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March 9, 2013 sat
March 9th, 2013

Question: Who were Heywoud Hale-Broun, Robert Trout, Charles Osgood and Howard K. Smith?

Yesterdays Question answered below: The big news story in America in 1841 was the Amistad Incident. Speilberg made a movie about it. What happened?
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History for 3/9/2013
Birthdays: Amerigo Vespucci, Eddie Foy Sr., Yuri Gargarin, Samuel Barber, chess master Bobby Fischer, Mickey Spillane, Vita Sackville-West, Raul Julia, Vacheslav Molotov, Juliet Binoche is 49, Linda Fiorentino is 55, Lil’ Bow-Wow is 26

1522- Protestant reformer Martin Luther had inspired the people of Germany to throw off the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. But he soon became alarmed by the excesses he heard of. People were burning churches and stoning priests who refused to change their ways. One bishop fed Holy Communion wafers to his pet parrot.

This day Martin Luther came out of protective hiding and donned his monks robes to give a series of 8 sermons from the pulpit in Wittenberg. He called people back to order and to show mercy to those who still preferred the old religion. Stop the violence he said" had I not freed millions of men from ecclesiastical oppression without lifting more than one pen?"

1566- The Scottish Presbyterian nobles around Mary Queen of Scots disliked her Italian secretary Antonio Riccio. So today despite the Queens protests, they dragged him off and stabbed him to death.

1796-NAPOLEON & JOSEPHINE'S WEDDING ANNIVERSARY- Legend has it Napoleon was working late at the office planning to attack Italy so arrived two hours late. The minister had dozed off and Napoleon shouted:" Wake up Citizen and Marry Us!" Josephine (34) was about 8 years older than Nappy (26) so to smooth over the difference on the marriage certificate he made himself 18 months older and she took four years off.

1805- YORK -Several times the little Lewis and Clark expedition was saved from attack because Indians were amazed to see York, Captain Clark’s slave. It was the first black man they had ever seen. This day York was introduced to Mandan Chief One-Eyed Le Bourgne. Le Bourgne first tried to rub the color off with water but when he saw York’s dark hair he whooped for joy! The whites were hairy, pale and ugly but this man was beautiful like a buffalo! LeBourgne immediately invited York make love to two Mandan maidens so a physical record of this great event would remain with the tribe. York found himself on several more occasions a sexual diplomat on behalf of the United States.

1822- First patent in the U.S. issued for ceramic false teeth. Before that they were made of a strong oak; George Washington once tried a set made of deer's teeth set in lead that was too heavy for him to close his mouth. He settled for a set carved from a hippopotamus jaw. In Gilbert Stuarts’ painting the bulge seen in his tightly compressed upper lip is his dentures.

1841- After hearing the arguments of former president John Quincy Adams, the US Supreme Court ruled that the African men who overpowered the crew of the Spanish slave ship La Amistad could go home.

1842- Francisco Lopez discovered gold in Placerita Canyon in Southern California.

1846- With the lavish ceremony before the gates of Lahore, Britain concluded the First Sikh War. One of the tributes handed over was the Koh-in-Noor Diamond, The Mountain of Light, at 800 karats the largest diamond in the world. It is now part of the crown jewels of Britain.

1847- General Winfield Scott began landing the U.S. troops off ships in the harbor of Vera Cruz in landing boats he designed. He hoped to emulate Cortez's march of conquest to Mexico City. It was the first large scale amphibious landings in U.S. Army history.

1858- THE MAILBOX is patented. One legend has it first invented by English writer Anthony Trollope.

1862- THE MONITOR VS. THE MERRIMAC. The first battle between iron warships. The Confederate Merrimac also called the Virginia spent yesterday shooting up the wooden Yankee fleet, it's armor plating laughing off their cannonballs.

She was preparing to finish the job today when the weirdly designed little U.S.S. Monitor chugged into view. The two ironclads fought to a draw, but it saved the remainder of the Union fleet. When you see paintings of the event, they neglect the fact that both ships were covered with pork fat to keep them slippery, and it must have caught fire during the cannon fire. So imagine two flaming pork chops bobbing in the water shooting at each other. They kept bouncing cannonballs off their iron sides all day. At one point the confederate captain asked his gunnery officer why he had stopped firing. He replied:" Because I'm doing her as much damage as if I snapped my fingers at her every two and a half minutes!" The Merrimac's crew even tried to board the Monitor with pistols and cutlasses, but she was too un-maneuverable to catch her. Finally exhausted, they both drew off for the night.

The CSS Merrimac was later blown up when it's home base at Norfolk was captured by land forces and the USS Monitor sank in a storm. But both sides began to build more iron warships. The London Times correspondent John Russell had watched the battle and wired home:" As of today every wooden fleet in the world is now obsolete."

1888- While strolling through his garden, writer Jules Verne was shot twice by a demented nephew. He recovered, but walked with a limp from then on.

1907-Former Edison animator J. Stuart Blackton starts "Moving Picture World" an early movie fanzine.

1913- Virginia Woolf completed her first novel The Voyage Out.

1916- Pancho Villa and his Mexican Revolutionaries- Los Dorados, crossed into Texas and New Mexico and at the town of Columbus killed 17 Americans and burned the town. Villa was angry that the Yankees had intervened in the Mexican revolution several times and allowed American railroads to transport the troops of his rival General Carranza. Pancho Villa was later pursued by U.S. troops under Blackjack Pershing leading men who would one day lead American armies like Lieutenant George Patton and Captain Douglas MacArthur.

1917- During the air battles over the Western Front this day a red German Fokker Albatross biplane was forced down over his own lines. Friendly troops carried the pilot to safety, stunned but okay. When they asked him how many planes had he shot down, he murmered "24". The men thought he was a liar until they undid the scarf around his neck and saw his Blue Max medal. The pilot was Von Richtofen, the Red Baron. Baron von Richtofen would recover and go back to the battle, scoring 80 kills until he was finally killed in April 1918.

1932-New York born Eamon DeValera elected first President of the Republic of Ireland.

1932- China’s last Manchu emperor Henry Pu Yi was declared by the Japanese Army emperor of their conquered territory in Manchuria called Manchukuo.

1935- The Looney Tune Cartoon "I haven’t Got a Hat" premiered. This cartoon gave birth to the first permanent Warner Bros. Cartoon star- Porky Pig.

1945- U.S. B-29s drop massive amounts of incendiary bombs on Tokyo, killing 120,000 people, more than Hiroshima (90,000). USAF General Curtis LeMay told his assistant Robert MacNamara that "If the Japanese had won the war, we would’ve been prosecuted as war criminals."

1954- Edgar R. Murrow does a "See It Now" television broadcast detailing the life of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the commie-chaser. The obvious contradictions and gross opportunism in McCarthy's record when laid out before a nationwide audience, destroyed his career and took the steam out of the "Red Scare" of the 50's. It is probably television journalism's finest moment. For the lowest? Well, what's on tonight ?

1955- Actor James Dean’s film East of Eden premiered today,.

1959-The first "Clutch Cargo" show.

1974- Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda came out of the Philippine jungle and surrendered, at last made to understand that World War II had been over for thirty years. Even after he captured a transistor radio, he thought the news of American troops in Vietnam and Korea was just propaganda. Onoda was finally convinced when Japanese researchers produced his elderly retired Major, who read over a bullhorn the surrender orders he first gave in 1945. He returned to Japan a popular, if confused, hero.

1984- Roy E. Disney Jr. resigned from the central board of the Walt Disney Company, setting in motion a series of takeover bids and maneuvering, that by August would leave him in control of the company.

1989- Artist-photographer Robert Maplethorpe died of AIDS.

1997- Gangsta-rap singer Christopher Wallace , who was known as the Notorious B.I.G. and also called Biggie Smalls, was shot and killed by a gangsta-style drive by. His last album was entitled Life After Death. Notorious BIG could never shake the accusation that he was involved in the similar murder of singer Tupac Shakur.
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Yesterdays Question: The big news story in America in 1841 was the Amistad Incident. Speilberg made a movie about it. What happened?

Answer: The Spanish slave ship La Amistad was taken over by rebellious African slaves as they came across the Atlantic. Once in America , some wanted to sell them or punish them as mutineers and slaves in rebellion. But former President John Quincy Adams argued that they were citizens of another country who took over a Spanish ship in international waters. The case went up to the Supreme Court, before the Amistad mutineers were allowed to go home.


March 7, 2013 thur
March 7th, 2013

Question: Okay music lovers, who was Mathilde Wesendonck? She is part of musical history even though she did not sing or play any instrument.

Yesterdays Question answered below: Quiz: Who wrote “ I shot an arrow up into the air. It fell to earth, I know not where.”
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History for 3/7/2013
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 42, Michael Eisner is 71, Wanda Sykes is 49, Peter Saarsgard is 42, Bryan Cranston is 57

322 BC- the Greek philosopher Aristotle died of indigestion.

161AD- The death of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 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 and ungrateful people they had defeated French and Indians for.

1774- To combat rampant smuggling and teach a lesson to the increasingly defiant 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 attack to dance with the scalps of the bluecoats.

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 flag, the Medieval heraldic shield of the ruling dynasty the Wittelsbachs. After the war, BMW was prohibited from manufacturing aircraft engines, as their engines had powered the fiercest fighters of the Luftwaffe, among them the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf 190. So BMW focused on making 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 Seigfried Line. The fleeing Nazi's 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 came down in 1989.

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

1965- 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 wrote “ I shot an arrow up into the air. It fell to earth, I know not where.”

Answer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Arrow and the Song.

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.


March 6, 2013 weds
March 6th, 2013

Quiz: Who wrote “ I shot an arrow up into the air. It fell to earth, I know not where.”

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean to set your imprimatur?
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History for 3/6/2013
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 66, Alan Greenspan, DC Mayor Marion Barry, Stephen Schwartz is 65, Ed McMahon, Will Eisner, Shaquille O’Neal is 41

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- 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 largest 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 neutral 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.

1998- The Big Lebowski opened in theaters. The Dude Abides…
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Yesterday’s Question: Who coined the phrase What does it mean to set your imprimatur?

Answer: Imprimatur actually means "it may be printed". In ancient Rome, it meant a senator or magistrate would make a document official by pressing his signet ring into wax sealing it. In Medieval Times, setting an imprimatur meant a book or other publication met censorship standards (most often by the Catholic Church) and could be printed. Today, the word has come to mean an approval or official endorsement of any sort.


March 5, 2013 tues.
March 5th, 2013

Question: What does it mean to set your imprimatur?

Quiz: Burkina-Faso. What is it? Is it a country?
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History for 3/5/2013
Birthdays: Henry III of England, Gionanni Batista Tiepolo, Explorer Le Sieur de Cadillac the founder of Detroit, Hector Villa-Lobos, Howard Pyle, William Oughtred 1574- inventor of the Slide Rule," Red Rosa" Luxemburg, Rex Harrison, Dean Stockwell is 77, Paolo Pasolini, Andy Gibb, Samantha Eggar, Andrej Wajda, Fred Williamson, Penn Gillette is 58, Eva Mendes is 39, Kevin Connolly is 39

Today is the feast day of Saint Eusebius of Cremona.

493AD- BARBARIAN PEACE SUMMIT- Theodoric the Visigoth invited Odoacer, King of the Germans in Italy to a peace conference. On a pre-arranged signal two Goths held Odoacer's hands pretending to shake them, then Theodoric whipped out his sword and chopped Odoacer in half. He said of his sword stroke: "Surely the mother of this knave hath made him with gristle, for I find no bones in his body." Peace was achieved.

1496- English King Henry VII hired Italian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) to go explore this New World that the Spanish were going on about.

1534- Renaissance painter Correggio died when after an argument in the cathedral of Parma with his patrons paid him with sacks of pennies. He grew overheated carrying them all home and died of a fever at age 45.

1562- The Teutonic Knights disbanded- Warrior monks were a creation of the Crusades but by the Renaissance they were outmoded. This German order of military monks formed in Jerusalem went to Prussia after the Crusades to convert the pagan Baltic peoples by chopping them up for Christ. But by now they had two big problems: Number one- everyone they used to chop were already Christians. Number two- the Reformation had started and all the knights were converting to Lutheranism, even the Order’s own bishop! So Grand Master Kettler went to Wittenburg to talk to the great reformer Martin Luther. Luther told Kettler to chuck the whole monk-thing, get married and become Duke of Prussia. Brandenburg-Prussia was later the state that Germany unified under in 1870.

1616- The Holy Office of the Inquisition published its verdict on the new scientific ideas of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. It read:" The idea that the Earth goes around the Sun is Foolish, Philosophically Erroneous and Heretical since it contradicts Holy Scripture. The idea that the Earth revolves on its axis is also Ridiculous and Heretical." Galileo’s writings were not removed from the Index of Banned Books until 1835.

1717- Giovanni Tiepolo joined the Guild of Saint Lawrence, the artists union in Rome.

1759- Francois Voltaire’s most famous satire on religion and hypocrisy- Candide- was published. It was immediately ordered publicly burned by the regional parliaments of Geneva and Paris. This only increased its popularity. To stay out of trouble Voltaire first refused to admit he was the author:" People must have lost their senses to attribute to me that pack of nonsense! I have, Thanks God, better occupations."

1770- THE BOSTON MASSACRE- A snowball fight near some British sentries turned into an ugly anti-British riot that made the redcoats open fire on the crowd. African American Crispus Attucks among several others were killed. Radical publisher Sam Adams inflated the incident into the Boston Massacre. The British authorities were accommodating enough to allow the soldiers put on trial in a colonial civilian court. The soldiers were defended by a young Boston lawyer named John Adams. They were all acquitted.

1836- At the Alamo, as the Mexican army of Santa Anna prepared for their final attack, legend has it Colonel Travis gathered the remaining defenders. He drew a line in the sand with his sword and asked all who wished to stay and fight to the bitter end to cross it. All crossed but one. He was an elderly Frenchman named Louis Rose, who slipped out through the lines to safety. Rose was a veteran of Napoleon's army and had fought at Waterloo. I guess he felt he had made enough history for one lifetime. At dusk, 16 year old rider James Allen slipped out of the Alamo to bring the doomed men’s last message to the outside world.

1853- Harry Steinway & Sons began their piano making company.

1863- The U.S. Army finally admits having the men do their own cooking was bad for morale, as well as their digestion. The first field kitchens with real cooks set up.

1868- Englishman C.H. Gould patented the first stapler.

1877- Rutherford Hayes inaugurated. His wife banned hard liquor from the White House. For this she was known as Lemonade Lucy.

1891- The town council of Phoenix Arizona offered a bounty of $200 for every dead Indian brought in, and they didn’t care how they came to be dead.

1912- Italy became the first to use dirigibles for military purposes. Using them to get aerial reconnaissance of Turkish positions west of Tripoli, Libya.

1913- The day after his inauguration, President Woodrow Wilson began filling his cabinet. Secretary of the Navy Dearing proposed as Assistant Secretary of the Navy a young New York assemblyman named Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wilson said:" Most Roosevelts I know try to run everything, but this fellow is a capitol idea!"

1918- Lenin moved the capitol of Russia from Petrograd- Saint Petersburg back to Moscow.

1922- F.W. Murnau’s eerie film Nosferatu premiered in Berlin.

1933- The day after his inauguration President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders a nationwide "Bank Holiday", a nice way of saying shut the whole darn system down to stop the panic and slide. One third of all U.S. banks had already collapsed. Roosevelt moved so fast, throwing program after program to combat the Great Depression, that his first 100 days in office became legendary, and now the media use it as a litmus to measure other presidents against.

1937-Allegheny airlines born, later to become U.S. Air. Allegheny had such a bad safety record that by the 1970’s the joke on their motto was "Allegheny will get you there-maybe."

1937- SPITFIRE. The first flight of Britain’s most famous fighter plane, the Supermarine Spitfire Mark II. Designer B. J. Mitchell fought red tape and outdated thinking on the army’s requisition board. He died of exhaustion and heart failure at 42, never knowing that his Spitfire would become the decisive tool in winning the air war over Britain, and saving his country from Nazi invasion.

1963- Country star Patsy Cline died in plane crash near Camden Tenn. Also killed were singers Cowboy Copas and Hacksaw Hawkins.

1973, New York Yankee pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson make a stunning declaration. The left-handers announce that they have traded each others wives, children, houses, even their family dogs.

1982 - John Belushi died of drug overdose at Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip. He had done twenty heroin-cocaine speedballs in just 24 hours. A woman named Cathy Smith was charged with administering to him the fatal dose. Robin Williams was with him that night partying also but left early. Belushi was 31. Someone scrawled on Belushi’s tombstone:" You could have given us more laughs.....But NNNOOOO!

1995- Vivian Stanstall, lead singer for the Bonzo Dog Band, died in a fire in his London flat. He had been smoking in bed.

2004- Communist China changes it’s constitution to say that private property is now OK.
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Yesterday’s Question: Burkina-Faso. What is it? Is it a country?

Answer: Burkina-Faso is a small nation in central Africa. It got it’s independence from France in 1960.


March 4, 2013 mon
March 4th, 2013

Quiz: Burkina-Faso. What is it? Is it a country?

Yesterday’s Question: When Leadbelly sang “Let the Midnight Special, shine his light on me”, what was he talking about?
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History for 3/4/2013
Birthdays: King Henry II Plantagenet, Antonio Vivaldi, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, Count Pulaski, Miriam Makeba, Nancy Wilson, Bernard Haittink, John Garfield, Knute Rockne, Chastity Bono, prizefighter Ray Boom-Boom Mancini, Patsy Kensit. Katherine O’Hara is 59, James Ellroy, Mykleti Williamson.

1152- Frederick Barbarossa made Emperor of Germany. Barbarossa means 'redbeard'. Barbarossa was the Richard Lionheart of Germany.

1517- HERNANDO CORTEZ LANDS IN MEXICO. With a hostile Viceroy of Cuba between him and Spain, and only 508 soldiers he resolves to attack the Aztec Empire of many millions. He even burned his ships to force his men to conquer or die.

1554- Queen Mary Tudor published a Royal edict repudiating her father Henry VIII’s religious reforms and restoring the Roman Catholic Faith to dominance in England. Protestantism and other “heresies” were forbidden. To those who didn’t agree she became Bloody Mary.

1647- As he realized he was losing the English Civil War, King Charles Ist sent his son Charles II and the rest of his immediate family abroad to Holland for safety. Today he saw them off. They would never see him alive again.

1681- King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn and his Quakers to found a colony in the New World-Penn wanted to name the new country "New Wales" because of its hills, but Charles disagreed. As a Quaker, Penn was too modest to have a whole colony named after him. Since the Merry Monarch was essentially paying off an old debt owed to Penn's father, Admiral Penn, who stayed loyal to him during Cromwell’s time, the king suggested the new colony be named after the father. What else was there besides hills? Lots of forest-- the King knew that woods in Latin is Sylvania. Hey, how about Penn's Woods- thus Pennsylvania..

When His Majesty noticed the Quakers not removing their hats in his presence, King Charles removed his. William Penn asked: ”Sire, why dost thou remove thy hat?” The Merry Monarch replied:” Well, ONE of us is supposed to!”

1759- Madame la Pompadour secured the appointment of Etienne de Silhouette as Finance Minister. Silhouette tried to fix the chaotic economy of France by steep taxes of aristocrats and cutting back their privileges. Noblemen said they had been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. By November he was gone, people joking called him a shadow. Now the word silhouette means outline figure.

1791- Green Mountains, or in French Vermont, territory became the 14th state. The first new state added to the original 13 colonies. Before then, Vermonters had tried to be an independent country and once during the Revolution, Ethan Allen floated secret negotiations to sell Vermont back to the British.

TRADITIONAL PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION DAY-1792-1933 "March Forth with a New President" (get it ?) Transportation being what it was in early America and the time it took to count votes, and the Electoral College to ratify the election results, this seemed a convenient time. Inauguration ceremonies have been as simple as Tom Jefferson addressing a few guests indoors, then returning to have dinner by himself at Conrad's Tavern to George W. Bush's $40 million dollar 8 inaugural balls.
In 1937 Franklin Roosevelt moved the inauguration date to the third week in January.

1836- Today General Santa Anna held a council of war to decide what to do about the Alamo. Many of his officers were against an attack. The Texans were cut off with little food and there was no help coming. The Alamo had no strategic importance. So why waste men? But Santa Anna wanted to make an example of these “Yankee Land Pirates”. He ordered a grand assault on the Alamo as soon as the preparations were completed.

1861- THE STARS & BARS. During the Civil War the Confederate army was having a problem with their flag. Their first design so closely resembled the United States flag that soldiers had trouble distinguishing one from the other in heavy battle smoke. Creole General Pierre Beaureguard put the ladies sewing circles of New Orleans on the problem and they came up with the familiar Confederate Stars & Bars design that still flies over some errant Statehouses today. When Old Dixie was defeated the original prototype flag was smuggled out to Cuba, but was eventually returned and today is in the Museum of the Confederacy in New Orleans.

1887- William Randolph Hearst buys the little San Francisco Examiner and builds the Hearst newspaper empire. Hearst’s father was owner of the famed Comstock Mine and thought his son crazy for wasting his time with the penny-paper business. Hearst died in 1951 at age 88, leaving an estate of $160 million. Today Hearst publications is still 15 magazines and broadcast networks..

1887- The first Daimler motorcar introduced in Essenlingen Germany- the Daimler Benzin Motorcarriage. Daimler’s chief competition was the motor company of Dr Carl Benz. In 1899 Austrian Emile Jellinek invested heavily in Daimler’s motorcars provided he name them for his daughter Mercedes. Mercedes and Benz merged in 1926 but the two founders- Gottfried Daimler and Carl Benz never met face to face.

1902- AAA the Auto Club founded.

1917- Jeanette Rankin became the first female member of Congress.

1924- The song “Happy Birthday to You” copyrighted by Claydon Sunny.

1933- Franklin Roosevelt gave his famous speech“ The Only thing we have to fear is, Fear itself.” at his first inauguration.

1936- Screenwriter Dudley Nichols publicly refuses the Best Screenplay Oscar for John Ford’s “The Informer” as protest in support of the struggling Writer’s Guild.

1936- First flight of the German dirigible Graf Hindenburg.

1944- Louis Lepke Buchalter went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. Buchalter with Albert Anastasia headed the heavy enforcement arm of Lucky Lucciano’s New York Mafia Syndicate. Nicknamed “Murder Incorporated ”the Brooklyn gang committed at least 100 murders, including Dutch Schultz and Lucciano’s mentor Joe the Boss Masseria.

1946- Alex Raymond's comic strip 'Rip Kirby" premiered.

1952- Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis at the Little Red Church on Coldwater Canyon blvd. in L.A. William Holden was best man.

1952- Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher:" I've completed a new novel. I think it's my best one to date." The Old Man and the Sea.

1956- Burger King introduced their signature hamburger the Whopper.

1958- U.S.S. Nautilus, first nuclear sub, reaches the North Pole under the ice cap.

1960-Famed American opera baritone Leonard Warren collapses and dies on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the 2nd act of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino.

1961- In the early stages of filming Cleopatra in London, actress Elizabeth Taylor developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. She would have died, had not doctors at a convention at London’s Dorchester Hotel performed and emergency tracheotomy. When you seen the film today you can still see the tracheotomy scar at the base of her throat.

1976- Due to the intervention of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, the Giants baseball team would stay in city by the bay. In a last minute deal, the Stoneham family sells the team to Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth instead of the Labbatt's Brewery, which had planned to move the Giants to Canada.

1994- Basketball legend Michael Jordan comes to bat for the first time in a Chicago White Sox Baseball uniform. Jordan will give up baseball after one season and return to the NBA.

1991- During the Gulf War, US troops destroy an Iraqi bunker concealing tons of deadly serin nerve gas. Estimates are up to 24,000 troops were exposed to the toxic release.

1994- 375 pound comedian John Candy died of heart failure in his sleep. He was 43.

1997- The senate of Brazil allowed women to wear slacks to work.

2000- The Japanese launch of Sony Playstation 2. The most anticipated videogame launch in history. 600,000 units were sold. One store in Tokyo’s Ginza had 4,000 people lined up at their door.

2004- A New York court convicted interior decorating guru Martha Stewart of four counts of stock fraud. This was for dumping her stock in a pharmaceutical firm called InClone after getting an inside tip that their cancer cure didn’t actually work.
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Yesterday’s Question: When Leadbelly sang “Let the Midnight Special, shine his light on me”, what was he talking about?

Answer: Sugar Land Texas was the site of the Federal prison Leadbelly was imprisoned in. At night convicts could hear the lonesome whistle of the express train that left Houston bound for California and the Good Life. Inmates called it The Midnight Special.


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