Quiz: Which Hollywood actor never served in the military in WW2? A. Clark Gable, B. Jimmy Stewart, C. Ronald Reagan, D. John Wayne.

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: What is the difference between a pederast and a pedagogue?
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History for 05/05/2023
Birthdays: Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Cochrane called Nellie Bly, Soren Kierkegard, Alice Faye, James Beard, Michael Palin is 81, Jim Kelly, Pat Carroll, Patrick Ewing, John Rhys Davies is 79, Lance Henriksen is 83, Brian Williams, Floyd Gottfredson

In Mexico and parts of the US, this is Cinco de Mayo (see 1862 below)

In Japan this is a holiday known as Children's Day.

National Teacher's Day.

National Cartoonist's Day.

2,349 BC- According to Bishop Ussher, an XVI Century Flemish cleric who tried to calculate an actual date for every major event in the Bible, today is the day Noah’s Ark struck dry ground on Mount Ararat.

840- Louis the German, a son of Charlemagne, died of fright during a total eclipse of the sun.

1504 -Sir Anton of Burgundy, known as The Great Bastard, died at 82.

1534- King Henry VIII executed a nun named Elizabeth Barton, who claimed to have been instructed by God to condemn the King’s divorce. She claimed supernatural forces had shown her the place in Hell being prepared for King Henry.

1640- King Charles I dissolved Parliament after only three weeks for being uppity. It was called the Short Parliament. When they refused to grant him tax money to fight his wars the King levied a 1% property tax on everyone in England. If you didn’t pay it right away you could lose your ears and be branded on the cheeks with a hot iron. Bright ideas like this cost Charles his head, after losing the English Civil War in 1649.

1789- King Louis XVI reluctantly convened an Estates General, the French national parliament, to get the country out of a fiscal crisis. He had fired his Swiss financier Jacques Necker, the only man who seemed to be stopping the economy’s slide. Up to now Louis' understanding of fiscal policy was to cut the budget spent on the royal lapdogs. An assembly like this had not been convened since 1611. The Parliamentarians demanded permanent power and by refusing to adjourn when the Royal command came, set in motion the French Revolution. Napoleon said the French Revolution began when the king fired Necker.

1800- Shortly after winning his Federalist parties nod to run for re-election President John Adams was told by his wife Abigail Adams” Tis a pity that politicians would sacrifice all that good men hold dear and sacred, just to win an election.”

1808- THE SPANISH ULCER- The Spanish Royal Family was having problems. King Charles IV, his chief minister Godoy who was also a lover of the Queen, the Infante Ferdinand VII and the Prince of Asturias were all trying to overthrow one another while Goya made funny portraits of them.
French Emperor Napoleon offered to mediate. After he lured them all to Bayonne on French soil, he told them: “ I’ve got an better idea. I’ll lock you up in this fortress, and my brother Joseph will be King of Spain.” Napoleon sent an army into Spain to enforce his idea, but the Spanish people wouldn’t stand for it and fought first in the open, and then as “guerrillas”- little wars.
While Napoleon was trying to conquer the rest of Europe, he had to constantly keep troops in Spain fighting the guerrillas and the Duke of Wellington’s English. Spain was finally liberated in 1814 and the Royal Family promptly went back to arguing.

1821"...le Armee'......Josephine....." Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of St. Helena at age 52.

1827- In Tennessee a 17-year old tailor's apprentice named Andrew Johnson married 16 year old Eliza McArdle. Johnson was illiterate, so one of his bride's first chores was to teach him to read and write. Johnson became the 17th President of the United States.

1862- CINCO DE MAYO- Battle of Puebla-Mexican Juaristas under Zaragosa defeated a French invasion force sent by Napoleon III. One of the heroes of the battle was a soldier named Porfiro Diaz. After Benito Juarez’s presidency Diaz made himself dictator and reigned 38 years until being ousted in the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

1864- While Lee and Grant’s armies began to battled in The Wilderness, Sherman began his Atlanta campaign. Sherman told Grant:" You hold Lee down and give me enough troops and I can make Georgia howl!"

1889- THE PARIS WORLD EXHIBITION opened. This exposition was what the Eiffel Tower was built for: it was the centerpiece of this World's Fair to mark the centennial of the French Revolution.
Americans remembered it as the event where American painting first stood out on the world stage, despite being given a small gallery space between Bosnia and Denmark. The judging of the artwork was controversial. Here they are trying to show the world the uniqueness of American painting, yet with not a single Copley, Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, or Winslow Homer was accepted.
James McNeill Whistler considered himself American although he lived most of the time in London. When the show was announced, he patriotically entered a dozen paintings, but the American judges rejected them all. He angrily re-submitted them as a British artist and won a gold medal.

1891-Carnegie Hall in New York opened. One old musician told me the acoustics are so perfect that you can fart in the trumpet section, and you'll be heard in the second balcony.

1920- Britain and France get the League of Nations to sanction their colonial takeover of the Middle East. France occupied Syria and Lebanon and Britain Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The League officially considered them 'mandates' to administer territory of the defeated Turkish Empire, but Britain and France held them in effect as colonial possessions.

1932- Charles Revson founded the Revlon Cosmetics Company.

1942- The last U.S. forces on the besieged Island of Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese. General MacArthur was ordered to escape to organize the defense of Australia, leaving his friend Jonathan Wainwright to lead his men into captivity. But when he was asked to recommend General Wainwright for the Congressional Medal of Honor, MacArthur refused. "The Medal of Honor cannot be awarded to a general who pulls down Old Glory and surrenders!". MacArthur had Wainwright at his side to sign the surrender documents on the U.S.S. Missouri in 1945.

1945- In a desperate plan to get at America, Japanese generals tried tying bombs to high flying atmospheric weather balloons that could catch the jet stream across the Pacific. This day the only World War II casualties on the U.S. mainland occurred when an Oregon woman Elsie Mitchell and her two children were killed by one of these strange bombs while picnicking.

1945- Happy Birthday Yosemite Sam! Hare Trigger, the first cartoon to feature the red mustachioed desperado premiered.

1953- Broadway Director Jerome Robbins was riding high after directing hits like On the Town and King & I, when he was labeled a Communist. To save his career, this day he testified before Joseph McCarthy’s House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He admitted he had been a communist party member and named names. One actress he finked on, Margaret Lee said,” I’ve just been stabbed by a wicked fairy”. Ironically, Jerome Robbins went on to direct two of his biggest hits “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the Fiddler on the Roof using Zero Mostel, Beatrice Arthur and Jack Gilford, blacklisted actors who all hated him. During a break in rehearsal on Fiddler, one actor said, “I’d like to kick Jerry in the balls!” Beatrice Arthur replied, “Jerry has no balls.”
The famed actor/director Orson Wells observed that “Friend informed on friend not to save their lives but to save their swimming pools.”

1960- Soviet Premier Khruschev announces to the world press the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia. President Eisenhower vigorously denied anything of the sort until Khruschev in a world news conference produced the plane wreckage and pilot Lt. Francis Gary Powers. The incident not only deepened the Cold War, but for the first time in modern history a U.S. President was caught lying. But sadly, not the last time.

1961- Alan Shepard became the first American in space on board Friendship VII. The rocket took him 115 miles into space but not high enough to achieve an orbit. That was done one year later by John Glenn. Shepard was kept on the ground in his capsule for so long he had to pee in his suit. In the upside-down position the fluid ran up his back and puddled up in his helmet behind his head. NASA realized it needed to make modifications on the space suit….

1968- Albert Dekker, character actor and star of movies like Dr. Cyclops, was found dead by his fiance kneeling in his bathtub, handcuffed, Noose around his neck, ballgag, and wearing ladies lingerie. A narcotics needle was sticking in his arm. Someone wrote in red lipstick on his butt “ whip”. He was 62. The police declared it an “auto-erotic episode that had gone wrong." His fiancé Geraldine Saunders went on to create the hit TV show The Love Boat.

1975- Anne Rice’s novel The Interview With The Vampire first published.

1981- Young IRA supporter Bobby Sands made himself a martyr in the Northern Ireland crisis by dying of a hunger strike while in jail. He went 66 days without food.

1983- At a regional Comicon, the first edition comic of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out and sold out within two hours.

1985- President Ronald Reagan started a firestorm of controversy among WWII veterans when he laid a wreath in Germany at a cemetery in Bitburg that contained graves of 49 Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. Some of them may have participated in the infamous Malmedy Massacre of US prisoners.

2006- Walt Disney Company formally acquired Pixar Studio.
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Quiz: What is the difference between a pederast and a pedagogue?

Answer: A pedagogue is the term for a person who educates children, and a pederast is a term for someone who sexually abuses children.

Question: Albert Schweitzer was called a Polymath. What is that?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What does The Jig is Up, mean?
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History for 5/3/2023
Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Bing Crosby, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70’s singer Engelbert Humperdinck, Dule Hill, Christina Hendriks

Happy World Press Freedom Day.

328 A.D.- Discovery of the True Cross- St. Helena the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine was the first to make fashionable the collecting of Christian relics. This day her archeologists in Jerusalem unearthed three old crosses on the Mount of Calvary. According to Medieval legend, she tested it out by crucifying someone on it who got up after three days. After all, it might have been someone else's cross! Ick! (From Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, by Sabine-Gould)
Byzantine Emperors carried the True Cross around and into battle like a flag until it was thought to be too precious to lose. So, it was broken up, and the wood distributed to the kings of Christendom. By Luther's time it was said so much of the Good Wood or Holy-Rood was around that if you got it all together you could build a nice house. The custom of saying "Knock on Wood" comes from touching the True Cross for luck.
Last year during the Russo-Ukrainian War, the sinking of the Russian flagship The Moskva, that ship supposedly had an icon on it with a splinter from the True Cross.

1494- Columbus discovered the island of Jamaica. He called it St. Iago.

1536- Huron Indian chief Donnaconna noticed that the French explorer Jacques Cartier and the other white men got excited whenever he mentioned gold or riches. So Donnaconna made up fantastic stories about a powerful kingdom upriver called Sanguenay, about where present day Ottawa is. He said the people were fabulously wealthy and had no anus's so they could only drink fluids. Cartier not only swallowed the gag this but he was so impressed he had poor Donnaconna kidnapped and brought to France to tell his stories to the king. The old chief never saw his home again.

1559- At Perth Scotland, Presbyterian preacher John Knox delivered the first sermon openly calling for the Scottish Church to throw off the authority of the Vatican.

1675- Massachusetts Puritans passed a law that church doors be locked during Sunday services. Too many people were leaving during long, boring sermons.

1702- William Hyde, aka Lord Cornbury arrived from England to be Royal Governor of colonial New York. This English aristocrat surprised the solid Dutch Calvinists of former New Amsterdam by his eccentric behavior. His favorite pastime was dressing up in ladies clothing and jumping out at people at night and pulling their ears. When in drag he bore an odd resemblance to England’s Queen Anne. He later explained he only dressed this way so the colonists could see what their queen in England looked like. Of course, nobody believed him.
There is today a painting of the Lord Governor in drag at the New York Historical Society. It was alleged that he was a fence for pirates and once asked the New York City council for money to repel a fictitious French attack, which he pocketed and bought the land today called Hyde Park.

1791- Polish Constitution of 3rd of May. This radical document was inspired by the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. But being situated in between autocratic monarchies Russia and Prussia who were unimpressed and crushed the Poles.

1812- A new poem called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1848- Working people of Saxony revolt against their king. Leo Bakunin the father of anarchism and the composer Richard Wagner were two of the leaders. The Prussian army was sent to help put down the workers and Wagner fled into Switzerland, but not before he had the pleasure of burning down the Leipzig Opera House.

1851- San Francisco burned down.

1863-2nd Day Battle of Chancellorsville-Lee sent Stonewall Jackson 12 miles swinging around the Yankee Army flank to attack them from behind. O.O. Howard, the Union General in charge of that area wouldn’t believe the scouts reports of an imminent attack. When a German immigrant officer demanded he prepare, Howard accused him of being drunk. Then Jackson’s men burst out of the woods and sent the Yankees running.
The fighting lasted well into the evening and confusion reigned in the darkness. General Daniel Sickles division got into a vicious three way firefight with a Confederate division shooting at him from one side and his own reinforcements shooting at him from the other.
Stonewall Jackson and his staff had ridden out beyond his lines to observe the Yankee preparations for tomorrow. He was riding back towards his own lines when a shot or two rang out. General A.P. Hill called out " Don't shoot! Were Southerners! ". But the Mississippi colonel in charge had been surprised once already that night by enemy cavalry:" It's a Yankee trick! Pour it into them!" A volley hit Jackson and several other officers." My boys, my own boys!" Jackson groaned. He died two weeks later.

1864- The day before his armies were set to move Union General Ulysses Grant laid out final plans for his campaign against the Confederacy. In a drawing room in Culpepper Virginia he told his staff that up till now union armies had acted independently like a bad team of horses that won’t pull together. He would now coordinate five armies attacking simultaneously from Washington to Atlanta to Shreveport Louisiana. Their goal would not be the taking of Richmond but the destruction of the main Confederate field armies like Robert E Lee’s. Grants plan was to hold Lee down near Richmond while the armies of Sherman, Banks and Butler completed the destruction of the Confederacy.

1888- The Poem "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer first published.

1906- British controlled Egypt seized the Sinai Peninsula from the Turkish Empire.

1917- The Great French Military Mutinies. During World War I, after three years of appalling conditions and being slain by the thousands in suicidal charges against machine guns, the average French "poilus" soldier nickname like G.I., had enough. Whole regiments refused to go to the front. The mutiny was so bad that to this day official records are vague as to just how many men were involved. A safe estimate is at least 100,000 men.

1931- E.C. Segar introduced Popeye’s friend J. Wellington Wimpy in his Thimble Theatre comic strip. “ I would gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today.”

1933- Fritz Lang’s movie M released in the US. It made a star of Peter Lorre.

1936- Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio first game for the New York Yankees. He got three hits.

1938- The Vatican recognized Generalissimo Franco’s fascist regime in Spain.

1941- Battle of Amba Alagi. Britain vs Italy for Ethiopia.

1948- THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theaters and producers (including the Walt Disney Company) had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains.
One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature. Many people were starting to become interested in that new television machine, anyway.

1952- U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma stepped out of a plane and walked to the exact North Pole, the first known person to do so. Commander Robert Peary claimed to have reached the Pole in 1909 as did others, but modern scholars think they were all off by several degrees.

1952- President Harry Truman showed off the newly renovated White House to the newfangled network television cameras.

1963- Birmingham police attack Civil Rights marchers with attack dogs, clubs and high powered hoses. The brutality was captured on nationwide TV. The images shocked the nation and President Kennedy, who had been assured by Governor George Wallace by phone that everything was under control. JFK resolved to fast track the Civil Rights Act through Congress.

1968- THE PARIS '68 REVOLT- Police are sent into the Sorbonne University in Paris to break up student demonstrations. The grounds of the university had never been violated by police, even during the Nazi occupation. This act enraged the student leaders who are joined by labor unions and there is fighting in the streets of Paris for the next three weeks that eventually brought down the DeGaulle government.
All night political meetings center in the Odeon theatre as the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and John Luc Goddard make intellectual manifestations of aesthetic freedom. "The More I make Love, the More I make Revolution!" One of the student leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bedit "Danny the Red". When conservative media tried to draw attention to Cohn-Bendit’s Jewish foreign background. This caused an even larger, angrier, march of Parisians shouting: "We are all Jews!"

1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts.

1971- National Public Radio’s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first U.S. news program with women anchors like Susan Stanberg.

1971- President Nixon’s administration arrested 13,000 anti-war protestors in one week.

1973- Chicago’s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the tallest office building in the U.S.A.

1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time, so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once.

1979- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. The green grocer’s daughter called the Iron Lady, dominated British politics for the next twenty years.

1985- The White House confirmed rumors that President Reagan would occasionally adjust his schedule when Nancy would seek the advice of a San Francisco astrologer.

1991- Steve Jobs agreed to the deal between Walt Disney and Pixar to create the film Toy Story. He insisted the Pixar logo be at the head of the film, instead of in the back roll credits. The world needs to know that Pixar are the one’s making these movies, not them. It’s all about marketing. The public will soon know who we are, more than they are.”

1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company James J. Morgan testified to a congressional committee that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears candy.

1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.

2002- Spiderman, directed by Sam Raimi, and starring Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst.

2014-Kevin McCoy created the first NFT (Non-Fungible Token) entitled “Quantum”.

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Quiz: What does The Jig is Up, mean?

Answer: From an old Elizabethan slang for the completion of a lively dance. It came to mean your plans have been found out or foiled. The Dance is Over.

Quiz: What does it mean when you say “The Jig is Up?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Antonio Gaudi’s architectural masterpiece The Sagrada Familia is in what city?
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History for 5/2/2023
Birthdays: Czarina Catherine the Great, Domenico Scarlatti, Manfred Von Richthofen the Red Baron, Bing Crosby, Dr. Benjamin Spock the Baby Doctor, Vernon Castle, Lorenzo Music, Theodore Bikel, Lesley Gore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Satyajit Ray, Pinky Lee, Link Wray of the Wraymen, Christine Baranski, Doug Wildey, Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock is 51, Marty Abrahams.

1349- The Kings of England and France declared a ten-year truce in their Hundred Years War because of the Black Plague. After all, how can you have a good war, when everyone was already dead? That’s no fun.

1519- Leonardo Da Vinci died of a stroke at the Chateau d’Amboise in the arms of King Francis I. He had accepted the offer of the French King of a stable retirement (even then artists worried about that kinda stuff). He was 67. Two hundred and eighty years later, during the French Revolution, peasants broke into his tomb to get the lead lining for cannonballs. They threw his bones into a trash pile. In 1863 and archeologist found some bone fragments and coins King Francis and declared that to be him. But but no one is really sure.

1670- The Hudson's Bay Company is chartered by King Charles II. At one point the Honorable Company was responsible for the administration of most of western Canada, called Prince Rupert's land, the largest land mass in history ever under the control of a board of directors. It's CEO, Sir George Simpson, was nicknamed "the Emperor".

1797- One of the marvels of Europe today is the City of Venice. Beyond an occasional flood, Venice never had a great fire or destruction by war. Many of the buildings are as old as Notre Dame. Venice was a naval power, so all of her wars were fought out at sea. This day in 1797 Napoleon, pursuing his conquest of Italy, declared war on the Venetian Republic. They immediately surrendered.

1808- Spanish Independence Day- Napoleon had invaded Spain and put his older brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. The Spanish called him "Pepe Bottaglia" (Joey Bottles, due to his fondness for drink) and bitterly hated the French occupation. Reacting to the occupation of Madrid, the Spanish people riot in the Playa Del Sol and cut up all the French soldiers they can find. The French round up all the Spanish people they can find and shoot them. Francisco Goya does lots of neat drawings and paintings. The Spanish invention of organized small scale partisan actions they will give the name "guerilla" warfare.

1813- Battle of Lutzen- Napoleon whups the Prussians.

1863- Battle of Chancellorsville - Robert E. Lee was surrounded by the larger Union army of "Fighting Joe" Hooker. Hooker bragged: "God have mercy on General Lee, for I shall have none!". Lincoln was more realistic: "The hen is the wisest of all animal creation. She does not cackle until AFTER her egg is laid." Lee got out of the trap and defeated Hooker.

1865- A $100,000 reward was offered for the arrest of former president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, now a fugitive on the run from Union armies.

1885- First Good Housekeeping Magazine.

1920 –The Negro National League, the first successful all-Black baseball league, held its first game in Indianapolis. The league was founded earlier that same year by legendary baseball player, Andrew "Rube" Foster, and featured teams such as the Chicago American Giants, Chicago Giants, Cuban Stars, Dayton Marcos, Indianapolis ABCs, Kansas City Monarchs and St. Louis Giants in its first season.

1921- Chicago’s Field Museum opened to the public. It was housed in the building originally called the Hall of Fine Arts in the Great Chicago Exhibition of 1893.

1927- Buck vs. Bell. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled states had the right to mandatory enforced sterilization of the “unfit and incompetent”. These included low IQ and epileptics. This was a result of the Eugenics Movement, that felt America’s gene pool was being swamped by “lesser races”. A court could order you sterilized against your will. The Nazis said they learned much from study of these American laws. Even today, there are still sterilization laws on the books in 20 States.

1930- Little ten year old Phillip of Greece came home from school to find his mother Princess Alice von Battenburg had been packed off to an insane asylum, and his father Prince Andrew of Greece going to send him to an Scottish boarding school so he could move in with his mistress. The boy would grow up to marry Queen Elizabeth II and become Prince Phillip of Edinburgh.

1932- Jack Benny's Radio Show debuts. Oh Rochester! Mel Blanc the voice of Bugs Bunny did many characters and voices on the show, including the sputtering engine of Jacks’ old Maxwell automobile.

1933- Hitler's stormtroopers raid all union offices in Germany. They seize their accounts and cart the labor leaders off to concentration camps. Hitler had said" Democracy and Free Enterprise cannot co-exist in the same state, and one of the evilest forms Democracy can take is Trade Unionism".

1933- The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. The Inverness Courier published an account of a couple that sighted Nessie and offered a reward for proof.

1936- Ethiopian Emperor Rastafari Halie Selassie the Lion of Judah fled Addis Ababa in advance of Mussolini's invading armies.

1945-As General Weidling surrendered what was left of Berlin to the Russians, Admiral Doenitz, then head of government, ordered his Foreign Minister, Schwerin von Krosigk to broadcast to the German people advising them to flee west," The Iron Curtain in the east moves closer and closer; all those people caught in the mighty hands of the Bolsheviks are being destroyed." Beating Churchill to the term Iron Curtain by a couple years.

1945- After the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the German ambassador to Dublin was summoned to President Eamon De Valera's office. He was given an official note of condolence on the loss of their head of state. The neutral Irish Republic became the only nation on Earth to send The Third Reich a sympathy card.

1945- All the remaining Axis forces in Italy surrendered. Meanwhile on this day in Bavaria, the top German rocket scientists led by Dr. Werner Von Braun gave themselves up to the Americans. On Braun’s worktable were plans for a missile that could travel 4,200 miles, far enough to reach the U.S. East Coast.

1952- The British Airline B.O.A.C. began the first trans-Atlantic jet plane service. This began the class of globetrotting rich partygoers named Jet-Setters. BOAC later became British Air.

1957- Mafia don Frank Costello had taken over the Lucciano New York crime family after Lucky Lucciano had been deported to Sicily. Another Lucciano triggerman named Vito Genovese felt he had been passed over. This day Frank Costello was crossing the lobby of his apartment on Central Park West, when Vinny " the Chin" Gigante came up behind him: "Hey Frank, this is for you!" and started shooting. Costello was left for dead but Vinny bungled his job- Costello was only grazed in the skull. He recovered, but wisely decided to retire from racketeering. Costello’s job went to Carlo Gambino.

1957- Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Commie Hunter, died in an asylum from hepatitis, alcohol delirium and cirrhosis of the liver.

1964- Disney’s audio-animatronic Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln opened at the NY World’s Fair.

1967-" Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud!" The Black Panther Party announced its armed militancy to the US and the world by trying to break in with shotguns on the California State assembly during a vote. This caused Gov. Ronald Reagan to pass the first assault weapons ban in the U.S. The media would ring with the militant words and images of Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton.

1972- J. EDGAR HOOVER DIED. He had been F.B.I. director since 1934. Despite his numerous achievements like neutralizing Nazi espionage and the Ku Klux Klan, he never seemed willing to attack the Mafia. While the FBI chased solo criminals like Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde, the big crime syndicates in Chicago and New York functioned unmolested. Some speculate it was because he knew they would expose the FBI chiefs secret lifestyle. Hoover lived in a long-term relationship with his second in command Clyde Tolson. That didn’t stop him from outing high profile gays in the Truman and Johnson administrations when it suited him. When Hoover was buried at Arlington, the Marine guard handed Tolson the folded flag from the coffin, something only the widow gets.
J. Edgar said he needed his secrecy to pursue his high profile war on "American Immorality". When Lyndon Johnson was asked why he still kept the ancient F.B.I. director around, he replied:" I’d rather keep that old bastard on the inside of my tent a pissing out, than on the outside pissing in.".

1972- First day shooting on Steven Spielberg’s film JAWS. The giant mechanical shark used as a prop was nicknamed "Bruce" after Spielberg’s lawyer.

1982- During the Falkland's War a British helicopter equipped with Exocet missiles sank Argentina's largest battleship, the Belgrano. London tabloids ran as the headline over the burning ship- "Gotcha !" Interestingly, the Belgrano was a refitted 45 year old American battleship, the U.S.S. Phoenix, that had survived the Pearl Harbor attack.

1982- The 24 hour Weather Channel started.

1983- Microsoft introduced the three-button mouse.

1997- Movie star Eddie Murphy was busted for picking up trans hooker Artisone Seiuli at 4:45 in the morning on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. Murphy said he was just being a good Samaritan and giving the young lady a ride home.

1999- Actor Oliver Reed was filming the movie Gladiator in Malta with Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott. Reed, like many British actors of his generation was a very hard drinker. Some like Richard Harris and Anthony Hopkins managed to pull themselves out of their spiral and went on to full careers in later life. But Oliver Reed did not. This day in a local pub, he got into a drinking contest with several young English sailors from HMS Cumberland. At one sitting Oliver Reed drank 8 pints of beer, a dozen shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey and a few shots of Hennessey cognac. Then when arm wrestling the sailors, he suffered a massive heart attack and dropped dead. Oliver Reed was 61. Ridley Scott had to use computer imaging to complete his remaining scenes in the film.

2011- In the dead of night American Navy Seal Team 6 flew into Pakistan and killed Osama Ben Laden. It turned out Osama had been living in a large compound just a few blocks from the Pakistani version of West Point. (Because of the time difference, it was still May 1st back in US).
To maintain the surprise factor, President Obama spent the evening joking at the Correspondents dinner, then rushed to the Situation Room to monitor events.
The Pakistani doctor who helps the Americans locate Bin Laden was later sentenced to 30 years in prison for treason.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Antonio Gaudi’s architectural masterpiece The Sagrada Familia is in what city?
Answer: Barcelona.

Question: Antonio Gaudi’s architectural masterpiece The Sagrada Familia is in what city?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What does it mean to be stuck in a rut? What’s a rut?
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History for 5/1/2023
Birthdays: Mary Harris a.k.a. Mother Jones, Marshal Vauban 1633, Benjamin Latrobe, Calamity Jane, Joseph Addison, Kate Smith, Jack Paar, Joseph Heller, Rita Coolidge, Steve Cauthen, Judy Collins, Glen Ford, Ray Parker Jr., Maurice Noble, Fyodor Khytruk, Louis Nye, John Woo, Wes Anderson is 54, Joanna Lumley is 77, Eric Goldberg is 68.

May is named for Maia Majestus, Roman god of flowers, one of the Pleiades, a daughter of Fauna and Vulcan. It’s also the Roman festival for the Bona Dea or the Good Goddess, a deity of fertility.

This day Romans celebrated the LARALIA- the feast of the Lares, your personal gods who watch over you and your family. Many times they included the founder of your house, ancestors or a particular allegiance to one deity, for example Julius Caesar claimed to be descended from Venus.

Feast of Saint Phillip and Saint James the Lesser

62BC- Publius Clodius Pulcher- The Handsome, made love to the wife of Julius Caesar by dressing like a woman and sneaking into Caesars home while the women were celebrating the sacred mysteries of the goddess Bona Dea. Part of Greco-Roman religious mysteries was the drinking of a wine mixed with herbs like ergot, approximating the effect of LSD. So they were all high. Sex, Drugs and Latin Conjugations!

305AD- The Abdication of Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian- Diocletian attempted to solve the problem of Roman emperors being chosen by means other than murder or civil war. He split the Empire into two pieces and took a colleague, Maximian, as Emperor of the West. They would each select a vice-emperor or Caesar and after a set number of years retire and the succession moves up. This system worked while Diocletian was around but it began to unravel almost as soon as he retired to his estates in Croatia to grow cabbages. When the emperors started to fight and kill each other again, the Senate tried to recall Diocletian. He responded: "If you could but see my cabbages, you would not ask me to do so! "

1152- Henry II Plantagenet, king of England and Duke of Normandy (grandson of
William the Conqueror) married Eleanor of Aquitaine, divorced wife of King
Louis VI of France and heiress to half of France. This union created the
powerful state called the Angevin Empire, so named because one of Henry's
family titles was Duke of Anjou. They ruled not from London, but from Chinon, in the center of the Loire Valley. This set the stage for the next three hundred years of warfare. They also would sire those rather interesting offspring Richard the Lionhearted and evil John Lackland.

1373- Dante Alighieri met the love of his life Beatrice at a MayDay party in Florence. Although she married another, he was inspired to write his Divine Comedy to her.

1516- The poor of London band together and stage a demonstration, complaining of their harsh life. The King's Chancellor, Cardinal Woolsey, replied by having 60 of them hanged.

1776- THE ILLUMINATI- In Ingolstadt Germany a former Jesuit named Adam Weishaupt created a radical fringe off-shoot of Freemasonry called the Illuminati. Their program of anti-religion, anti-royalist pro-democratic secular humanism gained great influence over intellectual Freemason lodges in Europe before being suppressed by the Bavarian government in 1785. A new Order of Illuminati formed in 1880 and the members roster claimed to have included Alastair Crowley (The Great Outer Head) ,King Arthur, Sir Francis Bacon, Goethe, Gaugin, Cocteau, Nietzche and King Ludwig the Mad. But none of those claims were ever proven. Today some Christian Fundamentalists who see pro-Satanic conspiracies under every bed, point to the Illuminati as proof.

1786- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO premiered in Vienna. So many encores and bows were demanded that the evening went on twice as long.

1798- The Birth of American Industry- Cotton Gin maker Eli Whitney proposed
to the U.S. government that he could make the army 10,000 muskets by a new automated
machine process. He gets the contract, but delivers only 500, many of them
handmade the old fashioned way. The first Defense department cost overrun.

1813- On the first day of the Saxon Campaign outside of Bautzen Germany, one
of Napoleon's top generals, Marshal Bessieres, is struck dead by a rebounding
cannonball. Marshal Ney stood over him and said:" It's a Good Death. It's OUR kind of
Death!" Bessieres was one of the last of his generation to wear his hair long, powdered white and in a tied ponytail, long after it was out of fashion.

1851- Queen Victoria and Prince Albert open the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the new Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. This first World's Fair would last until October and have exhibits and inventions from all around the world. Many European crowned heads stayed away for fear of all their revolutionary exiles England had given asylum. A touching moment was when the Chinese ambassador did a public kowtow or prostrated himself before the Queen, symbolizing China's submission to England. The fact that the diplomat wasn't a diplomat but a local London resident named Hai Sing who gave tours of his junk on the Thames for a shilling didn't seem to bother anybody. The Queen at one point was frantic that the Crystal Palace was attracting hordes of sparrows whose droppings were covering the glass roof with an unwanted glazing. The elderly Duke of Wellington came upon a solution: "Try sparrow hawks, M'am."

1863- The Confederate Congress reacted to the Union Army enlisting black soldiers by passing a resolution that any African-American captured in battle would be considered a slave in insurrection and hanged. I can’t recall any such executions taking place but in several battles Rebs refused to take black soldiers prisoner and just killed them outright. This did not deter 180,000 black volunteers, 85% of the eligible free black male population joining up to fight.

1869- LEE & GRANT MEET AGAIN- Four years after the Civil War ended, Ulysses Grant was U.S. President, and Robert E. Lee was dean of Washington University. They had not seen each other since Appomattox. Grant invited Lee to the White House where they sat together and chatted amiably for an hour. No one was allowed to hear or record what they said to each other. On the train passing through Arlington was the only time Lee saw his family home, now in the center of a giant national cemetery. He said nothing about it. Robert E. Lee died of heart disease the following year, Grant of throat cancer in 1885.

1886- MAYDAY- In most of the world except the U.S. this is Labor Day. Ironically the tanks and red banners that used to parade in Red Square and Havana celebrated events that began in the United States. In 1886- The Knights of Labor- an underground movement of unions came out in the open and announced itself America's first national labor organization. On this day they called for strikes against all employers who wouldn't grant an 8-hour workday. The norm in America then was 12 hours, 7am to 7pm six days a week. 500,000 people go out on 1,700 strikes and paralyze the nation's economy. The authorities crushed the strikes with violence, shootings, arrests and firings with a brutality that shocked the rest of the world. Karl Marx said: " Isn't it amazing what's happening in America ?” The 8 hour day doesn't become normal in America until 1913.

1889- in Europe the International Socialist Congress declaring itself in sympathy with the embattled American worker designated May 1st as International Worker's Day. In 1894 American Federation of Labor, a less militant successor to the Knights, asked President Cleveland to move Labor Day from May 1st to the end of August. This was so people can have a holiday between Independence Day and Thanksgiving, but also a Labor Day free of "radical politics".

1893- The WORLD COLUMBIAN EXHIBITION opened in Chicago. A great White City topped by the first Ferris Wheel, a giant that carried passengers higher than the crown of the Statue of Liberty. World’s Fairs then still had a certain amount of cheap sensationalist burlesque to attract customers uninterested in dynamos and new farming exhibits. Walt Disney’s father Elias worked as a carpenter building the exhibits. Candy maker Milton Hershey inspected some new German milk chocolate machines and was inspired to build his business around chocolate. This exhibition was made famous by the erotic gyrations of belly dancer Little Egypt. the famous tune "In the Land of Oz, Where the Ladies Smoke Cigars" was not written in Egypt but by a local songwriter named Joe Blume. Also the serial killer H.H. Holmes. It also displayed the World’s Largest Red Cedar Bucket, then filled with lager beer. In 2001, I had the pleasure of seeing the Bucket at Murfreesboro Tennessee, minus the beer.

1894- COXEY'S ARMY- Retired colonel Jacob Coxey called himself a spokesman for underprivileged. He led several marches of thousands of hungry, unemployed to Washington DC, proclaiming themselves The Army of the Commonwealth of Christ. On the steps of Capitol he loudly demanded workers compensation, unemployment insurance and national works projects to put the unemployed back to work. All these goals were achieved by the New Deal in 1933. For now, all Jacob Coxey got was 20 days in jail for disturbing the peace.

1898- BATTLE OF MANILA BAY- Admiral Dewey's fleet sank the Spanish fleet when
he gives the order to the captain of the USS Olympia :"You may fire when ready, Gridley:" I'm sorry, Bugs Bunny didn't say it first. The Spanish admiral Marquis de Montijo is remembered in Spain as a hero for even trying to engage the Americans with his outdated and outgunned fleet. Forgoing the support of shore batteries he deliberately drew his ships up away from the city of Manila so civilians wouldn't get hurt in the battle and his ships could sink in shallow water. Hundreds of Spanish sailors were killed but the only Yankee who died was an engineer who had a heart attack from all the excitement.

1902- Richard Outcault's comic strip Buster Brown and Tige first appeared. Outcault, the creator of the first hit cartoon the Yellow Kid was so famous that as part of his deal to do this strip he negotiated the first back-end deal for a percentage of the merchandise sales.

1914-THE BIRTH OF THE BIG BLUE- Thomas Watson got a job at a little business machine company called CTR, the Calculating Typewriter and Regulating Company. He quickly rose to the top and renamed the company International Business Machine or IBM. When he retired in 1956 it employed 60,000 workers, and was one of largest companies in the world.

1926- Famed black baseball pitcher Satchel Page pitched his first game. His nickname came from Satchel-mouth.

1930- Marry Harris- aka Mother Jones, union activist and child labor crusader made her last speech on her 100th birthday: " I was born of the struggle, of torment and pain. A child of the wheel, a brat of the cogs, a woman of the dust. Whenever a worker weeps tears of blood, I am his remedy!"

1931- The Empire State Building in New York dedicated. For fifty years it was the worlds tallest office building and King Kong’s hangout. It’s topmost deck was designed to be a dirigible mooring post, but despite several tries, no zeppelin has ever been able to park there. A Goodyear Blimp attempted mooring there in 1976 but the high winds bobbed it around like a bucking bronco. The building was dedicated during the depths of the Great Depression when business was so bad it was nicknamed the 'Empty State Building'.

1935- Lou Gehrig, the Yankee "Iron Man" who had never missed a baseball game, takes himself out of a game because of illness. It is the first sign of the degenerative muscular disease ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, that would soon be called Lou Gehrig's Disease.

1939- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia exports its first barrel of crude oil.

1941- Orson Welles film "Citizen Kane" debuted at the Paramount theater (the El Capitan) in Hollywood. At the last minute William Randolph Hearst's friend Louis B. Mayer tried to buy and destroy every print of the film and the Hearst press went crazy attacking it. Hearst spokesperson Louella Parsons threatened "A Beautiful Lawsuit" if the film was not pulled. Despite winning some Oscars, the film didn't do well in its initial release, but it remains one of the greatest films of all time. Orson Welles said later:" The problem I've always had is my movies become classics ten years later."

1942- The last execution by hanging at San Quentin Federal Prison.

1945- THE SECOND FUEHRER- Grand Admiral Doenitz, leader of the U-boat campaigns is informed of Hitler's death, and that he was the Fuehrer's handpicked successor. Hitler was mad at Himmler and Goring, and everybody else had shot themselves. Doenitz was leader of what was left of the Third Reich for 23 days. Even with Berlin fallen his country overrun by allied armies, he deliberately dragged-out negotiations so he could smuggle as many people as he could away west to the Anglo-American zones.

1960- THE U-2 INCIDENT Soviet authorities shoot down a high observation U-2 spy plane violating Soviet airspace and capture the pilot Francis Gary Powers. Ironically President Eisenhower had ordered a halt to the U-2 spy program but the Pentagon tried to get one more flight in. After 1989 the US Government admitted the overflights of Russian airspace had been going on since 1950.
In those ten years the Soviets had shot down around 20 planes with a loss of 100 U.S. servicemen killed or sent to die in Siberian Gulags, ignored by their government to whom they did not officially exist. Powers’s plane was hit and disintegrated. He fell 70,000 feet but miraculously he survived. Before he was captured he at first hitchhiked a ride from a Russian couple going to a wedding. They saw nothing strange in the uniformed man and when they noticed he couldn’t speak Russian in the middle of Russia, they decided he must be Bulgarian.

1964- Scientist John Kemeny at Dartmouth created the computer language BASIC.

1967- Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas.

1989- Walt Disney Feature Animation in Orlando Florida opened. It closed in 2006.

1993- The Florida Animation Union Local 843 chartered.

1997- Frank Gifford, ABC television sportscaster and husband of morning show celebrity Kathy Lee Gifford, was caught on videotape doing the nasty with stewardess Suzie Johnson. She got paid by a tabloid and posed nude for Playboy.

1997- Bebe, the dolphin who played Flipper on the television show, died at age 40.

1997- Tony Blair defeated Tory John Major to become Prime Minister of Britain.

1999- Spongebob Squarepants premiered on Nickelodeon.

2003- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. President George W. Bush landed a military jet onto the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to deliver a speech declaring the war in Iraq to be officially over. In the next 8 years thousands more Americans would be killed and wounded. A large banner on the carrier read Mission Accomplished. The White House said it was set up spontaneously by crewmen to celebrate, but later admitted it was planned, printed and hung bo order of the president’s men.

2004- The European Union expanded from thirteen to twenty-five countries, including Estonia and Malta.

2005- The Sunday Times of London first printed the Downing Street Memo. It was minutes of a meeting between US and British strategists, that proved that the Bush White House was irrevocably set on attacking Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein in July 2002. This while the official position of the Bush Administration was that they were only going to war as a last resort.
In an earlier generation, the Downing St. Memo would have been as important as the Watergate Smoking Gun, but the docile US news media buried its importance, and a blizzard of conservative spin.

3019TA- Aragorn II was crowned King of Gondor (according to Tolkien)
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to be stuck in a rut?

Answer: In the days of wagon wheels, a rut is a crevice usually made by consistently repeated passing of heavy vehicles over an unpaved path or road. Being stuck in a rut means to continue an action that is unproductive, but habitual and difficult to stop.

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