Well, the three month old Writers Strike is at last over. Congratulations to the great victory of the WGA and it's supporters. Of course, they didn't get everything they wanted, but one rarely does. Didn't Voltaire say "There are no complete victories, or no complete defeats"? Every negotiation is winning and losing a few things, and all sides will spin it to sound like they won. But the WGA did get the expansion of residuals and recognition of their jurisdiction of internet downloads. The actors will demand the same thing and more this June.

There is lots of talk of how one thing they lost was the jurisdiction of animation, and the media portrays it as though there are no organized union writers. But the fact is animation writers have been unionized by the cartoonists guild since 1939. It's not WGA, because it was negotiated in a time when all writing was done on the storyboards. I feel for writers who are mad their animation payrates are not as good as the WGA, but a few hotheaded animation writers made my last year as guild president miserable. I hear there are still some who are mad at me.

I would be the first to cheer the success of the writers in getting better conditions. Hell, I'm a writer myself. These past weeks I juggled my schedule around so I never had to cross a WGA picketline. But my job back then was to be president of all the animation tribe. I was not going to destroy the livelihoods of three thousand animators and their families, because a dozen writers were unhappy, most of whom had double cards with the WGA anyway. I asked them then, would the WGA strike Hollywood for you? ( anim writers). Now we see they couldn't budge the studios this time either. I knew the animation jurisdiction would be a minor negotiation chip that would go away as soon as the real deal was made.

If you seriously want to resolve this jurisdiction problem, the only thing that would work would be a one time sit down of the WGA, the Studios and IATSE. And the WGA better have something to trade to IATSE in exchange. No one wins anything by offering nothing in exchange. Now that this current strike is over, I don't see that meeting happening anytime soon. The studios like splitting this hair, the way they keep a difference between animators doing cartoon animation and animators who do motion picture visual effects.

From my distant viewpoint, the thing that impressed me most about this strike was the writers solidarity. I heard very little, inside or out, of writers crossing the line and going back to work or writing under the table. And the support of the actors and celebrities was admirable. If anything, more employers scabbed on the AMPTP than writers breaking ranks with the Guild. The Weinsteins, UA, Lionsgate , RKO, Marvel and more crossed the line and made a deal. But the writers, including the celebrity writer-directors like Woody Allen and Chris Carter, all hung tough, even though half of their ranks are unemployed most of the time.

This strike is a great lesson to us animation people. You see what you can do when we all stick together? All you rugged individuals, can you think of a job that is more subject to personal ego and solo achievement than writing? Yet, they all understood if they stuck together, they would win for all. When I was animators union president, I had a steady stream of "arteests" whining at me " What has the union ever done for me?!" " I make my own deals!" and " If you guys strike, I'm working anyway and screw you!" then " why is our union so damn weak? It can't do anything!!"

Draw your own conclusions.

The big guilds like the Writers, Actors and Directors didn't become powerful overnight. They fought their way up from nothing as we did. But if you are willing to work for WalMart wages just to get to make cartoons, an employer will be more than willing to accommodate you. - TS

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Quiz: Last time I asked if Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Now I’ll ask- was Robin Hood a real person?

Answer to yesterdays question below:
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History for 2/13/2008
Birthdays: Giambattista Piazzetta, Bess Truman, Grant Wood, Lord Randolph Churchill- Winston’s dad, Fyodor Chaliapin, Peter Tork of the Monkeys, Oliver Reed, Chuck Yeager, Woody Hayes, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Carol Lynley, Kim Novak, George Segal is 73, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Springer is 63, Stockard Channing is 63, Kelly Hu

1503- Today during the endless string of Italian wars of the Renaissance, outside the town of Barletta things were interrupted by a unique event. Angered by a French captain who said that the Italians were a sissy people, thirteen Italian knights challenged thirteen French knights to single combat. Both armies lined up and cheered them on like a sporting event. They fought until all thirteen Frenchmen were down.

1547-Catherine Howard, the 5th wife of Henry VIII was beheaded. The execution was held on the exact spot where wife Number 2 Anne Boleyn was beheaded six years before.

1863-President Lincoln hosted a wedding reception at the White House for P.T. Barnum star attraction General Tom Thumb and his bride. Lincoln was heavily criticized at the time for having such a frivolous party during the depths of the Civil War.

P.T.Barnum and Tom Thumb

1866-The first daylight bank job. In Missouri the Clay County Savings Bank is robbed of $60,000 by a young ex confederate guerrilla named Jesse James.

1867- The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss Jr premiered in Vienna.

1886- Artist Thomas Eakins resigned his professorship at the Philadelphia Academy of Art in disgust when he was attacked for having male nudes in his art class with women as students.

1914-ASCAP founded.

1917- German spy H-21. Also known as the beautiful Mata Hari, was arrested in Paris.

1932- Free Eats, the first Our Gang short comedy to feature Spanky MacFarland.

1933-comic character Blondie married Dagwood Bumstead.

1939- Producer David O. Selznick replaced directors on Gone With the Wind. George Cukor was out, Victor Fleming was in after completing The Wizard of Oz. Vivien Leigh liked Cukor who was known for directing women, but Clark Gable convinced the producers that they needed an action director. About 15 minutes of George Cukor’s work remains in the picture. Victor Fleming loved Clark, but didn't get along with Vivien Leigh and came to hate the controling Selznick. David O. brought in Sam Wood to direct second unit when Fleming fell behind. At the end Victor Fleming had one more tantrum when Selznick proposed giving Wood and Cukor co- screen credit.. Yet despite it all Gone with the Wind became a box office phenomenon. Years later Clark Gable came up to Selznick at a party and said: "Maybe I'm wrong about disliking you David, 'Gone With the Wind' keeps getting re-released and keeps me a star." Selznick once said:” My biggest fear is that all I shall ever be remembered for is producing Gone With the Wind.”

1935-German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptman found guilty of the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby and electrocuted. The chief of police in the town of Bergen New Jersey where the murder occurred was the father of Desert Storm General Norman Schwarzkopf.

1937- Hal Foster's comic hero Prince Valiant first appeared.

1945- THE FIREBOMBING OF DRESDEN.- Some experts say the annihilation of this militarily defenseless city was an act of revenge for Rotterdam and Coventry, the fact was at the Yalta conference several days earlier Stalin had asked that the major German cities on his eastern front be bombed by his Anglo-American Allies to delay Nazi divisions withdrawn from Norway and Holland to be used to slow the Red Army 's advance. Dresden was to be a major assembly point for these new reinforcements. Still, it's a legacy the Allies find troubling. On this day in the early evening 845 British bombers followed by 700 American dropped thousands of tons of incendiary bombs in a pattern calculated to cause a firestorm. The temperature reached 800 degrees, the church bells melted and the oxygen was literally sucked out of the air by cyclonic winds. By conservative estimate 35,000-100,000, mostly civilians, died. Young American P.O.W. Kurt Vonnengut was in a group made to help dig out bodies. The experience changed his life and he later wrote his accounts in the classic anti-war novel "Slaughterhouse-5"

1959 -Happy Birthday BARBIE ! Mattel introduces the plastic nymph, originally named by the German artist who created her 'Lily" but changed to 'Barbie" by an exec who's daughter Barbara was nicknamed that.

1964- The Invention of Cool Whip.

1996- Off-Broadway musical Rent by John Lawson, premiered

1996- In an airport in Thailand eccentric Icelandic rock and roll star Bjork attacked a journalist, beating her and dragging her by the hair.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the origin of the rounded shape with the point at the bottom that symbolizes a heart?

Answer: When Saint Valentine was imprisoned, he passed little notes out to his brethren. Not having paper, he wrote on little leaves, that are that shape. They were from the heart of Valentine, thus valentines. The earliest known regular valentine card was sent in the 1400s.

Uhh...I'm not sure this is what Saint Valentine had in mind...

Quiz: What is the origin of the rounded shape with the point that symbolizes a heart?

Answer to yesterdays question below:
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History for 2/12/2008
Birthdays: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin are born on the same day in 1809 although an ocean apart. Austrian Emperor Francis II, Thaddeusz Kosciuszko, Joe Garagiola, Luigi Boccherini, John L. Lewis, Bill Russell, Franco Zeffirelli, Lorne Greene, Joe Don Baker, Arsenio Hall, Christina Ricci is 28

1502-Ferdinand and Isabella had thrown all the Jews out of Spain, now what about the Moslems? This day all Moslems not accepting baptism were given until April 30th to leave the country. They complained that when the Moors ruled they tolerated all religions, but the Spanish monarchs were deaf to all entreaties. Up to 3 million Moors eventually left. A century later Cardinal Richelieu called the Edict of 1502 "the most barbarous act in history."

1733- General James Oglethorpe landed with a prison colony near present day Savannah to found the colony of Georgia.

1789- Ethan Allen, the frontiersman who's Green Mountain Boys were heroes of the American Revolution, died from injuries gotten from drunkenly falling out of a sleigh crossing frozen Lake Champlain. His last words were when someone said :"Ethan, the Angels await thee!" Allen replied:" They do? Well G-ddamn 'em, let em wait!"

1798- LORD NELSON AND MRS. HAMILTON DO THE NASTY..... Admiral Horatio Nelson had been increasingly shivering his timbers over his friend Sir William Hamilton's sexy young wife Emma. He was staying with the Hamilton's in their villa in Naples during his tour of duty in the Mediterranean. According to historians analyzing their love letters to each other Emma and Nelson make specific references to the 'Delightful Twelfth of February", and Mrs. Hamilton bore a daughter nine months later she named Horatia. Their open love affair in the face of polite society was one of the scandals of their age.

1809 -Happy Lincoln's Birthday, Because of Richard Nixon’s law creating President’s Day in 1970, you do not have today off as a holiday. One of my favorite Lincoln quotes is :" If I'm supposed to be two-faced, then why did I settle for this one?"

1924- RHAPSODY IN BLUE- Big Band leader Paul Whiteman had commissioned a rhapsody for Jazz Band from the famous composer George Gershwin. Tonight at a concert at the Aeolian Hall in New York City it premiered in a long bill of "Modern Music". Also on the bill was jazz interpretations of "Yes We have no Bananas" and "Kitten on the Keys." Sergei Rachmaninoff, Fritz Kriesler, Igor Stravinsky and Leopold Stokowski were in attendance.
Interestingly enough Gershwin’s orchestrator was Ferde Grofe’ the composer famous for the Grand Canyon Suite. It was Grofes’ idea to bring in a jazzman named Ross Gorman to do the opening clarinet solo. While rehearsing the piece Gorman took Gershwin’s opening 17 note ascent and ‘smeared’ the riff to the long high note, creating the famous opening. Gershwin liked it so much he told him to play it always that way. Gershwin was originally going to call his piece Concert Rhapsody for Jazz Band & Piano or American Rhapsody but his brother Ira Gershwin was inspired by some Whistler paintings he saw recently at a museum called Nocturne in Blue and Green and Harmony in Grey and Green. He suggested Rhapsody in Blue.

1941- General Irwin Rommel lands in North Africa to take over the Italian forces and his new Afrika Korps. Using lightning tactics and brilliant improvisation in the desert he became legendary as the "Desert Fox". He took over from an Italian general named Barbazioli, who because of his wild facial hair was nicknamed "Electric Whiskers".

1947- THE BIRTH OF THE 'NEW LOOK' The Paris fashion show where designer Christian Dior defined the look for women of the 1950s into the early 60's: Wasp waists, gloves and patent leather accessories, pleated mid length skirts.

1967- London police arrest Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Marianne Faithful for doing drugs and doin’the nasty.

1994-"WHY ME! WHY ME?!" The Winter Olympics at Lillehammer began, which are remembered mainly for figure skater Tanya Harding hiring a hit man to break her rival Nancy Kerrigan's kneecaps with a steel pipe. Despite all the hub-bubb the gold was won by Ukrainian skater Oksana Baiyul who was arrested a year later for drunk driving.
Nancy Kerrigan signed a multi-million dollar endorsement contract with Disney, which she succeeded in blowing within a month by making fun of Disneyworld during a parade. Within range of a microphone she whispered." This is all so corny!" When someone asked if Tanya Harding could get any commercial endorsements, it was pointed out that she's an asthmatic who smokes Marboros.

1999- President Bill Clinton was acquitted in his Impeachment trial in the Senate stemming from his affair with young intern Monica Lewinsky. During the trial word leaked out that several of the president’s chief critics like Representative Robert Livingston and Newt Gingrich also had extramarital affairs or sexually harassed their female employees. Chief Justice William Rheinquist, high on painkillers, presided over the trial with his dark Justices’ robes adorned with some gold stripes on the sleeves, the first time any Supreme Court Justice robes had any such adornment. He got the idea watching the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Iolanthe. The Parker Pen Company had created special monogrammed pens for the Senator’s use during the trial. But when the pens were used it was discovered they all had the name United States misspelled on them- they read the Untied States of America. Others said it was a fitting statement on the state of the government at the time.
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Yesterdays Question: Why is Valentines day, a day that celebrates love and courting, named for a saint? Did he date other saints?

Answer: Part of the strategy of the Roman Church to convert the pagans of Europe was to displace pagan feast days with Christian worship days. Feb 14th was the Roman fertility festival Lupercalia, with lots of orgies and wild goings on. The Church re-sanctified the festival for Saint Valentine, who was martyred on that day by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus. While in prison Valentine communicated with his flock by tossing messages out of his jail window- Valentines.

Quiz: As we near Valentines’ Day, why is a holiday dedicated to love and courtship named for a Saint? Did he date other saints?

Answer to yesterdays question below…Was Sherlock Holmes a real person?
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History for 2/11/2008
Birthdays: Thomas Edison, Leslie Nielsen, Eva Gabor, Tina Louise-Ginger on Gilligan’s Island, Rudolph Firkusny, Joe Mankewicz, Sidney Sheldon, Burt Reynolds, Sergio Mendes of the band Brazil 66, Al Eugster, Brandy Norwood, Bobby Picket -who recorded the Monster Mash, Jennifer Aniston is 39

1789- In Italy William Short wrote his friend Thomas Jefferson that as per his request he had obtained for him a pasta mold. The first known introduction of pasta in America.

1801- THE FIRST DEADLOCKED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION decided in the House of Representatives after 35 separate votes were held. Upstart Aaron Burr managed to come out of nowhere and put together enough anti-Jefferson and anti-Adams votes to tie the election with Thomas Jefferson. President John Adams and Senator Charles Pickney were a distant 3rd and 4th. Former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton was furious that fellow New Yorker Burr threatened to eclipse his power. New York and Pennsylvania were the swing votes in any deal between Yankee New England and the Aristocratic South. Since foreign born Hamilton could never be President, he liked to play kingmaker. So in retaliation Hamilton gave Adam's 36 votes to Thomas Jefferson, not out of any love for his old enemy, but just to screw Burr. Cranky old John Adams was furious that he was rejected by the public: “Damn Them! Damn Them! Anyone can see this elective government won’t work!” He took his sweet time moving out of the White House, making the president-elect wait in a tavern. All this political chicanery doomed the Federalists, the first American political party, and Burr would get his revenge on Hamilton with pistols in 1804.

1936- Famed German Expressionist animator Oscar Fishinger fled Germany for the U.S.

1963- Bell Jar author Sylvia Plath laid out bread and butter and two glasses of milk for her children, then stuck her head into an oven and committed suicide. Her poet husband Ted Hughes who had abandoned her waited until 1998 to tell his side of the story. Hughes wrote stories for his children like The Iron Giant.

1975- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to lead the Tory Party in England. The green-grocers daughter from Finchley became the Iron Lady and dominated British politics until 1990.

1976-Chuck Jone’s tv special “Mowgli’s Brothers.”

1990- Nelson Mandela was freed by South African authorities after 27 years in prison. He was jailed in 1962 for a life sentence and became the conscience and symbol of the black resistance to white South African rule, called Apartheid.

1995- Disney Studios planned neighborhood suburban community Celebration opened.

2003- A small satellite named U-Map, while studying the faint glow at the center of the Universe, calculated the exact age of the Universe to be 13.7 billion years old. That stars first appeared at 200 million years after the Big Bang, and that the Universe will ultimately expand forever, not crunch back in on itself or explode in one big cataclysm.

2005- Playwright Arthur Miller died at 90.

2006- While hunting for quail, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting partner in the face. After being treated the victim, an attorney named Whittington, went before the press and apologized to Cheney.
Cheney became the first Vice President since Aaron Burr in 1804 to shoot someone while in office.
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Yesterday’s Question: In a recent survey a large part of British youth polled think Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Was he?

Answer : Nope. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle studied to be a doctor in Edinburgh. To pass the time he wrote stories inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s Auguste Dupin, an eccentric sleuth who could solve crimes that baffled the police. Conan-Doyle’s teacher at Edinbugh Univ. was a Dr. Joseph Bell, who excelled at deductive reasoning, and had an assistant named Dr. Watson. Arthur Conan-Doyle also admired another doctor turned writer, the American Oliver Wendel-Holmes. A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, appeared several months after Conan Doyle attended a talk given by Oliver Wendell Holmes in London. No one is sure where he got the name Sherlock from, possibly a neighbor.
Despite these facts, Sherlock Holmes London address 221b Baker Street receives hundreds of letters a day requesting advice from the famous sleuth. The bank that occupies the site maintains a full time secretary to answer the mail.

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle

Well, it looks like we will have an uninterrupted Oscars after all. the WGA rank and file discussed the new deal with the producers and liked that they heard. Now every single person will not be totally happy with the deal, there is always one or two remaining hotheads wanting to fight on. But here is where pragmatism has to win out.
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Quiz: In a recent survey a large part of British youth polled think Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Was he?

Answer to yesterdays question below…
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History for 2/10/2008
Birthdays: Former British PM Harold Macmillan, Jimmy Durante, Bertholdt Brecht, Leontyne Price, Roberta Flack, tennis great Bill Tilden, Lon Chaney Jr., Stella Adler, Mark Spitz, Boris Pasternak, Dame Judith Anderson, Greg Norman, Donavan, Dr Alex Comfort author of the Joy of Sex, Michael Apted, Jerry Goldsmith, Robert Wagner, Laura Dern is 41

1722- Although not as famous as Blackbeard or Captain Kidd, Bartholemew Roberts was one of the most notorious pirates that ever flew the Jolly Roger. This day he met his end when the British warship HMS Swallow caught up with his ship the Royal Fortune near Cape Lopez in Gabon. The pirates had taken a merchantman the night before so most of them were too drunk or hung-over to fight. Captain Roberts bellowed defiance but as luck would have it he was struck dead by the first cannonball from the very first broadside the British fired. “ARR-MATEYS, ARR ….OUCH!” His men threw his body overboard and after a short fight surrendered. The pirates were rounded up and sent in chains to the Cape Coast in Ghana where an Admiralty Court hanged 54, the largest one time pirate hanging ever.
This stern treatment brought to an end the high period of piracy in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Sea Piracy mostly died out by the mid 1800’s but vestiges persist even today. In 1999 China executed 15 men for piracy and in 2001 the New Zealand captain of the ship that won the America’s Cup was killed by pirates off the coast of Brazil.

1763- THE TREATY OF PARIS- Ending the Seven Years War ( or French and Indian War here). Europe makes peace and England wins an empire. France cedes her territory in India and all of Canada. Spain gets Louisiana. “Half a continent changed hands with the scratch of a pen”. To ensure speedy approval of the treaty, Prime Minister Pitt the Elder set up a booth outside the Parliament to distribute cash bribes to the members as they went in to vote. The French were bitter but philosophical. Minister Choiseul predicted:" With our threat removed the Americans will try for independence in ten years." American colonial representative Benjamin Franklin assured London:" Freedom is the last thing Americans want...."

1799- Napoleon marched out of Cairo at the head of his French expeditionary Army. He headed north towards Jerusalem and Syria but was stopped at the city of Jaffa. Around this time French soldiers discovered marijuana. The tough old soldiers thought it cheaper than brandy and didn’t leave you hung-over the next morning.

1837- Russian poet Alexander Pushkin dies of wounds from fighting a duel defending his wife's honor. His last words were to his books "Farewell, my friends..." Pushkin was the great, great grandson of a black man sent to serve Czar Peter the Great in his Moorish Guard.

1863- Alanson Crane invented the Fire Extinguisher.

1888- The City of Long Beach incorporated.

1907- THE EUHLENDBERG SCANDAL- Three of Kaiser Wilhelm's closest aides are accused by a socialist newspaper of being homosexuals. The aides, including the Kaiser's personal friend Count Phillip zu Euhlenburg, sue in court but are disgraced and ostracized in the way writer Oscar Wilde was suffering in England. The scandal shocked German society and the Kaiser suffered a nervous breakdown.
Discreet approval of gays in the military was common in the pre-war Austro-German officer corps. Around this same time Wilhelm witnessed the spectacle of one of his top generals, 56 year old Count von Hulsen-Haesler, did a dance for the army general staff in a pink ballet tutu and rose hair garland ! The general had done these pirouettes before but this time he suddenly seized up and dropped stone dead of heart failure. The generals in a panic squeezed his stiff body back into his uniform and monocle before calling the doctor.

1920- Major League Baseball banned the spitball pitch.

1929- Elsa Lanchester married Charles Laughton.

1938- RKO screwball comedy with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant “ Bringing Up Baby” premiered.

1940-MGM's "Puss gets the boot" the first Tom and Jerry cartoon and the first collaboration of the team of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.

1949- The premiere of Arthur Miller’s play "Death of a Salesman".

1962- U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, shot down over Russia in 1960, was finally traded back to the U.S. for top Soviet spy Alexander Abel. In his memoirs Khruschev Remembers Khruschev later confided to Kennedy that he wanted to hang on to Powers through the American election of 1960 because he didn't want "that s.o.b. Nixon", as representing the administration, to have the advantage.

1966- CBS co-ops broadcasting the senate Kennan Hearings on the conduct of the Vietnam War with reruns of "I Love Lucy'. CBS news division president Fred Friendly quits in protest.

1966-Jaqueline Susanne’s novel The Valley of the Dolls first published. Although critics considered it cheap and trashy- Time Magazine called it “Dirty Book of the Month” and Truman Capote called Susanne in her heavy sixties eye shadow a “Truck Driver in Drag” Valley of the Dolls sold like wildfire. Its frank portrayal of single women enjoying casual sex and taking drugs was a big step in the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.

1966- Author Ralph Nader gained national fame when he testified to the Senate about the lax standards of auto safety. His greatest criticism was for GM’s Corvair. General Motors responded with a smear campaign trying to paint Nader as gay and anti-Semitic. Nader successfully sued them in court and many of the consumer advocates ideas are mandatory today like seat belts and listing gas efficiency on the sales sticker.

1993- Former black man Michael Jackson told Oprah Winfrey in a television interview that he wasn’t deliberately trying to whiten his skin but he was suffering from a rare pigment disease. And what about that nose?

1992- The children’s book- The Stinky Cheese Man debuted.
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Yesterday’s question: What is the origin of the phrase,” I gave him the whole nine yards”

Answer: 50 caliber Ammunition belts in the wings of a WW2 US fighter plane measured 27 feet, or nine yards...If the pilot shot off the entire belt, then he gave the enemy "the whole nine yards."

We all had a wonderful time at the Annie Awards at UCLA's Royce Hall last night. Ratatouille won most of the big awards as expected. Surfs Up won for best effects and production design. Robot Chicken for best TV show and EL Tigre for best childrens TV show. The Ub Iwerks Award was given to the inventors of FLASH, and the Winsor McCay Awards for lifetime achievement went to Glen Keane, John Canemaker and John Kricfalusi.
When Futurama won for direct to DVD, Matt Groening came up on stage waving a WGA Strike sign. Host Tom Kenny ( SPonge Bob) was pretty funny. But I thought the evening was taken by James Hong, veteran Chinese-American character actor ( Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little CHina) He was very glib and had the audience rolling. James Hong has a role in the upcoming Dreamworks film Kung Fu Panda.
Take that, ASIFA!
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Quiz: What is the origin of the phrase,” I gave him the whole nine yards”

Answer to yesterdays question below…
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History for 2/9/2008
Birthdays: Constantine XI Paleaologus- the last Byzantine Emperor 1404, President William Henry Harrison, Samuel Tilden, Carmen Miranda, Alban Berg, Ronald Colman, Mia Farrow, Ernest Tubb, King Vidor, Mamie Van Doren, Roger Mudd, Illustrator Alberto Vargas, Carole King, Bill Veeck, Fred Harman, Joe Pesci is 65, Zhang Zhi-Yi., Painter Frank Frazetta, Mena Suvari is 29

1824- The House of Representatives decided a deadlocked presidential election in favor of John Quincy Adams even though he didn’t win the popular vote. After all, why vote for a guy just because his daddy was president? - Ahem!

1856- An early tabloid The London Illustrated News reported a live Pterodactyl dinosaur popped out of a rock and flew away when workers were excavating a railroad tunnel in Culmont France. Believe it or Not!

1861- The new Confederate States elected as their first and only president former US secretary of state Jefferson Davis. Among other projects Davis was once in charge of introducing Egyptian camels to the Southwestern deserts and creating the First US Army Camel-Corps. When the Southern states seceded Davis was hoping to become a general of Mississippi volunteers since he went to West Point, but not be made president. Old Sam Houston said Davis was "cold as a lizard and ambitious of Lucifer". Current Republican Senate leader Trent Lott has said Jeff Davis was his role model.

1900- Collegiate tennis player Dwight Davis created the Davis Cup.

1909- The First US narcotics legislation, this one against opium. At this time heroin, morphine and cocaine were all available in patent medicines. Marijuana wasn’t outlawed until after prohibition in the late 1930s. Cab Calloway reminisced about the Reefer Man on the streets of Harlem selling marijuana cigarettes 3 for 25 cents.

1932- Mobster Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll was a hit man for Dutch Schultz when he decided to go freelance and start shooting up New York. He earned the name "Mad Dog" for once gunning down school children who accidentally strayed into his crossfire. Finally he was so violent even the underworld couldn't stand him any more. This day Mad Dog Coll was waiting for a meeting in a soda shoppe on 23rd and 7th in Manhattan. Some one called him to the phone. While waiting on the line two gunmen jumped out and sprayed the phone booth with tommy gun fire. Dutch disliked freelancers...

1950- THE WHEELING SPEECH- Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy "Tail-Gunner Joe" delivered his speech in Wheeling West Virginia in which he blamed Communist subversion for all the ills of American society: the Soviet atomic bomb, the loss of China, fluoridated water, post nasal drip, the works. He dramatically waved a paper:" I have in my hand a list of 205 names- names given to the Secretary of State of known Communists who continue nevertheless to work and shape policy in the State Department !" The paper was blank, he had no such list. But the effect was electric. From 1950-1956 McCarthy’s anticommie witchhunt ruined hundreds of careers and elevated to national status folks like Richard Nixon, Whittiker Chambers, Roy Cohn and Bobby Kennedy.

1964- Ed Sullivan introduced the English rock band the Beatles to a nationwide t.v. audience. It was a "Rrrreally Big Shewww!" ( Sullivan’s signature line)

1967- The" Lindsay Snowstorm". John Lindsay was the handsome if confused mayor of New York in the sixties of whom the Robert Redford character in "The Candidate" was partially based. He tried to cut budget expenses by stripping New York of it's snowplow fleet, thinking they were unnecessary. The city was immediately paralyzed by 14 inches of snow. Plows had to be brought from as far as Montreal.

1968-"You did it! You Finally did it! Oh, Damn you all to Hell!!" the film the Planet of the Apes with a naked Charlton Heston premiered.

1971- The Sylmar Quake (6.8) rocks L.A.

1989- In testimony before the New Jersey State Senate World Wrestling Federation officials including President Vince McMahon admit that the sport of wrestling is purely entertainment and no one actually gets hurt. I’m shocked, shocked!

1990- Singer Del Shannon, who had a hit with the 1961 song Runaway, shot himself with a 22 rifle. Del Shannon was supposed to replace Roy Orbison in the Travelling Wilbury's, the group that featured Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynn. Orbison had died the previous year of heart failure and the Wilburys were starting to rehearse with Del Shannon. After Shannon's suicide, the group decided to disband.

1996- German World War Two figther ace Adolf Galland died at age 86. While other aces had skulls or dice painted on their planes, Galland preferred a Mickey Mouse on the tail of his Messerschmidt. Ach Adolf, ist dat der RAF on your tail? Nein, izt der Disney Legal Department! Himmel!

2001- Actor Tom Cruise filed for divorce from his wife actress Nicole Kidman.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is a mixed alcoholic drink called a cocktail?

Answer: In the 1730’s a popular ale house in colonial New York was called the CocksTail. They specialized in rum punch drinks with fruit juices in them. Another theory is that the cocktail was originally a morning drink to help you recover from the night before “a hair of the dog that bit you.” The cock being the herald of the morning., A lot of the cocktails we are familiar with today, Rob Roy, Fuzzy Navel, etc. were invented during Prohibition to mask the bad taste of homemade bootleg alcohol.