Question: Who was the crazy king who stood in the surf, and tried to command the tide to turn back?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who is Holden Caulfield?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/11/2009
Birthdays: Abigail Adams, Alexander Borodin, Fyodor Doestoyevsky, Gen. George “Blood & Guts” Patton, Pat O’Brien, Kurt Vonnengut, Rene Clair, Carlos Fuentes, Jonathan Winters, Stubby Kay, Fuzzy Zoeller, Demi Moore is 47, Leonard DiCaprio is 35

Today in the Middles Ages this was "Martinmass" the feast of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of France.

Happy Veterans Day in the U.S., Memorial Day in many European countries.

1647- King Charles I had been defeated in the English Civil War and was held a prisoner at Hampton Court. On this day he gave his jailers the slip and escaped to the Isle of Wight to raise troops for what some historians call the Second English Civil War. His actions, not only of lying to escape but also of persuading a Scottish army to invade England on the promise to the Scots that he would forcibly convert England to Presbyterianism, offended his few remaining English friends. Parliamentary Leaders like Oliver Cromwell concluded there was no use negotiating with a king who saw peace talks only as a delaying tactic. They must have the head of this 'Man of Blood"

1668- Madamoiselle Du Parc was an beautiful actress who dumped Moliere and his comic company to become the mistress of the tragic playwright Racine, causing Moliere and Racine’s friendship to break. Plus Racine didn’t like the way Moliere’s actors did his plays. Three years later this day Mlle. Du Parc died under mysterious circumstances. Racine gave up his wild ways, got married and had a big family. In 1679 a notorious poisoner Madame Monvoisin claimed that Racine hired her to off his girlfriend! Was the French Shakespeare a Bluebeard or was La Voisin paid to slander him? The authorities considered arresting him, but King Louis XIV quashed the investigation because it would implicate the King’s favorite, Madame de Montespan.

1673- Battle of Cochim - Polish Hetman Sobieski and his "Winged Hussars" defeat a Turkish invasion in the Ukraine. The heavily armored Hussar cavalry wore wooden wings decorated with feathers like something out of a Christmas pageant, but the effect on enemies was terrifying. The flutter and hiss they made during their attack made them seem like warrior angels.


1914- Sultan Mehmed V of Turkey who was also the last Caliph, honoring his alliance with Germany in World War One, declared a Grand Jihad on the allies. He said it was the duty of all good Moslems to fight the Christians, unless of course they were Germans, Hungarians or Austrians. Historians say the effect of his declaration of Holy War was met in the Moslem world with resounding indifference. About the only one who listened was the Khedive of Egypt, who was promptly replaced by the British.

1918- ARMISTICE DAY- World War One ended. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns of the Great War fall silent. It sounds poetic but it was just a coincidence, the opposing sides had been negotiating since the 8th. In many countries this is the traditional Memorial Day, the American one in May is in honor of our Civil War. In a strange kind of salute when the word went down the battlelines that the ceasefire would take effect at 11:00AM, one minute before, thousands of cannons on both sides fired one last round simultaneously.
World War One's final tally was 22 million dead, almost 20% of the young male population in the opposing countries. In only 7 months of actual fighting 200,000 American died – as opposed to 5,000 in 8 years in Iraq. This also marks the turning point of the old world into the Twentieth Century: ethnic republics and socialist states arose out of dying monarchies. The British and French colonial empires were fatally wounded. Independence desires stirred in 3rd world colonies and the United States became a major global power and world financier.

1918- TOMMY GUNS- Sitting on a New York wharf forgotten and ignored was the first shipment of Thompson submachine guns, built for a war just ended. John Thompson was an inventor who tried to solve the problem of close hand-to-hand trench warfare by inventing a light mobile machine gun that could be a “trench-broom” –spewing 800 bullets a minute. Because it fired small pistol bullets it was called a “sub-machine gun”.

But the Great War was over and the U.S. Army wasn’t interested anymore, neither were most police departments. So in 1921 the Thompson Submachine Gun went on sale to the public as a “great home defense system”. The people who did buy them were the Mafia and the IRA. They nicknamed them Choppers, Chicago Typewriters and Tommy Guns. Al Capone invented the novelty of hiding one in a violin case. Old John Thompson was shocked that his creation was used by violent hoodlums to make incidents like the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre possible. He died in 1940 just weeks before the US Army would order thousands of his Tommy Gun to fight World War Two.

1920- On the second anniversary of the Armistice, the British entomb an Unknown Soldier to represent all war dead “A Soldier Whose Name is Known Only to God”. The French do it and the Americans think this a neat idea so do their own at Arlington in 1932. Bavarian corporal Adolph Hitler called himself the Unknown soldier of Germany, Now because of DNA identification identities of war dead will no longer be unknown. In 1998 the identity of the Unknown of the Vietnam War was discovered and the remains moved upon request of his family.

1925- Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong did the first recordings of his band the Hot Five. These records lift him from a local talent in Chicago and New Orleans to international stardom.

According to close friends Sachmo was a lifelong marijuana smoker. He called Pot his “antidote to racism”. Gives new meaning to the song “Laughing Louie”.

1925- The Nazis party formed a second para-military force to augment their stormtroopers (the SA) called the Schutz-Staffel or SS. Its leader was a one time chicken farmer named Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was heavily into the occult. He built officer training centers in a castle made up to look like King Arthur's round table and he encouraged Germans to conceive children in graveyards so the children could absorb the spirits of dead German heroes. The SS published a list of suitable graveyards.

1926- Route 66, the first interstate highway built for automobiles in the U.S. is started. (it will get finished in 1932) The World's first road exclusively for automobiles was opened in 1927, the Via Fiore Imperiale in Rome.

1932- The Girls Scouts first offered freshly baked cookies for sale. The proceeds went to purchase camping gear. In 1936, the Girls Scouts signed a contract with Keebler to bake and package the cookies.

1938- GOD BLESS AMERICA- Irving Berlin's song God Bless America sung for the first time by chubby chanteuse Kate Smith. Berlin had written the song in1918 for a show but it didn’t fit in so he threw it in a file cabinet and forgot about it. Twenty years later he revived the song for the effort to combat the Depression and it became a huge hit. Ever since 1942 there’ve been calls to have it replace the Star Spangled Banner as the National Anthem.
Kate Smith

In 1970 a frustrated DJ on hippy radical radio station WBAI promised to play Kate Smith’s God Bless America over and over again until people started calling in pledges to help the station. The phones soon started ringing.

1938- TYPHOID MARY- On this day 68 year old Mary Mallon died in an asylum. She was a carrier of the disease typhoid fever and, in 1910, while being a cook in a hotel resort ,infected 1,000 people. Released from jail a few years later she had promised not to resume her former profession but soon was in the kitchen again and started the epidemic of 1915. She, herself, never contracted the disease.

1938- The first day of shooting on the film 'The Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland met 125 little people hired to be the Munchkins. Judy's energy was fading under the heavy work schedule so L.B. Mayer ordered her put on Benzadrine (speed) every morning and Valium pills to sleep. June Alysson, another young MGM actress at the time said: "The studio nurse would give it to you and tell you it was vitamins." Judy Garland became a heavy drug addict and died of an overdose in 1969 at 47 years old.

1940- The Birth of the Jeep. The army introduces its first General Purpose vehicle-G.P. or Jeep, a name coinciding with a character in E.C. Segar's Popeye cartoons.

1941- On the night before mobster Abe Reles, alias Kid Twist, was due to testify what he knew of the Mafia, he was thrown out of a Coney Island hotel window to his death. He was under Federal protection but, in 1962, Joe Valachi testified mobster Frank Costello had raised $100,000 to bribe the cops to do the deed themselves. A popular toast around Brooklyn those days was: “ Here’s to Abe Reles, a canary who could sing but not fly.”

1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol, Groucho Marx.

1980- 'Heaven's Gate" Michael Cimino's $44 million dollar flop opened. Cimino originally said he could do the film for $8 million. Critic Pauline Kael said: "It's the kind of movie you want to deface. You want to draw mustaches all over it."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: Who is Holden Caulfield?

Answer: He was the main character in J.D. Salinger’s classic novel The Catcher in the Rye.

Question: Who is Holden Caufield?

Question: The media is acting like the fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of the Cold War. What was the first communist country to drop communism?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/10/2009
Birthdays: Mohammed, Martin Luther, William Hogarth, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Francois Couperin, King George II of England, Frederick Schiller, Claude Rains, Tim Rice, Richard Burton, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, MacKenzie Phillips, Russell Means, Sinbad, Brittany Murphy, George Fenneman-Groucho Marx’s TV announcer, Sue Kroyer, Kellie Bea Cooper

Today is the feast of Saint Leo the Great, the Pope who scared Attila the Hun away from Rome by playing on his superstitions about the invisible powers of the Christian god.

1610- THE NIGHT OF DUPES- Cardinal Richelieu ruled France with a centralized authority that made him admired by King Louis XIII, but hated by just about everyone else. When the king was gravely ill the Queen Mother nursed him back to health. In return she asked as her payment- the Cardinals head! She wanted him replaced by keeper of the seals Jean de Mariac. This day in the Luxembourg Palace, Mom told Louis "It’s either Richelieu or me!" On cue, the gaunt cardinal emerged from a secret door. The King made his choice- Bye Bye Mom. Oh and uh.,. Jean de Mariac was beheaded.

1766- In New Brunswick New Jersey Queens College was founded. It later changed its name to Rutgers University.

1770- Voltaire said:" If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

1775- The U.S. Marine Corps founded by Congress. Marines were originally the sharpshooters who climb up ships rigging during a sea battle and shoot down on the enemy decks. They have the nickname Leathernecks because part of their early uniform was a stiff leather collar worn under their cravat to ward off cutlass blows and "keep in the head up in a good military bearing."

1778- John Paul Jones had been beached in France for nine months. At the height of the American Revolution he had been told to send away his ship USS Ranger to await a bigger better one from the French. But delay and red tape was making him crazy. Today his agents found him a new command- a fat, old, run down East India merchant tub named L’Duc du Durras. Jones fixed it up, and renamed her the USS BonHomme Richard after Ben Franklin’s international bestselling book. The frigate BonHomme Richard became the most famous ship in the young American Navy.

1782- English King George III wrote his Prime Minister Lord Shelburne about the recently lost American Revolution: "I should be miserable indeed if no blame for the dismemberment of America from this Empire not be laid at my door, however knowing that Knavery is so much a striking feature of it’s Inhabitants, it may Not in the end be such an Evil that they are now aliens to this kingdom."

1865- During the Civil War Swiss immigrant Henry Wirz was the Confederate commander of the infamous prison Andersonville where thousands of Yankee prisoners starved and perished. On this day he became the first military officer ever hanged for war crimes. He was also the first person to use the excuse "I was only following orders."

1871- STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTON- No one in England had heard from the famous African explorer-missionary Dr David Livingston for three years and he was feared dead. Henry Morton Stanley undertook the expedition partly as a publicity stunt funded by the Josef Pulitizer’s New York World newspaper. After one year of wandering through the jungle Stanley came upon the old missionary on the shores of Lake Tanganyika near Ujiji. Stanley introduced himself by saying: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley also proved Speeckes theory of the source of the Nile River as Lake Victoria Nyanzaa.

1880- Ex Civil War general and New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace got his first novel published, and it came out pretty good- Ben Hur.

1885- Gottfried Daimler invented the first motorcycle.

1917- The Voting Rights for Women Movement or Suffragettes began a dramatic all day protest in front of the White House. Every time a protester was arrested and dragged off another would take her place. By the days end 41 women were arrested.
courtesy of corbis images

1918- After abdicating the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm finally decided he didn't want to stick around and maybe end up shot like his cousin Nicky the Russian Czar. So in the middle of night the German Imperial family slipped away by secret train and crossed the border into neutral Holland. The Hohenzollern Family, which had ruled since 1685 was now gone. Wilhelm’s first words when reaching the Castle of Daun were : "I should now like a strong hot cup of English tea." Remember his mother was Queen Victoria's daughter and he spoke perfect English. Kaiser Wilhelm lived in exile for the rest of his life, refusing Adolf Hitler’s offer to return in 1934. He died of old age in 1940.

1918- The Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary and Empress Zita abdicate. Elderly Emperor Franz-Joseph II helped start World War One and then he conveniently died. His young grandnephew Karl tried to handle a bad situation he had no control over. He even attempted a peace overture behind the Kaiser's back as early as 1916. Ironically the Austro-German High Command helped to fund Russian revolutionaries like Lenin. German money paid the printing costs for Pravda. After taking power in Petersburg Lenin immediately had soviet-style revolutionary cells set up in Vienna and Berlin. Like in Germany riots convulsed Austrian cities and whole armies were leaving their trenches and walking home. The Imperial Hapsburg family, which had reigned in Europe uninterrupted since 1265, piled into limousines and sped off for Switzerland before the Viennese Workers Soviet Committee could arrest them. Like the Kaiser, they too had heard how the Russian Czar and his whole family had been put up against the wall and shot. So they preferred not to suffer a similar fate. The Republics of Austria and Hungary were declared. In 2004 Pope John Paul II made Kaiser Karl I a Saint.

1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman and Katnip cartoon.

1951- The first long distance telephone call without needing an operator to make the connection.

1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper.


1971- The US table tennis team arrived in Red China for a tour. Ping-Pong became an unlikely diplomatic tactic to begin the warming of relations between China and the US.

1975- S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sinks at Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, drowning all 29 crew members and causing a famous 70's folk song to happen.

1977- Pope Paul VI announced that Catholics who remarried or married Protestants were no longer automatically excommunicate.

1981- Innovative French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen movie Napoleon restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow and produced by Francis Ford Coppola with a live audience. At Radio City Music Hall, Brownlow stretched a telephone cord out on stage so the old man could hear the wild cheers of the NY audience.

1982- The Vietnam Veterans Wall Monument in Wash.D.C. designed by Maia Lin opened to the public.

1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many Arnold Schwarzenegger hits like "Total Recall" declared bankruptcy after producing $115 million dollar megaflop "Cutthroat Island".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: The media is acting like the fall of the Berlin Wall was the first signal of the end of the Cold War. What was the first communist country to drop communism..?

Answer: Poland’s communist government fell to the protests of Solidarity in early 1989. Hungary allowed free elections that March. Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria all went before the Berlin Wall came down.

Question: The media is acting like the fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of the Cold War. What was the first communist country to drop communism..?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: what is a troussau?
---------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/9/2009
Birthdays: English King Edward VII, Stanford White, Marie Dressler, Ed Wynn, Claude Rains, Ann Sexton, Spiro Agnew, Tommy Dorsey, Dr. Carl Sagan, Whitey Herzog, Dorothy Dandridge, Dr. Herbert Kalmus the inventor of Technicolor film, Lou Ferrigno, Sisqo

In ancient Rome this was the Feast of Mania, like the Greek Anthesterion it was a time when the Gates of Underworld were said to be open and the shades of the dead could visit their old haunts. This is where we get the word Maniac.

1699- According to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, this was the day Lemual Gulliver was shipwrecked on the island of Liliput. " Alls Well, whats a rainy day..."


1781- After the Battle of Yorktown, George Washington watched his stepson Jackie Custis die of camp fever or meningitis. Washington would not believe that this victory had ended the Revolutionary War. He asked for a fresh offensive against Charleston South Carolina.But his French allies announced operations were done for the year. Meanwhile the British were thinking only about leaving. One British officer serving in America wrote home- I wish Columbus had never discovered this hateful place!”.

1875- A treaty had declared all of the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota to be protected Indian land “ So Long as Grass grows and Water Flows.”But prospectors supported by General George Custer had discovered gold in those hills and a gold rush began, Indians or not. This day a confidential memo from Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army Phil Sheridan with President Ulysses Grant’s approval ordered the frontier cavalry to cease preventing settlers and gold prospectors from moving into the Black Hills. This memo in effect violated the Indian Treaty of 1868 and would lead to Custer's Last Stand next June.

1888- the last victim of Jack the Ripper found. 25-year-old prostitute Mary Reilly. After her murder the Ripper attacks ceased as mysteriously as they had started.

1906- President Teddy Roosevelt departed on board the battleship Louisiana to go inspect the Panama Canal dig. TR is the first sitting U.S. President to travel abroad.

1911-The first Neon sign illuminated.

1918- KAISER WILHELM ABDICATED. A curious fact was that no Tommy, Doughboy or Poilu ( the nicknames for British, American and French soldiers) in World War One ever made it to Berlin, much less entered Germany. The German war machine collapsed from within- bread riots, the economy in shambles, The entire Navy mutinied, Bolshevik Worker’s Soviets were set up in eleven cities- Cologne, Munich and Hamburg.
At first the Kaiser hoped to sign a peace with the victorious Allies, then use the German army to put down the riots and restore order. But he changed his mind when 40 combat officers selected at random said 38 to 2 that they would refuse to kill other Germans to save his monarchy. “What about the Fananeider-the German Soldiers Oath to die for the Monarchy?! “he asked General Von Groener. “Sire, today the Oath is just some empty words!” Even the Kaiser’s personal bodyguards were setting up a Revolutionary Workers Committee.

So rather than wind up arrested and maybe even shot like his cousin the Czar of Russia, Wilhelm abdicated.Young university professor Albert Einstein wrote in his class log-“ Class canceled today due to revolution….”

1923- THE BEER HALL PUTSCH-Adolf Hitler's first attempt at a revolution styled to coincide with Napoleon's anniversary of coming to power in 1799. Old German war hero General Ludendorf stood by him in support. The coup attempt was easily put down by Munich police and Hitler only spent a year under house arrest. Hitler had a long memory. Eleven years later in 1934 when dictator Hitler was purging his stormtroopers, he remembered to look up the same Munich constable, and had the poor man shot.

1928- Anthropologist Margaret Mead arrived in Ta’u, Samoa to begin work on her book “Coming of Age in Samoa” which will have a great effect on how people raise their children.

1935- An aggressive group of labor unions led by United Mine Workers leader John L. Lewis break away from the AF of L and form the Congress of Industrial Unions or the CIO. The AFL and CIO reunited in 1951.

1937- KRYSTAL NACHT- In Paris, an angry German-Jewish exile shot and killed a German diplomat named Ernst Von Rapt. Ironically Rapt was anti-Nazi and was being watched by the Gestapo. Back in Germany the Nazis use this incident to order the mass destruction of 191 synagogues and 1,000 Jewish businesses. Then the Jewish community was ordered to pay fines up to $40 million to pay for the damage. The name Crystal Night pertains to the sound of smashing glass in the streets.

German boxing champion Max Schmelling was the media idol of Aryan Superiority for defeating American Joe Louis. One thing no one knew was that Schmelling concealed two Jewish boys from danger on Krystalnacht and had them smuggled out of the country. In 1961 Schmelling was invited to a testimonial in his honor at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas, now owned by one of those boys.

1964- First "Wizard of Id" comic strip published.

1953- Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning and liver failure in New York, after downing 18 straight shots of whisky. There's actually some debate as to whether or not Dylan Thomas intended to drink himself to death. Scholars have recently suggested that he was a diabetic and died of hypoglycemia. Whatever the actual agent of Thomas' demise may have been, the coroner wrote on his death certificate under the cause of death heading, "Insult to the brain."

1965- "WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?" The first Great East Coast Blackout. A transformer near Rochester shorts out and the surge overloads station after station until the entire eastern seaboard from Boston to Delaware is in darkness for 12 hours. Nine months later there was a notable rise in the birthrate. I guess there was nothing else to do.

1966- In London Beatle John Lennon went to an art exhibit and first met a Japanese avant garde photographer named Yoko Ono.

1981- The Screen Actor's Guild under President Ed Asner votes emergency moneys for striking PATCO air traffic controllers fired by the former SAG president, now U.S. President, Ronald Reagan.

1979- National Public Radio goes on the air. The first US national news show with women as anchor reporters. It was also the first news program in stereo.

1989- THE BERLIN WALL FELL. The East German authorities backed down as the people dance and sing on the hated symbol of Cold War division. A student points up at the t.v. cameras and shouted: "Look, the Whole World is Watching !" Some West German politicians drove to the scene of the spontaneous demonstration and they tried to get everyone to sing patriotic songs like "Deutschlandlied", but the crowd drowned them out, dancing to the theme from the movie:"GhostBusters".

The next day people found the streets covered in banana peels. It was the first thing East Germans bought in the west, and they ate their bananas as they window shopped.

2004- The Jones Soda Pop Company of Seattle announced its new creation – Mashed Potato Flavored Soda. This was to follow up on their success last year of Roast Turkey and Gravy Soda.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: What is a troussau?

Answer: A trousseau is a bride-to-be's supply of stuff she'll need when she's married, and moved out of her families house.

Question: What is a trousseau?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who invented the fork?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/8/2009
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nerva, Bram Stoker, Sir Edmund Halley, June Havoc, Margaret Mitchell, Joe Flynn- the cranky Captain Binghampton in the 60’s TV McHales Navy, Ricky Lee Jones, Bonny Raitt, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Ester Rolle, Katherine Hepburn, Parker Posey, Gretchen Mol, Tara Reid

641 A.D.- Cyrus the Greek Patriarch of Alexandria surrendered Egypt to the Arab army of Caliph Omar. Egypt had been a Byzantine province and the emperors in Constantinople had been persecuting their national church, the Coptic Rite, as a heresy. So the Egyptians opened their gates to the Moslem conquerors. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius appeared at the port of Alexandria with a large fleet. But after removing some personal effects, he abandoned the Paris of the Ancient World without a fight.

1519- Spanish Conquistador Hernan' Cortez first met the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II. Cortes was guided by Malinche', the "Pocahontas of the Aztecs". This noblewoman guided Cortez's little band into the heart of the empire.

Conquistador Bernal Diaz described how after dinner the Spaniards were given tobacco pipes to smoke, but a special pipe with different tobacco was given to Montezuma, after smoking it "The Emperor became merry, as we do when drunk with wine.." Cortez was also offered a cup of chocolate, then a bitter brew called Tchocolatl.

1620 -Battle of White Mountain.- Austrian Catholic armies crush the Czech rebels and their leader Frederick of the Palatinate, who is nicknamed: "The Winter King" for his brief reign. Unfortunately the Thirty Years War was just beginning. Future French philosopher Renes Descartes was a young soldier in the ranks. Although Frederick was married to the daughter of the English King, James wisely refused to get England embroiled in the European war. Fredericks son Prince Rupert later traveled to England and got involved in the English Civil War. The Czech Protestant rebels mostly came from the province of Bohemia and their wandering exile in the cities of Europe caused the word "Bohemian" to become synonymous with a rootless lifestyle.

1789- Elijah Craig first distilled whiskey from Indian corn and strained it through a wool blanket. He lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, so the stuff soon became popularly known as Bourbon. Abraham Lincoln praised Bourbon as the most American of drinks.

1793- In one of the positive results of the Reign of Terror, the French Revolutionary Government opens the royal art collection of the Louvre to the public as a museum.

1805- Lewis and Clark stand on the sand at the Pacific Ocean near the mouth of the Columbia River.

1864- Abraham Lincoln re-elected president over Democrat challenger George McClellan. It was the first U.S. election ever held during a war, and set the custom that Presidents in an election year never lose. Even most of the army voted for Old Abe. The inmates of the notorious Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp cast ballots, even if they had no way to send them to Washington.

1880- Famous actress Sarah Bernhardt made her American stage debut in La Dame aux Camellias. She made a further ten tours of the US, all billed as Farewell Appearances.

1887- Dentist-gunfighter Doc Holiday dies of tuberculosis or consumption at 35. He knew he had it for a long time, and in the 1800's it was as irreversible as AIDS is today. So some say this knowledge is what made him such a bold pistolero. But unfortunately for him, he won all his gunfights and died in bed anyway. His last words after taking a shot of whiskey were:" Well I'll be damned!"

1889- Montana became a state.

1910- Patent for the first insect electrocutor. FHZZZZITT !

1910- Congressman Victor Berger of Wisconsin became the first Socialist to be elected to Congress. Revisionist histories since the Red Scares and the superpower Cold War tend to ignore the achievements of the American Socialist Party. But in the first decades of the 20th century a number of big city mayors and congressmen were socialists. In the 1912 presidential election when Woodrow Wilson won by a slim one million votes third party socialist Eugene Debs polled over a millions votes.

1918- German and Anglo-French negotiators began meetings in a railroad car in the remote Compiegne forest to negotiate an armistice to end World War One. Meanwhile revolutionary German sailors seized the townhall of Cologne and declared a workers state.

1923- When it sounds like they would be found out early Nazi leader Adolf Hitler put into motion his attempt to overthrow the German government. Because they started in a beer hall in Munich the coup is called the Beer Hall Putsch.

1926- New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote the hit song: "Will You Love Me in December like You do in May? ", met chorus dancer Betty Compton at the musical "Okay" and fell in love. His romancing his mistress openly in front of New York Society, not to mention in front of his wife, is the scandal of the Roaring 20's. Forced to resign as mayor after a probe unearthed volumes of corruption within his administration Jimmy tried once more to run for mayor against Fiorello Laguardia in 1933. But he was blocked by the Roman Catholic Cardinal of New York and NY Governor Franklin Roosevelt, who had just become president and found Walker an embarrassment. Jimmy Walker and Betty Compton lived in Europe for the next ten years. In 2000 married NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost the chance to run for the US Senate in part because he made open appearances at shows and dinners with his girlfriend, even meeting her in Gracie Mansion while his family was in an adjoining wing.

1929- New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened.

1932-Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s second wife Nadehzda Alleyuieva shot herself, or so the official story said. Their daughter Svetlana later escaped to the U.S.

1933- King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan was assassinated by Abdul Khallig.

1942- Operation Torch- Anglo-American soldiers began mass landings in French North Africa. The first action of American soldiers in the European Theater of War. The Vichy French-pro Fascist soldiers fired on the Allies until a deal was made with their leader Admiral Darlan. Charles DeGaulle was furious that fighting began before he could try to convince the French not to resist, but Eisenhower, FDR and Churchill were not yet ready to admit that the big nosed Colonel had become the de facto French leader.

1943- The first one man show of American abstract painter named Jackson Pollock. Pollock later created his brushless dripping form of painting that earned him the nickname:” Jack the Dripper”.


1950- In Korea two Chinese MIG fighters tangled with US Sabre jets. The first jet-to-jet dogfight.

1952- The Supreme Court upholds a 1922 ruling that Baseball a sport, not a business. Therefore it is exempt from anti-trust laws.

1965- The Days of Our Lives soap opera first premiered on TV.

1966- Former actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan elected Governor of California over two-term incumbent Pat Brown. Reagan declared a tough line with the Hippies of Haight Ashbury and Berkeley. He declared hippies “ Dressed like Tarzan, had hair like Jane and smelled like Cheetah..”

1991- Marion Barry was re-elected Mayor of Washington D.C. despite serving time for smoking crack cocaine. Comedian Chris Rock wondered:” Who did he run against that was so bad you’d rather vote for a crackhead?”

2004- The Second Battle of Faluja began. U.S. Marines had to fight their way back into an Iraqi city they were forced out of the previous April. Faluja erupted in violence after civilian outrages committed by non-military Blackwater mercenaries, called by the media “contractors”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: Who invented the fork?

Answer: Personal dinner forks were invented by the Byzantines around AD400. In the 1300s when a Byzantine princess was married to the Doge of Venice, a set of dinner forks was part of her troussau. They were not common in Europe until the XVII Century. In 1633 King Charles Ist of England declared the fork the only way to eat correctly.

This weekend at the American Cinemateque at the Egyptian Theater, Tee Bosustow's Animazing Weekend of Shorts will premiere.



The mini-fest will feature an international student film competition and a number of seminar talks. These include ones on technique by Eric Goldberg ( Animation Crash Course), Bill Kroyer on milestones in Computer Animation, and Yours Truly on the history of animated short films. Should be fun!

---------------------------------------------
Question: Who invented the fork?

Yesterday’s Question: In English slang, why does the phrase “ You don’t know Jack!” also means you know nothing.
------------------------------------------------
HISTORY FOR 11/7/2009
Birthdays: Francesco Zubaran, Madame Curie, Rev. Billy Graham is 92, Leon Trotsky –real name Lev Bronstein, Albert Camus, Al Hurt, Joni Mitchell, Joan Sutherland, Judy Tenuda, Clive Barnes

1783- The last public hanging at London’s Tyburn Hill, where executions of commoners had been going on since 1196. Today the Tyburn area is called Marble Arch.

1805- “Oh Joy of Joys!” explorers Lewis & Clark first see the Pacific.

1811- Battle of Tippicanoe- General William Henry Harrison defeats Tecumseh and his united Indian tribes in a battle that decided the ownership of the Old NorthWest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan ). When Harrison later ran for the Presidency with James Tyler, his slogan was "Old Tippicanoe and Tyler Too!"

1820- This day President James Monroe was re-elected after running unopposed for nomination and unopposed for the election. It was the most boring election in US History. One presidential elector refused to vote for him only because he wanted George Washington to go down in history as the only US President ever elected unanimously.

1865- The London Gazette is founded.

1872- The S.S. Mary Celeste sets sail from New York bound for Italy. The ship was later found mid ocean with the crew and passengers mysteriously gone....

1876- THE STOLEN ELECTION- The Presidential election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford Hayes was declared a dead heat. Tilden had actually won an overwhelming majority in the popular vote, but when did that ever matter in Washington politics? The electoral votes were even, so Republicans forced the issue to be decided by the House of Representatives. In the meantime they made a secret deal with former Confederate territories that were not allowed to vote that if they would vote for Hayes they could come back into the Union as States again. The Hayes government also promised to slow down civil rights for African Americans and withdraw occupying troops from the South. On March 3rd 1877 with the aid of the new electoral votes of Louisiana, Georgia and Florida Republican Rutherford Hayes was declared the winner. Republicans chanted: “Hooray for Hayes and Honest Ways!” while Democrats protested: “RutherFRAUD Hayes !”

1876- Three crooks try a scheme to break into President Abraham Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield Illinois while everyone was distracted by the presidential election. They planned to hold the remains hostage for money. But their scheme was foiled because nascent Secret Service had an informer among the gang and he tipped off the feds as the hoodlums were prying the lid off the sarcophagus. Lincoln’s bones stayed put.

1885- The Canadian Pacific Railway completed, linking Montreal with British Columbia.

1914- First issue of the magazine The New Republic.

1914- THE MASS MOONING OF TSING-TAO- Japan had joined the allied side in World War One to attack German colonial holdings in China. The British Navy helped the Japanese Army attack the biggest German fortress in Asia, Tsingtao, home of their famous brewery, built in 1896. The surrendering Germans were angry that the British, their fellow white Europeans, with whom they had stomped the Chinese nationalists together, would aid another Asian race against them. Hadn’t that Englishman- Kipling wrote that poem about the “White Man’s Burden”? As the British troops marched in with the Japanese, the German P.O.W.'s executed a smart about-face, dropped trousers and executed a smart "group-mooning".

1917- RED OCTOBER, THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION- As the guns of the battleship Aurora boomed out across Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Lenin's Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace and overthrew the provisional government of A.P. Kerensky ( who died in Queens, New York in 1973.) Two Bolsheviks sent to take over the Petrograd telephone exchange had forgot to bring their weapons but succeeded nonetheless.
In the ten months between the Tsar’s fall and the Communist coup Russia had tried to govern itself with a fragile democracy. But no middle class support base, powerful extremists like elitist officer corps and landless peasants pulling on either side and the disastrous decision to stay in the Great War with Germany doomed the government. It was said Kerensky was a brilliant speaker but he had no serious plans or ideas beyond ebullient oratory. He was making it all up as he went along. Red Army leader Leon Trotsky had at one point lived in exile in New York. This day a Bronx newspaper proudly put as it's headline:" Bronx Boy Seizes Power in Russia !"

1918- As the Kaiser’s collapsing monarchy tried to save itself while seeking peace talks with the allies, Fritz Ebert, the leader of the socialists in the German Reichstag was told the Allies would not sign a peace treaty until the Kaiser stepped down. Ebert warned Chancellor Prince Max of Baden:” The Kaiser must abdicate and a democracy declared or revolution and civil war will break out.” Prince Max told this to the Kaiser, but he refused to listen.

1918- American labor leader and socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs sends Lenin a congratulatory note on the first anniversary of the Revolution.

1937- Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels sent an emissary to Paris to talk Marlena Dietrich into coming home. But Germany’s greatest movie star hated the Nazis and all they stood for.

1944- President Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented Fourth Term as president, even though Democratic party insiders knew he was dying. After FDR the conservative Congress created a constitutional amendment barring anyone else from having more than two terms. Roosevelt joked this night with friends:” You know, the first twelve years are always the hardest. “

1945- The Weisbaden Mainfesto- at the end of World War Two thousands of priceless works of art plundered from museums across Europe were hidden by the Nazis in salt mines in Bavaria. The victorious Americans sent a squad of art curators to catalog the treasures, then were ordered to secretly ship them back to the U.S.. This order morally troubled the team, and a Colonel Obermeyer and a Captain William Farmer wrote a protest petition to the War Department and published it, saying we would be no better than the Nazis themselves if we took the artwork. Washington gave in to the embarrassment and the 200 works of Durer, Raphael, Titian and more were returned to their proper museums.

1956- Eugene O’Neill’s biographical masterpiece play “Long Days Journey into Night” first premiered.

1957- Communist East Germany debuted the Trabant automobile. Trabants or “Trebbies” quickly entered legend alongside Yugos and Edsels as one of the worst cars ever made. Eastern Europeans spent many happy hours on the side of the road trying to get them running and making dozens of Trebbie jokes. “Did you hear the Ministry of going to make Trebbies with dual extra long exhaust pipes? Why? Because then after it breaks down, at least you can use it as a wheelbarrow.”

1962- After losing the California Governor's race to Pat Brown, Richard Nixon bitterly says to assembled newsmen and women:" You boys have been having a lot of fun....well, You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore..". Nixon felt his career in politics was in shambles and a final jab from the Kennedys was the news he was being audited by the IRS. Tricky Dick spent the next few years reinventing himself before making his successful Presidential run in 1968.

1963- The movie “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” premiered at Hollywood’s new Cinerama Dome theater.

1965- the first Pillsbury Doughboy commercial debuted. ‘Tee-hee-hee!”

1965- Dorothy Kilgallen was a New York socialite who’s witty sparring with Bennett Cerf and other panelists enlivened a CBS quiz show called What’s My Line.
But beyond that role she was an accomplished reporter and columnist who uncovered facts on the famous Dr. Sam Shepard murder case. In mid 1965 she announced publically that she knew the real facts on the John F Kennedy assassination and she had interviewed Jack Ruby. She would shortly announce her proof of conspiracy in a new book .
This night she had dinner with friends then asked them to drop her off at the Regency Hotel Lobby where she was meeting a new mysterious boyfriend. Next morning police found her dead body in her bed at her Greenwich Village apartment. Pills and liquor were strewn about her night table and a book was in her lap so police assumed she took too many sleeping pills and liquor. But conspiracy buffs point out she never read without her reading glasses, which were across the room. Her files were confiscated by the Justice Department and never released.

1977- Harvey Milk won election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the U.S.

1980- Actor Steve McQueen died of an aggressive cancer at age 50.

1991- “Even Me”-Los Angeles Laker Basketball star Irvin “Magic” Johnson admitted to the world that he was HIV –positive. He said he got it from casual sex and was retiring from the NBA. Coming soon after the death of movie star Rock Hudson , Magic Johnson’s example brought home to the world that HIV/AIDS wasn’t merely a “gay plague” but that straight people could get it too. His life is also an example that an HIV positive person can still lead a full productive life.

1997- Someone published a stolen home video of Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and rock star Tommy Lee having graphic sex on their honeymoon, not to mention Tommy steering his boat with his Johnson. The Pamela-Tommy video became the most downloaded file on the Internet and rented video in history. In 1998 Pamela Anderson Lee was the subject of 1% of the Total Traffic on the entire World Wide Web!

2000-THE DEADLOCKED ELECTION- Al Gore and George W. Bush electoral votes came to a statistical dead heat. In 1960 with a population of 150 million Kennedy beat Nixon by 60,000 votes. In 2000 with over 250 million Gore and Bush were separated in Florida by 140 votes! With nothing in the Constitution about a European style second round of voting. the decision was made in courts and precincts of Palm Beach Florida. Americans learned to study chads and dimples on punchcard butterfly ballots. Katherine Harris the Attorney General of Florida who validated the election for Bush was also the Republican campaign chair. In 2004 an outraged Florida voter drove his Cadillac up onto the sidewalk and tried to run her over.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: In English slang, why does the phrase “ You don’t know Jack!” also means you know nothing.

Answer: There are several possible origins- In the Nineteenth Century kids claimed You Don’t Know a Thing from Jackass Sh*t! which shortened to You Don’t Know Jack.
In England in the Middle Ages a common laborer was a Jack from Norman Jacques of Jakke. So Jack the Drover, Jack Tar the sailor. So you don’t know any more than an ignorant laborer. A jack was also slang for a five pound note. So, I don’t owe you jack.