Quiz: Who were Paulo and Francesca? (hint: Medieval Literature)

Yesterdays Question answered below: What does it mean to go around half cocked?
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History for 3/28/2023
Birthdays: Paul Whiteman, Pearl Bailey, Freddy Bartholomew, Dirk Bogarde,
Confederate Gen. Wade Hampton, pianist Rudolph Serkin, Swifty Lazar, Marlin Perkins, Diane Weist, Reba McEntire, Vince Vaughn is 53, Julia Stiles is 42, Lady Gaga (born Stefani Germanetta) is 37

193A.D. THE DAY THE WORLD WAS PUT UP FOR AUCTION- The Roman Emperor Pertinax had just been assassinated by his bodyguards and the Praetorian Prefect Marius Maximus wisely turned down the job- bad retirement prospects. The guards realized they cannot be Imperial Guards without an emperor to guard. They might even get sent back to the frontier! So, they posted an announcement that "whoever wanted to be Emperor of the Known World" should come to the Praetorian camp that night and submit a bid. Several senators competed. The winner was Didius Julianus, with a winning bid of 15,000 silver pieces per man in the 1,500 man Guards. Almost none of Rome’s generals went along with this dippy solution to the succession to the throne of the Caesars. Julianus was soon bumped off in a violent civil war that eventually saw Septimius Severus the winner.

1456- Today is the feast of St. John Capistrano. The Saint of the Swallows of California was born in Italy and was a preacher, was married, fought the Turks in Hungary, and in later life after becoming a monk was put in charge of the Holy Inquisition in Central Europe. He burned Protestant reformers and ordered all Jews to wear yellow badges so as not to seduce good Christians. He was so hated that a century after his death from plague the Calvinists dug up his grave and threw his bones down a well.
The Mission St. John Capistrano in California was named so by monk Fra Junipero Serra even though the Saint never visited the Golden State.

1778 -GEORGE WASHINGTON ANNOUNCED MAJOR GENERAL BARON VON STEUBEN, LATELY OF KING FREDERICK THE GREAT'S SERVICE, WOULD TRAIN THE AMERICAN ARMY. It turned out later Von Steuben was barely a real Baron. One British source claimed his medals were fakes purchased at a London theatrical costume shop. He did work on the Prussian General Staff. Von Steuben was a gay young man. And Frederick the Great was a gay king. And well, he made out well.
America was a new land, where if you wanted to be called a baron, you could be a baron. Von Steuben did an excellent job training the farmers and shop keeps in modern warfare. He wrote the first US Army manuals, he adapted and revised from the Prussian. He wrote: “ In Germany I order a soldier to do something and they do it. In America when I order a soldier to do something I must then explain WHY I want him to do it and WHY it is important!” The minutemen enjoyed watching him shout in a language they didn't understand, and at night around the campfire his big pet greyhound Azor howled along to the fiddle music.
Proof of his methods success was at the Battle of Monmouth. Lord Cornwallis groused:” Hmpf! Damned rebels formed up well.”

1800- Congress voted to extend Franking privileges to Martha Washington. Franking meant she could mail letters without having to pay for postage.

1862- SIBLEY'S RAID. THE BATTLE OF APACHE PASS -The closest the Civil War ever came to California. Confederate Henry Hastings Sibley proposed to the Confederate High Command in Richmond that since most of the US Army was now back East fighting, there was no one to stop them riding from Texas to the gold fields of California! Richmond gave him a brigade of Texas Volunteers, and they quickly overran Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and won a skirmish at Valverde. Plans were made for the Confederate conquest of Colorado, Utah and set up a new rebel state in Arizona. Fighting got as far west as some Pima villages that one day would be Phoenix.
But what Richmond didn’t appreciate was the regional rivalry – As soon as Colorado and New Mexico men heard they were being invaded by Texans, they rushed to fight them. And Sibley turned out to be a bad leader- because of his drinking habits, his men called him a Walking Whiskey Barrel.

This day a pitched battle was fought outside of Tuscon in Glorieta or Apache Pass. The Confederates won the battle, but during the confusion a Yankee captain named Chivington sneaked behind the lines and set fire to Sibley’s supply train. This proved decisive, since you can’t march armies in the Arizona desert without supplies and water. Sibley had to retreat to Texas, he, riding in a remaining wagon, drunk with officers wives, while his men marched with no water.

1870- THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAGUA KILLED BY A NEWSPAPER. Gen. George H. Thomas, retired Union war hero had a heart attack in a St. Louis Hotel after reading an editorial saying all in all he wasn't that great a general, and all his victories were just mistakes. Survivor of shot and shell, they found Thomas in his room, clutching a written rebuttal to his chest.

1881- P.T. Barnum formed a partnership with his chief competitor James Bailey to create Barnum & Bailey’s Circus. He proclaimed it the Greatest Show on Earth!

1920- Silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks & Mary Pickford married.

1928- Via radio broadcast, the public heard the voice of Charlie Chaplin for the first time.

1929- Disney short The Opry House was released. The first short where they changed Mickey Mouses’ design to give him white gloves.

1930- The name of the City of Constantinople was officially changed to Istanbul, Turkish for “The City”. Angora was renamed Ankara.

1935- Leni Reifenstahl’s hypnotic movie paean to Nazism- Triumph of the Will, premiered.

1941-Battle of Matapan- British Navy sank Mussolini's Navy off the coast of Ethiopia.

1941- English writer Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex. Her body was never found.

1942- Albert Hurter, Swiss designer for Walt Disney's "Snow White' and 'Pinocchio", and called the first inspirational artist in animation, died of rheumatic heart disease. He was 59.

1953- Senator Joseph McCarthy, the grandstanding Commie chaser, held a news conference where he decried that European countries that were receiving US aid from the Marshall Plan were also trading with Communist countries. He announced he had received a pledge from a Greek shipping concern not to trade with Communist states in the future.
This speech elicited a storm of protest, under Secretary of State Symington accused the Wisconsin senator of conducting his own foreign policy. Yet the new Eisenhower administration stayed silent and did nothing, which encouraged McCarthy to grow bolder.

1958- The Killer Slide- US 1, The Pacific Coast Highway has always been at the mercy of wind and weather erosion effecting the unstable cliffs it was carved from. This day while repairing a previous land slide, construction workers were caught in an even bigger hillside collapse- several people were killed.

1979- THREE MILE ISLAND- Partial Meltdown of the Pennsylvania reactor panicked the nation. Despite the official attempts to belittle the danger, Governor Richard Thornburg in Harrisburg moved his office underground to a bunker and Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia gave the entire counties of Lancaster and Harrisburg a blanket unction (Last Rites). just in case.... The accident spawned the largest civilian protests since the Vietnam War and nuclear energy business never quite recovered.

1987- The first Disney Store opened at the Glendale Galleria in California. Selling Disney themed merchandise outside of the parks.

1999- Matt Groening’s cartoon series Futurama debuted.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to go around halfcocked?

Answer: In the age of muskets and firelocks, to fire the gun you first had to pull back the hammer holding the flint. There was an intermediate stage where you could pull back the hammer halfway in preparation. Since then, going off half-cocked means a person has not thought things through and is not ready to proceed.

Quiz: What does it mean to go around halfcocked?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: The Seven Wonders of the World. Can you name any of them?
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History for 3/27/2023
Birthdays: French King Louis XVII –the boy during the Revolution who died in prison after his Royal parents were guillotined, Patty Smith Hill 1868- The composer of the song Happy Birthday to You, Edward Steichen, Gloria Swanson, Sarah Vaughn, Maria Schneider, Mies Van der Rohe, Snooky Lanson, Wilhelm Roentgen the discoverer of X-Rays, Nathaniel Currier of Currier & Ives, Donald Duck artist Carl Barks, cellist Mtisislav Rostropovich, Michael York is 79, Quentin Tarantino is 58, Mariah Carey is 51

The ancient Romans called today Washing Day, the origin of our concept of Spring Cleaning.
The ancient Egyptians had a similar holiday.

47BC – In Alexandria, Julius Caesar defeated the royal Egyptian forces of Cleopatra ‘s brother Ptolomey VII.

33AD- Ecce Homo- Behold the man, Traditional date for when Roman Governor Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to death.

715 AD- Saint Rupert was a Frank who did missionary work around Austria and Bavaria. When he arrived at the abandoned Roman town of Juvenum he revived the areas salt works and named it The Salt-Fortress, or Salzburg.

922- Persian mystic Al Halij Mansur was beheaded at age 64 by order of the Caliph.

1513- Juan Ponce De Leon first sighted the coastline of Florida. He thought it was an island. He claimed it for His Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain. For years Spanish maps called all of North America- Las Floridas.

1536- Swiss Cantons sign the First Helvetic Confession, declaring their common support of the Protestant religion.
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1599- Queen Elizabeth I appointed her toyboy the Earl of Essex to be Governor General of Ireland. In his 6 months there he was ordered to put down the rebels under Earl Tyrone of O’Neill, which he couldn’t; not to make any peace treaties without consulting London, which he did; and not to leave Ireland without permission, which he left. Eventually Essex thought he could handle the Queen. He lost his head instead.

1625- King Charles I ascended the throne of England. The king who lost his head in the English Civil War. Dutch painter Jan Van Dyck had a premonition about him. When doing his portrait he said the English monarch had” The saddest face he’d ever done.”

1790- The invention of modern shoelaces.

1802-The Peace of Amiens- A rare three years of peace interrupted the constant warfare in Europe. Around this time Napoleon was being annoyed by an oddball inventor from America named Robert Fulton, who had plans plan for a ship with no sails, only steam powered paddle wheels! He even proposed another ship that could travel underwater! He had first tried the British Admiralty, who threw him out. Napoleon had him design some craft for him, but it never went anywhere. Eventually, Fulton gave up and returned to America.

1814- THE BATTLE OF HORSESHOE BEND-The last great Indian battle in the American South. The War of 1812 coincided with Shawnee chief Tecumseh's called for all Indians regardless of tribe to unite to drive away the white man. Chief Red Eagle and the Creek Nation fought Gen. Andrew Jackson and his volunteer army of frontiersmen down in the Alabama territory. Jackson's army included Davey Crockett, Sam Houston and future Senator Thomas Hart Benton.
Jackson (Indians named him "Sharp Knife") defeated the Creeks in one huge battle. In a switch on Hollywood image, in this battle the Indians fought from inside a wooden walled fort and the whites charged around it. After the carnage Jackson ordered his men to cut off the dead brave's noses so he could make an accurate count. Andy Jackson became a national hero and carried a lead bullet around in his shoulder for the rest of his life, Sam Houston got shot in the groin, and Chief Red Eagle put on a suit & tie, became a Methodist, and changed his name to William Weatherford.

1836- The first Mormon temple is set up in Kirkland Ohio. Mormon ladies broke up their fine china to mix into the plaster so the walls had a sparkling effect.

1836- GOLIAD- After wiping out the Texas rebels at the Alamo, Mexican Gen. Santa Anna surrounded the next little fort at Goliad. Their commander, Colonel Daniel Fanin, seeing the result that resistance brought the men of the Alamo, tried the other tack and surrendered. Santa Anna, who was infuriated by the losses he suffered at the Alamo, wanted to make an example of the Yanqui Texans. He had Fanin and his whole command executed. But instead of being intimidated, Texans just got madder.

1855- Canadian doctor and part time scientist Abraham Gesner patented Kerosene. As a source of light, it burned brighter and was cheaper than whale oil. The first product made from crude oil.

1865- The City Point Conference. Lincoln, Grant and Sherman meet on the steamboat River Queen about how to finish off Robert E. Lee and end the Civil War. Lincoln stressed that after the war the South should be treated mildly, no mass treason trials, mass hangings or reparations.” Let’s let ‘em up easy.” It is the last time Grant and Sherman would ever see Lincoln alive.

1866- Andrew Rankin received the first patent for the upright porcelain urinal.

1883- When Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria was collapsed in grief. She was lifted out of her funk by her Scottish horse groom at Balmoral, named John Brown. For over a decade they had an inseparable friendship, which may or may not have been intimate. This day John Brown died. Victoria had a life size statue made of him for the front of Balmoral house. But after Victoria’s death, her son King Edward VII had Brown’s statue moved to a far corner of the estate, so he didn’t have to look at it. Recent archival discoveries proved that as she knew she was dying Queen Victoria left instructions that she be buried with personal tokens of Mr. Brown as well as Prince Albert.

1884-The first long distance telephone call-New York to Boston.

1886- GERONIMO! After a whirlwind campaign across Arizona being chased by three U.S. armies, Geronimo and his Chiracuha Apaches surrendered. With only 32 braves and their families, Geronimo evaded 5,000 troops. The Apaches nicknamed their pursuing enemy General George Crook, "General Day-After-Tomorrow" for his inability to keep up with them.
Finally, they were cornered and forced to give up. Geronimo and the Chiracua were shipped off to a Florida swamp for ten years before being allowed to return to their homelands. Many White Mountain Apaches who hated Geronimo acted as scouts for the army. Afterwards they were rewarded by being shipped off as well.

1908- Bud Fisher's comic strip Mutt & Jeff debuted.

1912- Washington DC received its famous cherry trees, 3,020 in number, a gift from the Japanese government.

1914- In Belgium, the first successful blood transfusion was performed.

1939- Madrid fell to Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his fascist forces.

1940- “Rebecca,” the first Hollywood movie by Alfred Hitchcock opened.

1941- After democratic Yugoslavs overthrew the pro-Nazi regime of Prince Paul, Hitler ordered an invasion.

1943- Companies in Los Angeles doing war work were forbidden to discriminate by race.

1945- Nazis fired their last V-2 rockets at London before the Allied armies overrun their launchpads. The last rockets hit Stepney and Kent. Chief scientist Dr. Werner Von Braun and his scientists started taking English lessons.

1945- Argentina declared war on Nazi Germany. This is seen as a bit of political theater since President Juan Peron openly admired Hitler and Mussolini and Argentina gave haven to many top Nazis after the war.

1952- U.P.A.’s cartoon “Rooty-Toot-Toot” premiered. Its music score was by jazzman Phil Moore, the first African American to receive a screen credit for scoring a movie.

1952- “Singing in the Rain” starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor premiered.

1957- California Reverend Robert Schuller opened the first Drive-In Church.

1958- Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet Premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.

1958- At the 30th Academy Awards, the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay went to Pierre Boule for The Bridge on the River Kwai. But Boule was not there. He wrote the novel it was based on, but the actual screenplay was written by two Blacklisted writers in exile- Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. Boulle’s name was entered as a cover.

1964-THE ANCHORAGE, ALASKA EARTHQUAKE- The largest in the western hemisphere in the Twentieth Century, 9.2 on the Richter Scale. It created a tsunami tidal wave that hit the coastlines of Alaska, British Columbia and Hawaii with a 100 foot wall of water. 164 people died.

1968- Russian Major Yuri Gargarin, in 1961 the first man in Space, died in a small plane crash during a routine private flight.

1973- In one of the more celebrated stunts in Hollywood history, when Marlon Brando won an Oscar for his role in The Godfather, he sent a buckskin clad model named Sashin Littlefeather to refuse the award and delivered a protest about treatment of Indigenous Americans.

1974- Mariner 10 visited the Planet Mercury.

1977- In the largest aviation disaster in history. A KLM 747 jumbo jet taking off crashed into another PanAm 747 jumbo landing at Tenerife Canary Islands. 582 people were killed.

1978- The first draft script of the film Norma Rae completed. The film dramatized the life of Christa Lee Jordan, a mill worker who was blackballed by the J.P. Stevens millworks for wanting a union.

1989- Who Framed Roger Rabbit earned four Oscars at the Academy Awards. Sound Effects, Visual Effects, Film Editing and a special one for Richard Williams for the animation. At that same ceremony, Pixar’s Tin Toy won best animated short. The first Pixar short to win.

1996- Fearful of mad cow disease, The European Community banned the export of beef from Britain for one year.

2022- At the Academy Awards, Best Actor winner Will Smith slapped and cursed out comedian Chris Rock on camera in front of the whole world for making a joke about his wife Jada Pinket Smith.
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Yesterday’s Question: The Seven Wonders of the World. Can you name any of them?

Answer: The Great Pyramid of Giza, The Colossus of Rhodes, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Lighthouse of Alexandria, The Zeus at Olympia, The temple of Artemis at Ephesus, The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

Quiz: The Seven Wonders of the World. Can you name any of them?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What is a mishigas?
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History for 3/26/2023
B-Days: Robert Frost, Chico Marx, Conde Nast, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Houseman, Joseph Campbell, Gen. William Westmorland, Erica Jong, Duncan Hines, Bob Woodward, Leonard Nimoy, Alan Arkin, James Caan, Diana Ross is 79, Sandra Day-O’Connor, Martin Short, Bob Elliot of Bob & Ray, T. Hee, Michael Imperioli is 58, Keira Knightley is 38, Alan Silvestri, Chris Bailey, John Pomeroy is 71.

1199- While attacking a small castle in Limousin named Chalus, English King Richard Lionheart was wounded by an arrow in his neck. Although the arrow wound wasn't very deep, blood poisoning set in and he died on April 6th. He was 42. Since he shunned the company of women and never made a direct heir, his brother evil Prince John became king anyway.

1351- The Combat of the Thirty. (Combat des Trente), During the Hundred Years War, 30 English knights challenged 30 Breton/French knights to a single combat. Called one of the most famous “deed of arms” of the Middle Ages. The struggle was quite intense. Geoffroy du Bois said to his wounded leader, who was asking for water: "Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir; thy thirst will pass" The Breton side won.

1660- Since the death of the dictator Oliver Cromwell, the military government ruling Britain was breaking down. This day in Holland the exiled Prince Charles II Stuart received a message from Puritan General Monck inviting him to return to England to be their king.

1791- The French politician Mirabeau had guided the French Revolution from the Bastille towards creating a constitutional monarchy on the English model. But being the most famous man in France, Mirabeau lived hard and played hard. This night he “entertained” 8 female ballet dancers, and woke up with violent intestinal cramps. He was dead by April 2. Without Mirabeau the French Revolution spun out of control into the Reign of Terror, then the dictatorship of General Napoleon.

1796- Napoleon Bonaparte takes command of the French Army in Italy. His promotion came mainly because new bride Josephine urged her old boyfriend Barras who was head of the French government to grant the little general with the Italian accent the assignment.

1811- Poet Percy Shelley was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet that argued that God didn¹t exist.

1827- Ludwig van Beethoven died at age 56. Six people visited him while he was sick, 20,000 attended his funeral in Vienna. Romantic legend says he died at the violent peak of a thunderstorm raising his fists skyward in a last act of defiance to God himself, but in actual fact he died peacefully in his sleep.
He lived in an abandoned monastery given him as public housing by the Austrian government along with a small pension. He constantly complained about his poverty so that the Philharmonic Society of London sent him 1,500 gold English pounds from a benefit concert. After his death they found around 20,000 gold pieces hidden in cupboards and pots.

1830- Vermonter Joseph Smith, 24, first published "The Book of Mormon." Smith said the archangel Moroni in a dream aided his discovery of a later testament of Jesus written on golden plates in Reformed Egyptian, which Smith was able to translate with the aid of the "Urim & Thummim" stones.

1832- Artist George Catlin began his first trip to the West. He traveled up the Missouri River on the American Fur Trading steamer The Yellowstone. Catlin’s portrait paintings of Plains Indians became famous.

1860- The tip of the Kowloon peninsula and Stonecutter¹s Island ceded by China to Great Britain. This would become the site of Hong Kong. A British diplomat called it "The notch by which the tree will be eventually felled.." meaning that like India, all China would one day become part of the British Empire.

1865- At City Point Virginia, the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens had a secret meeting with Abraham Lincoln to discuss peace terms to end the Civil War. But they couldn¹t agree on anything- Even at this late date Lincoln was offered a cash compensation of $4 million for the loss of slaves. But Stephens said the deal breaker was Southerners would not admit they were wrong to rebel and ask for pardons. Alexander Stephens went back to Richmond empty handed and the war went on.

1883-To inaugurate her opulent new 5th Ave. mansion Mrs. Cornelia Vanderbilt held one of the most lavish costume balls in New York City history. She and Mrs. Astor had formed the Social Register, also called the Golden 400, the ranking of the top families in polite society. If you weren’t on their list, then darling, you simply weren’t anybody.
The mansion stood where Bergdorf Goodman¹s faces the Plaza Hotel today. The party set new standards for the conspicuous wealth and excess of the Gilded Age. Many guests dressed as Venetian nobility. Mrs. J.P. Morgan dressed as “Electric Light: The Wonder of the Age.”

1900- The Happy Hooligan comic strip.

1909- The U.S. Board of Censorship created.

1920- This Side of Paradise, the first novel published by a young Minnesota writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a descendant of Francis Scott Key, writer of the Star Spangled Banner.

1937- A statue of Popeye the Sailor unveiled at the Crystal City Texas Spinach Festival.

1942- The first trainload of Jewish people arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1943- Just outside of Chicago, gangster Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti took a walk down a railroad track, took a swig of bourbon, put a 32mm pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. He first waved to get the attention of some track workers so they could witness that he was taking his own life and was not the victim of another gangster. The successor to Al Capone was going to be indicted the next day on Federal charges of racketeering, and he knew they had enough from stoolies to put him away for a long time.

1953-The Salk Vaccine for Polio announced.

1953- President Dwight Eisenhower increased US aid to the French fighting the Vietnamese in Indochina, but refused outright military intervention.

1955- The song The Ballad of Davey Crockett, went to number 1 in the pop charts.

1958- The Mau-Mau Rebellion in colonial Kenya. It's debatable just how extensive or violent the Mau-Maus were. Many Kenyan resistance did not call themselves Mau Mau, but the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army (KLFA). but the British colonial authorities used fear of the Mau Mau as the excuse to arrest real nationalists like Njomo Kenyatta.

1959- Writer Dashell Hammett died.

1960- THE MOULIN ROUGE AGREEMENT- Las Vegas gambling casinos finally integrate. Before this stars like Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald could headline in the clubs but had to exit via the kitchens and sleep across town in the colored section. Singer Nat King Cole was requested to keep his eyes on his piano keys for fear if he looked up he would seduce young white girls. Frank Sinatra played a big part in lobbying the Vegas Mob guys to change with the times. Marlene Dietrich grabbed Lena Horne by the arm and stormed into a casino bar defying any reaction. None came. The Moulin Rouge was the first completely integrated casino.

1969- The western movie 100 Rifles premiered. It broke taboos, because it featured sexy Raquel Welch making love to sexy black Jim Brown. And Burt Reynolds as the bandito Yaqui Joe Hererra.

1969- On this day a frustrated young writer named John Kennedy Toole committed suicide. When his mother went through his things, she found the manuscript of a novel in an old shoebox. She forced the manuscript on novelist Walker Percy to read. He was stunned by what he read. That lead to it being published by Louisiana State University Press. The book the "Confederacy of Dunces” went on to be a critically acclaimed bestseller and win a Pulitzer Prize.

1970- Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary admitted to having sex with a 14 year old girl.

1973- The Young and the Restless soap opera premiered.

1975 - The Who¹s rock opera "Tommy" premiered in London.

1976- USC sophomore Levar Burton screen tested for the role of Kunta Kinte in the landmark TV miniseries Roots. The role made him a star.

1976 - Wings release "Wings at the Speed of Sound" album .

1977 - Elvis Costello releases his first record "Less Than Zero"

1978- The skull of Swedish scientist-philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg auctioned at Sotheby¹s for $3,200. Swedenborg's family had found it in an antique shop and kept it until the auction. They said they needed the money.

1979- Camp David Peace Accords signed between Israel and Egypt. Israel¹s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt¹s leader Anwar Sadat at one point were so uncooperative President Carter had to walk from cabin to cabin because they wouldn¹t meet in the same room.
Menachem Begin liked to mess with people’s minds. At one point to cut the tension Presidential advisor Zbignew Brezshinski invited Begin to play chess. As they sat Begin said softly “ I haven’t played chess in 40 years. Not since the day the Nazis kicked in my door and dragged me and my family off to Auschwitz.”
While Brezshinski was thinking about the enormity of that statement, Mrs. Begin came in and said: “Oh, I see you¹re playing chess, it¹s Menachem¹s favorite. He never stops playing!”

1982 - Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder release "Ebony & Ivory" in the UK

1982- In Washington DC, groundbreaking for the Vietnam War Memorial. aka The Wall.

1989- The first free elections in Russia made Boris Yeltsin President.

1992- Heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson was convicted of rape.

1997- Turner Animation's film 'Cat's Don't Dance", Directed by Mark Dindal, featuring the last movie work of Gene Kelly. He was a consultant on the dance sequences.

2008- Arnold Schwarzenegger fired Clint Eastwood. No, its’ not a movie plot line. The former actor, turned Republican Governor, objected to a position the actor/director and former Republican mayor took on the California State Parks Commission.

2228 - According to Star Fleet records- James T. Kirk, captain of Federation Star Ship Enterprise (Star Trek) was born.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a mishigas?

Answer: It is a Yiddish phrase meaning a big crazy situation. A confusing commotion or problem.

Question: What is a mishigas?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In literature, who were Gargantua and Pantagruel?
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History for 3/25/2023
B-Days: King Henry II Plantagenet, Joachim Murat, Gutzon Borglum, David Lean, Mary Flannery-O’Connor, Arturo Toscanini, Aretha Franklin, Bela Bartok', Howard Cosell, Bonnie Bedelia, Jerry Livingston (writer of Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo), Simone Signoret, Gloria Steinem is 89, Sarah Jessica Parker is 59.

In ancient times this was the feast of Thalia, the goddess of comedy, one of the Nine Muses. In Latin she was called Hilaria. According to the historian Pausanias there was a town that was sacred to Thalia. When you arrived, you had to tell a joke to the locals or they would kill you.

In the medieval London this was Lady Day when streetlights no longer had to be lit after dark.

3019 TA- Frodo Baggins destroyed the one true ring, causing the death of Sauron.

421AD- People fleeing the depredations of Attila the Hun go into the marshes and found the city of Venice.

1306- Robert the Bruce crowned King of Scotland.

1330- Battle of Zebras de Acholes (Tula)- On his deathbed, Scottish king Robert the Bruce asked Earl Douglas of Argyle to take his heart to the Holyland. Black Douglas went on Crusade with the Bruce's heart embalmed in a little lead box, hanging from a silver chain around his neck. In Spain, the Earl was ambushed by a large force of Moors. When Black Douglas realized his hour had come, he hurled the box into the thickest of the foe, and plowed after it, long sword in hand, to go down fighting.

1441-During the Council of Clermont, the Vatican invited Czech Jan Hus under an amnesty to come and explain his Protestant doctrines. After he explained his case, they burned him at the stake. Supposedly we got the expression ‘his goose is cooked’ from the martyrdom of Hus. Hus was the old German word for goose.

1521- FIRST MAN CIRCUMNAVIGATES THE GLOBE- No, it was not Magellan. It was Magellan's 16 year old Malay slave, Enrique. Enrique was taken from his native Sumatra, then Arab merchants brought him to Madagascar where Portuguese sailor Magellan purchased him. He brought him by sea around Africa to Lisbon, then to Spain.
Later Magellan took him with his fleet west to South America and around the Cape into the Pacific and finally to the Philippine Islands. On this day on the isle of Cebu, Enrique found he could converse with the locals. Magellan knew he had done it and reached the Indies by sailing west. After Magellan was killed by natives, while captains stood around wondering what to do next, Enrique jumped overboard and swam home.

1524- Explorer Giuseppe Verrazano with a French fleet going up the coast of North America drop anchor off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Verrazano could not see the Carolina coastline beyond the thin isthmus of Diamond Shoals, so he decides the American Continent must become really-really thin in the middle before widening out to Canada. His men strain their eyes for signs of China, beyond what he thinks is the" Pacific". For a century European maps reflected this silly mistake, and Verrazano was later eaten by cannibals.

1586- Margaret Clitherow was a Yorkshire butchers wife who converted to Catholicism in Queen Elizabeth’s time. She held secret masses and sheltered outlawed priests. For this she was “pressed”. Meaning she was laid on the ground with a stone against her back, a door was placed on top of her. On that door they piled 700-800 pounds of stones until she was squished. The Catholic Church declared her a saint in 1970.

1634-The good ships Dove and Ark drop anchor in America bringing 128 English Catholics. The Colony of Maryland founded by Caelius Calvert- Lord Baltimore under former Virginia Gov. De La Ware (Delaware). For the first time in English America a Catholic Mass was held.

1668-First recorded horse race in America.

1815- After Napoleon seized back power in Paris he asked Europe for peace. This day the assembled powers meeting in Vienna declared him an outlaw and enemy of Europe. The issue was decided on the field of Waterloo.

1843- In London, the Thames Tunnel opened. The first tunnel under a major river.

1865- The Battle of Fort Steadman. Robert E Lee tried to break a hole in Ulysses Grants encircling army so he could rush reinforcements to Joe Johnston’s rebel army. They were trying to stop Sherman in South Carolina from marching north and uniting with Grant. It didn’t work.

1911-THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE- 145 seamstresses, mostly teenage Jewish immigrant girls, burned to death in a horrible office building fire. They could not escape the flames because their employer padlocked them into their sweatshop so they wouldn't take so many breaks, or talk to union organizers. The pavement was littered with dead girls who jumped ten stories to their death rather than burn, while a helpless crowd looked on in horror. They would hold hands and leap to their deaths together.
The factory owners were never charged with any crime. The owners soon opened another clothes factory that was cited for fire safety violations. The tragedy was a major cause of the formation of the ILGWU now called UNITE and the first job safety laws. One of the eyewitnesses to the horror, Frances Perkins, later became Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. The last survivor of the fire died in 2001 at age 107.

1915- The first modern submarine disaster. The US F-4 went down with 21 sailors.

1916 - Ishi, the last survivor of his Yaqui Indian tribe, died.

1928- Young American composer George Gershwin first arrived in Paris.

1931- The Scottsboro Boys. In Alabama nine young black men were accused of raping two white women in a freight car. Although convicted the case was appealed and retired four times, and only the spotlight of national attention prevented any from being lynched.

1931- Shortly after the invention of automobiles, there were automobile races. This day in the dry lake beds of Muroc California saw the first race car speed trials sanctioned by the American Automobile Assoc. It was the beginning of NASCAR.

1932- Motion Picture Academy President William DeMille, the brother of Cecil B., tried starting a 'Squawk Forum", inviting film industry workers to air their grievances with their studio heads. (and this way they won't try to unionize). The first boss on the hot seat was MGM's Louis B. Mayer. He was greeted with boos, insults and catcalls. The forum quickly devolved into a screaming free for all. Mayer furiously stormed out and preceded to fire all those Metro employees he could remember were there. The Squawk Forum idea was quickly abandoned. Workers continued to organize into craft unions.

1933- Nazis Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels offered famed director Fritz Lang a job. Fritz said he’d think about it, then immediately packed his bags for Hollywood.

1943 - The first Japanese anime film premiered " Momotarō no Umiwashi (桃太郎の海鷲,
Momotaro's Divine Sea Eagles" by director Mitsuyo Seo. Momotaro or Peach Boy, was a popular character with children. It ran only 37 minutes.

1944- During World War II, over the Dover coastline, Flight Sgt. Nicholas Alkemade bailed out of his burning Spitfire, and his chute failed to open. He fell 18,000 feet. In a freak occurrence, high on shore winds slowed his descent, and he hit a wet beach that broke his fall. Sgt. Alkemade suffered only a broken ankle. It was a million to one shot. English film director Michael Powell made the incident the basis of his fantasy film with David Niven called "A Matter of Life and Death", released in the US as "Stairway to Heaven”.

1945- The 322 fighter group escorted a large contingent of bombers from Italy to Berlin and back. During the dogfights over Germany the unit’s P-51 fighter planes shot down three German ME-262 jet fighters. No bombers were lost and the 322rd was awarded a special unite citation for bravery. The 322rd Fighter Group were the Tuskeegee Airmen, the Red-Tails, all black pilots. Their commander Benjamin Davis became the first African-American to become a US General.

1945- General Eisenhower told Marshal Stalin that the allied armies would hold back and let the Soviet Red Army take Berlin.

1953- NUMBER 10 RILLINGTON PLACE. A new tenant to this modest flat in London made an awful discovery- behind the walls were the bodies of 4 women, with one more buried under the pea patch. The previous tenant Jack Christie confessed to the murders and was executed. Christie became the most infamous British serial killer since Jack the Ripper.

1954- RCA began mass production and marketing of color television sets. At the time the set cost as much as an automobile, 12 inch screen and there was very little programming in color.

1955- US Customs seize a shipment of 258 copies Alan Ginsburg’s poem Howl printed in the UK on the grounds it was obscene." I saw some of the finest minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Next year when Lawrence Ferlinghetti of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore printed the poem, he was arrested.

1957-The Rome Treaty establishing the European Economic Community.

1960- Thirty-five years after it was written and published in Europe an American judge ruled that D.H. Lawrence's novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not pornography and could finally be sold in the U.S. Whaddaya think of that, John-Thomas?

1960- The Moulin Rouge Agreement. After a lot of agitation and arm twisting from Frank Sinatra, the owners of the Las Vegas casinos agreed to integrate. It was so named for the Moulin Rouge Casino, which up to then had been the only casino that allowed black and white patrons to mix freely.

1965- Viola Gregg Liuzzo was a fiesty red-haired wife of a Detroit Teamster official who was so moved watching Martin Luther King’s freedom marchers being beaten up by cops that she drove down to Alabama to offer her help. When her children feared they would never see her again Mrs Liuzzo replied she would "live to pee on your graves".
This night she was driving black marchers from Selma to Montgomery when three Ku Klux Klansmen pulled along side her car and shot her at point blank range. Her case reached up as high as the White House where President Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover spent several anxious meetings over what to do. The Klansmen were rounded up but acquitted by an all-white Alabama jury, then a Federal court gave them six years for violating Mrs. Liuzzo’s civil rights. Viola Liuzzo was the only white woman ever murdered in the 60’s Civil Rights Movement.

1966 - Beatles pose with mutilated dolls & butchered meat for the cover of the "Yesterday & Today" album, It was later pulled.

1967 -The Who & Cream make their US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show.

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their week-long "love-in" for peace in the bed of Room 902 of the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam.

1975- King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was assassinated by a nephew. The nephew was beheaded.

1990- The Happy Land Social Club fire. A Cuban man broke up with his girlfriend over drinks in a crowded Latino bar in New York City. The bouncers threw him out when he got abusive. He left the club then returned and splashed gasoline around the one entrance and set it on fire. 87 people died, some so fast that their remains still had their drinks in their hands. It was the worst fire in New York since the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, ironically on this same date.
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Quiz: In literature, who were Gargantua and Pantagruel?

Answer: Two giants who go on adventures created by the XVII French writer Francois Rabelais.

Quiz: In literature, who were Gargantua and Pantagruel?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Which is not a Marvel character? Spiderman, Antman, Hulk, Aquaman, Green Goblin.
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History for 3/24/2023
Birthdays: Steve McQueen, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Ub Iwerks (the first Disney animator), John Wesley Powell, Harry Houdini aka Eric Weisz, Edward Weston, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde, Bob Mackie, Robert Carradine, Jesus Alou, Laura Flynn-Boyle, Alyson Hannigan, Joe Barbera, Cal Howard, R. Lee Ermey, Peyton Manning, Kelly LeBrock, Sir Elton John is 76, Jessica Chastain is 46


1185- Battle of Dano-Ura. Huge Japanese samurai battle fought at sea. The Minamoto Genji Clan defeated the Taira-Hekki Clan and seized the throne. The 7 year old Hekki Emperor and many of his retainers drowned. To this day local fishermen find small crabs with shells like samurai face masques on them.

1241- Mongol armies were sent into Europe by Genghis Khan’s general Subotai. While one pincer marched into Hungary, another force under Vuldai and Paidar burned the Polish capitol of Krakow. A trumpeter trying to sound a warning from a church tower was shot through the throat with an arrow. Since then, in his memory in the town square every hour on the hour, a trumpeter plays the bugle call and stops short at the same note -The Heynal.

1603- Queen Elizabeth I of England died of a gum inflammation, James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I Stewart of the United Kingdom. Elizabeth was 69 and had ruled England since she was 25. She was famous for being frugal but she loved nice clothing. At her death she left 2,000 dresses. When an Anglican bishop in a sermon tried to criticize her for vanity, the Queen stood up and warned the good bishop to hold his tongue,”ere ye may attain Heaven before your time”.

1663- King Charles II granted lands in the newly forming American settlements called Carolina to noblemen who supported him in the recently ended English Civil War.

1765- the British Parliament passed the American Quartering Act, which means you have to let a redcoat soldier sleep in your home whether you like it or not! You even had to give them your extra food and candles at no charge! Up to now all the British army was on the frontier protecting against Indians, now it seemed the redcoats were moved into towns and settlements to keep an eye on the Americans! This and the Stamp Act was another of the sort of thing that bugged Americans about being a colony.

1794- Hero of the American Revolution Thaddeus Kosciuszko raised the banner of Revolt to liberate Poland from the Russians, Austrians and Germans. They were unimpressed. In spirit of American and French liberty, he appeared in the great square of Krakow in a peasants jacket and declared a fight to the death. He finished the war in a Russian prison. Eventually released, he visited America in 1797 and was paid $3,947 in back pay as an American army officer. He spent all the money buying black slaves and freeing them.

1808- Napoleons’ French army entered Madrid.

1843- THE BATTLE OF HYDERABAD- Sir Charles Napier and the British Army of India defeated the Balouki tribesmen and Talpur Emir and conquered the region in modern Pakistan called the Sindh.
One problem generals always have after a big battle is coming up with a good name. This battle was fought near a village called Dabaa, but in Hindi, Dabaa meant greasy animal skins. Charles Napier didn’t want to be knighted in Westminster Abbey as the Viscount Greasy Animal Skins, so he sent an officer to ride around until he found a town with a more suitable name. Finally they chose the town of Hyderabad. Back in London Lord Napier was hailed as the Conqueror of Sindh. Punch magazine punned that his report consisted of one word-PECCAVI- Latin for “ I have Sinned.- get it? “ Victorian humor!

1882 -In Berlin, German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacillus that caused Tuberculosis, enabling a vaccine to at last be created. T.B. or consumption, was the dreaded pandemic of the 1800's- killing everyone from Frederic Chopin, Henry Clay, Doc Holliday, Aubrey Beardsley, to Mimi in La Boheme.

1900- Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck turned over the first shovel-full of dirt on the project to build the New York City subway system.

1912- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s adventure novel The Lost World, first published in magazine installments. Conan Doyle was inspired when he in 1905 he attended a lecture at the Royal Geographic Society, when an Amazon explorer described finding dinosaur bones. It was the first of the Land-of-the-Dinosaurs type stories. In 1925, Willis O'Brien made the Lost World into the first dinosaur monster movie.

1918- A top magician on the London stage was Chung Ling Soo. His real name was Bill Robinson from Westchester, NY, but he got up in yellowface and pretended to be a magical mandarin. His best routine was when someone fired a pistol at him and he caught the bullet with his teeth. On this day his trick gun failed, and he was really shot and killed. Ta-Daaa!

1934-The Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour debuted on radio. It became a national craze to see who could be a future star. Frank Sinatra was among their finds. The show eventually moved to television and later spawned the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Chuck Barris the Gong Show, Star Search, American Idol and The Voice.

1939- The film The Hound of the Baskervilles premiered with actors Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. They became famous interpreters of the characters, and went on to make a dozen more films.

1944- The Nazi Gestapo in Rome retaliated for a car bomb that killed 33 Germans, by pulling innocent people at random off the street and executing them.

1944- THE GREAT ESCAPE- 60 Allied POWs dug a tunnel and escaped from an elite German prison in Poland. All but 5 were recaptured, and 40 were executed.

1945- Warners Life With Feathers, the first Sylvester the Cat.

1949- MGM’s The Little Orphan won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

1954- The Nash-Kelvinator Company and the Hudson Car Company merge to form American Motors Corporation or AMC automobiles.

1955- Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" debuts at Broadway's Marosco Theater. Barbera Bel-Geddes was the first Cat, and Burl Ives was " Big Daddy".

1958- Elvis Presley inducted into the Army. G.I. Blues!

1962- No one had been a more loyal supporter of President John F. Kennedy than Frank Sinatra. The singer got his Ratpack friends to stump for the candidate, and even got Mafia money to support a man whose brother Bobby was busy busting the rackets. But the President was warned that association with such a known libertine would cost him family values votes one day. So when Kennedy next visited Palm Springs he not only refused an invitation to stay with Sinatra, he stayed with more wholesome singer Bing Crosby, a Republican! Sinatra in a rage took a sledgehammer to the private helicopter landing pad he was preparing for JFK, and broke off his friendship with JFK’s brother-in-law, actor Peter Lawford. By the end of the 60s Old Blue Eyes was a supporter of Nixon.

1973- In Buffalo, a drunk fan bit singer Lou Reed on the ass.

1987- Michael Eisner and Premier Jacques Chirac sign the protocol to build Euro-Disney, later called Disneyland Paris.

1989- The supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound Alaska. It was claimed its Captain Joseph Hazelwood was drunk. But insiders claim Exxon fabricated the drunk-captain story to excuse their inadequate detection and warning equipment. The route was well charted and easy to maneuver. Despite lots of promises from Exxon to clean it up completely, today much of Prince William Sound is still contaminated, and the wildlife is still trying to recover.

1999- The U.S. and NATO began to bomb Belgrade over Serbian attacks in Kossovo.

2005- A Colorado Rockies big league baseball game was called off on account a swarm of bees. The bees were attracted by the coconut oil in the starting pitcher’s hair gel.

2006- 13 year old Miley Cyrus debuts on TV as Disney’s Hanna Montana.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which is not a Marvel character? Spiderman, Antman, Hulk, Aquaman, Green Goblin.

Answer: Aquaman is a DC character. The Marvel merman is called Submariner.