leon Klinghoffer and dumped his wheelchair and body into the sea. Composer John Adams wrote an opera about the incident, called The Death of Klinghoffer.

1993- Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" earned $ 712 million dollars just in North American box office.

1996- Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel began.

2001- U.S, British, Australian, Turkish and NATO forces attacked Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9-11 terror attacks. The war led to the temporary overthrow of the Taliban Regime ruling in Kabul and the suppressing of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. But the subsequent occupation was bungled to the point where the Taliban rallied. The US couldn’t establish a stable pro-Western government, so the Taliban got back into power twenty years later.

2003- The state of California had an unpopular Democratic Governor named Grey Davis. A Republican congressman named Daryl Issa who made a fortune making annoying car alarms “step away from the car..” found an obscure codicil in the State constitution calling for a recall election. The recall election soon had 154 candidates including a porn star, old child star Gary Coleman, Porn publisher Larry Flynt, a woman who financed her campaign by selling autographed thongs, and Grey Davis’ own lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante, who couldn’t stand him either. This night, after a farcical election, the people elected Austrian-born body builder-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

2016- One month before the U.S. presidential election, TV show Access-Hollywood played on air a tape recording of candidate Donald Trump bragging how he assaulted women: "You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them," Trump said, speaking on a hot microphone with TV personality Billy Bush for an "Access Hollywood" taping. "It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy."
Normally, a statement like that would destroy a candidate’s chances. All major GOP leaders immediately called for Trump to drop out. But Trump was elected anyway, with overwhelming support from Evangelical Christians.
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Yesterday’s Question: Russian Cossacks. They’re not really Russian. Some cossacks come from the Ukraine and some from the Zaporozshe regions. Where did Cossacks originally come from?

Answer: Originally Cossacks were not one ethnic group, but outcasts and exiles who settled in the wild steppeland between the Turkish, Russian, and Polish kingdoms. They embraced frontier life and adopted the dress and horsemanship of the Mongols and Tartars. They eventually adopted their own tribal allegiances, Ukrainian Cossacks, Don River Cossacks, Zaparoszhe (Beyond the rapids) Cossacks, Yaik Cossacks, etc.

Quiz: Russian Cossacks. They’re not really Russian. Some cossacks come from the Ukraine and some from the Zaporozshe regions. Where did Cossacks originally come from?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: Who wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
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History for 10/6/2022
Birthdays: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Jenny Lind the Swedish Nightingale, George Westinghouse, Janet Gaynor, Carol Lombard, Karol Szymanowski, Thor Heyderthal, wrestler Bruno Sammartino, Britt Eklund, Le Corbusier, Elizabeth Shue is 59, Sean William Scott, Jeremy Sisto is 48, Ioan Guffrudd is 49

In Ireland this is Ivy Day, when Irish folk commemorate the death of the great statesman Charles Stuart Parnell with a sprig of ivy in their buttonholes.

105 BC- Migrating German barbarian tribes called the Cimbri defeated the Roman army at the river Arusia, modern Vaucluse in the Rhone Valley. The defeat gave Gaius Marius the opportunity to reform the training of the Roman legions.

68BC- Roman General Lucullus defeated the Armenians under King Tigranes II at Artaxata.

1502- THE LAST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS -Rejecting the ideas of Amerigo Vespucci, Juan De La Cosa and the Portuguese that what he had discovered was in fact a new continent, Columbus made one more attempt to reach China by sailing west.
He explored down the Central American coastline to Venezuela and Columbia. The Nicaraguans told him that beyond their jungle is another Great Ocean. He surmised that it must be the Indian Ocean so these people must be the Vietnamese (Cochin-China).

1536- Near Brussels, Englishman William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake for committing a crime against the Church, that of translating the Bible into English. 50 years later Tyndale’s writing was the basis of the King James Bible.

1600- THE BIRTH OF OPERA. This day as part of the celebrations of the marriage of French King Henry IV to Marie de Medici, composers Rinconcini and Caecini premiered a new kind of musical drama where soloists sang without the heavy polyphony of madrigals but more directly in imitation of ancient dramas. It was “Eurydice” and it was the first true opera. Many composers including Claudio Monteverdi took up the form.

1683-THE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH- the first recorded German immigrants, Mennonite farmers from the Rhineland, arrived in America. They were invited by Gov. William Penn of Pennsylvania. The reason many German immigrants in Pennsylvania were labeled Dutch was the backwoods Americans inability to distinguish when the German declared “Ich bin Deutsche” from “Dutch”.

1802- The Heiligenstadt Testament- Composer Ludwig van Beethoven left behind a note found among his papers after his death in 1827. Dated this day it was addressed to his brother Karl and another unspecified relative. It was more of a spiritual Last Will than anything else. In the note Beethoven poured out of his heart confessing his faults and his fears of going deaf. It is an amazing insight into the great man’s soul.

1803- Napoleon inspected the restorations to a XVII century French church and veterans hospital called the Les Invalides, unaware that it would become his own tomb 40 years in the future.

1826- A Missouri saddle maker offered a reward of one penny for a runaway apprentice. The boy had joined a Santa Fe bound wagon train and grew up to become Kit Carson, one of the Old West's most famous scouts.

1847- Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre first published.

1860 First telegraph linking L.A. and San Francisco.

1860- During the Taiping Rebellion in China the Ever-Victorious Army, a mercenary western force paid by the Manchu Emperor, recaptured Peking (Beijing). Originally organized by an American named Stoneman, the Ever Victorious was now commanded by British Sir Charles Gordon, for which he received the nickname "Chinese Gordon'.

1863- The first Turkish Bath House is opened in Brooklyn.

1863- The BAXTER SPRINGS MASSACRE- Quantrill’s Raiders bushwhacked Union General Blount’s personal entourage on the road in Kansas and killed 86. It’s called a massacre rather than a battle, because most of the slain were noncombatant office staff trying to surrender. The heartless guerrillas even shot the regimental band. One union soldier with five bullets in him recalled before he lost consciousness, a large horseman standing over him gloating:” When you meet God, tell him the last thing you saw on Earth was Old Billy Quantrill!”

1864- SHERIDAN'S VALLEY CAMPAIGN- The Shenandoah Valley had been a pain in the neck to the U.S. Army throughout the Civil War. Its pro Southern population hid guerrillas like John Mosby, the "Grey Ghost". Stonewall Jackson had humiliated three Yankee armies there. Towns like Winchester and Harper's Ferry changed hands 73 times!
So while Lee and Grant’s armies stood stalemated outside Richmond and Sherman was in Atlanta, feisty Irish-born cavalryman Phil Sheridan was given a large army and ordered to finally bring the Shenandoah Valley to heel. After drubbing the Confederates in battle, he turned away from the rebel army and concentrated on the civilian population. His army burned towns and crops, and hanged men from the trees even remotely suspected of being guerrillas. Sheridan sat, feet up, in a slow moving open buggy and waved his cigar like an orchestra conductor's baton. "Go to it my boys! Have Fun!" Like Sherman’s terror campaign through Georgia, the brutality of Sheridan left a bitter memory to Southerners for generations to come.

1866- The Reno Bros. committed the first recorded train robbery, this one in Indiana.

1880- First classes at University of Southern California or USC.

1889- Paris' naughty nightclub the Moulin Rouge opened.

1908- Since a Peace Treaty of Berlin in 1878 the European Peace had hinged upon the little Turkish province of Bosnia-Herzegovina being administered by Austria while still of Turkey. This compromise was clunky but it worked. This day in reaction to the Bulgarians declaring their independence the Austro-Hungarian Empire announced it was annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina outright. This act destabilized the world situation and began the diplomatic spiral into The Great War 6 years later.

1911- The first transpacific telephone conversation, between Tokyo and San Francisco.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson said he changed his mind, and was now in favor of votes for women.

1917- The terrible WWI Battle of Passchendaele finally ended when Canadian troops took the ridge on the third attempt. 250,000 casualties on both sides.

1918- From the wreckage of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians formed themselves into a new country called the Kingdom of South Slavs or Yugoslavia. It broke up in the 1990s.

1921- In London the society known as PPEN established, for Poets, Playwrights, Editors and Novelists.

1927-"THE JAZZ SINGER" with Al Jolson debuts. Okay, somebody made a sound picture in 1924, and also something called "Footlights of New York" from 1926 but hey, you know what?- who cares! THIS was the movie that made "Talkies" a reality. The success of this film turned Warner Bros from a minor film company into a major Hollywood studio. Within a year of this opening, only a handful of movie theaters were still showing silent movies. 26 year old Walt Disney was in the audience at that opening day, and it made him realize he needed to put sound in his next cartoon about that mouse.

1959- “Pillow Talk” premiered, the first romantic comedy pairing Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Stanley Shapiro won a best screenplay Oscar for it. The film typified the wink-wink attitude about sex before the 1960’s Sexual Revolution and defined Doris Day’s reputation as the wholesome, girl-next-door archetype.

1966- California became the first state to officially declare LSD illegal. Hippies in San Francisco celebrated by rallying in Golden Gate Park in the thousands, and all taking a tab together.

1968- In Huntington Cal, Troy Perry and 12 others started the first Gay & Lesbian Church.

1971- William Freidkin’s gritty cop movie the FRENCH CONNECTION premiered. The film won best picture, director and actor Oscars, made a major star out of Gene Hackman. One unforeseen result was the movie stimulated interest in pursuing the investigation of the real French-Corsican Mafia heroin trafficking in the US. That mob was soon broken up. The two real life detectives the film was based on- Eddie Egan and Sonny Corso, both retired from the NYPD and pursued careers in show biz.

1973- THE OCTOBER WAR or THE YOM KIPPUR WAR. Egypt and Syria surprised attacked Israel on the holiest religious holiday of the Jewish calendar. They also achieved surprise by attacking at 2:00 in the afternoon instead of dawn. The Sinai and Golan Heights saw some of the largest tank battles since World War II. The Arab states received men and material support from the PLO, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Bangladesh and even Idi Amin the dictator of Uganda. America and Russia faced off by heavily re-supplying both sides. Both sides charged Russians and Americans were flying covert combat missions as well.

1976- During a televised debate with Jimmy Carter, President Gerald Ford said he was unaware of any Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, a great surprise to Poles, Czechs, Romanians, Lithuanians and others. Later the American public surprised Gerald by voting him out of office.

1981- Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat was assassinated while viewing parade marking Yom Kippur War anniversary. Commandos hopped out of the back of a troop carrier and blew him away with machine guns. Almost killed next to him was Hosni Mubarak. Although some claim that the chief assassin Khaled Al Islambouli asked Hosni to step aside so not to get hurt. One of the conspirators arrested was Alman Al Zawahiri, who was the little guy with the glasses and grey beard who took over Al Qaeda, after Osama Bin Laden was killed. He was killed earlier this year.

1991- Elizabeth Taylor got married for the 8th and last time, now to construction engineer Larry Fornetsky, at Michael Jackson’s house. They divorced shortly after.

1991- University of Oklahoma Professor Anita Hill testified at the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She alleged that when she was his aide she was subject to constant sexual harassment. Judge Thomas declared her testimony a "symbolic lynching". Thomas' conservative backers countered with a furious media campaign. Despite her credentials as a PhD scholar from a Christian University, they portrayed Prof Hill as a paranoid slut. Those involved in the smear campaign later admitted it was all fabricated. Justice Thomas was confirmed, but the controversy made Sexual Harassment a national issue.

2002- Pope John Paul II canonized Fra Paulo Escriva, the mystic founder of the order Opus Dei. John Paul broke with the more liberal Jesuits in favor of Opus Dei, a super conservative group that wanted direct power over Catholic doctrine and still practiced self- flagellation.

2002- The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delaune was stabbed in the stomach at an all-night Nuit Blanche rock concert. He recovered and remained mayor until 2014.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it, based on actual events where a thieving clergyman duplicated keys in wax, then robbed the houses of his parishioners (and was hanged for it). He dreamed the story, wrote it down in the morning and burnt the original version since it was 'too horrible'. (Thanks NB)

Quiz: Who wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: In Homer’s Odyssey, while Ulysses was out at sea fighting monsters, his wife was home fending off suitors by making and unmaking a tapestry. What was her name?
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History for 10/5/2022
Birthdays: Wendel Wilkie, President Chester Allen Arthur, Ray Kroc the mastermind of MacDonalds restaurants, Louis Lumiere, Vaslav Havel, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges" , Bob Geldorf, Mario Lemieux, Josh Logan, Bill Dana "my name Jose Jimenez", Bill Keane, Clive Barker, Glynnis Johns is 99, Donald Pleasance, Maya Lin, Bernie Mac, Karen Allen is 71, Kate Winslet is 47, Guy Pearce is 55, Jesse Eisenberg is 39

According to Mike Mignola, today is the birthday of Hellboy, born in Hell -1617.

1600- King Henry IV of France married his second wife Marie de Medici by proxy in a grand ceremony in Florence. Flemish master painter Peter Paul Rubens was in attendance, and the Queen asked him to create paintings commemorating the events.

1759- Col. Robert Rogers led his Roger’s Rangers on a forced march to surprise the Abeknackie Indians who had been raiding Maine homesteads. At 4:00 am near present day Saint Francis, the Rangers burned the Abeknackie village and killed so many that the Abeknackies ceased to be a force in the area. Years later Rogers wrote down his principles of irregular warfare- his maxims like "Move Fast and Hit Hard" became the basis of Special Forces training today.

1761- Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder, called the Architect of the British Empire, resigned from office. He was replaced by Lord Bute, who Frederick the Great called a complete scoundrel. Bute was chosen mostly because young King George III liked to play whist with him. Whist was a card game similar to bridge.

1762- Christoph Gluck premiered his opera Orpheo et Eurydice in Vienna.

1795- THE WHIFF OF GRAPESHOT- The end of the French Revolution. The problem with revolutions is once you start one it’s a real problem how to stop them. The Paris mob had gotten used to overthrowing one government after another since 1789. In 1795 when yet another mob of rioters threatened to overthrow yet another French government the politicians turned to young general Napoleon Bonaparte, who dispersed the crowd by firing cannons at them loaded with buckshot. A self proclaimed "Child of the Revolution" Bonaparte was already considered politically left, so his act of force could not be accused of royalist leanings. This action helped the little general with the funny Italian name becomes a national figure.

1813- BATTLE OF THE THAMES RIVER. Indiana territory- Tecumseh, an Indian visionary who foresaw that only by united action could native peoples hope to drive the white man back to Europe, spent his life convincing tribes to put away their tribal differences and fight as one people. He assembled a huge force of warriors, but this day he was defeated and killed by Gen. William Henry Harrison. Congressman Richard Johnson, who said he personally killed the great chief (nobody saw it happen) later became Vice President and Harrison President. People sang:"Rumpsy-Dumpsey, Rumpsey- Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson Killed Tecumsee."
Tecumseh was one of the few who managed to organize real resistance to the white migration west and as such was one of America's greatest threats. Yet whites were so impressed by his nobility that people like Ohio settler John Sherman named his son and future Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman.

1842-THE BIRTHDAY OF BEER! Lager Beer is perfected in the city of Pilzn-Pilsner. Of course, beer was made by the Sumerians, Egyptians, Gauls, and can be traced back to the Ice Age, but our modern concept of beer requiring an advancement in refrigeration is Pilsner or Lager.

1858- An arsonist burned down NY's Crystal Palace Museum.

1864- A cyclone destroyed the Indian City of Calcutta, killing 60,000.

1877- After a lightning campaign across 1,200 miles Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce found himself surrounded by U.S. armies just 40 miles from the Canadian border. At Bear’s Paw near Chinook Montana, Chief Joseph finally surrendered to General Nelson Miles…
"From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

1880- John J. Loud patented the first ball-point pen. The modern ballpoint was developed by a Laszlo Biro in 1938.

1882- Outlaw Frank James surrendered to authorities six months after his brother Jesse was killed. After doing some prison time Frank went straight and toured in a Wild West Show with fellow outlaw Cole Younger. He died peacefully in 1915.

1892-THE DALTON BOYS RAID COFFEEVILLE, Kansas and try to rob two banks at once. One quick thinking bank clerk told them the bank vault was on a time lock and would open shortly. There was no such timelock, but while the badmen waited, the townspeople broke into the hardware store and armed themselves to the teeth. As the Daltons emerged, they were shot down by the locals, much the same way the Jesse James Gang was wiped out at Northfield Minnesota ten years earlier. 8 were killed. Only Emmett Dalton survived despite 25 gunshot wounds. After getting out of jail in 1907, he also wisely went straight.

1904- According to comedian and playwright Steve Martin, this is the day Pablo Picasso met Albert Einstein at the Cafe Lapin Agile. There was a Cafe in Paris called Lapin Agile that Picasso did like to frequent, but he never actually met Einstein.

1905- Happy Birthday T-Rex! Prof. Henry Osborne published a paper on the new bones found in Montana of a sleek hunter-killer dinosaur. He originally called it Dynamosaurus Imperiosis, but changed it to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

1908- Bulgaria declared its independence from Turkey and formed a monarchy under German Prince Ferdinand von Battenburg.

1914- The first airplane was shot down by another airplane. For weeks since the Great War began German, British and French airplanes flew missions of air reconnaissance. When planes encountered each other the pilots would fire pistols and even threw darts and bricks at one another. Finally, someone thought of mounting a machine gun on a plane and aerial combat was born.

1915- Germany issued an official apology to the USA over the loss of life in the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania, and promised to pay restitution.

1930- THE R-101 The BRITISH HINDENBURG- Lord Thompson of Cardington dreamed of a fleet of passenger zeppelins uniting the British Empire much the way steam did in Queen Victoria's time. Dirigible moorings were built in Karachi, Montreal, Sydney and Ishmalia in Egypt. The R-101 was the largest zeppelin in the world when she was launched and had all the luxury of the Cunard ocean liners. Lord Thompson himself decided to take the inaugural flight from London to India and back in time to make a vital Imperial conference. On Oct. 4th as a crowd sang Sir Edward Elgar's hymn 'Land of Hope and Glory" Thompson launched the R-101 "I see this great ship of the air built with the same perseverance and permanency that has built our British Empire and will give us the mastery of the air lanes of the world!"
300 miles out the R-101 was struck by a violent thunderstorm and crashed at Beauvais France. A sergeant was heard saying : "We’re down lads." when the hydrogen gas exploded. All but 6 of her 54 passengers died in the flaming inferno, including Lord Thompson. (compared to 30 out of the 96 Hindenburg passengers and crew died). Even though her sister ship the R-100 made a perfect flight to Canada and back the British public was so shocked by the disaster that all further attempts at a British dirigible service was scrapped.

1932- Talking pictures now in vogue, MGM Studios fired famed comic Buster Keaton.

1933- Warner Bros musical Footlight Parade with James Cagney premiered.

1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK- Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars. Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. One of the strike leaders arrested was a background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters, then arrested by police for incitement to riot.

1947- President Harry Truman gives the first speech broadcast nationwide on television. In it he asked Americans to forgo eating meat on Tuesday’s and Thursdays, to build up U.S. grain stocks to feed people still starving in Post War Europe.

1961- The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s opened, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the song Moon River.

1961- There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!” The Underdog Show premiered.

1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on British television BBC-1.

1969- Cuban Lieutenant Eduardo Jimenez, who wanted to defect to the USA, flew his Mig-21 fighter jet to Miami and landed it at Homestead Airforce Base. But what was embarrassing was he flew completely through all the U.S. advanced warning defenses and missiles, and landed his Mig right next to Air Force One carrying President Richard Nixon. Doh!

1969- Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy was seen going into a Manhattan cinema to see the Swedish x-rated film I Am Curious Yellow. Jackie-O beat up the photographer who caught her, but her example spawned a fashion among New York high society going to see porn as a Sexual Liberation statement. They called it Porn-Chic.

1970- The Canadian October Crisis. A Quebec terrorist separatist group calling itself the FLQ kidnapped and murdered a Canadian cabinet minister. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sent army troops into Montreal and Quebec City to impose order.
Worst civilian disturbances in Canada since 1867.

1986- IRAN-CONTRA- President Ronald Reagan feared Communist expansion growing in a new revolutionary regime in Nicaragua. When the U.S. Congress banned any funds for anti-Communist mercenaries, Reagan's National Security Agency staffer Oliver North created a covert pipeline of arms. On this day Nicaraguan communists shot down an unmarked plane full of smuggled weapons flown by a CIA agent named Eugene Hasenfuss. The revelation of the incident sets in motion the scandal that would tarnish the last years of The Reagan Administration.

1989- The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2000- The Yugoslavian Revolution. –Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’ had spent the eleven years since the death of Tito making war on the various ethnic parts of Yugoslavia as they broke off and founded sister republics. War, misery and genocide were meted out on Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and Kossovar Albanians in turn.
Serbia endured the condemnation of the world and American-Nato bombing raids.
This day after refusing to admit he had lost re-election, 200,000 Serbs marched into Belgrade and in a massive "People Power" revolution threw old Slobodan out. Woycheslav Kostunitse was declared the legal president and old Slovo died in jail.

2003- Timothy Treadwell was an author and advocate for the wild grizzly bears of North America. This day near Khalifa Bay Alaska, a huge bear attacked Treadwell and his girlfriend Anne Huguenard and tore them to pieces. When authorities brought down the bear in question, after being shot 21 times, human remains were found in his stomach. When Treadwell appeared on the David Letterman TV Show the previous year, Letterman joked:" Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?" Werner Herzog did a film about his life. Grizzly Man.

2011- Steve Jobs died at age 56 of a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET) that spread to his liver. As he faded away, he looked straight ahead as if he was seeing something and murmured "oh wow....oh....wow...."

2017- The Me-Too Movement. Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and later the Weinstein Company was one of the most powerful movie producers in Hollywood. This day the NY Times broke the story of his history of sexually abusive conduct towards women. He was first fired from his company, then ejected from the Motion Picture Academy, and is now serving time in prison. Soon more women and men began to come forward with their stories of sexual abuse. All across Hollywood, celebrities’ dark secrets were exposed and careers collapsed, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Garrison Keillor, Les Moonves, John Lasseter, Maestro James Levine, opera star Placido Domingo, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and more.
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Quiz: In Homer’s Odyssey, while Ulysses was out at sea fighting monsters, his wife was home fending off suitors by making and unmaking a tapestry. What was her name?

Answer: Penelope