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March 11, 2015 Weds
March 11th, 2015

Quiz: What is the origin of calling someone zany?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: The official Walt Disney Fan Club is called D-23. Why?
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HISTORY FOR 3/11/2015
Birthdays: Torquato Tasso, Marius Pretipa, Raoul Walsh. Rupert Murdoch is 84, Charlie Ruggles, Lawrence Welk, former British PM Harold Wilson, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Bobby McFerrin, Sam Donaldson, Justice Antonin Scalia, Jerry Zucker, Vannevar Bush- MIT scientist who in 1945 predicted personal computer workstations. Joey Buttafuco, Jules Engel, Douglas Adams, Rob Paulsen is 59, Terence Howard is 46

In ancient Rome, today was the Festival of Hercules

1513- Giovanni de Medici, a son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was elected Pope Leo X.
He was ordained a priest two days later- hey, details, details! Leo was the quintessential Renaissance Party-Pope. He blew the Vatican treasury on lavish entertainment, artists, poets and buffoons. He was quoted as saying:” God has given us the Papacy, so let us enjoy it.”

1669- Sicily’s Mt Etna erupted and killed 20,000 people.

1801- Czar Paul I was strangled. It had been said the Czar was showing signs of mental instability. Others historians say that story was circulated by the nobility who were against the Czars land reform for peasants. The murder had the tacit approval of his son Alexander who became Czar. In 1812 after Napoleon's invasion was driven out, one of the top French generals, Dominique Vandamme, was captured. When Vandamme was reproached by Czar Alexander for attacking Russia, the Frenchman shot back:" Well at least Sire, I didn't murder my own father!"

1810- Prussian Chancellor von Hardenburg granted civil rights to the Jews of Germany.

1818- Mary Shelly's great novel "FRANKENSTEIN, or the Modern Prometheus" first published. It’s considered the first true science fiction novel. The heroes are not knights or kings but modern scientists. Whether you believe 21 year old Ms. Shelly invented the story one dark and stormy night in 1816 while smoking opium with her homeboys Percy Shelly and Lord Byron is a matter of conjecture. Still, it's a good story.

1829- BachMania!-The Rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach-. Bach was little known in his time and after his death in 1750 was soon forgotten. Even his son Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach though his dad’s music old-fashioned. But a century later the stirrings of German nationalism led to the re-examination of this obscure organist. This night at the Singadakademie in Berlin, musical superstar Felix Mendelsson performed The “St. Matthew Passion” and other Bach works. The musicians performed for free. The concert caused a sensation and Bach is soon being played all over Europe and influencing everyone from Berlioz to Wagner. Goethe and Hegel declared him a genius.

1851-Guisseppi Verdi's grand opera" Rigoletto "debuts. Considered Verdi's first mature work, it makes him an international star. Based on Victor Hugo's "L'roi's amuse", originally about the lustful abominations of King Francois Ist of France, Verdi changed it to the Duke of Mantua and steered away from the class politics to a family melodrama. Victor Hugo didn't like it.

1861- the seceded southern states adopted a constitution based on the old Articles of Confederation passed in 1778, hence the name the Confederate States of America. It provided for a President with a six-year term with no eligibility for a second term.

1888- THE YEAR OF BLUE ICE- The Great Blizzard of '88. In New York and Boston 40 inches of snow fell in 36 hours. Record low temperatures, 80 mile an hour winds and ice storms so severe that all the telephone and telegraph wires between New York and Boston snapped. To contact anyone you had to be routed through London England. 400 people died in New York City alone. Police set up frostbite checkpoints to rub the ears of pedestrians as they walked by.
Out West so many head of cattle died that a serious beef shortage the following year created a labor problem with unemployed cowboys that led to the Johnson County Wars of 1890. Teddy Roosevelt was a Dakota rancher at the time and he saw cattle freeze to death where they stood. Later in the spring thaw, these "cowsickles" would be bobbing up and down in the Dakota River with the ice flows.

1889- The California Legislature splits Orange County from LA County.

1890- Orange County carved out of L.A. County.

1918- THE GREAT SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC- Today influenza is controlled by antivirals and you feel miserable for a few days, but back before such drugs, it was a killer. This day the first noticeable rise in a strange new flu occurred at Camp Funston Kansas. It was called the Spanish flu because even though it broke out all around the world, Spain was one of the few countries that didn’t have wartime press censorship, so they reported it first.

In only one year this new flu virus killed 21 million people around the Earth, 640,000 in the U.S. alone- everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm to Blackjack Pershing got sick. In places as far away as China to Calcutta to Russia thousands died. The epidemic killed as many people as the just concluding First World War. HIV/AIDS killed 22 million in 25 years, Spanish Flu killed 21 million people in only 8 months.
Then it disappeared as rapidly as it appeared.

1926- Eamon De Valera gave up opposition to Irish politics and resigned from Sinn Fein. In 1933 he became first president of the republic of Ireland, a job he held off and on until 1973.

1927- The first Roxy Theater opens at 50th st. & Seventh Ave. in New York. Roxy was a nickname of theater owner Samuel L. Rothaphel who pioneered the movie palace and is called the father of De-Luxe presentation.

1938- ANSCHLUSS- The Nazi takeover of Austria. Hitler had been organizing a covert takeover of the Vienna government by Austrian Nazis until the Austrian Prime Minister Schussning declared they would put the issue of uniting with the Reich to a public plebiscite. Rather than risk asking the public Hitler ordered his tanks to roll. Gen. "Panzer Heinz" Guderian had his men adorn their tanks with flowers act like it was more of a German family reunion than an invasion.

Viennese intellectuals like Albert Einstein had to flee. Sigmund Freud was not allowed to leave until he signed a note saying he was treated well-" I'd personally recommend the Gestapo to anyone". Painter Alphonze Mucha wrote a letter to his friends in America saying he was in the care of the Nazis and that he was fine. He died shortly afterwards…?

Eric Wolfgang Korngold was in Hollywood debating whether to score the latest Errol Flynn picture for Warner Bros.- "The Adventures of Robin Hood" or return to Vienna to produce his opera- "Die Kathrin". When he heard his Vienna apartment was one of the first the Gestapo raided he decided to stay and do the Flynn picture. He later inscribed the music score to Jack Warner; "to Jack. Thanks for saving my life."

1939- The Nazis take over the rest of Czechoslovakia that they didn't absorb through the Munich Pact. This leads Britains Prime Minister Chamberlain and France’s Premier Daladier to declare any attempt on Hitler’s next target-Poland, would be met with force.

1941- The U.S. enacted the Lend-Lease program to send valuable military equipment to Britain without getting directly involved yet in World War II.

1943- The Broadway musical team of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein opened their first collaboration “Away We Go!”

1958- The U.S. Air Force accidentally dropped an H-Bomb on South Carolina near Mars Bluff. The safety catches insured it wouldn’t go off. The incident was kept top secret.

1971- Philo Farnsworth died of pneumonia at 64. As a young man in 1922 he had invented the television set, but by the 1960’s he was forgotten, broke and addicted to painkillers. The only recognition he got was as a contestant on the quiz show I Got a Secret. He won an $80 check and a carton of Winston Cigarettes. Today Farnsworth is considered one of the true inventors of Television, along with John Logie-Baird, Lee DeForrest and Vladimir Zworkin.

1977- Film director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown) was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home after he got her stoned on quaaludes. Polanski was charged with statutory rape. He jumped bail and fled Hollywood for exile in Paris. LA tried unsuccessfully to get him extradited in 2009.

1985- Since the death of Lenoid Brehznev the Soviet Union’s Central Committee was having a problem: every elderly Bolshevik they named as Soviet Premier -Yuri Andropov, Constantin Chernenko, had quickly died themselves of old age. On this day they selected the youngest member of their ranks to the leadership. He would be the last Premier of the Soviet Union- Mikhail Gorbachov.

1990- Lithuania becomes the first Soviet republic to declare its independence. By years end the unwieldy Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had flown to pieces and the Russian Federation was formed in its place.

2004- Al Qaeda terrorists set off ten bombs in Madrid commuter trains at the height of the morning rush hour. 200 dead, 1500 hurt.

2011- Mega-flop Mars Needs Moms released.

2011- FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI- The northern coast of Japan was struck by one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The quake sent a tsunami wave that erased whole towns and killed 20,000. The wave went across the Pacific and sank boats in harbor at Santa Cruz California and Oregon. The tsunami also damaged 5 reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, sending clouds of radioactive steam into the atmosphere and water. No one seems to be clear about just how badly polluted the Pacific is now with radiation.
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Yesterday’s Question; The official Walt Disney Fan Club is called D-23. Why?

Answer: D is for Disney, obviously. 23 is for 1923, the year Walt and his brother Roy arrived in LA from Kansas City and set up their studio.


March 10, 2015 tues.
March 10th, 2015

Question: The official Walt Disney Fan Club is called D-23. Why?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Question: Banker Lionel Rothschild once taught his son “ Just remember, there is your mizpoche, and then there is everybody else!” So what is a mizpoche?
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History for 3/10/2015
Birthdays: Lorenzo da Ponte -librettist of Mozart's operas, Barry Fitzgerald, Claire Booth Luce, Heywoud Hale Broun, James Herriot, Pablo de Sarrasate, Osama Ben Laden, Chuck Norris is 75, Shannon Tweed, Sharon Stone is 57, John Hamm is 44

241 B.C.- NAVAL BATTLE OF AEGATES INSULAE- Romans under Gaius Lutatius Catullus defeat the Carthaginians under Hamilcar Barca (The Thunderer) and win the First Punic War. The Carthaginians were much better sailors than the Romans, so Catullus lashed his ships side by side and laid planks over the decks. This way his legions could fight infantry style. The Romans had another nasty trick of taking clay beehives filled with angry hornets and shooting them by catapult onto enemy ships. The Romans won Sicily and Hamilcar taught his son Hannibal that the Romans were not nice people.

1661-King Louis XIV of France "the Sun King" tells his guardians to take a hike because he was now old enough to rule alone. He kept his old regent Cardinal Mazarin around a few more years but this is the beginning of his Divine Right Rule.

1697- PETERS TRAVELS- Young Czar Peter the Great was so hungry for the knowledge of the West this day he shocked Russian society by leaving the country to travel through Europe. He was the first Russian Czar to go outside his country.
The 6 foot 8 inch monarch spent 18 months personally studying economics, architecture and chemistry. Peter lived in a small wooden cottage in Zaandam Holland and studied boat building. He drank in local pubs with workers and even made love to a local waitress. He learned to make his own shoes, mend clothes and even learned to pull teeth, which he loved to practice on unwilling members of this court. After arriving in England Peter surprised English nobility by shouldering an axe every morning and pipe in teeth walking down to the docks to work with the ship builders.

He returned to Russia filled with the desire to rebuild Russian society in the modern western European model.

1791- Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who fancied himself an amateur scientist, presented a paper to the American Philosophical Society about the discovery of the fossils of a cow sized sloth called Megalonyx. The future sciences like Geology and Paelontology were referred to in those times as “Natural Philosophy”.

1842-Vigilantes of Virginia City, Montana hang a tough desperado named Jack Slade. Accounts say Slade was "More feared than God, but all in all a good citizen." (?)

1862- FIRST U.S. GREENBACK PAPER DOLLARS ISSUED- "Dollar" is a corruption of Jacobsthaler- named for silver coins minted in St. James valley in Czech lands, which became 'Thalers' then 'Dollars'. Lincoln was originally annoyed that Secretary of the Treasury Samuel Chase put himself on the one-dollar bill while he was on the five. Lincoln thought Chase wanted some cheap advertising for a presidential bid in '64. Lincoln made him Supreme Court Justice to get him out of the way. The money was printed with green ink because it was cheap and plentiful.

When issued the new money instead of silver or gold, Union troops promptly rioted. People nicknamed the fat bills“ Chases Shinplasters ”. After the Civil War, when the U.S. Treasury tried to recall the paper currency and go back to coins, people complained again that they were now used to the stuff.

1864- Lincoln gives Ulysses Grant overall U.S. command to finish the Civil War. The shy little general arrived late and unannounced at the White House party given in his honor. Because the crowd was so thick he stood patiently in the hallway until Lincoln spotted him. "There he is!" He made Grant stand on a stool, so everyone could get a good look.

Lincoln was a constant nag on his generals, but after choosing Grant he backed off giving Grant independent command, a custom maintained by presidents to this day. Grant's successful though unorthodox approach disgusted more traditional strategists. Gen. Henry "Old Brains" Halleck, after running out of criticisms to hurl at Grant, said: "And on top of everything else, The man's a drunkard!" To which Lincoln replied: "He is? Find out what brand he drinks and send a barrel of it to the other generals!"

1864- King Maximillian I died, his son Ludwig II 'the Mad' becomes king of Bavaria.

1876- THE FIRST TRUE TELEPHONE CALL. Alexander Graham Bell had applied for the phone patent several weeks before but he still couldn’t get the signal clear enough to be understood. He even had a surgeon send him a human ear from a corpse to study. This day when trying a new variation Bell spilled acid on his lap and called out over the wires " Watson ! Come Here! I Need You!" Watson heard it clearly and rushed to his aid. Some say Watson made up the story of the acid later to explain why Bell couldn’t think of anything loftier or profound to say as the first message sent by wire.

1926- The First Book of the Month Club – The Lovely Willows by Sylvia Townshend Warner.

1933- The LONG BEACH EARTHQUAKE. There had not been a serious quake in LA since 1857, so everyone thought it a thing of the past. Today the buildings swayed and brick walls collapsed. It was the last big shift in the San Andreas Fault. 200 people were killed, and if the schools had not been empty for Easter break, the casualties could have been much worse.
Actors convening SAG union meetings in the El Capitan Theater moved out into a parking lot because of the aftershocks. The quake sparked the first serious earthquake building codes.

1935- The First Smokey Stover comic strip ( notary sojac).

1938- Bowing to Arab anger and increased rioting, the British Mandate authority in Palestine imposed the first restrictions on Jewish immigration. A quota of only 3.000 were permitted. The previous year 40.000 immigrated fleeing the Nazi persecution in Europe. Zionist Jews developed novel ways of smuggling more people ashore. They once held a Jewish Olympics to rival Hitler’s Berlin Games, then all the participants who came melted into the crowd and stayed.

1940- US Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles tried some shuttle diplomacy between Berlin, London and Paris to try and halt the World War that had just broke out. He was met with no cooperation. Hitler told him “Peace will come when we have the inevitable German Victory.” In January 1941 FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, “outed” Welles by accusing him of homosexual activity and attempting to proposition several Pullman porters on trains. Welles resigned in disgrace.

1947- Ronald Reagan becomes President of the Screen Actor's Guild after President George Montgomery and V.P. Franchot Tone resign to become independent producers. In the violent gangster-ridden atmosphere of Hollywood unions in those days Reagan took to wearing a .32 Smith & Wesson in a shoulder holster under his coat.

1948- Zelda Fitzgerald, the socialite wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, died in a fire at the mental hospital where she had been committed for more than a decade.

1948- Stalin’s agents take Czech Nationalist leader Jan Masaryk and defenestrate him -throw him out of a window- as a way of influencing the upcoming Czech elections. They gave as an excuse that he accidentally fell out of the window while doing yoga to combat his insomnia.

1952- General Fulgensio Batista seized power in Cuba. He was a favorite with US Corporations and the Mafia because he sold everything in his country not nailed down. Part of his coup was the dissolving and arrest of the Cuban Congress, among whom was a young novice politician and part time baseball pitcher named Fidel Castro.

1953- PANCHO AND THE GENERAL- Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes was the granddaughter of Thaddeus Lowe, inventor of the U.S. Army balloon corps in the Civil War. She became an aviatrix and in 1930 broke an air speed record set by Amelia Earheart.

In the late 1940s she moved to Maroc California in the desert and opened up a saloon "The Happy Bottom Riding Club' where the test pilots flying dangerous experimental craft trying to break the sound barrier came to blow off steam. Chuck Yeager and the future astronauts were frequent guests. She once told famed General Jimmy Doolittle "Jimmy, you know I can out fly and out f**k you any day of the Week!!" The bar was famous for wild parties with lots of booze and rough housing.

In 1952 a General Holtoner took over command of Maroc, now renamed Edwards Air Force Base. He tried to have Pancho evicted so the Air Force could expand it's supersonic runway. When she objected to the General's lack of respect, he implied that she ran a house of prostitution. On this day Pancho sued the US Air Force for 1 1/2 million dollars. General Holtoner was replaced, the Happy Bottom Riding Club was destroyed in a fire and Pancho Barnes moved away. The bar was immortalized in the film 'The Right Stuff'.

1954- In a letter to studio heads director Elias Kazan worried that young actor James Dean was “too odd” and unpredictable to star in his movie “Rebel Without a Cause”.

1954- First day of shooting on Stage 3 of the Giant Squid battle on Walt Disney’s production of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The director was Richard Fleischer, the son of Disney’s onetime competitor Max Fleischer.

1963- Pete Rose first took the field in a Cincinnati Reds uniform. During an exhibition baseball game with the Yankees Mickey Mantle hit one of his monster 400-ft home runs and young Rose was the only outfielder scrambling and jumping hopelessly to catch it. Mantle laughed and said:” Hey, look at Charlie Hustle over there.” The nickname stuck. Charlie Hustle would go on to break Ty Cobb’s all time hitting record and manage winning teams. But after his retirement he was banned from baseball for betting on sports.

1975- North Vietnamese begin their final offensive that will capture Saigon and end the Vietnam War on April 30th. For the first time they fight out in the open with heavy Russian T-52 tanks.

1980- This year one of the most popular diets in the country was the Scarsdale Diet by Dr. Herman Tarnower. This day a woman named Jean Harris entered his Purchase NY home and shot Dr. Tarnower to death.

1988- Andy Gibb of the BeeGees overdosed on drugs and died at age 30.

1997- The Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who was in jail at Broadmoor England for killing thirteen women, was stabbed in both eyes by another inmate.

2008: BANG THE GOV SLOWLY- Elliot Spitzer was the hard-driving NY State Attorney General who rocketed to the governorship and was touted as a potential future presidential candidate. His specialty was catching hi-tech Wall Street white collar crooks. Today his Icarus-like ascent came crashing down. He admitted to soliciting high price hookers. At $4,300 an hour. Spitzer was known to them as Client #9. When the news came over the ticker on the Stock Exchange trading floor, day-traders stopped to cheer.
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Yesterdays’ question: Question: Banker Lionel Rothschild once taught his son “ Just remember, there is your mizpoche, and then there is everybody else!” So what is a mizpoche?

Answer: Mizpoche is Yiddish for your family.


March 8, 2015 sun
March 8th, 2015

Question: What does it mean when something is ad hoc?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, the colonel portrayed by Robert Duval says:” Charlie don’t surf!” Who is this Charlie?
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History for 3/8/2015
Birthdays: Sophocles, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, Hannah Hoes Van Beuren- the First Lady for Martin Van Beuren, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Alan Hovhannes, Kenneth Grahame the author of the Wind in the Willows, Cyd Charisse, Charlie Pride, Mickey Dolenz, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Rice, Aiden Quinn is 56, Freddy Prinze Jr is 39, Jim Bouton- baseball player, author, and inventor of Big League Chew bubble gum

1265-THE GREAT PARLIAMENT- For the first time in the modern era, a legislative body comprised of English Nobility, Clergy and Common men met to discuss the affairs of the kingdom. All modern representative government begins here. This inclusion of a "House of Commons" was the genius of Earl Simon de Monfort, a rebel baron who saw the need to curb King Henry III's power, and perhaps from the depths of the Middle Ages, he saw the future. First he had to defeat and capture the King in battle and forced the clergy to declare excommunicate anyone who messed with the system, just to make the whole thing stick. So even after Simon De Monfort was chopped up in battle and the king restored to full power, the Parliamentary system endured.

1702- After the death of King William III of Orange, Queen Anne takes over England.
She was an obese lady almost in constant pain from gout and pleurisy and had to be moved around in a chair, raised and lowered with ropes and pulleys. Like William and Mary she had no direct heir - she had 17 children but none of them made it past the age of 11. After her death the British throne went to a nephew, the German Elector of Hanover, George Ist because he was Protestant.
Pirate Edward Teech, called Blackbeard, named his ship "Queen Anne's Revenge", for reasons known only to him.

1778- France’s entry into the war for American Independence made London rethink it’s strategy. This day Colonial Secretary Lord Germain sent orders to Generals Howe and Clinton to stop chasing rebels in Philadelphia and fall back to New York City, where they could be more adequately supported by the navy. The American Revolution would now be a secondary consideration to the wider global war with France, Spain and Holland.

1782- Gnaderhutten massacre- Connecticut militia ambush 90 Pequot Christian Indians as revenge for Indian raids. The raiders were from another tribe, but these guys were more conveniently in the neighborhood.

1846- After the U.S. annexation of Texas, Mexico disputed exactly where the border ended. The U.S. claimed it was the Rio Grande, the Mexican Government claimed it was a few hundred miles further north at the River Nueces. This day President James K. Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor “Old Rough & Ready” to move his army into the disputed area and hope he gets attacked so they could declare war on Mexico with a clear provocation.

1862- The Confederate navy had dredged up the hull of a sunken warship named the Merrimac and outfitted her with iron boilerplate to create the C.S.S. Virginia, the first ironclad warship. Her skipper was Captain Robert Buchanan, before the war he was first commandant of the Annapolis Naval Academy.
On this day the Merrimac-Virginia steamed over to a large fleet of wooden warships blockading Hampton Roads inlet and sank them. While the big warship's cannonballs bounced harmlessly off her iron plate she rammed and sank the U.S.S. Cumberland, burned the U.S.S. Congress and ran two more ships aground. Eventually she drew off for the night resolved to finish them in the morning. Washington D.C. panicked: the entire wooden U.S. Navy was now obsolete.
What was to prevent the Merrimac-Virginia from sailing up the Potomac and shelling the White House? The USS Monitor, that's who, sailing down slowly from New York. It arrived this night and moored alongside the stricken Congress. Sailors said it looked like a “Cheese Box on a Raft.”

1862- THE LAST PIRATE - Ned Gordon was the last man hanged in the United States for high sea piracy. By then most of his companions had taken commissions in the Confederate Navy as privateers. The buccaneer life continued in the South Seas through the Twentieth Century by the Lascar people of Madagascar, and today pirates can still be found in Somalia. In 1999 China executed 13 men for sea piracy and in 2001the Australian captain of the America’s Cup winner was killed by pirates off the coast of Brazil. In 2012 America sentenced a Somali pirate to 33 years in prison.

1886- A small time doctor in Portsmouth England named Arthur Conan-Doyle had been trying his hand at writing fiction. He had sold a few stories to magazines and tried to publish a historical novel “Firm of Girdlestone” with lackluster results.
This day he began a new novel “ A Tangled Skein” which had a new character named at first Sheridan Hope, then Sheringford Holmes. By the time he finished his story month later, he had changed the title to “A Study in Scarlet” and the main protagonist name had become SHERLOCK HOLMES.
Conan Doyle was an admirer of the American writer Oliver Wendel Holmes who was touring Britain that year. Like him, Holmes was a doctor who turned writer. No one is sure where he got the name Sherlock. It may have been a neighbor. Conan Doyle’s professor in Edinburgh college Dr Joseph Bell excelled at deductive reasoning and had an assistant named Dr Watson.

1894-First dog licenses issued in New York.

1908- The British House of Commons voted down a bill giving women the vote.

1921- Spanish premier Eduardo Dato was assassinated while leaving the Cortes or Paliament in Madrid.

1930- An angry mob of unemployed battle the police in New York’s Tompkin’s Square.

1933- As a result of President Roosevelt's Nationwide Bank shutdown, Hollywood Studios go into a cash panic. MGM, RKO and the others ask for 30-50% salary cuts from their stars and artists. At one point they announced the salary cuts at the Oscar banquet ( betchya that made for a real fun party!)
Louis B. Mayer, tearful and unshaven pleaded his case to his contract-stars, who reluctantly accepted the cuts. Lionel Barrymore called out "We're with ya. L.B. !" Afterwards Mayer winked to his secretary and giggled:” So how’d I do?” A week later Mayer hired his new son-in-law David Selznick as a producer at $4000 a week. Production chief Darryl Zanuck quit Warner Bros. over the cuts and went on to build Twentieth Century Fox.

1933- Nazi interior minister Wilhelm Frick announced the creation of a system of Concentration Camps to incarcerate political undesirables.

1941- Writer and playwright Sherwood Anderson dies from pterioteritus- internal bleeding- after swallowing a toothpick at a cocktail party.

1941- The National Television System Committee set up by the FCC to standardize television technology recommended an industry standard of 525 scan lines at 30 frames a second- what we now call after their name- NTSC. England later adopted the PAL (Phase Alernation Line) of 625 lines, 25 frames per second and France the SECAM System (Systeme Electronique Couleur Avec Memoire).which is also a 625 line, 25fps system. This is why British t.v. shows like the Prisoner always looked so grainy on American sets and American shows look so garish on British sets. By garish I mean the color, not the content.

It also speeds up the film during video from 24 frames to 25fps (i.e. 4%)...which is why in England and the rest of Europe, all Hollywood movies are 4% shorter and the voices of the actors all sound a little squeaky. The way to remember NTSC is "Never-The-Same-Color'. DVD and BluRay went to a thousand- scan lines. The invention of digital screens is making most of this irrelevant.

1942- Dutch forces surrender Java to Japanese invaders. They roll on to Sumatra.

1950- the Volkswagen bus introduced.

1961-The Frito Company merges with potato chip makers H.L. Lay company to form Frito-Lay. The recipe for Fritos corn chips was bought by milkshake salesman Elmer Doolin from a Mexican fry cook in Texas.

1966- London gangster Ronnie Kray entered the Blind Beggar Pub on Whitechapel Road and shot gangster George Cornell in the head. Ronnie and his identical twin brother Reggie ran rackets in London as well as a West End nightclub that booked performers like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. The Krays were finally imprisoned in 1968.

1968- The Soviet nuclear submarine K-19 sank in the Pacific off the US coastline. In 1974 the CIA tried to secretly dredge it up with a research ship the Glomar Explorer designed by Howard Hughes Company. In 2002 Harrison Ford made a movie about the K-19, but that sank without a trace also.

1969 The Pontiac Trans-Am introduced. Muscle car enthusiasts rejoice!

1970- The Nixon White House announced that the Americans operations in Vietnam and Cambodia had also been expanded into the neutral nation of Laos and already 27 Americans had been killed in fighting there.

1973- Paul McCartney was fined 100 pounds for growing marijuana on his farm Mull of Kintyre.

1977- Ralph Bakshi’s film Wizards premiered.

1980- H&B’s “Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels’ show.

1994- Don Ku invented the ubiquitous little wheeled black suitcase with collapsible handle that bumps into your legs at airports today.

1998- In Ladson South Carolina, Daniel Rudolph, the brother of Abortion Clinic bomber Eric Rudolph, videotaped himself cutting off his own hand with a power saw. He said he intended this to be a message to the FBI and the Media!

2014- A Malaysian airliner MH Flt 370 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and crew disappeared mid-ocean. Evidence showed that it’s satellite tracking had been turned off from inside the cabin shortly before it disappeared. Despite a massive manhunt and many leads, it has never been found.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, the colonel portrayed by Robert Duval says:” Charlie don’t surf!” Who is this Charlie?

Answer: Charlie was a generic name the US troops gave to the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese Communist guerrillas) during the Vietnam War. “VC,” or “Victor Charlie,” was radio lingo for Viet Cong, which quickly abbreviated to Charlie. ( Thanks FG)


March 7, 2015 sat
March 7th, 2015

Question: In Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, the colonel portrayed by Robert Duval says:” Charlie don’t surf!” Who is this Charlie?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Who was the first British king to speak English?
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History for 3/7/2015
Birthdays: Maurice Ravel, Piet Mondrian, Roman Emperor Geta, Luther Burbank, Tammy Fae Baker, Willard Scott, Lynn Swann, Franco Harris, Daniel D. Travanti, Rachel Weisz is 44, Michael Eisner is 73, Wanda Sykes is 51, Peter Saarsgard is 44, Bryan Cranston is 59

322 BC- the Greek philosopher Aristotle died of indigestion.

161AD- The death of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. Marcus Aurelius became Emperor. Marcus named his brother Lucius Verus as co-emperor, but Verus died after a few years. Marcus Aurelius became famous as the philosopher-emperor, ruling justly and leaving behind his Meditations, one of the great works of western philosophy.

1274- Saint Thomas Aquinas died in Italy. Everybody knew the great teacher was so holy he undoubtedly would be made a saint (the medieval equivalent of being called to the Hall of Fame). So rather and wait for opportunity to sell his bones as relics the people sped up the process of decomposition by boiling his remains in lye.

1765- PARLIAMENT PASSES THE STAMP ACT. Ever since winning Canada and India from France, England had to come up with ways to pay for her massive war debt as well as garrisoning and administering of all the new possessions. The Stamp Act ordered that all purchases and exports to and from America have a royal stamp (i.e. tax) on them, sort of like the stamp you see on liquor bottle caps. These taxes were already in place in England, so Whitehall felt nobody would mind. Americans went ballistic and overnight became a nation of smugglers. They most strongly objected to the idea that the tax was levied without their consent. No one consulted their elected representatives and there were no American seats in Parliament.

Even though the unpopular act was repealed a year later after Benjamin Franklin successfully argued in Parliament, the resentment against the mother country lingered. The British in turn were surprised and annoyed by the all the fuss. They felt the Yankees were an ungrateful people they had defeated French for.

1774- To combat rampant smuggling and teach a lesson to the increasingly uppity New Englanders, the Royal Governor of Massachusetts General Thomas Gage ordered the Port of Boston closed. This act all but ensured that the first outbreak of violence in the American Revolution would happen there.

1809- French Balloonist Jean Pierre Blanchard died from injuries sustained from crashing his balloon in the Netherlands. Blanchard with a man named Jeffries had crossed the English Channel by air and for years he had demonstrated the wonders of air flight for audiences like Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon.

1850- THE 7TH OF MARCH SPEECH- The only address given to Congress that is known only by it's date. Senator Daniel Webster stood up and electrified the nation with a three hour address backing the Clay Compromise: "Mr. Speaker ! I rise not as a Massachusetts man, or a Northern man, but as an American !!" This Northern abolitionist backed the fugitive slave law and other concessions to the South in exchange for California entering the union as a non-slave state.

New England supporters were furious and called him a Benedict Arnold. His controversial stand probably cost him his last chance of ever becoming president and he died bitter two years later, but John F. Kennedy said in "Profiles in Courage" that by doing this act Daniel Webster helped delay the Civil War for ten more years, which allowed the north to grow more industrially powerful. So he saved the United States as we know it.

1862- THE BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE- Yankees under General Curtis defeated a Confederate army under Gen. Stirling Price, keeping Missouri in the Union. It was a confused battle with militias, frontier scouts like Wild Bill Hickock and Creek Indians under Confederate Colonel Stand Watie. Curtis directed the battle in an old brown corduroy jacket and nuzzled a shotgun in his lap. The Creeks captured a Union battery but stopped their advance to dance with the scalps of the Yankees.

1862- BULLETHOLE ELLIS- Rebel Guerrilla leader William Quantrill and his raiders shoot up the Kansas town of Aubrey. During the raid Quantrill fired his Colt revolver at a man in a second story window named Abraham Ellis. The bullet was slowed by smashing through the windowsill and embedded in the man’s skull, but just missed touching his brain. Quantrill apologized to Ellis. Ellis had helped him get a teaching job before the war. The raiders left him for dead, but Abe Ellis recovered. Old Bullethole Ellis lived to a ripe old age, just with a large round dark hole in the center of his forehead.

1877- Bill Reed, a Union Pacific Railroad worker discovered a vast field of dinosaur fossils at Como Bluff Wyoming. "The bones extend for seven miles and are by the ton!"

1906- Finland becomes the first nation to give women the right to vote.

1916- BMW- The manufacturing firms of Karl Rapp and Gustav Otto merged to form the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG -Bavarian Aircraft Works. The company would later become the Bayerische Motor-Werke -Bavarian Motor Works or BMW. The Logo circle represents a white propeller turning against a blue sky- the colors of the old Kingdom of Bavaria, the heraldic shield of the ruling Wittelsbach dynasty. After the world wars, BMW was prohibited from manufacturing aircraft engines, as their engines had powered the fiercest fighters like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf 190. So BMW focused on making high quality cars.

1932-BATTLE OF THE RIVER ROUGE- At the depth of the Great Depression unemployment in Detroit was up to 50% of the population. 10,000 desperately unemployed auto workers stage a protest march on Henry Ford's Rouge River plant, the largest factory in the world. They are met by police and thugs who fired into the crowd, killing 3 and wounding 25. Henry Ford, (who personally made $10 million that year) had machine guns mounted on his home's roof and advised his chief executives to carry sidearms. Fords private in-house police were called by the Orwellian misnomer the Service Department.

1936-HITLER RE-OCCUPIED THE RHINELAND- Since the Versailles treaty the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr valley was under neutral and sometimes Anglo-French occupation. Imagine trying to restart your stagnant economy with Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh under foreign control. Today Hitler took the biggest gamble of his career and ordered the still infant Wehrmacht army to reoccupy the Ruhr, in defiance of all previous treaties. He dared the Allies to do something about it, and they stayed quiet. German generals were amazed that France and England could have easily invaded at any time and squashed them, but they did nothing.

1942- The Japanese army captured Rangoon and cut the Burma Road, severing Anglo- Chinese supply lines. After this supplies would have to be brought in 'Over the Hump" meaning flown by unescorted transport planes from India over the Himalayas.

1945- THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN- A hostile army had not crossed the Rhine into Germany since Napoleon in 1806. The Germans called their defense of the border the Siegfried Line. The Nazis had ordered all Rhine bridges destroyed, but the bridge at Remagen was detonated with inferior charges. So it stayed intact as the U.S. Third Army approached. Sgt. Alex Drabik of Ohio ran across the bridge, weaving back and forth like a football fullback, with the enemy firing at him from all sides. Just as he reached the other side a Nazi popped out, pointed a Lugar pistol in his face and pulled the trigger. The gun was empty. The Siegfried Line was breached, and Sgt. Drabik died of very old age in 1993.

1947- Winston Churchill, while giving a speech in America about the Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe uses the term "Iron Curtain". " From Zagreb on the Adriatic to Stettin in the Baltic, an Iron Curtain has descended across Europe." The phrase had been invented earlier by German Admiral Doenitz, but Churchill popularized the phrase. The Iron Curtain ended in 1989.

1951- The Prime Minister of Iran- General Ali Rasmara was assassinated by Islamic extremists.

Fifty Years Ago 1965- BLOODY SUNDAY- THE EDMUND PETTUS BRIDGE-As Dr. Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights marchers reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Gov George Wallace had Alabama police ambush them with firehoses, teargas, bullwhips and attack dogs. Dozens of peaceful marchers were beaten and hospitalized. Three were killed. The brutal images on television shocked the nation had probably did more to ensure passage of the National Civil Rights Bill than anything the police could do to stop it.

1969- Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel.

1988- 300 pound female impersonator Harry Milstead, better known as Divine in the John Waters films, died of sleep apnea.

1999- Film director Stanley Kubrick died just five days after completing his final film Eyes Wide Shut.
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Yesterdays Question: Quiz: Who was the first British king to speak English?

Answer: Most English kings after William the Conqueror spoke Norman French, the ones before them spoke Saxon or Celtic. The first king to prefer speaking the new hybrid tongue was King John I Lackland, who we know as evil Prince John from the Robin Hood stories.


March 6, 2015
March 6th, 2015

Quiz: Who was the first British king to speak English?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the origin of the term “The House of Pain”..?
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History for 3/6/2015
Birthdays: Michaelangelo Buonnarotti, Cyrano De Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Phil Sheridan, Lou Costello, Ivan Boesky, Ring Lardner, Gabriele Garcia-Marquez, Valentina Tereschkova the first woman in space, Tom Arnold, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rob Reiner is 68, Alan Greenspan, DC Mayor Marion Barry, Stephen Schwartz is 67, Ed McMahon, Shaquille O’Neal is 43

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Fridolin the Wanderer.

1521- Fernan de Magellan discovered the Pacific Island of Guam.

1554- The future King of Spain Phillip II married the Catholic Queen of England Mary Tudor long distance, by proxy. When Phillip came to England and realized Mary had waited to long to have children and was now too old and ill he sent emissaries to see if her half-sister Elizabeth was interested.

1834- The Ontario settlement of Fort York is incorporated as the new City of Toronto.

1836- THE ALAMO- The Mexican army of General Santa Anna overwhelmed a small garrison of rebellious Texans in an old mission.
The tragic stand of 189 men led by colorful frontiersmen like Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie against 5,000 troops has become part of American mythology. That they ignored Sam Houston's direct orders to blow up the mission and join his main army with their valuable cannon is forgotten. Apologists contend that if they didn’t stall, Santa Anna's army he would have swooped down on Washington-on-the-Brazos and squashed the Texas Rebellion while they were still quibbling over their constitution.

The attack began at 4:30 a.m. in the predawn darkness and was all over in 90 minutes, a little after 6 a.m. Jim Bowie was bayoneted in his hospital bed. The notes of a Texas officer named Dolson who interviewed a Mexican officer named Sanchez after the battle were discovered in 1961. It revealed that maybe Davey Crockett didn't go down heroically using his rifle "Old Betsy" as a club- like in the movies, but tried to surrender. His wife was Mexican and he was a politician after all. Santa Anna had him and any surviving men shot. Sanchez wasn’t sure if it was Crockett. We'll never know for sure.

There were 16 Alamo survivors, the women and children and Colonel Travis' black servant Joe. Santa Anna made sure they were each given two pesos and a blanket and set free. The battle cry of Texans became Remember the Alamo!

1837- Col Travis black slave Joe fought on the barricades of the Alamo alongside his master. After the battle Joe was thanked for his services by being returned to Travis’ family in Alabama to remain a slave. On the one-year anniversary of the battle Joe escaped to freedom. He remained in hiding for 30 years, long after the Civil War and Emancipation, emerging for a newspaper interview in 1877.

1850- Gustav Flaubert was the French writer who was once tried for pornography for creating Madame Bovary. This day while in Egypt he kept an appointment with the countries most famous belly dancing prostitute Kuchuck Hanem.

1853- Giusseppi Verdi’s classic opera La Traviata premiered at Teatro alla Fenice in Venice. It was based on Dumas novel Le Dame Aux Camelias. Verdi wrote in his diary about the premiere:" The evening was a disaster! Was it my fault or the fault of the singers? Only time will tell..."

1856-LONG BEFORE AMAZON- Mr. Simon met Mr. Schuster while buying a piano in New York City and discovered they had a common love of books, They formed Simon & Schuster, one of the most famous publishers in the U.S.

1857- THE DREDD SCOTT DECISION.-One of the incidents leading to the Civil War and one of the most infamous court rulings in US History. A slave, Dredd Scott, sued in court for his freedom on the grounds that he no longer lived in a slave state, because his master had moved them to a free state.

The Supreme Court of Justice Taney, whom the N.Y. Tribune had described as "5 slaveholders and two doughfaces", handed down the decision that not only was Scott still a slave, but he and his descendants could never have rights of U.S. Citizenship, no matter where they lived. In effect, all Afro-Americans even if born free in the North were still not people but property.

This idea exploded the already enraged public opinion in the North. Four years later the same justice Taney swore in Abraham Lincoln as president.

1860- Presidential candidate Abe Lincoln in a speech said:" Thank God we have a system where workers have the Right to Strike."

1864- THE NAVAJO LONG WALK- After being defeated when their Navajo-Fortress in Canyon de Chelly was stormed by US Cavalry under Kit Carson, the Navajo and their families were forced into a death march in the winter cold several hundred miles to a reservation. Years later Washington decided it didn't want their ancestral lands after all and let them return.

1884-Susan B. Anthony led 100 top women’s rights advocates, called Suffragettes, to a meeting with President Chester Allen Arthur. The demanded he throw his support for giving women the vote. President Arthur said he would think about it, but he did nothing.

1899- The wonder drug of the age and the first patent medicine- Aspirin, is patented. Felix Hoffman isolated the compound salicin from ground willow bark, an old Indian pain remedy. Ancient Romans drank willow water for pain.

1911-THE YELLOW PERIL- In the bizarre game of diplomatic chess the great powers played before World War One, the race issue was a favorite topic. The" Battle between the White Forces of Christian Civilization against the limitless Yellow Hordes of Asia" was an idea the German Kaiser Wilhelm liked to talk at length on.

On this day the Kaiser's agents convinced the U.S. public via the sensationalist press that Japan had concluded an alliance with Mexico and was preparing to seize the Panama Canal, and that a Japanese Army was even now marching up Baja to attack California! To quiet public fears President Taft was actually forced to mobilize 2/3 of the U.S. Army and Navy and sent it to the Mexican border "for maneuvers".

When the Great War did come Japan was on the American side and the Kaiser tried fruitlessly to make an alliance with an unsympathetic Mexico.

1917- Woman’s rights advocate Margaret Sanger is released from prison where she was jailed for trying to open the first Planned Parenthood clinic. She married the inventor of the Three-In-One Oil Company and used to smuggle abortion medicines in cans of oil. During prohibition she smuggled diaphragms in cases of innocent-looking bootleg whiskey. She lived into the 1960s, long enough to see the Birth Control Pill and the Women’s Movement.

1918- The Navy destroyer USN Cyclops disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, and has never been found since.

1921- The film Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse premiered. The first Hollywood film to earn over one million dollars, and it made a major star out of Rudolf Valentino..

1927- Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis opened in the US.

1936- Mr. Clarence Birdseye introduced frozen vegetables.

1944- The first great daylight bombing raid on Hitler’s capitol Berlin. In one of the largest air battles of World War Two 800 US B-17 and P-51s battled hundreds of Luftwaffe fighters. Over 80 US planes were shot down losing 690 airmen and 45 German but the message was sent: Berlin would now get the kind of destruction that Rotterdam, Warsaw and London got.

1978- Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt was shot and crippled by a lunatic.

1979- The film The China Syndrome premiered. It was about an accident at an American nuclear power plant.. Three weeks later the real Three Mile Island accident occurred, boosting the box office. " It's spooky, it's enough to make you religious" said star Michael Douglas.

1981- CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite retired. Dan Rather succeeded him after CBS learned ABC was offering Rather big bux to jump networks. Roger Mudd, who was thought to be the real successor to Cronkite, left the network to anchor the History Channel. Dan Rather was the CBS anchor until 2004.

1989- Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to become Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate in the world. They were bought by AOL in 2000 but AOL proved to be dead weight and they resumed control as TimeWarner in 2003.

1992- The film The Lawnmower Man premiered. It featured early motion-capture CGI imagery, and claimed to have the first virtual reality sex scene.

1998- The Big Lebowski opened in theaters. The Dude Abides…
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the origin of the term “The House of Pain”..?

Answer: From the 1934 movie The Island of Lost Souls, based on the book The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells.


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