Quiz: Which country is known in their own language as Suomi?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is meant by the phrase, “Tilting at Windmills”…?
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History for 9/3/2022
Birthdays: Alan Ladd, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, Irene Papas, Memphis Slim, Eddie Brat Stanky, Mort Walker, Eric Larson, Mitzi Gaynor, Richard Tyler, Eileen Brennan, Phil Stern- former WWII Darby’s Ranger and personal photographer for Louis B. Mayer of MGM, Valerie Perrine, Charlie Sheen is 58

401BC- THE MARCH OF TEN THOUSAND- Prince of Persia Cyrus the Younger had begun a civil war to overthrow his brother the King Artaxerxes the Mindful. In Cyrus’ army was ten thousand Greek mercenaries led by several generals including Xenophon, a writer who was once a student of Socrates. Today at a Babylonian town called Cunaxa, Cyrus’s force defeated the Persian Royal Army, but Prince Cyrus was killed.
Without an employer and a thousand miles from home in a hostile country, these ten thousand Greeks were really in trouble. But they got themselves together, and in an epic march they fought their way up country through hostile armies from the Euphrates (Iraq) to the Greek colonies on the Black Sea (Northern Turkey). After 5 months their cry "Thalassa! The Sea! Which meant they were at last safe and could get a ship home. They dedicated a monument which was discovered by archaeologists near Trapizond Turkey in 1997. Xenophon wrote a book about this adventure called Anabasis or The March Up Country.

1189- King Richard the Lion-Heart crowned at Westminster. He declared his desire to fulfill his father Henry II’s vow to go on Crusade. Richard spoke French and only visited England twice more in his ten years as king. The Anglo-Saxon tongue would not become the official language of England until the 14th century. We don't know Richard's full opinion of London but he allegedly once told his minister William Longchamps:" I'd sell the whole place if they'd let me.." The people celebrate their new king by killing all the Jews they can find, including a mass burning in York. That didn’t stop good King Richard from keeping a Jewish man as his personal doctor.

1260- Battle of Ayn Jalut (Goliath’s Spring)- Hulugau & the Mongol horde were turned back from Egypt by the Mamaluke army of Sultan Baibars. The Mongols had been in the saddle since China. They had already ravaged Baghdad, Moscow and the Holyland. The Mamelukes were originally an elite guard of slaves handpicked as children to be brought up as fanatical fighting machines. They eventually seized power and ran Egypt until 1798.
When emissaries from the Caliph of Baghdad asked the Mameluke Sultan who was his family and by what right did he rule, the Sultan shook his scimitar in their faces and declared "This is by what right I rule!' Throwing some gold coins on the floor and watching the slaves and eunuchs scamper for them, he said, "And That is my family!!'

1592- Retired London actor Richard Green wrote a pamphlet to his fellow actors complaining of an actor becoming popular in their midst "A new upstart crow filled with Bombast" - William Shakespeare.

1651-Battle of Worcester. Puritan Oliver Cromwell destroyed in battle an army of resurgent Royalists. Young King Charles II hid in an oak tree, forever called the Royal Oak. He then slipped out of the country in disguise as a chimney sweep. This is why a number of English pubs along his route bear the curious name "The Black Boy". The little ship that carried Charles across the Channel he later purchased for himself as a yacht and renamed it, “ The Royal Escape”.

1657-Battle of Dunbar- Cromwell defeated the Irish.

1658- Oliver Cromwell doesn't defeat Death. As you can see Cromwell the Lord Protector liked things on lucky days. Even though he was a deeply religious Puritan he believed in astrology and would send money to German astronomer Johannes Kepler to cast his horoscope. Kepler was the father of modern astronomy but it was horoscopes that paid his bills.

1697 - King William's War in America ends with Treaty of Ryswick.

1777- In a small skirmish with British redcoats near Cooch, Maryland, the American rebels raise their new Stars & Stripes flag for the first time. They lost.

1792- Enraged French revolutionaries broke into the jail cell of the Princess de Lamballe, a confidante of Queen Marie Antoinette. She was gang raped in a kennel, beheaded and the body torn to pieces. One revolutionary pulled her heart out and bit it, another shot her legs out of a cannon. Finally they put her head on a pike and danced with it under the Queen’s window demanding she give it a kiss.

1833- The New York Sun began publication, the first American mass circulation newspaper.

1838- Writer Frederick Douglas escaped slavery by boarding a northern bound train disguised as a sailor. Later when he was making a living as a writer, he returned to his former master enough money to compensate his loss. Southerners doubted anyone as intelligent and well-read as Douglas could have ever been a slave, but Douglas liked to remind them he "stole himself out of slavery."

1864- Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan was killed during a raid. He encouraged his raiders to disdain sabers as outmoded antiques and equipped them instead with rapid firing carbines and six-shooters. Once when attacked by union cavalry with drawn sabers, Morgan cried:" Hah, the fools! Mow ‘em down boys!"

1870- Napoleon III surrendered himself to Bismarck and the Kaiser after losing the Battle of Sedan. Louis Napoleon was suffering so from kidney stones that he was wearing rouge and lipstick to give color to his grey face.

1886- Geronimo gave up to the U.S. Army for the fourth and last time. He and his Chiracaua Apaches were promised no retribution would befall them. After they were disarmed they were packed up into railroad cars and shipped to prison in Ft. Myers, Florida to die in the malaria infested Everglades. Geronimo in his time had as many Apache enemies as white men. The White Mountain Apaches helped guide the US cavalry in their pursuit. After Geronimo's Chiracaua's were exiled, the White Mountain Apache were rewarded by also being shipped to the everglades. Geronimo survived it all. After his release he retired to Santa Fe, where he died in 1910.

1895 - 1st pro football game played, Latrobe beats Jeanette 12-0 (Penn)

1903: Col. Griffith Jenkins Griffith shot his wife, Christina, in the head.
The shooting occurred at the Hotel Arcadia in Santa Monica, where the Griffiths and their 15-year-old son were spending the summer, The Times reported two days later."Mrs. Griffith was in the room packing the trunk preparatory to coming home to Los Angeles, when Griffith entered the room and pulled his revolver," the newspaper said, citing a relative who had heard the story from Mrs. Griffith "in moments of consciousness" at the hospital." He pointed it at Mrs. Griffith, and said: “Get your prayer book and kneel down, and cover your eyes. I'm going to shoot you, and kill you.” 
The bullet went through Mrs. Griffith's left eye, but she managed to escape by jumping out the window. She landed on a porch roof, fracturing her shoulder, The Times reported.
Griffith was convicted of attempted murder and spent more than a year at San Quentin. Col Griffith later gave the town of Los Angeles more than 3,000 acres of land to create the park that bears his name, Griffith Park. And his wife divorced him.

1898- After destroying the Mahdi army in battle, Lord Kitchener and the Anglo-Egyptian army re-entered the destroyed Sudanese capitol of Khartoum. Kitchener in a spotless white uniform held an Anglican memorial mass at the site of General Charles Gordon’s headquarters where he was killed. Thousands of redcoat, white pith-helmeted troops sang Gordon’s favorite hymn " Abide With Me ", to massed bugles. Meanwhile, the Muslim inhabitants looked on with curiosity.

1902- In Pittsfield Massachusetts, a trolley car crashed into the carriage carrying President Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was hurled from the wreck and landed on his face. A Secret Serviceman was killed. But Teddy survived.

1912- Los Angeles attraction Frazier's Million Dollar Pier destroyed by fire.

1930- The first issue of the Hollywood Reporter.

1937- Orson Welles Mercury Theater of the air produced its first play on nationwide radio- an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

1939- Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany over the invasion of Poland, World War II results.

1939- British Prime Minister Chamberlain's war announcement interrupts a Disney Cartoon "Mickey's Gala Premiere" showing on the nascent BBC television service. Television shuts down for the duration.

1940 -Adolf Hitler set the date for the invasion of England for Sept 21st. This after Goering’s Luftwaffe would destroy the Royal Air Force, which they never did.

1941-1st use of Zyclon-B gas in Auschwitz, on Russian prisoners of war.

1944- During the World War II U.S. pilots shot down by the Japanese were rescued by submarines. The submariners called the pilots Zoomies. This day off the coast of Ichi Jima, the submarine USS Tampico plucked out of the ocean a Zoomie who would one day become President of the United States. Second Lieutenant George H. W. Bush. George Herbert Walker Bush was such an Ivy League preppie, that while other pilots had nicknames like Wild Man and Capt. Marvel, his fellow pilots called him “George Herbert Walker Bush.”

1962- The Hanna-Barbera show 'Lippy the Lion and Hardy-Harr-Harr" premiered.

1967- Sweden officially switched from driving on the left side of the street (UK style) to driving on the right, with the expected traffic confusion.

1970 - Al Wilson, "Blind Owl", guitarist/vocalist (Canned Heat), died at age 27.

1970 - Jochen Rindt, famed German racecar driver died in a car crash. He was 28.

1971- The offices of the psychiatrist of Defense Department attorney Daniel Ellsberg were burglarized by agents of the Nixon White House, to look for incriminating dirt on Ellsberg. They hoped to stop him from publishing the Pentagon Papers by resorting to blackmail. Chief White House counsel John Dean noted that agent G. Gordon Liddy was such a loose cannon, that as he stood watch outside the offices he invited a friend to take a photo of him! A true Kodak moment!

2003- Two crooks in Detroit hijacked a Krispy Kreme truck and tried to hold three thousand donuts hostage.

2004- Chechen separatists attacked a primary school in Beslan, Russia. After a three day siege the Russian authorities stormed the school after first pumping gas into it. 331 died, mostly little children.

2017- After weeks of extensive negotiations and personal photo-ops with Pres. Trump and Kim Jong Un, North Korea exploded its first hydrogen bomb anyway.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is meant by the phrase, “Tilting at Windmills”…?

Answer: In Cervantes story of Don Quixote, the old knight imagines some benign country windmills were actually evil giants. He galloped at them with his lance, which in medieval terms was called “tilting”. Tilting at windmills has come to mean a futile effort for a inevitably disappointing result.

Quiz: What is meant by the phrase, “Tilting at Windmills”…?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Which Island was never a part of the British Empire? Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda, St. Thomas
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History for 9/2/2022
Birthdays: Hawaiian Queen Lydia Liliuokalani, Yang Tsu Ching leader of the Taiping Rebellion, Cleveland Amory, Alfred Spaulding 1850, founder of Spaulding sports equipment, Martha Mitchell, Mark Harmon is 71, Marge Champion, Terry Bradshaw, Chrysta McAuliffe, Jimmy Connors, Norm Ferguson, Selma Hayek is 55, Keanu Reeves is 58

44BC- In the Roman senate, Marcus Cicero delivered the first of his speeches condemning Mark Anthony. He called them his Philippics, because they were modeled on Demosthenes’ speeches against Phillip of Macedon.

31 BC- The Battle of Actium- Large naval battle near Corfu that decided that Octavian and not Anthony & Cleopatra would be the master of Rome. Legend has it that before a battle the priests spread out sacred chicken feed and could predict victory or defeat based on how the sacred chickens would peck. This time the chicken wouldn't peck. Anthony said:" If the chickens won't peck, then let them drink!" And had them all thrown overboard. He lost the battle. Don't mess with the sacred chickens!

1191-Richard the Lionheart and Sultan Saladin made peace. Contrary to legend and Hollywood movies, Richard and Saladin never met face to face. Saladin couldn't defeat Richard in open battle, but knew the English king's time in the Holy Land was limited, because he had to get his lands back from his brother Prince John. Richard knew Saladin was old, his Jihad was spent, and Richard fully expected to return by 1196 and then take Jerusalem back. So, he made peace for now. He got for Christians the freedom to worship at the Holy Sepulcher, which they always had before the Crusades anyway. Richard even offered his sister in marriage to Saladin’s brother. Saladin died the following year, but Richard never did return to Palestine. He died in 1199 from a gangrenous arrow-scratch while attacking a castle in France named Chalus.

1415- Czech theologian Jan Hus had traveled to a Church conference in Constance to explain why the Church needed to be reformed. The Church elders burned him as a heretic, despite a promise of safety. This day 500 Czech leaders signed a note to the Vatican stating Hus was a good Catholic, they denounced his burning and declared they would fight to the last drop of blood for his doctrines. The Hussite Wars Began.

1572- Edward De Vere, the young Earl of Oxford, was first presented at the court of Queen Elizabeth. Scion of an ancient family, he lived several years traveling Europe, particularly Italy.
Recent scholarship has made a strong argument that DeVere may have actually been the author of Shakespeare’s plays. Because 12 plays are set in parts of Italy he traveled, and they demonstrated a knowledge of detail of Italian topography and society that the Will Shakespeare from Stratford could not have known. Then it would have been undignified for a Peer of the Realm to indulge in such middle class pursuits as playwriting, Actors then were looked upon as a step up from prostitutes. So, Oxford may have used Shakespeare as his cover identity. We may never know for sure.

1609- HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEW YORK CITY. Henry Hudson and his Dutch ship "Halve Maen -Half Moon" entered New York Harbor. Twenty canoes of Indians rowed out to welcome the strange looking craft. The French under Cartier and English under Cabot had cruised by years earlier but did not bother to stop there.
Hudson sailed 100 miles up the Hudson looking for China, but he just found more river and forest. He reported home about this "Great River, not unlike the Rhine and this Great Natural Bay, Wherein a Thousand Ships May Ride Tranquilly in Harbor."

1666- THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON- started in the bakery shop of Thomas Farynor on Pudding Lane. The Lord Mayor was woken up at 3:00AM. At first, he was not impressed, “Tosh, an old woman might piss it out!" Actually, it burned down the city, including Old St. Paul's Cathedral. 200,000 Londoners were left homeless. King Charles and his brother James (James II) pitched in personally as firefighters.
After several days struggle it was finally put out. Samuel Pepys climbed up the steeple of Old St. Brides and recorded his eyewitness account in his diary. It was a tough time to be a Londoner, because shortly before the Great Fire was the Great Plague. But the great architect Christopher Wren rebuilt St. Paul’s and other London monuments into the beautiful images we know today.

1752 - Last day of the Julian or Old-Style calendar in Britain and her colonies, including the
US and Canada. You went to sleep the evening of Sept. 2nd and awoke on the morning of Sept. 14th. The Gregorian Calendar had been promulgated in Rome in 1582, but it took this long for the Protestant countries to get on board with the new system.

1772- The FIRST PARTITION OF the POLAND. Russia, Austria and Prussia start to digest the Polish Commonwealth, which then included the Ukraine, Belarus (then called the Voivode of Ruthenia), Moldova and the Baltic States. These nations disappeared in 1794 not to reappear until 1919 (and later until 1991). English statesman William Pitt called it "One of the great political crimes of our Century." This gives folks like Frederic Chopin, Josef Conrad, Madame Curie and Count Pulaski an opportunity to chalk up a lot of travel miles in exile.

1775- The U.S. Navy is born. George Washington gave a commission to the U.S.S. Hannah. Most of the infant navy were privately funded pirate ships, given the nice label "commissioned privateer". The British refused to give Americans the status of foreign belligerents, so they referred to any sea-going Yankees as Pirates.

1784- Thomas Coke was named the first Bishop of the Methodist rite, by founder John Wesley.

1792- The September Massacres- When the French Revolution seized power the mob locked up pro French royalists, noblemen and priests. They were confused about just how far to go with trying them. But this day after radical publisher Jean Paul Marat called for death to all traitors because they were plotting with the German invaders to destroy the Revolution, mobs broke into the various prisons around Paris. They murdered the inmates by the thousands with swords, clubs and lynching from streetlights. "A’ la Lantern!" meant hang people from a lamppost. The massacres continued until Sept. 6th, but the real Reign of Terror was just getting started.

1795- Happy Birthday Cleveland. A group of Connecticut businessmen bought a tract of land on Lake Erie and lay out a new settlement. Their agent and project supervisor Moses Cleveland named the place for himself.

1814- A landing party from the British warship HMS Hermes visited the Louisiana pirate Jean Lafitte in his lair at Barataria Island in the swamps near the Bayou St. Jean. They offered him a captaincy in the Royal Navy and $30,000 dollars in gold if he would aid the British in capturing New Orleans. Lafitte said he would think about it, then passed on all he heard on to the Americans. It was the first warning the Americans had that the British planned to attack in force at the mouth of the Mississippi.

1859- THE CARRINGTON EVENT. One of the largest geomagnetic solar storms ever recorded struck the Earth. The Aurora Borealis was seen as far south as the Caribbean. Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed. In the Pacific Northwest, the aurora was so bright that people could read a newspaper at night by its light. According to calculations by insurers Lloyd's of London and risk assessor AER, if a storm of the same magnitude struck the Earth now, it would cause up to $2.6 trillion worth of damage. The storm is known as the Carrington event after the British astronomer, Richard Carrington, who recorded the storm's genesis as a sunspot on 28 August.

1864- "Luki Lock the Door! The Yankees are coming!" Sherman’s army entered Atlanta.

1897 – McCalls magazine first published.

1898-BATTLE OF OMDURMAN Lord Herbert Kitchener the Sirdar turned heavy cannon and machine guns on attacking Sudannese tribesmen. Kitchener later revealed his cruel side by refusing any medical aid for the enemy wounded and letting hundreds of them die slowly where they fell. 20,000 Sudanese fell to 48 British casualties. Standing in the field of corpses Kitchener said he had given the enemy a "Thoroughly Good Dusting." Kipling writes some neat poems, young Winston Churchill gets decorated and Kitchener breaks open the tomb of the Dervish religious messiah El Mahdi and had, his skull made into a drinking cup. Prime Minister Gladestone told him this is not a terribly civilized thing to do, so he got rid of it.

1901- In a speech Teddy Roosevelt said the U.S. should " Speak softly and carry a big stick!"

1909- On the three hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery New York City held a grand birthday party. Hundreds of ships and public spectacles capped off with Wilbur Wright flying his new aeroplane around the Statue of Liberty. Thomas Edison illuminating the entire skyline with the new electric bulbs- the first time a city was illuminated at night by electricity.

1917- Baron von Richtofen the Red Baron first took to the sky with his new all red Fokker triplane. In it, he forced down an English Sopwith Camel fighter plane intact. The rotary engine Fokker had a design flaw that made it buck sharply to the right whenever you let up on the rudder bar. Richtofen would let an enemy get behind him, then he would lift his foot from the bar. The plane would jerk quickly to the right and he would zip behind his opponent. Then with a cheerful wave he'd shoot them down.

1922 -Weimar President Fritz Ebert declares "Deutschland uber Alles" as the German national anthem. The song was written in the 1770’s by Franz Josef Haydn, who had heard “God Save the King” while touring in London and decided his Kaiser needed an anthem. It was originally named Gott Enhalte Kaiser Franz.

1924- Harold Lloyd’s comedy short "Why Worry?" released.

1925- French and Spanish troops attacked the Moroccan coastline under Abdl el Krim to re-establish their colonial interests. The first Spanish troops landing at Alhucemas Bay were led by a Colonel Francisco Franco, later dictator of Spain.

1930 - 1st non-stop airplane flight from Europe to US –only 37 hrs.

1931-Young new singer Bing Crosby sang for the first time on CBS radio.

1935- A huge hurricane submerged the Florida Keys, killing 443. They did not give them names yet. The storm was the inspiration for Maxwell Anderson to write the play Key Largo in 1939, which became a famous Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall movie in 1948.

1942- At the Changi POW Camp in Malaysia, Japanese authorities were having difficulty convincing their British prisoners to be slave labor to build the Bridge on the River Quai. At Selarang Barracks they herded 15,000 prisoners into a building only meant to house 1,000. In the morning the surviving prisoners agreed to work. Artist Ronald Searle survived and was there to record the incident.

1945- WORLD WAR II OFFICIALLY ENDED. The grand surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on board the battleship U.S.S. Missouri. Imperial Japan signed the surrender before the representatives of the great powers. General Douglas MacArthur presided. His normally pompous speaking style seemed appropriate for this dramatic moment:" These proceedings are now concluded. The most tragic era in human history has drawn to a close. We hope that future generations will not resort to war to resolve their problems."
The only glitch in the ceremony was the Canadian representative signed the surrender in the space reserved for the Japanese ambassador, and MacArthur brought his own pens which he then took back for souvenirs. General Claire Chennault, the leader of the Flying Tigers had an ego almost as big as MacArthur's. He was the American general most under enemy fire, but he was not invited to the ceremony because the top brass considered him a pain in the ass.

1946- "The Iceman Cometh" by Eugene O’Neill premiered at the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway.

1963 - CBS & NBC expand network news from 15 to 30 minutes. CBS named a reporter to star in their broadcast with the new title of "news anchor"- Walter Cronkite.

1964- Ten months after his brother’s assassination, Robert Kennedy resigned his post as attorney general of the United States to run for Senator of New York. Bobbie Kennedy and new president Lyndon Johnson hated one another. Johnson said he felt snubbed by that "Pipsqueak and his Massachusetts Mafia." Bobbie Kennedy referred to the President and First Lady as "Colonel Cornpone and the Little Piggy". Johnson’s decision not to run for re-election in 1968 in part was because he felt he would have to put his popularity up against Bobby Kennedy.

1969- The first ATM opened at a branch of Chemical Bank at Rockville Center, NY.

1973- J.R.R. Tolkein died at age 81. He once said of his trilogy The Lord of the Rings- “I should have written more.”

1985- A team of French and American oceanographers led by Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the final resting place of the HMS Titanic, which sank in 1912.
Ballard would go on to discover the German battleship Bismarck, the WWII carrier Yorktown and JFK’s torpedo boat, the P.T. 109.

1991- Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim started.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which Island was never a part of the British Empire? Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda, St. Thomas

Answer: St. Thomas. That part of the Virgin Islands was once owned by Denmark, then sold to the USA.

Quiz: Which island was never a part of the British Empire? Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda, St. Thomas

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Where do the Tlingit people live?
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History for 9/1/2022
Welcome to September from Septembrius Mensis, After August the Romans ran out of names for months. Septembrius means month number 7, March being the first month of the Roman Calendar.

Birthdays: Joachim Pachebel, Gentleman Jim Corbet, Sir Roger Casement, Seiji Ozawa, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Walter Reuther founder of the United Auto Workers, Englebert Humperdinck- the 19th century composer, Conway Twitty, Jack Hawkins, Leonard Slatkin, Yvonne DeCarlo, Gloria Estefan, Mike Lah, Boxcar Willie, Richard Farnsworth, Lily Tomlin is 83

338BC- BATTLE OF CHAERONEA. Phillip of Macedon, with his son Alexander the Great, defeated the combined armies of the Greek citystates. The Macedonian victory united Greece for the first time under their rule. It was said that night Phillip celebrated by getting roaring drunk, then going out on the battlefield and dancing on the bodies of the slain. The elite corps of the Theban army was the Sacred Band, a unit where every warrior was married to the man next to him. This way you are less likely to run away from a battle if your lover is next to you rather than a stranger. The system worked, none broke ranks, the Sacred Band fought and died to the last man.

1642- THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR BEGAN- Charles I of England, tired of arguing with his Parliament over money, religion and legislative power, set up his standard at Nottingham and called for the nobles of the Realm to bring troops to put down his saucy subjects.

1661- King Charles II introduced England to a sport he picked up while an exile in Holland, Yacht racing. Yacght is Dutch for little ship. This day in front of the court the King and his brother James raced each other down the Thames.

1715- French King Louis XIV, the Sun King, died at 76. He said: "Idiots! Did you think I would live forever?" later " Hmmm, I thought dying would be harder." His mistress Madame DeMaintenon once complained to the Archbishop that the king still insisted on sex every day and at 68 she was tired. The Archbishop replied: "It is all our duty to obey the king."

1730- Benjamin Franklin married Deborah Regan, the mother of his illegitimate son William. William nursed a lasting hatred of his father for his shoddy treatment of him. When the revolution broke out William Franklin was the Royalist Governor of New Jersey. When Ben Franklin died he left nothing in his will to his son: " It is as much as he would have left me were the roles reversed."

1772- The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa founded in California.

1774- EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE LEXINGTON AND CONCORD- Royal Governor in Boston General Thomas Gage had been ordered by London to get tough with these unruly colonials. This day he sent a force of redcoats to Cambridge to confiscate a store of gunpowder he believed would be used against him. The word spread that the troops were coming and the rumors grew to wild proportions. All the way in Connecticut and New York the rumor was Gage's men were burning farms and bayoneting innocent people in their beds.
As the redcoat troops marched off they noticed hundreds of heavily armed farmers emerging from the woods, only dispersing after hearing that the atrocity stories were false. An army of Minutemen had materialized with hours before the British officer’s eyes and disappeared as quickly. Gage wrote London that things were getting out of hand.

1775- British King George III asks Czarina Catherine the Great for 20,000 Russian troops to put down the American rebellion. She declined, but later said: "If I were my cousin George, rather than give up my American colonies I would sooner put a pistol to my head." The British crown did buy mercenaries from the Elector of Hess, the famous Hessians. The cost England for ten pounds, ten penny a man. The elector became very rich exporting his subjects, he received an extra charge whenever one was killed or wounded. Frederick the Great of Prussia charged cattle tax when they were transported over his territory. The Rothschild Bank was founded to handle the expenses. Of the 15,000 Hessians sent to America, only 5,000 ever returned. The rest weren't all killed, most decided to stay, settle down and become Americans.

1785 - Mozart publishes 6 string quartet Opus 10 in Vienna.

1799 - The Manhattan Company chartered. This was a clever bit of maneuvering by Aaron Burr to move in on the banking trade dominated by Alexander Hamilton’s rival The Bank of New York. The Manhattan Company was proposed as a concern to finance the building of new sources of fresh water. New York City’s mushrooming population was constantly beset by diseases of poor sanitation- yellow fever, dysentery, typhus. Hamilton controlled the State Legislature, but saw nothing wrong in building aqueducts. So the company was granted a charter.
Deep in the companies boiler plate text was an amendment allowing it to open a bank as well. Much to Hamilton’s chagrin the Manhattan Bank opened. The Manhattan Bank in 1840 dropped its water projects and united with the Chase Bank to form the Chase Manhattan Bank. This was another thing that annoyed Hamilton about Burr. They would settle their argument with pistols in 1804, but Chase is still around today.

1802 – The Aurora, a scandalous newspaper, first accused President Thomas Jefferson of having an 'improper relationship' with his slave Sally Hemmings. “Dusky Sally” was the child of Jefferson’s own father in law and his slave that Jefferson had inherited. When they met in 1786 he was in his late forties and she was fourteen. Friends said they lived together like man and wife for 38 years. In 1998 DNA testing of descendants proved Jefferson indeed created offspring with his servant Ms. Hemmings, although outraged Jefferson apologists are still trying to blame the paternity on a cousin.

1807- Chief Justice John Marshall finds former Vice President Aaron Burr not guilty of treason against the United States. President Thomas Jefferson was so mad that Marshall let his old enemy off the hook that he tried to have the chief justice impeached and had Burr's defense attorney, Luther Martin, put in jail. Burr always maintained his real purpose was the conquest of Texas. He lived long enough to see Texas independence and remarked” I was right! Only thirty years too soon”.

1836- A wagon train of Presbyterian missionaries reached the site of Walla-Walla Washington. One member of the party Narcissa Whitman, was the first white woman to cross the Rockies.

1836- In Jerusalem, Rabbi Judah Hasid began to build his synagogue and his reform movement- Hasidim.

1852-The Hot Dog or Frankfurter was invented by a group of butchers in Frankfurt, Germany. Frankfurterwurst didn't catch on in the U.S. until it was served at the opening the Coney Island Exhibition in 1894, where it was billed as a Vienna Sausage or Red Hots. Dog was one newspaper's speculation upon the origins of the meat. It was first served at a baseball game in 1910.

1859- The first Pullman sleeping car train went into service.

1864- After Sherman threatened his last escape route at Decatur, General John Bell Hood abandoned the City of Atlanta to the Yankees. By now the 34 year old Texas born General Hood had his arm amputated at Gettysburg and a leg blown off a Chickamagua. He required straps to hold him up in his saddle. Yet he survived the Civil War, became a US senator and fathered nine children.

1870- THE BATTLE OF SEDAN. French Emperor Napoleon III lost his Empire losing to the Prussians and gets captured to boot. He had allowed himself to be bottled up in a fortress and pounded on all sides by new long distance German steel cannon. French General LaCroix wrote: " We are caught in a chamberpot and here comes la merde." When it came time to surrender the generals couldn't bear the humiliation, so they sent LaCroix out to do the honors.

1885- Mrs. Emma Nutt became the first telephone switchboard operator. At first telephone companies used telegraph errand boys to connect calls, but switched to women after customers complained of the boys saucy wisecracks and rude attitude on the phone.

1897- The Boston T-train opened. Between Park St and Boylston. The first subway line in the U.S.

1901 - Construction began on NY Stock Exchange.

1905-The Canadian territories of Prince Rupertland become the Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

1913 - George Bernard Shaw’s play "Androcles & the Lion," premieres in London.

1916- The Keating-Owen act banned child labor from interstate commerce.

1919- Pat Sullivan's 'Feline Follies" cartoon staring Felix the Cat. Felix is the first true animated star, not depended on a previous newspaper comic strip. His body prototype, a black peanut shape with four fingers, will be the standard for years to come. By 1926 he was the most popular star in Hollywood after Chaplin and Valentino. Lindbergh had a Felix doll in his plane and it has been speculated that Groucho Marx copied his famous strut. The first television image broadcast by scientists in 1926 was of a Felix doll.

1923- The Kanto Earthquake. Tokyo and Yokohama are destroyed by the largest earthquake recorded in the twentieth century. 100,000 died.

1928- Paul Terry premiered his sound cartoon RCA Photophone system for a short called "Dinner Time". Young studio head Walt Disney came by train out from Los Angeles to see it. He telephoned his brother Roy back in L.A." My Gosh, Terrible! A Lot of Racket and Nothing Else!" He said they could continue completing their first sound cartoon "Steamboat Willie".

1932- Mayor Jimmy Walker resigned as Mayor of New York. The corrupt but colorful Walker was a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote a hit song "Will you love me in September like you do in May.?" and flouted his chorus girl mistress at social functions. The man who served out Walker’s term was John P. ”Boo-Boo” O’Brian, another Tamany machine politician who was so inept that when a reporter asked who he planned to name as the new Sewer Commissioner O’Brian said “A decision hasn’t been given me yet..”

1939- FIRST CANNES FILM FESTIVAL- The premiere film event in Europe had been the Venice Film Festival but western democracies tired of the bias of the judges for Fascist and Nazi films. For example Walt Disney was annoyed his Snow White, the box office and critical champ of 1938, lost out to Leni Reifenstahl's Olympia. So the little French Riviera city was chosen as the site for a new festival. Two days after opening World War II was declared and the festival shut down until 1946.

1939- WORLD WAR II BEGAN. The Nazi Army blitzkriegs into Poland. Britain and France declared war two days later. Blitzkrieg meant Lightning War- heavy motorized tanks and troops moving at full speed into an enemies interior while the airforce destroyed most of the Polish air force still on the ground. The outdated Polish Army still fought with cavalry. The Nazis propaganda Ministry rigged up a border incident to claim Polish troops had fired first. They put dead concentration camp victims in German uniforms in a plan called Operation Canned Goods. So all through the massive invasion the operation was referred to in the German media as the “Counter Offensive”

1939- Hitler ordered the mentally ill sent to concentration camps.

1939 – The Physics Review published the first paper on a celestial phenomena called "black holes".

1941- Hitler passed a law ordering Jews in Nazi occupied countries to wear yellow stars on their clothing for identification. The King of Denmark reacted by donning a yellow star.

1942- Battle of Alam Halfa. Rommel the Desert Fox’s final flanking push to try to reach Cairo and the Suez Canal was stopped by Montgomery’s Eighth Army. Rommel had no petrol for any more attacks. He now dug in and awaited Montgomery’s counter attack.

1947-In early 1947, the British Government turned over the problem of Palestine and Jewish statehood to the UN. The UN High Commission on Palestine UNSCOM studied the matter and on this day recommended to the General Assembly that two separate states, one Jewish, one Palestinian Arab be set up.

1955- Phillip Loeb was a TV star, playing Papa on the show The Goldbergs on radio and television. But the book Red Channels listed him as a Communist. He was blacklisted and the show dropped by CBS and NBC. This day Loeb checked into the Hotel Taft and swallowed a bottle full of sleeping pills.

1956- Elvis Presley bought his momma a pink Cadillac.

1963- The Mighty Hercules animated TV series began.

1967- After Israel’s big victory in the Six Day War she put out a diplomatic feeler. They offered to return the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai Desert in return for Arab recognition of Israel and stable borders. Today at a meeting of the Arab League in Khartoum Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan said a resounding no. No peace, no recognition, no deals. President Nasser said, “What was lost in war can only be recovered by war.”

1969- Col. Mohammar el Khaddafi seized power in Libya after deposing King Idris. He held power until the Arab Spring Revolution overthrew him in 2011.

1972 - Bobby Fischer (US) defeated Boris Spassky (USSR) for the world chess title.
The young eccentric genius Fischer was the Tiger Woods of chess and for a time a pop icon. He would after a few years of fame drop out of competition at the height of his powers and go into seclusion.

1977 - 1st TRS-80 Model I computer sold

1978 - Last broadcast of "Columbo" on NBC.

1979- The fantasy book The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende first published.

1979 – An LA Court ordered retired TV star Clayton Moore to stop wearing his Lone Ranger mask in public appearances. Paramount was pushing it’s remake the Legend of the Lone Ranger starring Klinton Spillsbury, so they wanted the old man to stop competing for the spotlight. Today that 1979 movie, as well as the 2013 movie are forgotten, while many still fondly remember the old TV show,

1982- In Houston, three friends from Texas Instruments, Rod Canion, Bill Murto, and Jim Harris got together and formed the company COMPAQ. They designed their first portable computer on a back of a House of Pies placemat. Made with off the shelf components, and compatible with all IBM programs it was a tremendous success.

1982 - Max US speedometer reading mandated at 85 MPH.

1983- A Korean KAL 747 passenger airliner had strayed into Russian airspace over the Sakhalin islands. Soviet authorities had the 747 shot down, killing 269 innocent people including 60 Americans and a US congressman. President Reagan decried this “barbarous act” and called for sanctions. Truth be told US and Korean intelligence played games of chicken with the commies using civilian airliners. Also KAL pilots were given monetary bonuses if they got to their destinations ahead of time, so this pilot used the Sakhalin shortcut. Passengers were kept unaware of these dangerous games.

1995 – The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened in Cleveland Ohio.

1998- The Wild Thornberries TV series premiered.
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Yesterday’s Question: Where do the Tlingit people live?

Answer: They are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. Their territory resides in Canadian British Columbia and Yukon, and American Alaska.