Quiz: When Leadbelly sang “Let the Midnight Special, shine his light on me”, what was he talking about?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Pope Benedict is the first pope to resign since the Great Schism. What is a Schism?
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History for 3/3/2013
B-Dayz: George Pullman of Pullman Railroad cars, General Matthew Ridgeway, Jean Harlow, Diana Barrymore, Akira Ifukube the composer of the music scores to movies like Godzilla, Tone Loc, Jacky Joyner-Kersee, James Doohan, Ronald Searle, Bruno Bozzetto, Will Eisner, Herschel Walker, George Miller, Miranda Richardson is 55

1517- Protestant reformer Martin Luther wrote the Pope in Rome a letter of submission and tried to make nice. But privately he told a friend” I am not sure whether the Pope is the AntiChrist or merely his Apostle.”

1764- Elderly King Louis XV appeared before the regional Parliament of Paris and re-affirmed in France he was absolute master:” In My Person alone resides the Sovereign Power…to me alone belongs the legislative power, unconditional and undivided. My people and I are one, all public order emanates from me.” No representative government stuff like England was going to happen while he was around. King Louis all but ensured that France would change only from violent revolution.

1783- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed his Symphony #35 the Hafner in Vienna with the Austrian Emperor Joseph II in attendance.

1800- President John Adams signed a bill calling for the second Census of the people of the United States.

1801- THE MIDNIGHT JUDGES-Outgoing President John Adams was the first presidential sore loser. He was outraged that he was not re-elected to a second term. He vented his frustrations by spending his last night as President signing dozens of Federal Judgeships and army officer commissions to members of his Federalist party. He then boycotted the inauguration and took his sweet time moving out of the White House, forcing Thomas Jefferson to spend his first night as President in a pub.

1820- The Missouri Compromise. Most of US politics of the early nineteenth century was seeing how long they could keep the Civil War from breaking out. Congress was evenly divided between slave states and free states, so every new state created caused a crisis. This day it was decided Missouri would be a slave state while Maine would be a free state and there would be no slave states north of Missouri in the remaining Louisiana Purchase territories.

1836- A messenger slipped past the Mexican army into the Alamo. He told Col. Travis and his Texans that they could expect no help from the outside world to save them.

1842- Massachusetts created a law trying to limit the workday for children under twelve to twelve hours a day only, but it is considered too liberal to be enforced.

1849- The US Department of the Interior established

1863- President Lincoln signed into law the National Conscription Act (the Draft).
The Confederate States had already started drafting the previous year. Rich men could get out of the army by paying $300 for a substitute. J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller and Theodore Roosevelt's father took this way out. Harvard-Yale games and varsity boat races went on throughout the Civil War with no loss of players. This angered the poor that the war was a rich man's game. Riots broke out in several cities. A popular song of the day "We are coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand Strong" was changed to "We are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Dollars More

1873- Under the Comstock Act, information on birth control is considered pornography and not permitted to be sent through the U.S. mail.

1873- The US Congress voted to double their own salaries, and make the pay raise retroactive for the previous two years. This was at the time of a severe economic recession. The public was furious over the “Salary Grab Act”.

1875-Claude Bizet's opera CARMEN debuts. Parisians usually go to see comedies at the Opera Comique and most thought this would be about the adventures of a coquettish Spanish gypsy. Instead they saw one of the great dark dramas of opera, a story of sexual power and obsession. The shocking sight of a slutty smuggler getting knifed by a burnout soldier driven mad with sex was so upsetting, it was booed off the stage. Bizet never got over the fiasco, he died six months later. Carmen is now one of the world's most famous operas.

1875- HOCKEY- The first modern Hockey Game was played at the Victoria skating rink in Montreal Canada. No one is sure just how old hockey. In the 1700’s Micmac Indians played a game on bone skates using sticks and passed it on to the British garrison of Halifax Nova Scotia. The people of Windsor Nova Scotia claim hockey was invented there at Long Pond in 1844 from the Irish game of Stick & Ball. The first pucks were frozen horse droppings. No one is sure where the word Hockey came from, the nickname of some British officer or local schoolteacher perhaps.

1902-The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it's all right for the U.S. Government to ignore Indian treaties, if they do it in a nice way.

1931- Congress and President Hoover made the "Star Spangled Banner" officially the U.S. national anthem. The 1814 Francis Scott Key poem set to the English beer hall song "To Anacreon in Heaven" was sung since the 1850's, but this day it became official.

1934- Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger escaped from a Witchita jail by carving a gun out of soap (it was actually wood) and painting it with shoe polish. He said :"The jail hasn't been made that can hold me!"

1945- General MacArthur announced the Philippine capitol Manila had at last been retaken from the Japanese. The fighting had been house-to-house and General Yamashita’s troops had committed wholesale executions of civilians as they retreated. After the war, General Yamashita was executed as a war criminal.

1950-Paramount's "Quack-a-Doodle-Doo" The first Baby Huey cartoon.

1950-Don Herbert teaches millions of kids about science as televisions Mr.Wizard.

1952- The Supreme Court ruled that school teachers could be fired if they were Communists.

1966- William Frawley, the bald, gravel-voiced neighbor Fred Murtz on I Love Lucy, had just seen the movie Inside Daisy Clover on Hollywood Blvd. He was outside the Knickerbocker Hotel when he lit a cigar, then dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 79. When his TV partner Vivian Vance heard the news, she said “ Champagne for Everyone!” They never liked each other much. She died in 1979.

1973- THE BAR CODE. An ad-hoc committee of scientists from Proctor & Gamble and Nabisco and such announced the invention of the Universal Product’s Code- The Bar Code, that annoying little set of bars and numbers on everything you own or buy. No longer would stores have to close their doors periodically for inventory counting. But if you are a conspiracy fan its the way the Hidden Government and the guys in the black helicopters keep a record on everything you buy.

1980- Aetna Insurance reported in a newsletter having to pay damages for a man at a delicatessen who had a carp he was ordering jump off the counter and bite him in the leg.

1991- L.A.P.D officers beat up drunk and disorderly driver Rodney King. King had previous convictions and was tazed several times with a an electric shock but still fought back at police, who seemed to go berserk on him with their clubs just as a witness caught the incident on videotape. The incident and trials caused a scandal in Los Angeles and later the largest civilian riots in U.S. history.

2001- Despite worldwide outrage, the fundamentalist Taliban of Afghanistan began destroying their nations ancient giant stone Buddhas with dynamite, as graven images.
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Yesterdays question: Pope Benedict is the first pope to resign since the Great Schism. What is a Schism?

Answer: A schism is a split in the Church. In 1378 A political battle between France , Italy and the German Empire caused two popes to be elected simultaneously. The Council of Constance convened and solved the crisis in 1415 by ordering both popes to resign and a new one elected.

Quiz: Pope Benedict is the first pope to resign since the Great Schism. What is a Schism?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Byron wrote a famous poem about Ozymandias. Who was Ozymandias?
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History for 3/2/2013
Birthdays: Sam Houston, Alexander Graham Bell, Kurt Weill, Desi Arnaz ( Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III ), Ted Geisel aka Dr.Suess, Mikhail Gorbachov, Willis O'Brian, Moe Berg, Karen Carpenter, Lou Reed, Jennifer Jones, John Cullum is 83, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Jon Bon Jovi is 51, Daniel Craig is 45

1820- It had been thought in modern times that the Pyramids in Egypt were solid monuments with no chambers. This day Italian archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni discovered the long lost entrance to the Great Pyramid of Giza and explored it’s inner corridors and burial chambers.

1836- TEXAS DECLARES INDEPENDENCE FROM MEXICO. In 1821 the Mexican Congress had given Yankee settlers permission to live in the under-populated northern province of Teijas. Soon there were 3,000 Tejanos to 100,000 Yanquis living there. After a military coup in 1833 brought General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to power conditions in the outer provinces got harsh. Taxes were bad and the army sent to police them were drawn from the dregs, usually convicts. Mexico also wanted the American settlers to liberate their black slaves.

When settlers leader Stephen Austin went to Mexico City to complain he was immediately jailed for fomenting insurrection. The Republic of Texas independence declaration was signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos. One of the signers there was John Wheeler Bunton, the Great Grand-Uncle of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Texas revolt was as much a revolt of the ethnic Mexican Teijanos as the gringos. Similar revolts broke out at the same time in California and Jalixsco, but we remember Texas mostly because it succeeded.

1863- The Union Pacific Railroad adopted a standard track width of 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches. This width became the standard for the United States and later for most of the railroads of the world. Although train travel was invented in Britain, Europe was slow to adapt to it, while America, Russia and India rapidly embraced a technology that could quickly cover it’s vast distances quickly.

1917-CZAR NICHOLAS II ABDICATED THE THRONE OF RUSSIA with a note scribbled in pencil. He had tried to abdicate in favor of his younger brother Archduke Michael as regent for his son Alexis, and save the dynasty. But Michael wanted none of it and the revolutionary forces tearing at Russian society. He ignored his pleas. After 303 years the Romanov Dynasty was at an end.

1922- A 21 year old veteran named Walt Disney after getting out of the army began studying in the public library Edwin Lutz's book "Motion Picture Animation and How it is Made". In Kansas City he and his brother Roy persuaded the owner of a small chain of vaudeville theaters to fund some cartoons. Today the Newman's Laff-O-Grams Company was formed. A year later the Disney brothers would move to Hollywood and start a new enterprise called the Walt Disney Company.

1923- THE FIRST TIME MAGAZINE. Founders Henry Luce and Claire Booth Luce were among the more powerful of the nations cultural elite. Conservative to the core -to the end of their days they thought Franklin Roosevelt and Civil Rights were big mistakes, they still experimented with LSD when it was thought by Harvard professors to be mind expanding. In the late 1980's the Time merged with Warner Communications to form Time-Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate.

1925- The US Government started assigning numbers to motorways and planned interstate highways Before that roads had names like the Boston Post Road or the Baltimore to Washington Highway.

1933- Movie "KING KONG" premiered at the new Radio City Music Hall in New York and the Roxy. Twas Beauty killed the Beast. No CGI around.

1940- SEABISCUIT-. The small ungainly racehorse Seabiscuit had lost the Santa Anita Handicap Stakes twice and at 7 years old had ligament tears and was considered washed up. But he was entered one more time to try to win this race. The jockey Red Pollard was an alcoholic who had broken his leg and collarbone and was told he couldn’t walk, much less ride ever again. Today this unlikely duo raced one more time against odds more like a Hollywood movie than a stakes race. The Biscuit not only won his last race, but set a track record,, the second fastest time ever and the richest win for that time. It’s called one of the greatest comeback stories in sports history. When discussing the Sports Legends of the Twentieth Century- Ali, Ruth, Michael Jordan, Seabiscuit is the only non-human.

1943- Battle of the Bismark Sea. U.S. Navy planes shoot up a Japanese task force .

1947- Crusading Hollywood labor union organizer Herb Sorrell is plucked off the street in Glendale by gangsters posing as police. They may not have been just posing, many studios at the time hired off-duty LAPD at doubletime rates to rough up problem employees. They drive Herb up to Mulholland and work him over, leaving him by the side of the road. Shortly after leaving the hospital Sorrell was jailed for disturbing public peace.

1960- Wilt Chamberlain ("Wilt the Stilt") scores 100 points in one game for the Philadelphia Warriors . Wilt averaged a phenomenal 55 points per game that year and the NBA instituted a number of anti-Wilt regulations to ensure guys under 6'2 could get back in the game, like offensive goal tending, etc. Wilt also claimed to have put his off the court time to good use. He claims to have had sex with 3000 women .

1961- Pablo Picasso married his second wife Jacqueline. He was 80, she was 35. Jacqueline cared for the increasingly reclusive artist and kept even his family at a distance. When Picasso died in 1973 she turned away many family members from the funeral. Jacqueline committed suicide in 1986.

1965- US military bombers do the first bombing raid inside of North Vietnam in a campaign that got the designation Rolling Thunder.

1971- Charles Engelhard died, a venture capitalist who’s wild investments and grand lifestyle made him the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s villain Auric Goldfinger.

1972- Pioneer 10 space probe launched. The first satellite to the outer planets, it sent back the first closeup photos of Jupiter in 1973 and left our solar system in 1983. It carries a plaque with a representation of men and women, a map of the Earth and Richard Nixon’s signature on it. It is in deep space now and will reach the star Ross 246 in the constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 A.D. Boy, I can hardly wait!

1973- The Women in Film organization founded.

1976- Francis Ford Coppola began shooting his epic film“ Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines. The film was plagued by cost overruns, a typhoon and his Philippine Army helicopters frequently flying off to fight real guerrillas in the middle of shooting, but somehow it all got done.

1979- The Anglo-French Concord supersonic airliner service introduced. It was discontinued because of bad economics in 2003.

1982- Science Fiction writer Phiilip K. Dick died of a stroke in Santa Ana California. The author of stories the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall were based. Dick said he was at times possessed by a superalien who appeared in his mind in a beam of pink light. His autobiography was titled “ I am alive and you are dead.”

1989- At a photo session, NY Mets outfielder and recreational cokehead Darryl Strawberry threw a punch at the team's first baseman, Keith Hernandez. The scuffle started over comments about salaries and ended with the Straw walking out of camp. A sportswriter for Sports Illustrated describing the fight said" Darryl Strawberry finally hit his cut off man."
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Yesterday’s Question: Byron wrote a famous poem about Ozymandias. Who was Ozymandias?

Answer: Ozimandias was a poem written by Percy Shelley (not Byron) in 1817. About a traveler who comes upon a massive broken statue in the desert. Its theme is of the futility of earthly glory.

Ozymandias is a bastardization of the name "User-Maat-Ra Setep-en-Ra" the throne name of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II (the Great) and the name used in antiquity to call him, until Francois Champollion cracked the code to hieroglyphs and the world discovered his true given name.

Question: Byron wrote a famous poem about Ozymandias. Who was Ozymandias?

Answer to yesterdays question below: When speaking about lenses and cameras, people use the name Argus. Who was Argus?
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History for 3/1/2013
Birthdays: Frederic Chopin, Glen Miller, Harry Belafonte is 86, David Niven, Robert Clary, Oskar Kokoschka, Roger Daltry, Robert Conrad, Deke Slayton, Yitschak Rabin. Catherine Bach, Timothy Daly, Ron Howard is 58 Javier Bardem is 44.

Welcome to MARCH from MARTIUS Mensis, THE MONTH OF MARS-so named because in ancient times it was the first month that was warm enough for armies to take the field and kill each other. Various warrior societies held religious ceremonies to inaugurate campaigning season. In Rome, the Salian Priests would do a ceremonial dance with the magic shields of Mars the Avenger, dropped from heaven for Romulus. The Macedonians would split a dog in half lengthwise and parade the troops between the two halves, sort of going through the gates of Pluto. I hope the dog appreciated the symbolism...

86 BC. Roman legions of Lucius Cornelius Sulla recapture Athens from Mithradates the king of Pontus (a part of eastern Turkey). Mithridates was offering Rome it's most serious competition in the conquest game since Hannibal. Sulla was so angry that the Athenians had welcomed the enemy in, that he destroyed half of the city. He then saved the rest :"more in memory of her glorious past than her modern inhabitants." Mithradates was defeated and committed suicide. According to Plutarch, at one point Sulla's men captured a satyr (half man-half goat) in the precincts of the temple of Artemis. Sulla asked the supernatural creature about the future, but all it would do is whinny like a goat. So he told his men to get rid of it.

589 AD- HAPPY SAINT DAVIDS’ DAY- This is the traditional date of the death of St. David, the patron saint of Wales. Called the Waterman, he was a Celtic monk, abbot and bishop who became the first archbishop of Wales. He was one of many early saints who helped to spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic tribes of western Britain. Welshmen celebrate today like the Irish celebrate St. Patrick, although with out the green beer.

1562-THE MASSACRE OF VASSEY- In France the Catholics and Huguenots- Protestants had been headed towards open conflict despite all attempts at mediation. In the little town of Vassey south of Dijon the Catholic Duke Du Guise became annoyed when Huguenots hymn singing in a barn disturbed his ability to hear Mass. Scuffling broke out and when the Duke got hit in the face with a stone, his retainers drew their swords and chopped up 125 people. The Religious Wars had begun.

1579- Sir Francis Drake on board the Golden Hind made the catch of his career. In the waters off Cartegena Columbia he attacked and captured one of the great Spanish treasure ships carrying Inca gold and silver from Peru. This one ship carried more wealth than the entire treasury then in Elizabeth’s England. And a fleet of these crossed the ocean twice a year. Drake instantly became a rich man. The galleon was called La Nuestra Senora De La Concepcion, but her crew nicknamed her “KaKaFuego” which some translate as “Spitfire”, but more closely means “Hot sh*t.”

1680- Pennsylvania became the first US colony to outlaw slavery.

1711- The first issue of England’s’ great periodical the Spectator first published. It was unique for a broadsheet in that it didn’t cover politics or doings at court but printed essays on social gossip, literary criticism, studies of manners and morals. It was said the Spectator helped begin the transformation of English gentry from ale-swilling philanderers to the well-bred, well-read snobs of the Victorian Era.

1777- Young artillery officer Alexander Hamilton was appointed to General George Washington’s personal staff. This marked the beginning of Hamilton’s personal relationship with Washington that would last throughout the war and his presidency. Hamilton was his constant consultant, advisor and may have written many of Washington’s speeches. There is a rumor that GW may even have been Hamilton’s father since his only trip outside the US was to visit Bermuda. Hamilton was born illegitimately on the Virgin island of Nevis, but beyond that no evidence has ever been substantiated.

1808- Parliament outlawed the overseas slave trade within the British Empire.

1815- Napoleon Bonaparte came ashore in France near Frejus on the Riviera and marched on Paris in a desperate gamble to regain his throne. He was attacking a nation of 14 million with just 1,200 followers. After his defeat in Russia and exile to Elba the European allies restored the Bourbon King and old aristocrats to France.

The old royals soon made it plain they learned nothing from the French Revolution and wanted to continue things as if it was still 1789. Little things like evicting war orphaned children into the street so some old aristocrat could have his crumbling chateau back. The Royal family also liked to spit on the tricolor flag and appeared in public in Russian uniforms, a uniform seen by French people as responsible for the deaths of many of their brothers and husbands. The peoples anger enabled Napoleon to recall old memories of Glory, and Liberte’.

At the sight of the little man in the plain black hat everyone went nuts. The whole Royal Army changed sides without a shot fired. His desperate gamble became a triumphal party and he was carried on the crowd’s shoulders back into the palace.

1836- A dozen or so Texans from Gonzales slip past Santa Anna’s Mexican army to join their friends in the Alamo. These are the last reinforcements to arrive.

1872- Congress ok’s creation of Yellowstone National Park. In 1878 during the military campaign against the Nez Perce Indians, Chief Joseph took his warriors through the park territory frightening some early tourists.

1896- Battle of Adwa- The Italian colonization of the ancient land of Ethiopia is halted for a generation after the entire Italian army is wiped out in one big battle. Critics like to scoff that the modern Italian forces were massacred by a spear wielding foe, but in truth the legions of the Negus Negusti (king of kings, i.e. Ethiopian emperor) had been covertly rearmed by France with the latest rapid firing cannon. France didn’t want any encroachment on her own colonial holdings in nearby Senegal.

1912- Albert Berry completed the first parachute jump from an aeroplane in St. Louis Missouri

1917-Czar-Autocrat of all the Russias, Nicholas II rushed back to his rebellious capitol St. Petersburg in a private train. Today he was told the way was blocked by revolutionaries. His train backed up and was blocked again from behind by mutinous troops. His ministers advised that the army would no longer remain loyal and he may have to abdicate.

1919- The March Movement- Korea declares it’s independence from Japan, Russia and China.

1930-Disney animator Ub Iwerks, the animator/designer of Mickey Mouse, quits the studio to set up his own place. Walt was stunned by the defection of one of his first employees and closest friends. Iwerks studio producing Flip the Frog Cartoons, will eventually fail and he'll return to Disneys to invent the xerox process. Iwerks partner was Pat Powers, who’s PowersCinephone was the process used to put sound on “Steamboat Willie”.Powers engineered the break when Disney refused to let him buy in to a co-partnership in Disney Studio.

1932- Museum of Modern Art in New York has first major retrospective of the style of architecture called "THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE" Steel girder frames with large windows for walls and no ornamentation. This style pioneered by Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Phillip Johnson. Called by critics "vertical ice cube trays" they now dominate the skylines around the world, making Moscow and Shanghai equally unrecognizable from Pretoria, or Newark, New Jersey.

1932-THE LINDBERGH BABY KIDNAPPING. The infant son of the famous couple was taken from his crib in their Princeton New Jersey home. Forensic science determined he was bludgeoned and buried shortly afterwards. But the kidnap plot went ahead for nine days. The kidnapper left behind a crudely written note asking for $50,000 dollars in small bills. Bruno Richard Hauptman, the man who was convicted and executed for the crime protested his innocence to the end, The New Jersey country sheriff in charge of the investigation was the father of future Gulf War general Norman Schwarzkopf.

1936- Max Fleischer's short cartoon"Snow White" (starring Betty Boop). Cab Calloway singing the "St. James Infirmary Blues" is a highlight.

1937- Connecticut issued the first metal license plates for autos.

1941- Congress approved a designating a committee to investigate waste in defense appropriations. It was chaired by junior Missouri Senator Harry Truman. The Truman commission routed out corruption ad sweetheart deals among businessmen doing war work. The exposed waste, fraud, padding bills and corporations still doing business with the enemy. The Truman Commission saved America millions and made Harry Truman a national hero. No such committee was allowed for the Iraq War, and the result is billions in secret no-bid contracts, and $9 billion still unaccounted for.

1946-The National Cartoonists Society formed.

1951- Frank Sinatra was subpoenaed by the Senate Kefhauver Committee looking into the activities of the Mafia. In deference to Old Blue Eyes public persona, strings were pulled so he was allow to testify in his attorney’s private office high in 30 Rockefeller Plaza at 4:00 a.m.

1954- Puerto Rican Nationalists shoot 5 congressman on Capitol Hill. They opened fire from the visitors gallery down on the Congressman.

1961- John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps.

1961-The Ken Doll introduced.

1962- A huge tickertape parade in New York is held for astronaut John Glenn.

1966- The Russian probe Venera 3 landed on Venus. Although the Venera crash landed it was the first unmanned probe to land on the surface of another world.

1968- Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara, who presided over the Vietnam War buildup and humiliated by the Tet Offensive, resigned and was replaced by presidential advisor Clark Clifford.

1971- Radical Hippy Weathermen Movement planted a bomb in the men’s room of the US Senate. It exploded causing thousands of dollars in damage but hurting no one.

1975- The first Honda Civics arrive in the US.

1978- Unemployed auto mechanics Gatchko Ganas and Roman Wardas broke into the tomb of Charlie Chaplin in Vevey Switzerland and stole his remains. They tried to hold it for ransom. The body was recovered and the two losers were soon arrested. They were trying to make enough money to open a car repair garage in France.

1988- Apple introduced the first commercially available CD-ROM drive for your personal computer.
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Yesterday’s Question: When speaking about lenses and cameras, people use the name Argus. Who was Argus?

Answer: In ancient Greek Mythology, Argus was a monster with 100 eyes who never slept. Hera had him guard the maiden turned heifer Io. Hermes played his pipes to lull Argus to sleep and then killed him. Hera put his eyes in the tail of the peacock.