QUIZ: What opera includes a triumphant chorus about the Wells Fargo Stage Coach?

Yesterdays’ question answer below: Who was the first artist to sign his work?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/9/2011
Birthdays: Woody Guthrie, Richard Nixon, Ray Bolger, Roy Disney Jr., William Powell, George Balanchine, Judith Krantz, Bob Denver, Crystal Gayle, Joan Baez, Simone de Beauvoir, Sir Rudolph Bing, Herbert Lom, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joely Richardson

Festival of Janus, the namesake of January, Roman God of gateways and doors, not to be confused of course with Terminus, God of borders and terminal points, Lemintinus the God of Threshholds and stoops. Cardea the Goddess of hinges, or Forculus the God of the door leaves and sectioned doors.

1349- The Jews of Basel Switzerland were locked up in a warehouse and burned to death. Their neighbors thought they caused the Black Plague.

1570- Ivan the Terrible, just getting the suspicion that the city of Novgorod may be plotting treason, surrounded the city and massacred 20,000 people. Afterwards he tells the survivors: " Forget your wrongs."

1768- Former English cavalry sergeant Phillip Astley combined trick riding in a tight circular ring with a clown and some jugglers and took it all on the road. The first traveling Circus.

1769- Gaspar De Portola and Fra Junipero Serra set sail from Mexico to colonize California. The California coastline had been explored by Juan De Cabrillo, Francis Drake and others 250 years earlier. But since there were no gold-encrusted Aztec-type cities to plunder it was quickly forgotten. Conquistadors don’t surf. The King in Madrid was finally moved to order the colonization of California to limit the encroachments of Russian fur traders, and English claims to Oregon territory.

1793- Aeronaut Jean Pierre Blanchard and his dog flew by hot air balloon from Philadelphia to Woodbury New Jersey. President George Washington was a spectator.

1806- In London this day was the great funeral of Admiral Horatio Nelson, killed at the moment of victory in the Battle of Trafalgar. He was interred under the center of Saint Pauls Cathedral in a tomb built for Henry VIII's chancellor Cardinal Woolsey. Woolsey fell from royal favor before he ever got a chance to use it. The huge stone coffin stayed around in storage until a suitable hero popped up. An early example of recycling.

1825-Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams have dinner. The presidential election was deadlocked between Adams and Andrew Jackson with Clay a distant third. Andrew Jackson had won the popular votes, but the electoral votes were tied. Over sherry Henry Clay offered all his electoral votes to Adams in exchange for the job of Secretary of State. So John Quincy Adams won the presidency with the electoral votes of states like Kentucky where not one soul had voted for him. People were furious over King Caucus and called it the stolen election. In the next election cycle Andy Jackson won easily and began major reform of the electoral system.

1847- THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES-after a small battle near San Gabriel Mission, Commodore Richard Stockton and the U.S. cavalry retake Los Angeles and end resistance by the native Mexican population 'the Californios' to U.S. rule. The Californios had driven out the Yankee occupiers three times before.

1847- First U.S. governor of New Mexico territory Charles Bent is murdered and scalped by angry Indians after the U. S. conquering army had moved on. His trading post- Bent’s Fort , still stands today.

1857- The Fort Tejon earthquake shook Los Angeles This was the last major quake in Southern Cal of the great San Andreas Fault, an estimated 8.0 !

1860- The Star of the West, a ship sent to re-supply Union held Fort Sumter sitting out in Charleston Harbor, was fired on by South Carolina shore batteries on Morris Island and forced to turn around. These are the first hostile shots fired between North & South. But the incident was not enough to trigger the U.S. Civil War.

1914 -John Randolph Bray takes out patents on the principles of film animation: cycles, arcs, keys and inbetweens. He even tried to sue Winsor McCay, who had already been using them for years.

1924- The breakfast cereal Wheaties invented.

1936- Actor John Gilbert died of a heart attack after years of alcohol abuse. The accepted reason was he was a has-been silent film star who's voice was too thin and squeaky for talking pictures. Actually his voice wasn't too bad, some of it may of had to do with his punching Louis B. Mayer in the mouth when Mayer made a crude remark about Gilbert's sexual relations with Greta Garbo -something like "Why marry her when you're getting it anyway ?.."-BOP! . Mayer got up and screamed: "I'll ruin you if it costs me millions!"
Gilbert's fading popularity and decline into alcohol as his second wife Virginia Bruce’s film career blossomed was the inspiration for "A Star is Born".

1939- Top Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin was hired by Walt Disney. He quit after two fruitless years, and left so angry he wrote a children’s book called the "Bear that Wasn’t" about his experiences. An early vice president of the Cartoonists Guild, he also joined the Mouse House to help unionize the studio. After a stint at Screen Gems, in 1945 Frank Tashlin went to Paramount’s live action division and became the director of the Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis comedies.

1959- The TV series Rawhide debuted, starring a young cowpoke named Clint Eastwood. President Lyndon Johnson and Ladybird were big Rawhide fans.

1968- THE BATTLE OF QUE SANH- Que Sanh was a U.S. Marine firebase at the western tip of the Vietnamese DeMilitarized Zone. It was so placed to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This day Firebase Que Sanh was surrounded and attacked by huge North Vietnamese forces. General William Westmorland growled to his corps commanders "This will NOT be the American Dien Bien Phu !" Dien Bien Phu was the 1954 siege that defeated the French. The Battle of Que Sanh lasted until April with the Marines fighting off huge human wave attacks.
The U.S. media at the time portrayed Que Sanh as an epic showdown in the tradition of Gettysburg or Guadalcanal, but to the Vietnamese General Ngyun Vo Giap, it was a feint to the real offensive when the Tet Lunar New Year holiday began....

1972- In a rare press conference by telephone from the Bahamas, reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes declared the biography done of him by Clifford Irving was a total fabrication.

1976- First day of shooting in Philadelphia of the movie Rocky. It was the first movie to utilize the Steadicam, a system that balanced hand-held camera shots.

1987- THE OCTOBER SURPRISE- The Ronald Reagan White House released a memorandum from 1980 proving the sales of weapons to Iran did bring about the release of the American Embassy hostages. Ronald Reagan had declared there was no ransom paid. His media spinners encouraged the idea that all the Old Gipper had to do was show up in the White House for the mad mullahs to release our people and hightail it outta’ town! Now the truth was out that Reagan lied, but it was too late, and not enough of a sound bite for a dazed & confused public.

2008- After his surprise win in the New Hampshire Primary, Barack Obama electrified the country with his speech :” Yes We Can.”

-------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: Who was the first artist to sign his work?

Answer: A 12th Century medieval sculptor named Ghiselbertus, or Gilbert of Autun, put on his work Ghiselbertus Hoc Fecit, Latin for Ghiselbertus made this. Of course, you can also point to the Ice Age caverns like Lausanne, where next to painted images of animals a stone age artist placed his hand on the wall and traced around it with chalk. Historian Jacob Bronowski called that the first signature.

Question: Who was the first artist to sign his work?

Answer to yesterdays question below: : Which cartoon character was NOT drawn using rotoscope? Koko the Clown, Max Fleischers Superman, Felix the Cat, Walt Disney’s Snow White?
----------------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/8/2011
Birthdays: Elvis Presley would have been 76, Robert Schumann, Jose Ferrer, Shirley Bassey, Peter Arno, Yvette Mimieux, Larry Storch is 88, John Nierhardt, Bruce Sutter, Charles Osgood, Gen. James Longstreet, publisher Frank Doubleday, Steven Hawkings is 69, Saheed Jafray is 82, Soupy Sales, David Bowie is 64

Today is the Feast day of St. Severinus of Noricum, one of the first missionaries to the pagan Austrians 482 AD.

794AD The great monastery of Lindisfarne was sacked by Vikings.

871- Battle of Ashdown- English warriors of Wessex defeated a large force of Vikings led by Halfdan the Black, Bacsecg and Ivar the Boneless. On the English side under his brother King Ethlered, was future king Alfred the Great.

1297-MONACO FORMED- Francois the Cunning was the leader of the Grimaldis, a prominent Genoese clan. On this day he disguised himself as a monk and sneaked into Monaco castle where he stabbed the guards, then opened the gate for his troops. The Grimaldis became Princes of Monaco in 1659.
In 1851 Prince Charles III Grimaldi opened the first gambling casino. In gratitude of it's success, the people named the hill town they lived in Mount Charles, or Monte Carlo. The Grimaldi family still rule Monaco today under their present Grimaldi- Prince Raynier II.

1642- Astronomer Galileo Galilei died at 77 of 'slow fever'. After being forced by the Holy Inquisition to recant his support of the theories of Copernicus in 1616, he lived under a loose house arrest. He became blind, but he played his lute and still published scientific papers smuggled out to be printed in Holland. Other great thinkers like English poet John Milton could visit him.

1654- Hetman of the Ukraine Bogdan Khmeilnitski pledged his loyalty and the loyalty of all Cossacks to the Russian Czar in Moscow. After Bogdan’s death the furious Poles dug up his grave and threw his bones to the dogs, but the deed was done. The Ukraine and the Voivode of Ruthenia (Moldova-Byloruss) would stay a part of Russia until 1989.

1675- The first American Corporation chartered- The New York Fish Company.

1705- George Frederich Handel’s first opera Almira opened.

1790- George Washington starts a custom of the President delivering an annual speech reporting on the nation's progress in the past year, later known as the State of the Union Address.

1814-"In Eighteen Fourteen we took a little Trip. With Colonel Andy Jackson down the Mighty Missa-sipp" BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. The Last engagement of the War of 1812 and the last battle fought between England and the United States was actually fought AFTER the peace treaty had been signed. Then it took two months to cross the Atlantic with the news, too late to stop the conflict. A large British invasion force composed of Wellington’s veterans was ordered to capture New Orleans and choke off American commerce on the Mississippi River.

General Andrew Jackson ( the fellow on your twenty dollar bill ) had a pathological hatred of anything English. When he heard of their landing, he roared: "By Eternal God I will not have them sleeping on our soil!" He told the terrified New Orleanaise -still more French than American, that he would defend their city to the last, then burn it to the ground.

At Chalumette plantation, the redcoats were met by Jackson's ragtag force of regulars, militia, Jean Lafitte's pirates, Cherokees and slaves, dug-in in a dry canal. Interestingly enough, the slaves proved to be the deadliest shots. Many slave families were denied meat for their diet. One or two men a family were allowed to keep a bird rifle to bring home small game. To them bullets were precious, so they learned to make every shot count. At Chalumette they were given Kentucky long rifles with a range accuracy 300 yds. to the British "Brown Bess" musket 's 150 yds. The British grand assault never got within range before they were annihilated. It was all over in half an hour.

1853- The equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson unveiled in Lafayette Park in Washington D.C.

1856- Borax discovered in the California desert by Dr John Veatch. Now where’s that 20 mule team?

1889- Herman Hollerith received a patent for the electronic counting machine. The machine fed numbers onto punch cards and was used extensively in the U.S. census of 1890. In 1896 Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which later was renamed International Business Machines or IBM.

1904- Pope Pius IX banned women wearing low cut dresses in front of clergy.

1918- THE FOURTEEN POINTS- President Woodrow Wilson had pondered the reason why the world had torn itself apart in World War One. He had his aide Colonel House chair a committee of top intellectuals and jurists called the Inquiry. They came up with Fourteen Points for lasting world peace. It asked for new ideas like people should be allowed to decide what government controlled them, and freedom of the seas.
Wilson made it the cornerstone of his foreign policy, and airplanes dropped printed leaflets on the Germans. England & France were willing to use the document as propaganda, but were not interested in its ideas. French Premier Clemencau said:" God gave us Ten Commandments and we broke them. Wilson now gives us Fourteen Points. We will see."

1959- Charles DeGaulle returned to power as President of the Fifth French Republic.

1962- The Mona Lisa traveled to America and went on display today at the National Gallery in Washington. It was loaned in a deal brokered by Jackie Kennedy and French cultural minister Andre Malreaux

1964- President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his War on Poverty campaign.

1965- NBC TV premiered Hullabaloo, a Rock & Roll dance show with lots of mini-skirted go-go dancers. ABC responded with Shindig.

1973- Carly Simon got a gold record for "You’re So Vain".

1992- BARF! At a state dinner in Tokyo, President George Bush Sr. vomited onto the lap of Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone in front of press cameras. There is now a word in Japanese- BUSHURU, meaning to vomit onto the lap of the person next to you.

2002- Pres George W. Bush Jr. signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: : Which cartoon character was NOT drawn using rotoscope? Koko the Clown, Max Fleischers Superman, Felix the Cat, Walt Disney’s Snow White?

Answer: Felix the Cat

Quiz: Which cartoon character was NOT drawn using rotoscope? Koko the Clown, Max Fleischers Superman, Felix the Cat, Walt Disney’s Snow White?

Answer: What does it means to ask for three fingers of Scotch?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/7/2010
Birthdays: Jacques Montgolfier, Joseph Bonaparte- Napoleons older brother, St. Bernadette of Lourdes, Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam, Francois Poulenc, Butterfly McQueen, Adolph Zukor, Charles Adams, E.L. Doctorow, Jean Pierre Rampal, Millard Filmore*, Katie Couric, William Peter Blatty the author of Jaws, David Caruso, Nicholas Cage- originally Nicolo Coppola is 47

• HAPPY MILLARD FILLMORE DAY!! Millard Fillmore is famous, if you could call it that, as Americas most irrelevant president err…So far. This day the Millard Filmore Society has a banquet in his birthplace of Buffalo, N.Y.

1174- Today is the Feast day of Saint Raymond of Penafort, who sailed to Barcelona on his own coat. (....? )

1610- Galileo aimed his telescope into the heavens and first noted moons around Jupiter- Ganymede, Io and Europa.

1785- Aeronauts Jean Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries crossed the English Channel in a gas balloon. To keep from crashing before attaining the French coastline they had to jettison most of their equipment, including silk covered oars intended to use to row through the air. Blanchard even threw his trousers overboard to lighten the load.

1789-THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION -Meaning when the electors nominated by the various state legislatures cast their votes .The Electoral College is a remnant of this. Popular elections really didn't catch on until the 1820's. At this time only white, male, landowning literate, freeborn men could vote, so out of a population of 4 million about 160,000 voted; in England at this time only 10% of the male population could vote.
George Washington won overwhelmingly over John Adams and John Hancock.

The first election also produced the first sore-losers. Hancock, who after all was the leader of Congress all through the Revolution and had that really big signature, was so disgusted that when Washington paid an official visit to his home state of Massachusetts, Hancock snubbed him. John Adams was annoyed about being only Vice President of a country he felt he invented, under a man he felt he created. He was the one who suggested the big Virginian with the bad teeth head the army.

John Adams hoped his position of Vice President would evolve powers not unlike an English Prime Minister, with the President a powerless figurehead. But Washington's annoyance with Adams ensured he, and consequentially all future vice presidents, would have little serious work to do.

1839- Frenchman Louis Daguerre announces the invention of Photography.( Just three weeks later on the 31st William Fox Talbot will say HE invented it first ). Despite the controversy of credit, the Daguerrotype photgraphic process becomes the popular system worldwide in the nineteenth century. The image of Lincoln on the five dollar bill is from a daguerreotype.

1894-" The Sneeze" The first motion picture film to be copyrighted by Thomas Edison and his engineer Canadian W.K.L. Dickson

1896- The first Fanny Farmer Cookbook published.

1914- the Merrill-Lynch Stock brokerage founded.

1922-THE IRISH CIVIL WAR After a furious debate the Irish Dail’ ( parliament ) voted by just seven votes to approve the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiated by IRA chief Michael Collins and Sinn Fein founder John Griffiths. This was the take-it-or-war deal offered by David Lloyd George that allowed for an Irish Free State but not a republic and with six counties of Northern Island sliced off to remain part of Britain. Irish President Eamon De Valera angrily took his partisans out of the Dail and the street fighting broke out shortly afterwards. Griffiths died of a heart attack and Collins was assassinated. The Irish Republic declared in 1932 but the Northern Irish question is still being worked on.

1924- George Gershwin completed his Rhapsody for Jazz Orchestra, popularly called the Rhapsody in Blue. Ira Gershwin came up with the name after seeing a museum show of Whistler paintings with names like "Composition in Grey, Nocturne in Green," etc.

1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1927- The first private telephone call from America to England.

1929-With the approval of Edgar Rice Burroughs, artist Hal Foster began drawing the Tarzan comic strip.

1934 –The First Buck Rogers adventures.

1935- Roger Sherwood’s play the Petrified Forrest opened to smash revues at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway. Leslie Howard got great notices, but the real find was an obscure hard drinking actor with sad eyes playing the gangster Duke Mantee – Humphrey Bogart. In the audience was Jack Warner of Warner Bros, who decided Mr Bogart might just make it in motion pictures.

1942-BATAAN-Gen. Homma's Japanese army attacked Gen. Douglas MacArthur's American and Phillipino last stand defense line on the Bataan Peninsula. From today until late April, the Philipino-Americans wage a desperate fighting retreat against overwhelming Japanese forces down the Florida-shaped peninsula of Luzon, hoping for reinforcements from America that would never come. They sang:
"We're the battling bastards of Bataan,
No moma, no papa, no Uncle Sam.
No aunts, no uncles, sisters or nieces;
no pills, no planes, no artillery pieces.
We're the battling bastards of Bataan,
And nobody gives a damn.."

1943- Nicholas Tesla died. The inventor of AC current, rotary field motors and the Tesla coil, in his last years he had been experimenting with telegraphy, and trying to develop a death ray for the US Army.

1961- In Providence Rhode Island a bunch of kids were stopped by police for driving a round a neighborhood store suspiciously carrying guns and masks. One 21 year old who did three days in jail for carrying a concealed weapon later became a pretty good actor- Al Pacino.

1966- A hippie group from what would become Silicon Valley, called the Grateful Dead, got their first gig playing a club called the Matrix. They would be one of the most successful rock bands in history, only breaking up after the death of their leader, Jerry Garcia in 1995.

1972-Pulitzer prize winning poet John Berryman went to a Minneapolis bridge over the Mississippi River, took off his glasses, waved at a few people then jumped to his death. He missed the river and hit the bank 110 feet below, but he achieved his initial purpose of killing himself.

1979-The invading Vietnamese Army took Phnom Penh and ended the regime of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. During his regime known as the Killing Fields, he may have murdered up to a quarter of his countrymen, over two million people.

-----------_________________________________-----------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it means to ask for three fingers of Scotch?

Answer: In the time before standardized shot glasses were made, the way a barman would measure a shot of Scotch was to pour using the width of three of his fingers as a measurement.

Quiz: What does it means to ask for three fingers of Scotch.

Yesterday’s Question answered belowz: Epiphany commemorates the gifts of the Three Kings, also called the Magi. Who were the Magi? Were they really kings? Were they magical?
---------------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/6/2011
Birthdays: St. Joan of Arc, Mountain man Jedediah Smith, Tom Mix, Alexander Scriabin, Gustav Dore', Loretta Young, Earl Skruggs. Carl Sandburg, Danny Thomas, Nancy Lopez, John DeLorean, Alan Watts, John Singleton, Rowan Atkinson, Anthony Minghella

Happy Feast Of Epiphany or Twelfthnight. Today is the end of the twelve days of Christmas when the Magi, the three kings- Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, visited the Holy Family. In many countries the Three Kings, not Christmas, is when children get their presents, because that’s when JC got his.

1522- The Augustinian Monastery of Wittenburg had been the home of reformer Martin Luther. Today, inspired by Luther’s preaching against the Vatican, the monks and nuns voted to disband themselves and start having sex like bunnies. Eventually Luther had to sermonize them to calm down.

1759- George Washington and Martha Custis marry. Washington first loved another woman who refused him, a Sally Fairfax who married a prominent English loyalist plantation owner. They fled to Europe when the Revolution began and never returned. When George married Martha she was a very rich widow, but beyond childbearing years. This might have been a factor in Washington's decision later not to be King of America, for he would have no direct heirs. Imagine the complications in the young democracy trying to establish this concept of an elective President if there was a George Washington Jr. to contend with. Or a George W.Washington? In later years when Washington wanted to be alone he would ride over to the ruins of the Fairfax Mansion.

1842- THE RETREAT FROM KABUL - This day15,000 British troops and their dependants march out of Kabul, Afghanistan on the road to Jellallabad. They were attacked by Afghan Ghilzais tribesmen all along the route through the Khyber Pass. Only one man survived, a surgeon William Brydon, who got lost along the way.

1849- the first cartoon cover of Punch Magazine.

1853- President-elect Franklin Pierce and his family are involved in a train wreck in Concord Mass. Pierce and the first lady survived but their last surviving child Ben was killed. First Lady Jean Pierce took this as a sign that God was punishing them for wanting the Presidency and she morosely withdrew from society. Franklin Pierce himself spent most of his administration drunk or on his knees singing psalms.

1872- Millionaire robber-baron Big Jim Fisk was shot dead by Ned Stokes, his rival for the affections of beautiful actress Josie Mansfield. Fisk once conned President Grant into a business partnership while he tried to corner the gold bullion market.

1912- New Mexico statehood.

1912- Scientist Alfred Wegener presented his paper to the German Geological Society in Frankfurt. In it he theorized that the Earth’s continents are not fixed in place but moving. He named it Continental Drift. This was dismissed as nonsense until after WWII when submarines charting the ocean floor discovered tectonic plates. Today it is accepted that the continents move at the speed with which you grow a fingernail. About 6 feet a century.

1919- Teddy Roosevelt died peacefully at Oyster Bay ,N.Y. at 60. He was never expected to survive childhood asthma, was wounded in Spanish American War, thrown 40 feet in a streetcar wreck, got a dangerous leg abscess while on safari, almost died of malaria in the Amazon and was shot by an assassin while giving a political speech, which he finished anyway. His daughter Alice said: " The problem with daddy is at every wedding he wants to be the bride and at every funeral the corpse."

1919- In the social anarchy after the defeat in World War One, German Communists storm the Chancellery in Berlin and try to set up a Bolshevik style Revolution. They are driven out by right wing mobs and more chaos reigns in the streets.

1945- First Pepe Le Pew cartoon, "Odorable Kitty". When the Warners producer who replaced Leon Schlesinger, Eddie Selzer, heard the plans to do a short about a skunk he thundered: "Absolutely Not! Nobody will like a cartoon skunk!" Chuck Jones recalled: "As soon as he said no, I knew we just had to do it." Selzer's final opinion:" Nobody'll laugh at that sh*t!" The short won an Oscar. Selzer later went on into network T.V.

1945- Navy Lt. George H. W. Bush married Barbara Pierce. Despite Barbara’s mother’s opinion of Bush “Singularly Unimpressive”, Poppy Bush made Barbara First Lady and the mother of another president.

1949- Composer Leonard Bernstein noted in his diary that “JR (Jerome Robbins) called today with a novel idea- a modern version of Romeo and Juliet set in the slums.” At first the musical was going to be called East Side Story, then GangWay, finally West Side Story.

1956- Prince Rainier of Monaco announced his engagement to movie star Grace Kelly.

1962- Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent. This was the animated version of his popular puppet show.“So Long Kids, Wind Up Your Lids, We’ll look for You Real Soooooon.”

1975-“ Ease on Down the Road.-“ The musical The Wiz premiered on Broadway.

1993- Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev, the most famous male dancer since Nijinsky, died of HIV/AIDS.

1994- “WHY ME, WHY ME?” Shortly after a practice in a Detroit skating rink, Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by a man trying to smash her knees with a steel pipe. The man Derrick Smith later confessed to the FBI that he was paid $6500 to do the deed by Jeff Gilhooly, the manager of Kerrigan’s rival Tanya Harding. Despite all the intense media coverage Nancy Kerrigan got one Silver medal, Tanya Harding nothing and the Olympic went to Ukrainian Oksana Baiul, who was busted for drunk driving.

1995- In another great leap forward for low journalism, CBS anchor Connie Chung gets Kathleen Gingrich, the mother of Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, to call First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton a “bitch”. In an earlier time such gutter utterances would have been politely edited, but this was televised and given national prominence.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: Epiphany commemorates the gifts of the Three Kings, also called the Magi. Who were the Magi? Were they really kings? Were they magical?

Answer: The Magi were the priestly caste of ancient Persia. They were believed to predate the Persians and come from the Chaldaeans, the people who invented the western branch of the science of astronomy. The Maya and Chinese were doing astronomy on their sides of the world. A lot of the Magi ritual concerned observation of the stars.
Some astronomers theorize the Star of Bethlehem was a rare planetary alignment that created a bright spot the Magi weren't used to, or a close orbit of Jupiter. Others have calculated that there was a supernova around 6 BC which is more or less the right time.

QUIZ: Epiphany commemorates the gifts of the Three Kings, also called the Magi. Who were the Magi? Were they really kings? Were they magical?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What time was known as The Era of Good Feelings?
------------------------------------------
History for 1/5/2011
Birthdays: Zebulon Pike, Stephen Decatur, Alven Ailey, James Stuart Blackton (the first American animator, born in Lincolnshire, England ), W.D. Snodgrass, Jack Norworth -composer of " Take Me out to the Ballgame' , Konrad Adenauer, Astrologist Jean Dixon, Umberto Ecco, Yves Tanguy, Walter Mondale, George Reeves, Roger Spottiswoode, Hiyao Miyazaki is 70, Robert Duval is 81, Dianne Keaton is 65, Spanish King Juan Carlos, Marilyn Manson is 42, January Jones is 30

1463- French poet Francois Villon was kicked out of Paris.

1477- THE BATTLE OF NANCY- The Duke of Burgundy Charles the Rash dreamed of turning his duchy between France and Germany into one of the great powers of Europe. In the process he managed to annoy just about all his neighbors with his constant wars. This day Charles found out why the Swiss are left alone by most European powers. Upon invading Switzerland his army was cut to pieces. His body was found naked in a ditch with his head stuck fast in a puddle of ice. Battle axes were protruding from his butt. These were for insults sake.

The King of France as his Feudal Suzerain annexed Burgundy to France, but just before his last battle Charles engaged his only daughter to the German Emperor. So the only thing Charles left to history was the ancient feud between Germany and France over who owned Alsace-Lorraine and the Low Countries, which raged until 1945.

1643- The first divorce granted in North America. Pilgrim Anne Clarke was granted a divorce by the Massachusetts Bay Colony from her deadbeat husband Dennis.

1757- A man named Robert Damiens attacked French King Louis XV and stabbed him. It was a flesh wound that Voltaire described as a pin-prick. The king survived and the court sentenced Damiens to the most horrible death they could think of, the medieval punishment for regicides. Nobody had done it for generations so the court executioner, Charles Samson, had to consult the history books. Hmm...Drawing and quartering....cut off assailants hands and stick stumps in pan of burning sulfur...uh-huh..got it! The execution was so ghastly that the witnesses vomited and fled, Samson passed out, so his assistants had to finish the job. Robert Damiens believed he was doing it for the people but unfortunately he was 32 years too early for the French Revolution.

1762- The Seven Years War in Europe was a war of three powerful women against one gay man. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, Madame la Pompadour the favorite of Louis XV of France and Czarina Elizabeth of Russia. They all made war on King Frederick the Great of Prussia, the country that eventually became Germany. Frederick called them the Three Petticoats. But after 6 years of war with his country overrun with foreign armies, and his treasury bankrupt, Frederick needed a miracle to survive. His miracle came this day, when Czarina Elizabeth died. She was succeeded by her eccentric son Peter III. The new Czar idolized Frederick. He immediately changed sides and donned a Prussian uniform to serve My Master. Frederick thought Czar Peter a bit odd, but he welcomed the help nonetheless.

1825- Writer Alexander Dumas fought a duel with the Chevalier Saint George, a black duelist from Martinique, who played violin so well he helped Beethoven write his Violin Concerto. Neither man was seriously hurt and Dumas went on to write the Three Musketeers. Saint George also once fought a duel with the mysterious Monsieur d¹Eon, a transexual who fought his duels in a womens¹ ballgown and petticoats.

1836- Davy Crocket crossed into Texas.

1895-Today was the famous scene of after Captain Albert Dreyfus was framed for espionage he was publicly humiliated in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire in Paris. He was stripped of his insignia and his sword broken. As he was marched off to prison he shouted aloud ³Citizens of France I am Innocent!²

1896- A Vienna newspaper announced the invention by Dr. Wilhelm Roentgen of a machine that produces "X-Rays" to see inside the body. In England, scientist Lord Kelvin, who invented the Celsius temperature scales, declared x-rays a " ridiculous hoax "

1896- Josef Pulitzers’ New York World began printing the Sunday Yellow Kid comic strip with a yellow color on his shirt. The strip gave the name to the sensationalist tabloid press 'Yellow Journalism".

1914- The Ford Motor Company shocked the captains of American Industry by raising it¹s wage rates for work shift from $2.40 a day to $5.00 a day and voluntarily adopting the new 8 hour work day. Henry Ford¹s idea was ³when workers have more money they buy cars². The idea worked and sales of cars quadrupled and the economic climate of Detroit boomed.

1921- Famous Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was preparing one last expedition to the South Pole. This day on his ship anchored in South Georgian Island Bay, he complained he felt ill. He said to his doctor ³Oh, what do you want me to give up now?² then he fell over dead of a heart attack. He was 47.

1924- William Chrysler introduced his first automobile featuring an all steel chassis frame instead of wood. He created it for the failing Maxwell Car Company and in 1925 changed the name to the Chrysler Car Company.

1925- Nellie Taylor Ross was inaugurated as the Governor of Wyoming, the first woman to hold such an office.

1933- First day of construction on San Francisco¹s Golden Gate Bridge.

1933- Calvin Coolidge died peacefully. The laconic Coolidge was so low key and stand offish that he was a favorite target for political writers. H.L.Mencken said "Being fanatical for Coolidge is like being fanatical for double entry Bookkeeping".Dorothy Parker had the final word. When told that Coolidge had died she replied:" How could you tell?"

1934- Both the American and National Baseball Leagues agreed upon a standard size for a baseball.

1953- Samuel Beckett¹s play Waiting for Godot ( En attendant Godot ) first premiered in Paris.

1959- Buddy Holly released his last single, It Doesn¹t Matter Anymore.

1959- The first Bozo the Clown TV show premiered on TV. Larry Harmon played the famous children¹s clown.

1961- “Hello Wilbur” Mr Ed the Talking Horse appeared on TV for the first time.
Veteran Western actor Chill Wills provided the voice.

1968- A Boston grand jury indicted famous baby doctor Benjamin Spock for conspiring to abet violation of draft laws. The great scientist had come out as a vocal opponent of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. "I helped them be born. I'm not going to abandon them now."

1970- Soap opera “All My Children” premiered.

1979- EMI Records ended their contracts with the punk band the Sex Pistols. They felt their outrageous behavior had gone just too far.

1980- The first Hewlett Packard Personal Computer or PC goes on the market.

1998-At the Heavenly Valley Ski Resort former pop singer turned Republican Congressman Sonny Bono died, when he skied headlong into a tree.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday¹s Quiz: What is the difference between Sterling Holloway and Stanley Holloway?

Answer: Sterling Holloway was an American character actor who provided the voice for the Disney animated characters Winnie the Pooh, Kaa from The Jungle Book, and the stork in Dumbo. Stanley Holloway was a British character actor who best known as Eliza Doolittle’s pub-crawling dad in My Fair Lady. His famous number was “I’m Getting Married in the Morning.”