Quiz- What does the Jamaican movement Rastafarians have to do with the deposed Emperor of Ethiopia Halie Selassie?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is a cup of coffee sometimes called a cup of Joe?
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History for 4/3/2013
Birthdays: King Henry IV of England (1361), Washington Irving, William Marcy " Boss" Tweed, Sally Rand the Fan Dancer, Ma Rainey, Iron Eyes Cody, Wayne Newton, Doris Day, Robert Sherwood, Virgil Grissom, Marsha Mason, Melissa Etheridge, Marlon Brando, Amanda Byrnes, David Hyde Pierce, Alec Baldwin is 55, Eddie Murphy is 51

In Ancient Greece the beginning of April was the Aphrodisia- the Festival of Aphrodite. Greeks would offer sacrifices to the Goddess of Love and some would visit the sacred prostitutes in the great temple in Corinth. Gimme that Ole Time Religion….

127 AD.- Today is the day Pope Sixtus Ist was martyred under the Emperor Trajan. Sixtus is remembered as the pope during the Mass when the priests chanted Holy, Holy, Holy -Hosanna in the Highest, etc. he insisted it be sung by everyone in the congregation.

628AD- After being defeated by Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, Persian King Chosroes II was murdered by his own son, and his body chucked down a well.

1043- Edward the Confessor crowned King of England.

1312-The Vatican, under the influence of the French King Phillip the Fair, abolished the Holy Order of the Knights Templar. The order was rich in international finance and none of it taxable and because they were monks there were no relatives to sponge it off. They invented the personal check, so a Templar didn’t have to ride from castle to castle with those heavy bags of gold. Just write out a note (or have your scribe do it if you were illiterate) and affix your seal to it. I wonder if they had pretty sunsets printed on them...

1367-The Battle of Navarette- during a lull in the Hundred Year War, Edward the Black Prince of England goes to Spain to help King of Aragon Pedro the Cruel press his claims against Navarre. He defeats a Franco-Navarrese force of knights and captures the great French knight Bertrand DeGuesclin (De-Gue-Klan). But when Edward refused to turn over his prisoners to Pedro so he could behead them ( why else have a nickname like Cruel ?), even refusing to hand over DeGuesclin for his weight in pure silver, Pedro refused to pay the Englishmen's wages and Edward went home broke and annoyed.

1657- Oliver Cromwell formally refused the title King of England and preferred to remain the Lord Protector of the English Republic.

1714-THE FIRST BRITISH PRIME MINISTER-Before this time men who ran the government of England at the kings pleasure held a variety of titles: Lord High Admiral, Chancellor, Mayor of the Palace, etc.. As the complicated checks & balances of democratic government evolved more dependable positions were needed.

When The British Crown was offered to the German George Ist of Hanover, he was bewildered by how complicated English parliamentary democracy was! He also refused to learn English, switching to French or Latin when no one responded to his German.

Couldn't I just work with one man who could get what I wanted done? So Minister of the Exchequer (treasury) Sir Robert Walpole (father of writer Horace Walpole), who's party was in the majority in Parliament became First Minister, later Prime Minister .The reason the job evolved out of the Treasury is that minister could grease the rights palms to get things done.

King George wanted Walpole in close touch so he gave him a house near Whitehall Palace. He had just foreclosed on a modest row house called #10 Downing Street. Walpole said he didn't want it seen as a royal bribe. He would vacate it when he left office for his successor.

1730 -EMPEROR MOYTOY OF AMERICA- An English conman, Sir Alexander Cummings, had ingratiated himself into the council of the huge Cherokee Nation, then occupying most of Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee. In a scam to make himself look like the spokesperson of all native Americans, Cummings convinced one Cherokee chief named Moytoy to travel to England and do ritual submission to King George II under the title Emperor Moytoy of the Americas! The Indians were confused but went along with what they thought was a gag. Cummings disappeared shortly after the truth came out, undoubtedly a much wealthier man.

1764- Aging Empress Maria Theresa of Austria raised her son Joseph II to be co-emperor. He was the Emperor in the movie Amadeus. This day he was crowned at Frankfurt. He later wrote his mother “ ..a lot of elegant people mouthing idiocies.”

1791- The French Revolution Assembly National decided to convert the Church of Saint Genevieve to a secular temple to contain the remains of the great leaders of the French Nation. It was renamed the Pantheon after the ancient Roman name. The bones of Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau and more were soon moved there.

1814-THE MARSHALS STRIKE. Napoleon’s top generals, the Marshals, gathered around him at Fontainbleau Palace to try to convince him to step down. These men had their fortunes made in his service. They had fought and bled for him on a hundred battlefields. But after twenty years, France was overrun by five foreign armies, Paris had fallen, the French were down to drafting fifteen year olds. The war was obviously lost.

The discussion soon grew ugly. Marshals Ney, Oudinot, Moncey and Lefebvre told him if ordered they would not follow him to try to retake Paris. Napoleon shouted:” You just want to protect your titles and estates! I can replace you all with sergeants!”

Finally he was made to accept the inevitable. He had tried first to resign in favor of his three year old son and save his dynasty. The Allies were amenable to this if it represented what the French people really wanted. However certain French government officials scheming for the return of the Bourbon Kings staged street demonstrations for the old monarchy, and convinced one of Napoleon's closest friends, Marshal Marmont the Duke of Ragusa, to defect to the enemy with his entire army.

This gesture decided the allies that the French people would rather have King Louis return rather than the boy Napoleon II. Napoleon was forced to abdicate completely, and the name "Raguser" became a word for traitor like Benedict Arnold.

1860-The Pony Express system starts. Relay riders from Saint Louis across the prairies and deserts all the way to Sacramento, California. Ten days to get a letter from St. Jo to Denver. For all it's romance it failed after just 1-1/2 years. Stagecoaches and telegraph wires soon covered the message business.

1861- Seven days before the Civil War would begin, tensions between North and South built to the point of explosion. At Fort Sumter South Carolina a Boston ship, the R. H. Shannon, with a cargo of ice bound for Savannah puts in a stop at Charleston Harbor. She sails right in between the itchy fingered Yankee and Rebel cannons. The captain rarely read newspapers so he was completely unaware of the political situation. When he heard a warning shot, he ran up the Stars and Stripes. Suddenly cannons started to boom out all around him. Mystified, he lowered the flag, the gunfire stopped and the Shannon sailed on...

1869- First performance of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor.

1882- JESSE JAMES SHOT-The famous outlaw had been living quietly with his family under the alias of Mr. Howard when he was murdered by his own gang members, his cousins Bob and William Ford. Jesse was shot in the back of the head while he was standing on a chair straightening a picture frame. His last words were: ”My, it’s awfully hot today...” He was 34. Jesse’s older brother Frank took the hint and went straight. Bob Ford went on tour giving lectures, re-enacting how he had killed Jesse. Finally in a mining camp someone blew him away with a shotgun.

1897-composer Johannes Brahms died.

1920- Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald got married.

1922- JOSEF STALIN made General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In the scramble for power after the death of Lenin this move allowed him to consolidate his his hold on the top job and push out Leon Trotsky and the other top Bolsheviks like Zioniev, Kamieniev and Krupskaya. He made sure Lenin's last will and political testament was never made public.

1936-Bruno Richard Hauptmann was electrocuted for the murder of the Lindbergh baby.

1948 -THE MARSHAL PLAN signed into law by President Truman. It called for 5 billion U.S. dollars to be spent to help 16 European countries rebuild their shattered economies after World War Two.

1968- In Memphis, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was supposed to give a sermon at the Temple Baptist Church, but excused himself because of his workload. Since he had openly come out against the Vietnam War the death threats had increased and it all weighed heavily on his mind. Rev. Ralph Abernathy telephoned from the church that the crowd was disappointed Dr. King had not showed up. "Martin, they don't want to hear me. They're here to hear you."

So Dr King went to the church, and delivered off-the-cuff the last great speech of his life: "I have been to the Mountain and have Seen the Promised Land, and though I may not get there with you, it is alright.". At one point he was startled when the wind outside caused a shutter to bang. Then he returned to the Lorraine Motel.

1968- Stanley Kubrick's epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered. The N.Y. Times review said it was : " Somewhere between hypnotic and boring". Pauline Kael called it "monumentally unimaginative!" Writer Arthur C. Clarke always said HAL the computer was not a coded reference to IBM . At the Oscars, Clarke and Kubrick lost the best screenplay award to Mel Brooks for the Producers. 2001 won only one Oscar, for visual effects. It was the only Oscar a Stanley Kubrick film ever won.

1973- Standing on the corner of 6th Ave in Manhattan, Motorolla scientist Marty Cooper made the first cell phone call. He called his competitor Joel Engel at Bell Labs to tell him he had lost the race to invent the cell. That first phone “was the size of a leg of lamb.”

1974- Even while the Watergate Scandal continued, this day the IRS reported President Richard Nixon had been paying taxes based on an income of only $15,000 a year, when he was making at least $200,000 a year.

1975- Eccentric chess champion Bobby Fischer was stripped of his World Chess Championship for refusing to play any more matches to defend his title.

1984-THE COFFEE SHOP CONVERSION. Future President George W. Bush was a cocaine-snorting alcoholic who had been busted for drunk driving. This day he became Born-Again Christian after a meeting with an evangelist in a coffee shop.

1996- Ron Brown, the first African American to be Chairman of the Democratic Party, was killed in a plane crash near Dubrovnik, Croatia.

1999- Egypt repealed a 1904 law that said a rapist could escape prison for his crime if he married his victim!
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is a cup of coffee sometimes called a cup of Joe?

Answer: It was named for Secretary of the Navy Josephus “Joe” Daniels, who banned “ardent spirits” from the officers’ mess in 1914, making coffee the strongest drink offered aboard ship. This inspired the slang reference to coffee as a cup of Joe. ( Thanks FG).

Question: Why is a cup of coffee sometimes called a cup of Joe?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What does it mean to have an albatross around your neck?
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History for 4/2/2013
Birthdays: Frankish Emperor Charlemagne, Giacomo Casanova, Hans Christian Andersen, Marvin Gaye, Emile Zola, Max Ernst, Buddy Ebsen, Sir Alec Guinness, Frederick Bartholdi, Emmy Lou Harris, Linda Hunt, Isaiah Washington, Karl Castle.

304B.C.- Alexander IV, the young child of Alexander the Great, began his reign under the regency of the Macedonian General Perdiccas.

430 a.d. Today is the feast day of Saint Mary the Egyptian, a former prostitute who repented by living naked and alone in the desert for 49 years, only appearing briefly at Easter time to take communion, and to get some more sunblock. 1459- Vlad II "Dracula" -Little Dragon, duke of Wallachia, shows why he got the nickname Vlad the Impaler by impaling the city council of Brasov high on stakes then eating lunch under their quivering bodies. Impaling was a torture of Turkish origin, where you had a huge sharpened stake hammered up into your body, then standing it up. A good executioner could keep the stake from piercing too many important organs, prolonging the agony of your death.

This was Vlad’s preferred method of getting rid of inconvenient people. No wonder in the 1890’s when British author Bram Stoker was collecting folk tales in the Transylvanian mountains to use as source material for a gothic vampire novel he chose Dracula for it’s title.

1502- King Henry VII Tudor’s primary heir Arthur of Britain died at age fifteen. King Henry had just married Arthur to the Catharine daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain a few weeks before. Now Henry didn’t want to lose the Spanish alliance, and he was too cheap to send back Catharine’s huge dowery. So he remarried her to his other son, Henry VIII. Catherine and Henry VIII’s marriage problems would lead to the English Church’s break with Rome. 1520- Somewhere off the coast of what will one day be Argentina, Magellan's captains, convinced this crazy Portuguese turncoat didn’t know where he was going, try to mutiny and go home to Spain.

1800- Beethoven's First Symphony premiered. Vienna's leading music critic called it - 'a vulgar, impertinent explosion, more expected from a military band than an orchestra!’

1801- BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN- The British Navy has a one day war with Denmark. The fleet was sent by London to intimidate the Danes into leaving Napoleon's anti-British blockade, but the Danes were more worried about a Russian-Swedish alliance forcing them to remain. So Admiral Nelson sailed his fleet into Copenhagen harbor and pounds it out with the Danish Navy and shore batteries. Nelson’s ships sailed up and down the drydocks pounding the unmasted Danish battleships in for repairs. Despite fearful manpower losses the British don't lose one ship while sinking or capturing 17 Danish top ships of the line.

The one-eyed, one armed Nelson gloried in battle. When a Danish cannon ball struck his mainmast showering him and his staff with burning splinters, he laughed and said: "Hot work, what ?" At one point the action got so desperate, that Nelson's superior Admiral Hyde Parker raised the ensign flags to break off battle and retreat. Nelson ignored them. He jokingly raised his spyglass to his dead eye and said :"What ensign flags ? I don't see any ensign flags !"

Denmark made peace the next day and all the surviving combatants had a lovely dinner together at the Copenhagen Palace, as though nothing had happened.

1814- Now that Paris was occupied by enemy armies, the French Senate led by Talleyrand declared the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte officially deposed.

1836- Charles Dickens married Elizabeth Howarth.
1865- The Confederate capitol Richmond fell to U.S. armies. More destruction to the city was done by looting Confederates and released prisoners than the enemy. Several large fires created the type of total urban destruction not to be seen again until the World Wars in the 20th Century.

Mrs. Robert E. Lee ( a grandniece of George Washington) was at her town home in the city while her husband was still out with his army. General Phil Sheridan stationed a guard to protect her door but she protested bitterly that he was a black soldier and thought it was meant to annoy her, which knowing Phil Sheridan, it probably was.

1865- Lincoln awakes from a strange dream. He tells Mary that he was wandering in an empty White House and heard women weeping. When he asked a guard at the East Room what had happened, the guard said the president had been assassinated.
1877- First man shot out of a cannon.

1877- The first White House egg rolling contest.
1917- Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin arrived by train at St. Petersburg's Finland Station to cheers and salutes. He was smuggled from Geneva to Russia by the German High Command in a sealed railroad car. the German secret service also paid for the printing presses for Pravda. He begins to organize the Communist plot to seize the Russian Government.

1917- President Woodrow Wilson called a special session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. ‘The World Must be made Safe for Democracy!” he said.

1943- Disney short 'Private Pluto' the first Chip & Dale cartoon.

1943-Happy Birthday SAT’s! This day Harvard Dean Henry Chauncey supervised the distribution to 316,000 High School seniors of the Army-Navy College Qualifying Test, later re-titled the Scholastic Aptitude Tests or SAT. This became a standardized test that manages every year to raise the stress level of seniors regardless of race, class or religion. Go On To Next Page.

1974-While actor David Niven was speaking at the Academy Awards telecast a nude streaker ran past him on nationwide television. Mr. Niven, completely unflustered, dryly commented: "The only laugh that man will ever get is by stripping off his clothes and showing off his shortcomings. "

1974- at that same Oscar telecast, Francis Ford Coppola held up presenting the Best Picture Nomination to declare that a coming Revolution was coming in Digital Technology “that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like a small town try-out!” The audience was confused and annoyed at being delayed any longer to get to their parties.

1978-The TV show "Dallas" debuts.

1982- THE FALKLANDS WAR-Britain declared war on Argentina over the their takeover of the Falkland Islands.

1981- John Welsh made CEO of General Electric. After automating factories and firing one third of his employees, he earned the name "Neutron Jack" after the bomb that kills people but leaves buildings intact.

1993- Bullocks Wilshire department store with the famous Tea Room closed.

1994-Disney chief executive Frank Wells is killed in a helicopter crash on a skiing trip. It’s been speculated that blowing snow off some high peaks caused a ice ball to be sucked into the copter’s air intake manifold. Clint Eastwood was supposed to be on that trip but couldn't make it. Billie Joel and Christie Brinkley had a similar scare with their helicopter on the same day. The death of the Disney CEO set in motion the events that would lead to Jeffrey Katzenberg forming Dreamworks and Michael Ovitz’s brief tenure as a mouseketeer and Michael Eisner’s eventual fall. In 1999 the Hollywood Reporter estimated that the little iceball cost the Walt Disney Company one billion dollars.

1996- Lech Walesa, who led the first great people’s movement to overthrow a Communist dictatorship and was president of Poland for two terms and a Nobel Prize winner, got his old job back repairing electric batteries at the Gydansk shipyard. The shipyard was later closed. Capitalism’s a beyatch, ain’t it?

2004- Walt Disney Studio released Home on the Range.

2005-Polish Pope John Paul II died after reigning for 26 years and making more Saints than any previous pope, but not the late Pope John XXIII, because he was a liberal.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean to have an albatross around your neck?

Answer: In medieval times, one of the penalties for poaching on the King’s lands, was you having to wear the dead animal around your neck as a mark of shame. In Coleridge famous poem The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, the last sailor of a cursed ship wears the albatross he killed around his neck.

Question: What does it mean to have an albatross around your neck?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is today called April Fools Day?
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History for 4/1/2013
Welcome to April, named for Aprilis, an Etruscan Goddess of Agriculture and planting or it may even be a corruption of the name of the Greek Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The month was considered by Romans sacred to Venus- Venuralia.

To Ancient Egyptians it was the birthday of the God Het-Heth or Hathor.

Happy April Fool’s Day – The Ancient Romans considered today ALL FOOLS DAY-a day of comedy- they did things backwards, men and women swapped clothes and carried on. Before the Julian reforms some Old Style Calendars had the year begin in late March instead of January. As the new modern calendar became more widely accepted the people who stubbornly clung to the old practice were made fun of, and called April-Fools.
"This is the day upon which we are reminded what we really are on the other three hundred and sixty four.." -Mark Twain
In San Francisco today the Church of the Last Laugh holds it’s annual Saint Stupid’s Day parade. They go to the Sock Exchange to exchange socks, then inspect the large bolts holding San Francisco in place from sliding into the ocean.

Birthdays: Big Jim Fisk , Edmund Rostand, Lon Chaney, Sir William Harvey*, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ali McGraw, Toshiro Mifune, , Debbie Reynolds is 82, Phil Neikro, Wallace Beery, Jane Powell, Bo Schembechler, Annette O’Toole, Barry Sonnenfeld, Rachel Maddow is 40

*- Sir William Harvey was the discoverer of the nutrient carrying purpose of the blood system. Before that people thought blood regulated body temperature like a radiator. He also confirmed that the heart was a pump and not a heater or a strainer.

1081- Alexius Comnenus Ist, captures Constantinople and establishes the Comnenoi dynasty. He took the city by bribing the Varangian Guards –English, Hun and Viking mercenaries, to open the gates and let his army in. Alexius I was the Byzantine Emperor when the Crusades began. His daughter Anna Comnena described the event in her journal :"Then one day all of Europe decided to walk to our door..."

1488- Ludovico Buonarotti, after going through a lot of trouble to get his son in the wool and draper’s guild, gives up hope that the boy would ever be anything other than an artist. He reluctantly takes him to be an apprentice to fresco painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Michelangelo's career begins.

1621- The first treaty between English and Indians signed in Massachusetts. Massacoit of the Wampanoags made peace with the newly arrived Pilgrims.

1747-Georg Frederich Handel premiered his oratorio Judas Maccabeus with the song "Hail, Conquering Hero !" frequently used at royal functions.

1789- The first session of the U.S. House of Representatives. Felix Muhlenburg was the first Speaker of the House.

1793- Unsen Volcano in Japan erupted, killing 53,000 people.

1808- Sir Arthur Wellesley landed with a small British Army to try and defend Portugal from Napoleon. The Peninsular Wars would by 1814 drive the French from Portugal and Spain and make Arthur the Duke of Wellington.

1810- Napoleon, having divorced Josephine because she could not provide a son for his dynasty, married Princess Marie-Louise of Austria. Josephine was nicknamed "Our Lady of Victories" and was more beloved by the army but Marie Louise made up for it in spirit. She liked to smoke cigars and play billiards with Nappy’s officers. She was nearsighted but too vain to be seen in public wearing spectacles, so when she would dedicate art shows and public works like the Arch De Triomphes, she would smile regally and wave her hand, not knowing what she was looking at. Napoleon banned his kid sister Pauline Bonaparte from court because he caught her in a mirror making faces behind Empress Marie Louise’s back.

1861- As the American Civil War was breaking out, Secretary of State Seward sent Lincoln a memo proposing that the way to keep the South united to the U.S. would be to declare war on Spain or France. Lincoln said thanks for the advice, but no thanks...

1862- Confederate General John Sibley declared the counties of western New Mexico to be the new independent Confederate State called Arizona. Sibley's rebs were driven out but Lincoln kept the idea, setting up Arizona in 1864.

1865- BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS- Grant's Yankee Army closed in on Robert E. Lee's Confederates, Grant's cavalry master Phil Sheridan cut off and destroyed one over extended division of Lee's under George Pickett, taking 5000 prisoners. Pickett had won fame as the leader of the famous charge at Gettysburg. But he blew it at Five Forks because while his men were dying he was away with some friends at a fish fry. No cell phones or text messages in those days.

1867- Opening of the Paris World Exhibition. The gala worlds fair was seen as the zenith of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. Visitors marveled to fascinating exhibits as Dr Lister’s new Disinfectant, a new metal alloy called Aluminum, a new butter substitute called oleomargarine, and in the American exhibit a novel bit of furniture called a Rocking Chair. The Art galleries of the exhibition were filled with Ingres, Courbets and Delacroix. But nothing from Cezanne, Manet, Pizarro or any of the other weirdoes who would one day be called Impressionists.

1918- The British Royal Flying Corps (RAF) formed.

1923- Developers S.H. Woodruff and Canadian William Whitley start advertising lots for sale in Hollywoodland, beneath his his giant new Hollywoodland sign. The sign originally was covered with lightbulbs. It collapsed and was repaired in 1939, the 'land' part never restored. The Hollywood Sign was made over again in 1978.

1924- After the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Nazis party leader Adolph Hitler was sentenced by a German court to 5 years in prison. He serves only 8 months in a beautiful lodge in Bavaria named Castle Landsberg and uses the time to write Mein Kampf.

1932- The baby of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was kidnapped from their home.

1939- Generalissimo Francisco Franco announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, which had been raging since 1936.

1944- Tex Avery's "Screwball Squirrel" Only a few shorts were made. As one artist reminisced:" Everyone found that squirrel just too annoying!"

1945- OKINAWA- The Marines land and the battle begins. Because it was not a conquered territory but part of the home Japanese islands, Washington weighed it’s decision to use the atomic bomb by it’s observation of how tough Okinawa was, indicating how tough it would be to land on mainland Japan, only 360 miles away.

The fighting was brutal, hand to hand with bayonets and flame-throwers. Of the 125,000 man Japanese garrison only 7,500 didn’t fight to the death, and civilians threw themselves off cliffs in mass suicide. A children's class trip visiting from Tokyo who were caught in the battle, were shown by soldiers how to cluster themselves around a single hand grenade, so as to save on the number needed. Today there is a shrine to their memory. The Cave of the Maidens is dedicated to a group of schoolgirls who hid in a cave and when the Americans heard Japanese voices inside and none would answer their calls to come our and surrender, filled the cave with flamethrower fire.

Almost every American soldier who was captured was executed. The U.S. Navy suffered the worst number of ships sunk and men killed since Pearl Harbor. There were 1,900 Kamikaze plane attacks. U.S. casualties were so high the government re-imposed a press blackout.
This battle has the rare distinction like the Plains of Abraham in 1759 where both opposing generals died. US General Simon Bolivar Buckner, who’s father had fought Ulysses Grant in the Civil War, was killed by an artillery round three days before the battles end. Japanese General Usijima committed hari-kiri almost at the same time.

1945- Adolph Hitler moved his headquarters from the Reich Chancellery to a bunker deep below it’s street level.

1949- Zsa Zsa Gabor married George Sanders.

1954- The U.S. Air Force Academy was established at Colorado Springs.

1961- Rev Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker get married.

1970- A symbol of the 70’s.- AMC’s compact car the Gremlin introduced.

1972- In a gesture of turnabout-is-fair-play for women, Playgirl Magazine ran its first male nude centerfold- Burt Reynolds.

1976- Two college dropouts, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs started a company named Apple Computers. A third partner Ron Wayne sold his shares to Jobs & Woz before they filed papers of incorporation. He didn’t want to get stuck with the bill when they failed. He sold his third for $800. In 2011 Apple surpassed Microsoft as the worlds richest company.

1983 – Largest British civilian protests to Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher’s plans to put nuclear cruise missiles at Greenham Common. The Thatcher government requested the missiles after the perceived weak response of Jimmy Carter to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The conservative British and German government felt that the US could not be trusted to risk nuclear war if the Soviet Union invaded with conventional forces- i.e. American would not risk Kansas City for Frankfurt, so they asked for missiles.

1984- Motown star Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his own father in an argument over plans for the singer's 45th birthday party the next day.

1995- Chasen's restaurant closed. Former actor Frederick Chasen opened his exclusive Beverly Hills Restaurant in 1936. James Stewart and Mickey Rooney were regulars. During the filming of Cleopatra (1963) Elizabeth Taylor had Chasen's chili flown out to her in Rome. Walt Disney met Leopold Stokowski over dinner at Chasens and conceived the film Fantasia, Orson Welles and Joe Mankiewicz got into a fistfight over the script outline of Citizen Kane there, Bogart, Bacall and John Huston discussed how to fight the Hollywood Blacklist there. Today there is a booth from Chasens preserved in the Reagan Presidential Library.

1996- Animation World Network, Toontown’s virtual trade magazine, started up. www.AWN.com

1997- In Israel, honoring a deal made with a ultra right religious party to get into office, the right wing Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu passed a law that the only Jewish conversions that would be recognized under Israeli law would be conversions done by Orthodox rabbis. This law created such a firestorm of protest from Reform and Conservative Jews around the world that the government quickly backpedaled.

1998- Ukrainian serial killer Anatolyi Onoprienko was sentenced to death for the murder of 52 people.

2004- G-Mail invented.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is today called April Fools Day?

Answer: See above.

Question: Why is tomorrow called April Fools Day?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Where in the U.S. is the only full statue of George Washington for which America’s first president actually posed?
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History for 3/31/2012
Birthdays: Rene' Descartes, Franz Josef Haydn, Serge Diagheliev, Richard Chamberlain, Cesar Chavez, Herb Alpert, Gordie Howe, Liz Claiborne, Gabe Kaplan, Rhea Perlman, Shirley Jones, Richard Kiley, Volker Schlondorf, William Daniels, Lucille Bliss the voice of Crusader Rabbitt, Christopher Walken is 70, Colin Farrell is 37, Ewan McGregor is 41, Al Gore is 65

HAPPY EASTER, Commemorating the time when Jesus Christ was crucified and after three days rose from the dead. The Resurrection story has roots in other cultures- Osiris in Egypt, Dionysius and Orpheus in Greece and Odin in Scandinavia all had death and resurrection myths about them. Easter is named for Oster or Aster, German goddess of the East Wind, who’s sacrifice was painted eggs laid at her alter. In 63AD. Baodicea, The British warrior queen who battled the Roman legions of Nero had on her flags the Great Moon-Hare, who was the servant of Oster. In 1680 a German writer named Georg Franck published a story of a fantastic rabbit who laid magic eggs and hid them for lucky children to find. How this all got mixed up with Jesus, you gotta ask Mel Gibson

We owe a colorful Easter egg thanks to druggist, William Townley who invented Easter egg dye tablets in his Newark, New Jersey drug emporium in 1880. He branded his five-color dye kits, Paas, which comes from the word Passen, the Pennsylvania Dutch name for Easter.

250AD Roman general Constantius 1st born. He was called Constantius Chlorus or the Pale. He was the most powerful general and virtual ruler of Northwestern Europe at the end of Diocletian’s rule. His son Constantine became Roman Emperor in 312.

1146- St. Bernard preaches the Holy Crusade at Vezalay, King Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad of Germany declare the SECOND CRUSADE. After all the ready-made pilgrim cross emblems were distributed Saint Bernard tore his own cloak to pieces for cross making material. Folks don't remember much about the Second Crusade because it was pretty much a non-event.

Conrad took the land route through the Balkans to the Holy Land and by the time he got to Jerusalem his army was about 5 guys. The French king’s army arrived intact but he was more of a tourist than a conqueror, after visiting the holy places and gathering some medieval tourist trinkets ( 'My folks went on Crusade and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt!") he went home.

They wasted most of their time in an unprovoked attack on the Emir of Damascus, who at the time was one of the Christians’ only Moslem allies. The most memorable person on the voyage was the French Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had an affair with a Saracen Prince, and legend has it inspired the troops by riding bare-breasted to Damascus. Later she would leave Louis and marry Henry Plantagenet of England and give birth to Richard Lionheart.

1796- Touissaint L’Ouverture named Lieutenant Governor of the island of Saint Dominique, now called Haiti.

1814- PARIS FALLS- Since his Retreat from Moscow, Napoleon seemed to be fighting all of Europe. Today the allied armies of Austria, Sweden, Prussia and Russia captured Paris despite a spirited defense in the suburbs of Montmartre by Marshals Moncey and Marmont. Moncey had reformed the municipal police and is considered the father of the Paris Gendarmerie. But now German army tents went up in the Bois Du Bolongne and Cossacks watered their steppe ponies in the Seine.

In the South, Wellington and his Anglo-Portuguese army moved down from the Pyrenees to take Toulouse. Napoleon was at Fountainbleau with the tatters of his little army. He tried to make the best of it. Saying that now that he was free of covering the capitol he could maneuver in the enemies rear, but everyone but him had had just about enough.

1824- The British Parliament declared that any ships they caught transporting slaves would be treated as pirates and punished accordingly. They tried to get the United States to agree to make it an international law but the U.S. refused.

1836- Charles Dickens first work published "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club."

1840- Congress lowers the minimum workday for federal workers from 11.4 hours a day to 10 hours a day. At this time in mines and factories people worked an average 12-16 hour day. The 8 hour day wasn’t achieved until 1913, not until 1941 in Hollywood and it’s still a dream in most digital effects studios and dot-com companies today.

1860- Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper refers to Harriet Lane, President James Buchanan's niece as "FIRST LADY of the Land". Buchanan was a bachelor and may have been gay, So Ms. Lane performed the duties of the White House hostess. Earlier in 1840 President Zachary Taylor eulogized Dolly Madison as First Lady, before that Martha Washington and Abigail Adams were referred to as Lady Washington and Lady Adams. But this is the first official use of the term First Lady for the President’s consort.

1889- The Eiffel Tower opened to the public to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. Twice as tall as the Saint Peter's in Rome or the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Wizard of Iron Gustave Eiffel also designed the armature holding up the Statue of Liberty. Eiffel’s original deal with the French government called for the tower to only stay up for twenty years, then pulled down if no further use can found for it. Eiffel agonized about what to do as the deadline approached but fortunately by 1909 Wireless radio transmissions became important and the Eiffel Tower was a great broadcast antenna.

1905- The Tangiers Incident. Germany tries to provoke an incident with France by sending the Kaiser to Morocco, then a target of French colonial expansion. Kaiser Wilhelm rode around on a temperamental white Arabian stallion and spent the ceremony looking nervously at the welcoming crowd for Spanish anarchist assassins. He gave the Moroccan Sultan a gift of his own personal machine gun that the delighted boy liked to fire at his running courtiers. The whole thing looked silly but it scared the hell out of diplomats in Paris and London.

1905- THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought back his famous sleuth in a new series of adventures. Conan Doyle had created Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in 1887 but by 1893 he had tired of the characters, he wanted to write more serious fiction like his novel The White Company. So he killed him off. Holmes fell to his doom fighting Prof. Moriarity at the Reichenbeck Falls. The reaction of the public was astonished outrage. It seemed whenever Conan Doyle went out inevitably someone would stop him and say "You Blackguard! How Could You ?!" Finally Conan-Doyle bowed to public pressure and resumed the career of the inhabitants of #221B Baker Street.

1918- The Battle of Ykaterinadar- Anti-Communist White Russian armies invaded the Kuban region of southern Russia to fight a battle that was considered so unnecessary that one officer said it was “ A march to Hell to collect bluebirds.”Although the Kuban and Don Cossacks were anti Bolshevik the workers and peasants of the town were pro-Red and outnumbered them heavily.

So when the White commander General Kornilov ordered an attack his aristocratic second General Markov dryly joked “Better wear your clean underwear if you have any left gentlemen, because whether or not we take Ykaterinadar, we are all going to be killed!”But fate intervened. Before the attack could commence a lucky Red artillery shell dropped right on top of their commander General Kornilov and blew him to bits. Breathing a sigh of relief, his army immediately turned around and went home.

1930 -Reacting to charges that the movies had become too naughty, Hollywood producers accept the MOTION PICTURE CODE. It was regulated by Will Hays, former Republican Party Chairman. The regulation wouldn't really start to have strength until 1935-36 when pressure groups like the Catholic League of Decency went after Mae West and the Tarzan pictures.

The Hays Code forbade open sex and obscenity:
- twin beds only in a bedroom, nightclothes buttoned to the neck.
-if a couple were seated together on a bed they must have at least one foot touching the floor,
-"kisses with a duration of no longer than 3 seconds, parting with lips closed."
Lots of jokes were spawned like: "Give him the bird!" "If the Hays Commission would let me, I'd give him the bird!" One other little known clause was the forbidding of members of different races from kissing on camera. So Anna Mae Wong, the greatest Chinese actress of her time, could not play a Chinese heroine if her co-star was a Caucasian made up to look asian.

1931- ITT transmits the first message by microwave, from Dover to Calais.

1932 Ford introduces the V-8 Engine.

1943- Rodger & Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" debuts. Despite the opinion of producer Mike Todd -"No legs, No Laughs, No Chance", the musical becomes one of the great hits of American musical Theater.

1950- Thor Heyderthal's book of his exploits Kon Tiki published. This was an account of his 4200 mile voyage which proved ancient mariners could have traveled from Peru to Polynesia on boats made from tied reeds.

1959- The Dalai Lama fled the Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet and began his long exile.

1962- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened on Wilshire Blvd. No, it didn’t display customized surf boards or the ideal tuna melt with sprouts, but an exhibit of paintings by Bonnard.

1967- In a small London nightclub rising young rock & roller Jimmy Hendrix burned his guitar for the first time. British rock luminaries like Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Pete Townsend sat in the audience stunned at the technical brilliance of this unknown former paratrooper who played left handed. The pieces of his guitar were purchased by Microsoft chairman Paul Allen and today are in his Seattle Rock Museum.

1968- Depressed over Vietnam War, the strong primary surge of Sen. Eugene McCarthy and the challenge of his old enemy Bobby Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for re-election. Borrowing the words of General Sherman in 1884 he says: "If Nominated Ah will not Run, If elected Ah will not serve.." In retirement Johnson resumed cigarette smoking and neglected his health. He was dead in four years.

1973- Comic strip hero Smilin' Jack gets married, the strip concludes next day.

1991- Former child star Danny Bonaduce arrested for a fist fight with a transvestite prostitute.

1995- In Corpus Christy Texas famed Tejana singer Selena Perez was shot and killed by an obsessed fan. The woman Yolanda Saldivar was president of the Selena Fan Club. “the gun just went off, I didn’t mean to shoot anybody.” Uh-huhh.
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Yesterday’s Answer: Where in the U.S. is the only full statue of George Washington for which America’s first president actually posed?

Answer: In Richmond, Virginia, in the state capitol. The life-size marble statue was carved by noted French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon after he took detailed measurements of Washington’s body and made a life mask of his face and a plaster bust of his head. The statue was installed in the capitol rotunda in 1796.

Question: Where in the U.S. is the only full statue of George Washington for which America’s first president actually posed?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: We all know Easter moves around the calendar each year. What is the formula to decide when Easter will occur?
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History for 3/30/2013
Birthdays: Maimonides- Moses Ben Maimon, Anna Sewell (the author of Black Beauty), Vincent Van Gogh, Francisco Goya, John Astin, Peter Marshall, Warren Beatty is 75, Eric Clapton is 66, Arthur Lee Harrington the designer of the first Jeep, Tracey Chapman, Robby Coltrane, Paul Reiser, Celine Dion, Nora Jones is 35, Disney animator Marc Davis would be 100

To the Romans this was the Festival of Salus, the God of Public Works .

1282- THE BIRTHDAY OF THE MAFIA- The Sicilian Vespers. Because of the strategic location of the Isle of Sicily her people were never allowed their own government. Sicilians were constantly being conquered by Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Crusaders. So while they were under the harsh rule of French-Norman knights, they formed secret societies.

This night at the ringing of the evening vesper bells as a signal, they all ran out and cut up every Frenchman they saw. This was the first "hit". Later at the turn of the century Mafia families like "Il Mano Negro (The Black Hand) and La Cosa Nostra ( our way) brought their clan structure to the U.S., supplanting the earlier Anglo-Jewish-Irish gangsters.

No one is really sure just what the word Mafia means; "Morte Alla Francia Irredenta Arreghana", the Arab response “Ma Fi”- Don’t Ask Me…or some woman who’s daughter was raped by a French knight called out MaFilia!- My Daughter! Italian comic Pat Cooper said Mafia meant “the Mothers and Fathers Italian Association”.

1492-THE JEWS EXPELLED FROM SPAIN- Shortly after conquering the last Moorish strongholds in Spain their Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand & Isabella issue an edict giving all Jews three months to convert or leave the country. Jewish people had held exalted positions in the Moorish Emirates of Granada and Cadiz like the philosopher Maimonides, some even became Vezirs or Prime Ministers. Ferdinand & Isabellas own doctor Abraham Senior was Jewish.

Some Jews tried to flee to Portugal but most went to Moslem countries like Turkey and Morocco where the persecution of the children of Issac was less fierce among the children of Ishmael. Many Jews who live in Bosnia and Kossovo speak Old Spanish- Ladino instead of Yiddish or Hebrew. The Inquisition made it a any Jewish practice a crime, even people who changed their sheets on a Friday or turned to the wall to die were accused of Jewish Heresy. Whenever there is a call in Spain to make Queen Isabella of Castile a saint, this little issue pops back up.

1534- The English Parliament passed the Act of Succession declaring King Henry VIII’s divorce from Catharine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn legal and any criticism of it to be treason. All Englishmen and women were required to take an oath of loyalty to ensure their agreement. This oath was what got Sir Thomas Moore and Bishop Fisher beheaded.

1788- The great French philosopher Francois Voltaire had been exiled to estate at Fernay away from court for decades because of his criticism of the Catholic Church. Now at age 84 and the most famous writer in the world, he returned to Paris to see his last play Irene debut, but in reality to die. This night his passage to the theater became a triumphant procession as his coach was mobbed by cheering people shouting Vive Voltaire! After the play he was too frail to take a bow so a bust of him was placed center stage and adorned with garlands and flowers.

1789- Father of the U.S. Navy John Paul Jones is accused in Russia of having sex with a minor. He later proved the girl was over 16 but Catherine the Great told him to leave anyway. Jones had turned mercenary and organized Catherine's Black Sea fleet. He retired to Paris ill and exhausted- Thomas Carlyle said he looked “like an empty wine skin.” Abigail Adams said “ He was so small I could have wrapped him in wool and kept him in my pocket…”

1809- First Lady Dolly Madison began the tradition of regular White House receptions in the Drawing Room. Her husband James Madison despite being the writer of the Bill of Rights was a timid person and was not good in crowds and a poor speaker. But the vivacious Dolly dominated these soirees and accomplished more politicking than many of her male counterparts.

1822- FLORIDA ACQUIRED BY THE U.S.. During the War of 1812 Spain allowed Britain to use Florida as a base for raiding the U.S.. They also provided safe haven for the hostile Seminole Indians. This annoyed American politicians who wanted to have Florida anyway. General Andy Jackson concluded the First Seminole War by invading Florida and throwing the Spanish Governor out of Pensacola in 1818. What Jackson had started roughly, John Quincy Adams concluded diplomatically, with the Adams-Otis Treaty, buying Florida from Spain for $5 million.

1842- Dr. Crawford Long of Georgia uses Ether as an anesthetic in an operation. Before that surgeons had to have good biceps to hold down their patients while sawing on them. Surgery was actually less painful in ancient times because the patient was invited to chew an opium bulb “The Food of the Gods” before operating. In 1846 another doctor named W.T.G. Morton did a public demonstration of the Ether anesthesia process and tried to hog the glory of the invention, refusing to share any prizes with Dr. Long.

1853- The pencil eraser patented.

1856- Tsar Alexander II emancipates the Russian serfs. He's later blown up by terrorists.

1867- Seward’s Folly. Secretary of State William Seward negotiated the deal with Czarist Russia to buy Alaska for $7.2 million or two cents an acre.

1918- Thomas Edison sold his studio and gets out of the movie business. He had earlier fired W.K.L. Dickson inventor of the movie studio set, Edwin Porter the inventor of the narrative film and closeup, and J. Stuart Blackton the inventor of cartoon animation for annoying him too much about filmmaking. Edison was more interested in finding a way to extract iron ore from rocks using magnets.

1968- In New York’s Bowery district two children find the body of a homeless drug addict. The John Doe is later identified as Bobby Driscoll, 31, Walt Disney child star and the voice of Peter Pan.

1981- PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN SHOT. After only few weeks in office President Ronald Reagan is shot by lunatic John Hinckley. Hinckley was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster. Reagan recovers. Jodie Foster was unimpressed. John Hinckley was a Republican.

In a bit of bizarre theater during the confusion Presidential Security advisor General Alexander Haig went to the media and announced he was in control: “ I am minding the store.” This is in direct conflict with the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which states plainly the line of succession goes from the President to the Vice President the Speaker of the House to the Senate Leader Pro-Tem. Fortunately, no one took Haig seriously.

Presidential press secretary James Brady was shot in the head, which left him permanently brain damaged. He and his family later sponsored the Brady Handgun Bill, which was passed by President Clinton, but not renewed by Pres. George W. Bush.

Ironically, one of the reason Ronald Reagan’s life was saved was because Secret Service agents rushed him to the nearest emergency room, which was a Washington DC ghetto hospital with much too much experience with gunshot wounds. Reagan quipped to the doctors working on his collapsed lung- ”Hey, you guys aren’t Democrats, are you?”

2000- Dreamworks animated feature the Road to El Dorado premiered.
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Yesterday’s Question: We all know Easter moves around the calendar each year. What is the formula to decide when Easter will occur?

Answer: The first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal (Spring) Equinox.