Quiz: What is a crustacean?

Answer to Yesterdays Question below: During the American Revolution, France was on the American rebels side. Who’s side was Germany on?
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History for 2/3/2021
Birthdays- French King Charles VI the Mad –1380, Felix Mendelson-Bartoldy, Horace Greely, Gideon Mantell 1790-pioneer British fossil hunter that named the Iguanadon, Pretty Boy Floyd, Gertrude Stein, Norman Rockwell, James A. Michener, Joey Bishop, Shelley Berman, Bob Griese, Fran Tarkenton, John Fiedler the voice of Piglet, Victor Buono, Blythe Danner is 78, Morgan Fairchild is 71, Nathan Lane is 65

Today is the Feast of St. Blaise, patron saint of sore throats and sick cattle.

1238- The Mongol horde under Genghis’ grandson Batu Khan burned the Russian city of Vladimir-Suzdal. He later also destroyed Kiev.

1134- Robert Curthose (little bandy legs) was the eldest son of William Conqueror, but he was outmaneuvered first by his middle brother William II Rufus, then his youngest brother Henry I. Henry had his brother imprisoned in Cardiff Castle for thirty years, until this day he died in his 80s.

1547- Czar Ivan the Terrible married Anastasia Romanova. Her young death may have pushed his sanity over the edge.

1637- TULIPMANIA- Dutch merchants went so wild over the importation of tulip bulbs from Turkey, that they drove up the market in tulips to absurd lengths. It was the birth of Futures Markets, investing in crops that haven’t even been planted yet. Today the first consignment of bulbs failed to sell, and caused panic selling. It caused the first international stock market collapse.

1690- The first paper money issued in the New World, by the Massachusetts Colony.

1780- THE FIRST AMERICAN SERIAL KILLER- For those who think this kind of crime is a symptom of our modern Secular-Humanist society: In New Milford Connecticut, Revolutionary War veteran Barnett Davenport was rooming at the farm of Mr. Caleb Mallory. This day for no apparent reason Davenport murdered Mallory, his wife, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, using his musket and farm tools. He then set the house on fire with their bodies inside.
He was soon captured, and his confession ran to 14 pages. He was sentenced by Declaration of Independence signer Judge Roger Sherman to 70 lashes, then hanged. The incident was widely reported in the young nations press and was quite sensationalized.

1781- After declaring war on Holland over their support for the Revolutionary War, Admiral Rodney with a British fleet captured the Dutch Caribbean island of Saint Eustachius (now the Virgin Islands ). The island was a major trading center of covert military aid to the Yankee rebels. Rodney looted the city and flew the Dutch flag over the harbor for several more weeks to surprise incoming Dutch and American ships. But while he made neat headlines in the Caribbean, he and his fleet would have been far more useful rescuing Lord Cornwallis whose army was surrounded at Yorktown Virginia.

1783- The Kingdom of Spain recognized the independence of the United States.

1846- The US Army captured the pueblo town of Taos New Mexico from hostile locals and Indians by shelling the town with cannon fire. Lt. Sterling Price then hanged the Indian Chiefs for treason, even though these Indians hadn’t even seen an American until now. New Mexico had just been conquered by US forces for a few weeks.

1862- President Lincoln received a message from the King of Siam offering him Siamese war elephants to help him win the Civil War. He politely passed on the offer.

1863- MARK TWAIN- It was a long custom in American newspapers for columnists and critics to publish under pseudonyms. Author, riverboat pilot Samuel Clemens invents for himself the pseudonym for which he would become famous. This day in the Virginia City Nevada Territorial Register newspaper was an article authored by someone calling himself - 'Mark Twain'. Mark Twain was the Mississippi River pilot's term for when a steamboat is in two fathoms of water or more, in other words, safely enough away from shallows to proceed at full speed.

1865- The Confederate government made the first overtures to Washington for peace talks to end the Civil War. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens secretly met with Abe Lincoln on board a riverboat in the James River to discuss terms. However no agreement was reached. One point that became a deal-breaker was the Lincoln’s offer of pardons and amnesties to Rebels who retook the Oath of Allegiance to the US. Stephens angrily replied that the South had a legal right to secede so had committed no crimes needing any pardons. So the Civil War continued on for two more bloody months

1889-THE BANDIT QUEEN- In Oklahoma, outlaw Belle Starr was shotgunned out of her saddle by an old boyfriend. She usually shot them first. Originally named Myra Belle Shirley, she pursued a career as an outlaw and had two children, one by Cole Younger, another by a member of the James Gang. Rustler, gunfighter, prostitute, sideshow performer, she said: "Let's just say I'm a woman who's seen a lot of the world."

1912- The rules governing U.S. football are revised. The playing field was shortened to 100 yards; a touchdown counted as six points instead of five; four downs are allowed instead of three and the kickoff point was moved from midfield to the 40 yd. line.

1913- Federal Income Tax Amendment ratified.

1916- The original Canadian Parliament building burned down.

1917- After a German U-Boat sank the U.S.S. Housatonic, President Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany.

1920- The play Beyond the Horizon premiered. The first hit of a young man who tried to drink himself to death, but instead became a playwright- Eugene O’Neill.

1930- Roy Disney signed a deal with M. George Borgfeldt Co. of New York to sell figurines of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Disney merchandising is born!

1943- Four Chaplains Day. This day a German U-Boat torpedoed and sank the troopship USS Dorchester, with the loss of 600 lives. Four army chaplains gave their life jackets to others to be saved, and so drowned in the icy Atlantic. Congress declared Feb 3rd thereafter Four Chaplains Day.

1945- General MacArthur began the battle to liberate Manila. The fighting lasted a month, fierce fighting house to house with some Japanese troops killing Philippine civilians as they withdrew.

1945- Walt Disney’s The Three Caballeros opened in the USA. It had premiered first in Mexico City last Dec.

1948- The first Cadillac’s with big rear tail fins were produced.

1953- Jacques Cousteau, inventor of the Aqua Lung published The Silent World, and later made a film version of the book with Louis Malle.

1959 "The Day the Music Died" The first Rock & Roll tragedy. Top pop stars Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson died in plane crash. They were on tour and Holly chartered the small plane so they could get to Fargo, North Dakota in time to get his shirts cleaned. Waylon Jennings was supposed to join them but he gave up his seat to Richardson because Richardson was running a fever and didn’t want a long cold bus ride. As they left Richardson teased Jennings:” Hope your bus doesn’t freeze.” And Jennings joked:” Hope your plane doesn’t crash.” The plane was called the American Pie, which inspired a Don McClean’s hit song “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie.”

1962- John F. Kennedy signed the trade embargo act against Cuba, banning all trade with Fidel Castro’s regime. White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger recalled how the night before JFK had him go around Washington DC and buy up all the Havana cigars (Monte Cristos) he could for the White House humidor. The embargo lasted until partially lifted by President Obama in 2015. Then it was reinstated by Pres.Trump.

1966- Russia soft landed a probe on the Moon- Lunik-7. The Soviets took the first photos of the Dark Side of the Moon with Lunik –2 as part of their Space Race with the US.

1973- Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law.

1986- After three months of negotiations, Steve Jobs signed papers to purchase the George Lucas Film Graphics Division, now under their new name Pixar Inc.

1989- Swiss firm L'Oreal/Nestle bought animation studio Filmation from Westinghouse and shut it down laying off 229 artists the day before a new federal regulation requiring a company give it's employees 60 day notice before closing went into effect.

1998- Near Trento Italy a low flying Marine jet on maneuvers tangled snapped a cable on a ski tram, sending 20 people 300 feet down to their deaths.

1998- Female murderer Karla Faye Tucker executed by lethal injection at Huntsville State Prison, Texas. She had chopped up two people with an axe in 1983.

2003-Legendary rock and roll producer Phil Spector shot his girlfriend B-movie actress Lana Clarkson at his LA mansion. Spector created the Wall of Sound concert technique and produced for the Beatles, Diana Ross and Lenny Bruce among many others.
The few days before, Phil Spector said to the British Daily Telegraph, “. I would say I'm probably relatively insane, to an extent. I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn't say I'm schizophrenic. I have a bipolar personality, which is strange.”
He died in prison of CoVid in 2021.

2013- American super-sniper Chris Kyle spent his time back from the Iraq War helping men suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome by taking them hunting. Today he took out a vet named Jodi Routh. At a shooting range, Routh turned his weapon on Kyle and shot him. Shortly before he was killed, Kyle texted his wife about Routh “ This guy is straight-up nuts.”
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Yesterday’s Question: During the American Revolution, France was on the American rebels side. Who’s side was Germany on?

Answer: Neither. There was no real Germany yet. Just 38 little principalities, loosely constituting the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The largest state, Prussia, ruled by Frederick the Great, was disinterested in overseas colonies. When the English King hired Hessian mercenaries from the neighboring state of Hesse, Frederick charged them cattle tax to cross his territory.








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Quiz: During the American Revolution, France was on the American rebels side. Who’s side was Germany on?

Yesterdays question answered below: During the American Revolution, France was on the American rebels side. Who’s side was Spain on?
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History for 02/02/2021
Birthdays: Tallyrand, Charlie Halas a co-founder of the NFL, James Joyce, Ayn Rand, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifitz, Abba Eban, Farrah Fawcett, Garth Brooks, Christie Brinkley, Tommy Smothers, Stan Getz, James Dickey, Liz Smith, Elaine Stritch, Brent Spinner is 72, Shakira is 44

Happy Groundhog Day. This morning if Paxatawney Phil sees his shadow, it means 6 more weeks of winter.

In ancient Rome it was the day for the lesser Eleusinian Mysteries held in honor of the goddess Demeter. Part of the ceremony was you were given a bowl of wine with certain herbs in it. After drinking it, you saw the gods.
It was experimenting to find the nature of these ancient herbs in 1946 that led Dr. Albert Hoffman to discover LSD.

961 A.D. -Otto I Hohenstaufen crowned, The HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE of the GERMAN NATION declared, the First Reich. Otto was one of the first rulers to win wars with armored knights on horseback instead of the Roman Legion style infantry, setting the tone for the Middle Ages.
At age 45, he was crowned Emperor by Pope Stephen VI, who was 19. This event created the unusual connection between the German Empire and the Italian states. Italian states like Florence and Venice considered vassals of the German Emperor even though they acted independently and he almost never crossed the Alps to check up on them. A German Emperor was called King of the Romans until crowned by the Pope.

In 1477 the Emperors did away with kissing up to the Pope and left the Imperial selection to a court of electors meeting in Frankfurt. Holy Roman Empire hung around until about 1809. To quote Voltaire “ It wasn’t much of an Empire, it wasn’t Roman and it most certainly wasn’t very holy either.”

12-1300's-In the middle Ages this was the day of the Winter Reysa- when Crusader Knights of the Teutonic Order would venture into the Lithuanian forest, find a village of pagans, and chop them up for the Christian Faith. There were two expeditions a year, this one and in the summer. The Knights ran a sort of Club-Med for northern knights who wanted to crusade, but not risk the dangerous long journey to Palestine.

1536- The City of Buenos Aires founded.

1565- CZAR IVAN THE TERRIBLE exhibited the first signs of mental unbalance. Without warning, in December he abandoned his capitol Moscow and disappeared. It took several weeks for the Russian court to find him at a little village named Alexandrov, 350 miles away. A procession waving incense and icons came out to beg him to return. He said he would return only if he were allowed to deal with his enemies ruthlessly.
This day he returned to the Kremlin with a private army called the Oprichina, 6,000 criminals and peasants dressed as monks to help him torture people. When asked if a group of Jews from Lithuania could settle in Muscovite lands, Ivan explained his opposition: “ Jews would bring strange herbs into our realm and lead Russians away from Christianity.”

1709- William Dampier was a reformed buccaneer who wrote books about his travels. This day while cruising the South Seas he rescued a man named Sir William Selkirk, who had been marooned on an otherwise uninhabited island for four years. It seems Selkirk had gotten into an argument with the captain of a Chilean schooner who left him there. It was a wise move, because the captain was crazy and his ship was later lost with all hands. Upon returning to London, Capt. Dampier mentioned the incident to his friend, writer Daniel DeFoe, who used it to create his most memorable novel- Robinson Crusoe.

1811- Fur traders established Fort Ross, just north of Spanish San Francisco. It was the deepest Russian settlement into North America. In 1845 the Russian Fur Trading Company sold it to American John Sutter. Today there is a reconstructed facsimile of Fort Ross on the site.

1848- TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO signed, which ended the U.S.-Mexican War. Ambassador Nicholas Trist was given the dangerous assignment of finding the Mexican Government fleeing the American assault on Mexico City, then convincing them to sign away California and the Southwest, approximately 40% of their national territory.
Just when negotiations in the little village of Guadalupe Hidalgo were about to conclude successfully, he got a message from Washington to break off talks and return. President Polk had changed his mind. He now wanted the complete conquest of Mexico down to the Yucatan! Trist knew if he did this, the war party in Mexico would keep up a guerrilla war for decades afterwards. So he ignored the message, signed for the U.S. and fixed our southern border at the Rio Grande.
When Trist got home, instead of thanks, he was arrested for treason. But President Polk couldn't convince his war-weary congress to continue the fight. So the treaty was upheld. The French tried conquering Mexico twenty years later and got the Mexican national uprising Trist avoided. Nicolas Trist was released from prison, but he never got his back pay until President Lincoln awarded it to him on his deathbed 16 years later. John Kennedy wrote about him in his book Profiles in Courage.

1852- London’s first public toilet was dedicated- near 95 Fleet St.

1870- Samuel Clemens also known as Mark Twain, married Olivia Langdon or Livy.

1870- The first international news agency. Reuters, Havas and Wolf News Agencies agreed to pool their resources for the shared expense of telegraphy.

1876- The National Baseball League founded.

1890- Ten months before the massacre at Wounded Knee 11 million acres of Sioux homeland in South Dakota went on sale to white homesteaders. The Sioux were removed to a smaller reservation and the money raised from the sale was supposed to go to them, but it all disappeared into the pockets of middlemen.

1910- D.W. Griffith's' In Old California', sometimes called the first Hollywood film.

1913- New York’s Grand Central Station opened.

1920- Admiral Kolchak, leader of the anti-communist (White) Russian armies in the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, was shot by firing squad and chucked into a dry canal. For a year Kolchak was de facto dictator of all Russia from the Ural mountains to the Pacific.

1922- the novel "Ulysses" is published. James Joyce had finished the book months earlier but delayed publishing until his birthday, when it would be 2/2/22, which he considered lucky.

1922- Twenty one year old Walt Disney founded Newman's Laff-O-Grams in Kansas City.

1925- IDITEROD- THE SERUM RUN COMPLETED- Nome Alaska at this time was a town totally depended upon supplies from the outside world traveling in by sled dog teams. When a serious epidemic of diptheria threatened the population the call went to the ‘Outside” as Alaskans called the rest of the world, for help. It normally took a musher 18-20 days to cover the 650 miles from the coast to Nome, now a relay of 20 teams in short sprints would attempt to do it in 5 days in the depth of winter.
One musher reported blizzard conditions so bad he couldn’t see the end of his team. While the press kept the world waiting breathlessly on this day Charlie Evans and his malamute team led by his lead dog Balto got into Nome with the serum in a metal cylinder wrapped in fur. At one point two of his dogs froze to death in harness and Evans took up their place himself and ran alongside the dogs the balance of the trip. It took 5 days and 7 hours. The epidemic was limited to five deaths.
The 20 men and their teams were hailed as heroes. Although the dog Balto got most of the credit and has a statue and a movie about him, experts say a 48 pound Siberian husky named Togo did the greatest exertion, going 200 miles in the first leg. The Iditerod sled race is today run in commemoration of this event. The last surviving musher of the original race, Edgar Nollner, died in 1999 at 94 years old

1940- Soviet dictator Stalin had futurist theater director Vselevod Meyerhold shot.
At the time of his arrest Meyerhold’s wife Zinaida was stabbed to death. Neighbors who heard her screams assumed they were rehearsing a new play.

1957- Elizabeth Taylor married producer Mike Todd. Todd was killed in a plane crash a year later. Despite her famous association with Richard Burton, Taylor later said Mike Todd was the only man she ever truly loved.

1961- In a little Greenwich Village nightclub called the Blue Angel a young stand up comic got his first debut. His name was Woody Allen

1963- In England, singer Helen Schapiro was on tour. On the lower end of her program card was a new band called the Beatles.

1966- Woody Allen married Louise Lasser. They later divorced.

1971- After a coup toppled legal President Milton Obote, former British colonial sergeant Idi Amin was inaugurated as president of Uganda. He declared himself Conqueror of the British Empire, led his little army in mock invasions of Israel, even though it was thousands of miles away, and he was surrounded by hostile nations. He played drums in his own rock band, wrestled crocodiles, and once reputedly killed and ate one of his sons.
He was kicked out by a Tanzanian invasion in 1979.

1971- Murakami-Wolf's TV special "The Point" with Dustin Hoffman narrating and Harry Nilsson's music. In 1973, Hoffman's track was re-recorded by Ringo Starr for some reason. “Me and my Ar-row…”

1979- Sid Vicious, lead singer for the punk band The Sex Pistols, was found dead of a drug overdose. The 21 year old was awaiting trial for the stabbing death of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen.

1982- President Hafiz al-Assad ordered the destruction of Syrian city of Hama after its occupation by a Muslim fundamentalist group who sought to create an Iranian-style theocracy. Maybe as many as 25,000 were killed. His son and successor Bashir Al Assad did equally horrible things to the Syrian people in their civil war.

1985- O.J. Simpson married Nicole Brown Simpson.

1997- Nationally known sportscaster Marv Albert allegedly had an evening of sex and porn with a prostitute. At one point he bit the lady on the back. He was tried for lewd behavior and his career tanked.

2006- The Cartoon Riots. A Danish newspaper printed a political cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with his turban shaped like a bomb. This so offended people in the Moslem world, that rioting broke out in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jakharta and European capitols. Grenades were thrown at Danish embassies and Danish nationals made to flee. Cartoonist Peter Westergaard dodged a Somali man who attacked him with an axe, and still today needs a bodyguard.

2014- Actor Phillip Seymour-Hoffman died of a drug overdose.
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Yesterday’s question: During the American Revolution, France was on the American rebels side. Who’s side was Spain on?

Answer: Spain was on the American side. Spanish Viceroy the Maquis de Galves attacked English settlements in West Florida (Alabama)