Quiz: What do Marlon Brando, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Charlton Heston, CBS newsman Roger Mudd and humorist Jean Shephard ( The Christmas Story) all have in common?

Yesterday’s Answer below: Where was the first fire department in the New World started?
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History for 10/4/2011
Birthdays: French King Louis X The Stubborn 1314, Richard Cromwell-“ Tumbledown Dick, “ President Rutherford B. Hayes, Frederick Remington, Jean Millet, Buster Keaton, Englebert Dolfuss, Charlton Heston, Susan Sarandon is 65, Armand Assante, Damon Runyon, Alvin Tofler, Anne Rice, Alicia Silverstone is 35, Liev Schreiber is 44

1648- Happy Birthday NYFD! Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam Peter Stuyversant established the first regular municipal fire department in the New World. Fire depts were volunteer brigades until the late 1800s.

1777-BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN-George Washington tried a dawn surprise attack on the British army around Philadelphia. The same tactic had worked at Trenton, but here things went wrong from the start. In the morning fog the Yankee right flank got turned around and started shooting at the Yankee center. The Center thought they were being attacked by Loyalists and returned fire. Two thirds of the American army shot itself to pieces and ran away before the British even knew what was happening. Washington realized he was going to need some drill instructors....

1798- Lyrical Ballads, a small book of poems published jointly by English poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book opened with the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and finished with Wordsworth’s Lines composed a few miles above Tinturn Abbey.” The book didn’t sell that well. Wordsworth blamed Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner poem for being too long. Some of the best sales of the book were by sea captains who thought a Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was a collection of sea shantys.

1846- The First American mayor of Los Angeles, a Lieutenant Gillespie, was apparently so harsh and racist to the population of Spanish Californians that they rose in revolt and chased him out of town. The Californios under their old Mexican General Andres Pico waged a guerrilla war against the U.S. army for the next few months.

1869- Henry J. Heinz begins his condiment company, bottling horseradish in a little shop in Pittsburgh. He was later called the Catsup King, -or Ketchup, if you prefer. One of the Heinz Company's greatest stunts was in the 1920s they placed a 40 foot tall electrified pickle on the corner of 23rd and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

1909- St. Louis Missouri was site of the first –and probably only- airship race in the US. Four dirigibles, the total number in America, ran a course for a purse of $1000 dollars.

1910-King Manuel II of Portugal abdicated. The Portuguese Republic is declared.

1918- The day after he took the job of German Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden first telegraphed Washington DC to request peace talks to end World War One. But the note said Germany would not give up any of the territory it conquered in Belgium, France or Poland. President Wilson refused this, so the war went on.

1931- Chester Gould's "Dick Tracy" comic strip debuts.

1943- Actor Clark Gable was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying combat missions over Germany. It was said Gable took these deliberately dangerous missions instead of doing USO shows out of a death-wish in grief for his wife Carole Lombard, who was killed in a plane crash.

1950- The first Peanuts comic strip introducing Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy.

1955- The Brooklyn Dodgers a.k.a. "Da Bums" win the World Series for the first time, and the only time they ever won it while inhabiting the precincts of Flatbush. The name Dodgers came from the fact that several main trolley car lines intersected in front of Ebbets Field on Atlantic Avenue. To get into the ballpark you had to cross this area dodging the traffic. So they were known as the Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers, then Dodgers.

1957-SPUTNIK- Russia inaugurates the Space Age and first shoots an object into space orbit. A basketball sized satellite called" Sputnik-1" . Sputnik means Satellite and the word spawned pop words like Beatnik, Nudnik and Peacenik. Americans used to thinking of themselves as the leaders in all technology reacted with shock. Why weren’t we first? We were losing the space race! Senate leader Lyndon Johnson complained “I don’t want to sleep under a Commie Moon!” Wild rock & roll star Little Richard Penniman thought Sputnik was an omen of the end of the world and resolved to give up sex, drugs and rock & roll and become a Born Again Christian preacher. Good Golly Miss Molly!

1957-"Leave it to Beaver' debuts on CBS.

1965- Pope Paul VI arrived in the US to deliver a plea for world peace at the United Nations. Then his Holiness visited the World’s Fair and took in a Yankee baseball game.

1969- Diane Linkletter, the daughter of television personality Art Linkletter got high on LSD and leapt out of a window to her death. Her boyfriend snatched at the belt loops of her dress in an attempt to save her, but they tore away. Afterwards Art Linkletter became a livelong crusader against drug abuse.

1971- Janis Joplin was found dead of a drug overdose at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood. She was 27. Her song “Me and Bobby McGee” was as yet unreleased but soon topped the pop charts. Joplin left a considerable sum in her will for a party for her friends. The invitation read “ The Drinks are on Pearl” her nickname.

1986- On a New York street a man named William Tager walked up to CBS News anchor Dan Rather and mumbling “Kenneth, what’s the Frequency?” started furiously punching Rather. He thought CBS was beaming microwaves at his brain and it was Dan’s fault. Who Kenneth was, remains a mystery.

1993- After a two week power struggle between Russian Parliamentary hard line conservatives and President Boris Yeltsin, Russian troops fire on and attack the barricaded Russian White House (Parliament building). The conservatives, including Yeltsin's own vice-president Victor Chernomyrdin, are arrested and the fragile democracy saved. This Parliament building is where Yeltsin himself was barricaded two years earlier during the failed August Coup.

2001- James Hemingway, the youngest son of writer Ernest Hemingway, was found dead in the women’s wing of a Miami jail. A cross-dressing transsexual, he had gone by the name of Gloria, and was picked up by Miami cops for drug use and exposing himself in public. He was 69.
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Yesterday’s Question: Where was the first fire department in the New World started?

Answer: NYC, see above, 1648.

Question: When the HMS Beagle returned to England from a trip to Brazil, New Zealand and the Galapagos Islands, it was carrying a famous scientist on board. Who was it?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: what was the Philadelphia Experiment?

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History for 10/1/2011

Welcome to Month Number 8, Octubrius to the Romans. In 138 AD the Roman Senate wanted to rename month eight as Faustina, after the wife of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. But being a rare modest empress, she declined the honor.

Birthdays: Vladimir Horowitz, Julie Andrews is 76, Walter Matthau, Richard Harris, Phillipe Noiret, James Whitmore, Pres.Jimmy Carter is 85, Everet Sloane, Rod Carew, Stanley Holloway, Tom Bosley, Mark McGuire, Randy Quaid, Cindy Margolis, Zack Galifanakis is 42


331BC. BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA or Arbelum - Alexander the Great's victory over the Persian army of King Darius IV. Darius had sought to once and for all destroy this Greek troublemaker by assembling an enormous army from all over his kingdom. But this multinational, polyglot force had no cohesion and the disciplined Macedonian-Greek veterans knifed through their ranks. Alexander ordered his elite Companion Cavalry to make right for King Darius, since he was the only thing holding his army together. Darius had to run for his life and his army broke up soon after seeing their Great King fleeing. The Persian kingdom collapsed and Alexander soon captured his capitol and family.

326 A.D. Emperor Constantine the Great bans sentencing criminals to Gladitorial schools, effectively ending Gladitorial Combat. Games continued on a little while longer using prisoners of war, but the fun and professionalism had gone out of it. The last recorded bout in Rome was in 407AD.

Today is the Feast of Saint Bavo of Ghent, who begged one of his former servants to drag him by a chain around his neck because of what a cruel master he was before his conversion.


1202- To the sound of massed trumpets and singing the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, the knights of the Fourth Crusade left from Venice for the Holy Land.

1273- German Electors choose Duke Rudolph of Hapsburg as Holy Roman Emperor. The Hapsburg family was the most successful dynasty in Europe. They remained in power (with one or two interruptions) for 645 years, finally being deposed in 1918. When a Hapsburg chided Napoleon for having no royalty in his blood he snapped back" I prefer to be the Rudolph of my race!'


1791- The first day of the French Legislative Assembly, the second French parliamentary body after the Assembly National that had started the French Revolution adjourned itself. In this assembly for the first time the conservatives sat on the right side of the hall, the liberals on the left side and the moderates in the center. This gives us the designation today used around the world for political Leftists and Right Wingers.

1800- By the secret Treaty of San Idelfonso Spain returns Louisiana to France in exchange for the Italian Duchy of Parma. Spain had owned Louisiana for her part in the French and Indian War (Seven Years War) victory. Napoleon needed it back for his planned worldwide colonial challenge to Britain. But when Santo Domingo revolted against French rule and Nelson sank the French navy Napoleon soured on his colonial plans. He decided to sell Louisiana to the one country he knew would annoy the British most, the United States.

And Spain never did get Parma.

1810- The first Berkshire Cattle Show.

1857- Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary premiered in magazine installments. Flaubert was tried for pornography but acquitted.

1880- John Phillip Sousa was named leader of the Marine Corps Band and began his career as the March King.

1903- First World Series of Baseball. The Boston Pilgrims had lost the first game today to the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-3, even though Cy Young was the starting pitcher. But Boston went on to win the series in best of nine games. Yes, that’s not a typo, Boston did win a World Series. There was no 1904 World series because the owners couldn't agree on a format.

1908- Ford announces the Model "T" the "Tin Lizzie" the first mass produced affordable car. It was called the Model T because it took Twenty prototypes to perfect it. The Model T cost $825 dollars and paid on installments with as little as 10 dollars down. It’s top speed was 45 miles and hour and 15 million were sold. When they asked Henry Ford what color should it be, he replied: "Any color so long as it's black.' The auto goes from being a rich mans plaything to something every home could afford.

1911- A bomb blew up the L.A. Times building, killing 23 people. The Times had a hostility to unions and two union organizers the McNamara Brothers were arrested.Despite having Clarence Darrow as a lawyer they were convicted, possibly because halfway through the trial the brothers confessed and Darrow had to beat a charge of jury-tampering. As the MacNamaras were hanged they shouted 'Hurrah for Anarchy!'

1919- THE FIX IS IN- First game of the 'fixed' world series.The Chicago White Sox had the best team in baseball at the time but Charles Comisky paid them wages lower than most minor league teams. They were nicknamed the Black Sox because Comisky was too cheap to pay for laundering their uniforms. So this year five players accepted bribes from gangster Arnold Rothstein to throw the world series. Pitcher Eddie Cicotte ,who spent much of the previous night sewing $10,000 into the lining of his overcoat, at first threw a perfect fastball strike, then hit the batter in-between the shoulderblades on the next pitch- a signal to the gangsters that "The Fix was In" Cincinnatti won this game 9 -1 and eventually the series.

The scheme was uncovered a year later and Baseball Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned all the Sox players from ever playing again. The White Sox have never made it to a World Series since.


1923- The first football game in the L.A. Coliseum- USC defeated Pomona.

1931- Construction completed on the new Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The original Waldorf Astoria from the XIX Century was demolished to make way for the Empire State Building. The new Waldorf boasted the Waldorf Towers, where kings, presidents and other Hoi-Paloi could enter by a private lobby and stay for weeks at a time.

1932- Babe Ruth's "Called" Home Run. Ruth was hitting against a Chicago Cubs pitcher when he pointed with his bat towards right field. He then swung his bat and hit a home run over the right wing bleachers.

1937- After heavy lobbying by millionaire publisher William Randolph Hearst the first Federal law banning Marijuana goes into effect. The law was sought chiefly by southwestern states, that wanted to have an excuse to deport Mexican immigrants. Plus Hearst had many powerful paper manufacturers behind him who wanted wood pulp to be the chief source of paper products rather than hemp, which grows, well…. like a weed.


1942-The test flight of America’s first experimental jet aircraft- the XP59A Comet.

1943-THE DANISH MIRACLE- This day the Nazis were to begin deporting Denmark's Jewish population to death camps. The Danish people meanwhile had quietly smuggled the entire Jewish population to the coast and onto ferries to neutral Sweden. The Germans only found a few hundred stragglers. Earlier in a show of defiance when the Nazi authorities ordered all Jews to wear a large yellow Star of David, every Danish citizen including the King wore one.

1944- Nazis doctors in Buchenwald concentration camp began conducting experiments on homosexuals.

1945- Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin left the cartoon business to work full time at Paramount doing live action movies. He wrote for the Marx Brothers and later directed the Dean Martin Jerry Lewis comedies.

1946- NUREMBERG-The verdicts read in the International Military Tribunal Trials of top Nazi war criminals. Herman Goering, Hans Franck, Jodl and 8 others got death sentences, their bodies later to be burned in the very crematoriums they created. Others like Rudolf Hess life prison terms.

1947-THE BIRTH OF THE BURBS- William Levitt's postwar dream, a planned community of affordable pre-fab homes on the outskirts of New York, called Levittown, is born. Mr. and Mrs. Bladykas moved into the first 2 bedroom house, which cost $7,990 bucks. The first true suburb.

1948- After the Israeli War of Independence the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haij Amin Al Husseini gathered many Arab refugees displaced by the fighting and declared a Palestinian State in the North of Israel. The King of Jordan Abdallah rejected this and declared all Palestinian lands not claimed by Israel were part of Jordan. While Arab states lined up on either side to argue, the Palestinians were kept in refugee camps instead of being allowed to assimilate into the populations of the surrounding Arab countries.. This confusion in part explains why Israel and other Western nations had trouble taking Palestinian nationalism seriously. For years Israeli leaders like Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan felt Jordan was the homeland for resettled Palestinians. King Abdallah was later assassinated by a Palestinian.

1949- THE EAST IS RED - Mao declared the Peoples Republic of China. "Now Let the World Tremble! " he said. In China today is a holiday –National Day. Contrary to paranoid conservative American politicians who feared the growing global Communist Conspiracy, Soviet dictator Stalin continued to support Chiang Kai Chek’s nationalist government and always hated Mao. During World War Two, Mao sent his wife to Moscow for safety. Stalin locked her up in a lunatic asylum just to piss him off.

1952- This Is Your Life TV show hosted by Ralph Edwards premiered.

1957- Los Angeles outlaws garbage incineration to try and cut down smog levels. Even though Los Angeles has reduced it's pollution levels by 30% in ten years it still had the worst air in the United States until surpassed by Houston in 1999.

1958- NASA born. The National Aeronautics & Space Agency. The U.S. government takes the space program out of the hands of the military and sets up a civilian space agency to get us into orbit.

1960- The independence of Nigeria.

1962- Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show, after host Jack Paar in a rage walked of the set and resigned. Paar was annoyed at network censors for cutting a comedy sketch that featured the sound of a toilet flushing.


1963- People who argue that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy take note: It is a fact that this day weeks before the assassination top Mafioso Jimmy Roselli flew down to New Orleans to have two secret meetings with Jack Ruby, the man who later shot Oswald. Why would a national crime boss take time to talk with a two-bit strip joint manager?


1964- THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT- It’s hard to believe now, but once upon a time most US universities had strict laws against students holding political protests on campus. It changed when this day on the campus of Berkeley, Cal., Jack Weinberg was arrested by Oakland police for distributing Civil Rights pamphlets. A mob of students surrounded the police car he was handcuffed in and would not let it proceed. The crowd held the car for 32 hours as speakers stood on the roof and made speeches denouncing the ban and other issues. The University lifted the ban on public political rallies and set the stage for the Ant-War protest of the 60’s.

1966- Largest demonstrations in China of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

1968-George Romero's weird film "Night of the Living Dead' premieres.

1982- Disney's EPCOT opens.

1987- The Whittier Earthquake rocks L.A. 5.9 on the Richter Scale killed 8 and caused millions in damage.

1992 -The Cartoon Network started.

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Yesterday’s Question: what was the Philadelphia Experiment?

Answer: The Philadelphia project was a WWII experiment where physicists tried to create teleportation based on Einstein’s Unified theory. They supposedly made a destroyer, the USS Eldridge and it's crew disappear from Philadelphia Harbor and reappear a hundred miles away in Baltimore. But they couldn't control it, some of the crew re-materialized sticking out of walls and bulkheads. So the Navy shut it down. The rumors never been proven.