Question: In Film and TV, what is known as “Breaking the Fourth Wall?”

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a John Hancock?
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History for 12/11/2022
Birthdays: Sir David Brewster 1781-inventor of the kaleidoscope, Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Koch the conqueror of tuberculosis, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Carlo Ponti, Gilbert Roland, Big Mama Mabel Thornton, Jean Marais, Jean Louis Tritignant, Tom Hayden, Jermaine Jackson, McCoy Tyner- John Coltrane's pianist, Brenda Lee, John Buscema, Rita Moreno is 91, Teri Garr is 78, Mos Def is 49, Mo’nique is 55, Vampira (Maila Nurmi) would be 100 (1922-2008)

493 AD. Today is the feast of Greek Saint Simon Stylites the greatest of all the religious hermits known as pillar-sitters. He died at the age of 85 after having sat on top of a solitary stone column for 35 years. He only descended twice, once to chastise the Byzantine Emperor. The Patriarch of Constantinople even had to be hoisted up by ropes and pulleys to ordain him a priest.

711AD- death of Byzantine Emperor Justinian II Rhino-Nose. Gotta love that nickname.

1668- Mademoiselle Du Parc was a beautiful actress who dumped Moliere and his comic company to become the mistress of the tragic playwright Racine, causing Moliere and Racine’s friendship to break. Plus, Racine didn’t like the way Moliere’s actors performed his plays. Three years later this day Mlle. Du Parc died under mysterious circumstances. Racine gave up his wild ways, got married and had a big family. In 1679 a notorious poisoner Madame Monvoisin claimed that Racine hired her to off his girlfriend! Was the French Shakespeare a Bluebeard, or was La Voisin paid to slander him? The authorities considered arresting him, but King Louis XIV quashed the investigation because it would implicate the King’s own mistress, Madame de Montespan.

1718- After many wars, Swedish King Charles XII the "Madman of the North" was shot and killed by a Danish sergeant while peeping over a trench parapet. He was a brilliant general but had a bad habit of getting too close to the action for a look. The day before his great battle at Poltava with Russian Czar Peter the Great, Charles was wounded, and had to direct the battle from a stretcher. He lost.

1763- A Parisian cultural newspaper noted: “A kapellmeister from Salzburg named Leopold Mozart arrived at court today. He brought his two performing children, a daughter who is 11 years old, and a son who at 7 years old is extraordinary. He already can perform and compose music!” (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

1785- French artist Jean Baptiste Greuze was well known for making popular paintings of simple scenes like Young Girl Weeping For Her Dead Bird. This day he went to the Paris police prefect and accused his wife Gabriele Babuti of “Persistently receiving lovers into his home over his protests, stealing large sums of his money, and trying to beat his head in with a chamber pot.” The couple was granted a legal separation.

1793- The previous July, when the French Revolutionary Convention heard of the assassination of their great radical leader Jean Paul Marat, one delegate called out “David ! We Need You!” This day Jacques Louis David unveiled his painting, The Death of Marat for the first time.

1816- Indiana admitted to the union.

1882- The Bijou Theater in Boston presented Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe in the first show completely illuminated by electric light bulbs.

1926- Josephine Baker first performed her banana dance in Amsterdam.

1926- THE LADY VANISHES- 35 year old mystery writer Agatha Christie caused a mystery herself when she disappeared, leaving her car abandoned by a local brook. The search for the body sensationalized the London press, even knocking the death of the last great impressionist master Eduard Monet off the front page. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle employed the first use of a police psychic. Finally after a week Mrs. Christie turned up at a health spa in Yorkshire. She was depressed when she earned her husband Sir Archibald Christie of the Guards was having an affair with a younger lady. She ran off and registered in the hotel using her younger rival’s name as her alias- Mrs. Neal.

1929- Frenchman Charles Cros patented a searchlight he declared he would use to signal civilizations on Mars and Venus. Nobody's returned the call yet.

1936- In a dramatic speech broadcast on radio around the world, British King Edward VIII abdicated his throne to be with "The Woman I Love" - to marry the American divorcee' Wallace Simpson. He had been leader of the British Empire for less than a year. His younger brother George became George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II. Edward & Wallace later became Duke and Duchess of Windsor and lived outside of England for the rest of their lives.
For years, many outside of England sympathized with the handsome young king who had renounced everything for love. But later revelations showed a darker side to the story. The Nazis had planned after they had conquered England to put Edward back on the throne as a puppet. Edward never quite dismissed the rumors that he secretly sympathized with Nazi ideology.
While he was Governor of Bermuda Edward had many parties and dinners with socialites who were known Nazi operatives.

1941- Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy declared war on the United States, honoring their Tripartite axis pact with Japan. Hermann Goering protested to Hitler that the Japanese had so far not been of any help to them, and they refused to declare war on Russia. Why invite another mighty foe? Hitler shrugged,’ The Americans will be our enemies eventually, why wait?”

1941- The hopelessly isolated little group of Marines on Wake Island repulsed a Japanese naval task force with heavy casualties. They played possum until the invasion fleet got in very close then hammered them with 16 inch naval shore batteries. To a U.S. still reeling from the shock of the Pearl Harbor attack, the nation was encouraged by the gutsy broadcast from tiny Wake: "Send us more Japs!"

1941- Gone With The Wind producer David Selznick pitched a movie version of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by Ben Hecht. Mercifully for moviegoers, the idea was dropped.

1946- UNICEF formed.

1950- THE CHOISIN FEW- During the Korean War the last remnants of the US First Marine Division completed their terrible retreat from the Chosin Resevoir. In subzero conditions they fought their way out of 5 encircling Chinese armies and brought out all of their wounded. Col. Chesty Puller, a veteran of Guadalcanal, exhorted his men “Remember you are First Marines, and all the Commies in Hell can’t stop you!”

1951- Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement from baseball.

1957- Rock and Roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis secretly married his 13 year old cousin Myra Gail Brown, while still married to his second wife, who he divorced when the press broke the story the following April. They divorced 13 years later. The incident ruined his career. Great Balls of Fire!

1961- The first contingent of U.S. military advisers arrived in Vietnam.

1962- SAVE THE VILLAGE! Robert Moses was the famous engineer who crisscrossed New York City with bridges and highways. But many felt the imperious city-planner destroyed whole neighborhoods with little compassion for the inhabitants. Finally he set his sights on a roadway cutting right across Manhattan at Hudson Street to the Holland Tunnel, which would destroy historic Greenwich Village. Houses once inhabited by Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barret-Browning, Jacques Kerouac and Mark Twain. But Robert Moses’ plans were thwarted by an odd alliance of Beatniks, Little Italy Mafia dons, Chinatown merchants and various Village Bohemians lead by author Jane Jacobs. This day after successfully pleading their case the Mayor and the NY City Board of Estimate rejected Moses plan. The Village today remains a gloriously confused muddle of quaint streets.

1964- Soul music star Sam Cooke was shot to death in an argument with a lady who ran an L.A. motel he had brought his girlfriend to.

1967- The Concorde SST passenger plane is unveiled in Toulouse. It was a joint venture between England and France. The American SST project was scrapped as too expensive.

1970- Walt Disney's the 'Aristocats' premiered.

1978- THE LUFTHANSA HEIST. Some small time Brooklyn Mafiosi slipped into the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport and stole $8 million in unmarked bills and jewelry, most from European currency exchange booths. As the FBI moved in on the gang its members tended to wind up dead, thirteen bodies in all. The money was never recovered. The reputed mastermind, Jimmy the Gent Burke, died in prison on an unrelated murder charge in 1991. The feds were still chasing ringleaders as late as 2015. The incident was dramatized in the Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas”.

1985- A Sacramento computer rental store owner named Hugh Scrutton became the first to get a mail bomb from the Unibomber. MIT advanced mathematics major Ted Kusczynski slowly became mentally unbalanced, and blamed rampant technology for ruining the world. His campaign of mailing explosives terrorized the academic world for a decade, until he was turned in by his own brother.

1997-150 nations sign the Kyoto Protocol, pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but not the United States or China, the world’s two largest polluters.

2008- Bernie Madoff was arrested for stock fraud. For years he was known as an A-list Wall St investor. In reality, he ran the largest Ponzi-scheme fraud in history. Madoff cheated clients out of $180 BILLION, more than the GNP of many nations. Hundreds of investors were burned, as diverse as Steven Spielberg, NY Governor, Eli Weizel, The Shoah Foundation and even his own synagogue. Madoff’s son Mark committed suicide and his family members have since changed their names.

2009- The Princess and the Frog opened in theaters. Directed by Little Mermaid directors John Musker and Ron Clements, it was the first film with an African-American Disney Princess, and the last traditionally animated Disney feature.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a John Hancock?

Answer. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Hancock, as then president of congress, signed the document first. He said he made his signature big enough “ so King George won’t need his spectacles”. Since then, a large signature became known as a John Hancock..

Question: What is a John Hancock?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is suet?
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History for 12/10/2022
Birthdays: English King Edward VII “Bertie”, Emile Dickinson, Ada Lovelace, E. H. Shepard the illustrator of Winnie the Pooh. Chet Huntley, Morton Gould, Victor McLaughlin, Dan Blocker, Tommy Kirk, Fionnula Flanagan, Kenneth Branaugh is 62, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey is 70, Michael Clarke Duncan

Happy World Freedom Day.

969AD- Byzantine Emperor Nicephorous II Phocas had no better administrator than John Tzimisces. But John was also the lover of Nicephorous’s wife Empress Theophano. This day she had Nicephorous assassinated. Theophano had earlier poisoned her own father-in-law Emperor Romanus II to help Nicephorous seize the throne. But now she was bored with him. To please the angry Greek Patriarch, John Tzmisces exiled Theophano to a convent and reigned as a pretty good emperor. But then he too was poisoned, by Basil II the Bulgar Slayer. Believe it or not, this was a happy period in Byzantine history.

1041- Byzantine Michael IV the Paphlagonian died. Before his death he had his sickbed moved to the Monastery of Saint Demetrios and changed his golden robes for monks rags.

1198-The death of the Moorish philosopher Averroes.

1508- Pope Julius II formed a grand alliance to crush the Republic of Venice. Called the League of Cambrai, the Vatican, France, The German Emperor, Spain and Naples all pledged to destroy the Most Surene Republic. The Venetians fought back valiantly, noblewomen patriotically pawning their jewels to pay the troops. After being attacked on all sides for 4 years, the League of Cambrai finally broke up when Pope Julius decided he’s rather have fellow Italians for neighbors rather than foreigners after all. The Republic of Venice survived, but her status as a world power was broken. She lapsed into an elegant, pleasure-loving decline until absorbed into Italy by Napoleon in 1796.

1513- Former Florentine politician Niccolo Machiavelli was living in a small town after being kicked out of government. He was even twisted a bit on a torture rack. Still missing his life in power, he declared this day to a friend he was writing a book on political theory to give to the Medici duke of Florence. He hoped by doing so he’d be called back to office. He also tried to dedicate it to Cesare Borgia. It didn’t get him a job, but his book THE PRINCE became one of the great works of political philosophy, the handbook of unscrupulous politicians ever since.

1518- Ulrich Zwingli was chosen to be the Gross Munster or chief vicar of the Swiss city of Zurich. Zwingli became a top leader of the Protestant Reformation like Martin Luther and John Calvin.

1520- Protestant reformer Martin Luther shows the Pope what he thinks of his Bull of Excommunication on him by burning it in public. Pope Leo’s command Exsurge Domine went up in smoke along with the Canons of Roman Church Law to the cheers of students.

1577- The Union of Brussels- The 17 provinces of the Netherlands and Belgium formalized their union. This is why Holland is also known as the United Provinces.

1607- Captain John Smith left the Jamestown camp with two men to find food. They were captured by the Indians who killed the other men and dragged Smith before chief Powhatan. He ordered Smith’s head to be placed on a flat stone and bashed in with a war club. But Powhatan’s favorite daughter Pocahontas threw herself over Smith and protected him. Smith could speak no Algonquin and the Indians no English and neither could sing any Broadway tunes. Was this an execution prevented or a ritual of admission into the tribe? Powhatan was known to extend his rule through dynastic alliances with other tribal leaders, and he was well aware of the white strangers, wiping out a Spanish attempt to land on his beach in 1600. Maybe this was his way of wanting to bring the white mans powers to his side.
No one knows for sure. John Smith is the only source for the story, and he didn’t write of this incident until back in England 14 years later.

1641- King Charles I issued a Royal Declaration ordering all Britons to conform to the practices of the Church of England, or else! The Declaration was King Charles’ defiant answer to a list of demands called the Great Remonstrance given him ten days earlier that accused him of undermining the Protestant faith. This was a poke at all the Puritans, Pilgrims, Levellers, Anabaptists who were complaining that the Anglican Church had gotten too Catholic-looking in its rituals.
Indeed, at the insistence of monarchs since Elizabeth, the reformed English service had re-introduced crucifixes, communion plate and surplice aprons for the priests. The declaration was one more provocation building the conflict that would soon break out as the English Civil War. When violence broke out the Puritans dragged out the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Laud and chopped his head off. Laud was seen as the instigator of this declaration and the Kings policy on religion and was branded as Laudism.

1672- New York colonies Royal Governor Sir Thomas Lovelace announced the establishment of a regular monthly mail delivery between New York and Boston.

1800- Congress debated a bill to build a mausoleum for George Washington to be placed in the center of the Congress. But Martha Washington cut off such efforts by citing George’s specific instructions that his remains not be turned into some kind of regal national shrine. He insisted on and still sleeps in his simple family tomb at Mt. Vernon.

1710-Battle of Villaviciosa- Phillip V of Spain defeated an Anglo-Portuguese invasion and assured the throne for the Bourbon family. His descendant are still on the throne today.

1817- Mississippi statehood.

1839- THE GREAT GAME- A large British army left India to invade Afghanistan. The 15,000 troops carried with them 38,000 camp followers, including camels laden with raspberry jam, cigars, cricket bats and fox hunting dogs. One British officer alone brought sixty servants. The British claimed they were invading to contain Russian expansionism. The duel between Britain and Russia for the Indian Northwest that lasted until 1947 was nicknamed The Great Game. By 1841 this army would all die in the terrible Retreat from Kabul and its sole survivor would be a doctor who got lost. The British officer who coined the term the Great Game was beheaded by the Emir of Bokhara and thrown into a pit of reptiles.

1864- Sherman’s army reached the sea at the Georgia coast near Savannah.

1877- Siege of Plevna ends. Russia and Austria force Turkey to grant independence to Serbia and Bosnia. Austria’s later efforts to swallow up Bosnia became the issue that sparked World War I.

1869- Wyoming Territory granted women the vote. The nation follows 58 years later (California in 1911).

1898- Spain and the U.S. make peace ending the Spanish American War. Secretary of State John Hay who was once Abe Lincoln’s secretary called it “A Splendid Little War.” Critics Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce called it the Yanko-Spanko War. The United States became a global power player with colonies in Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, Midway, Wake, and the Philippines.
The Filipinos, who were fighting for independence under their leaders like Aquinaldo, suddenly discover they were now American property. The U.S. declared they fought for their freedom from Spain yet never officially recognized their national independence movements. The Philippines gained its full independence in 1946 and the last American base, Subic Bay, wasn’t removed until the 1990s.

1899- Battle of Magersfontein (more Boer-Woer). Our post-Apartheid opinion of white South Africans was not very high, but in 1899 most of Europe and America sympathized with their fight against the awesome might of the British Empire. The Queen of Holland begged the German Kaiser to help them (the Boers were ethnically Dutch-German). Crowds in Paris and Brussels would jeer and boo at the visiting Prince of Wales with the cry "Vive les Boers!"

1901- The First Nobel Prize is given. Alfred Nobel made millions by inventing dynamite and nitro-glycerine. But as much as his discoveries were used for constructive purposes they also made it possible for armies to kill each other much more efficiently. He felt guilty and after an accident with the stuff killed his own brother, He resolved to create something positive from his fortune. Hence the Nobel Prize. Nobel died on Dec 10th 1896 and the awards are given each year on the anniversary. President Teddy Roosevelt won the first Peace Prize in 1910 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. President Obama was the third U.S. President to receive the Peace Prize.

1905- O. Henry’s short story “A gift from the Magi” first published.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt in a ceremony in the White House.

1938- To make the film "Gone With the Wind" Producer David Selznick and director Victor Fleming shot the massive "Burning of Atlanta" in Culver City, California. The sequence was storyboarded and designed by William Cameron-Menzies, who designed the sets for Intolerance for D.W. Griffith. Selznick used the opportunity to clean the studios backlot storage, burning sets from King Kong, Little Lord Fauntleroy and Last of the Mohicans in the inferno. They shot the scenes with three Rhett Butler stand-ins.

1941-The Hollywood Victory Committee formed. Top Hollywood agents like Abe Lastfogel, Lou Wasserman and Myron Selznick (David's brother) start signing up movie stars for bond drives and touring shows for the troops.
The committee later created the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen on Ivar near Sunset. A soldier or sailor could come in for a free meal served by Tyrone Power or Red Skelton and have a dance with celebrities like Rita Hayworth or Dina Shore. The Canteen was also the only completely integrated night club in LA then.
One animation painter who worked in the kitchen told me the only celebrity who would stay until closing, even mopping up, and washing dishes was Marlena Dietrich. While Janey Gaynor and Rhonda Fleming were working in the kitchen, Bette Davis would burst in and announce, “ Okay you Haus-Fraus! We need some glamour out front!”

1941-Japanese planes sink the battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in just 90 minutes. The prized British battleships had participated in the sinking of the German dreadnought Bismarck in the Atlantic a year earlier, but had been transferred to the Pacific to boost the defenses of Singapore. The next day a lone Japanese plane dropped a wreath at the site of the sinking in tribute to the 884 British sailors who died there.

1941- A Japanese Army of 4,000 under General Homma landed on the Philippine Islands at Luzon and Vigan while a third force overran the U.S. outpost on Guam.

1941- The New York Metropolitan Opera announced that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack they were suspending any further performances of Madame Butterfly for the duration. Other opera companies also stopped doing Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

1942- OPERATION WINTERSTORM- General Von Manstein was ordered by Hitler to swing his panzers north and attempt to break through the Russian forces encircling the trapped German 6th Army at Stalingrad. But Von Manstein’s rescue mission was halted by Russian resistance and wintery conditions just 30 miles short of their goal. The 6th Army surrendered in February.

1948- The United Nations adopts Article XIX, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The committee, spending months drafting the resolution, was chaired by the Eleanor Roosevelt. By this act she debuted not just as a former first lady and widow of FDR but as a stateswoman and diplomat in her own right.

1949- After being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces, Kuomintang (KMT) Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek flew to Taiwan. Two and a half million ethnic Han Chinese evacuated to the island of Formosa-Taiwan, which continues today to call itself the ROC- The Republic of China. This ended the Chinese Civil War. Since 1924 China suffered 2 million deaths in its first civil war, 20 million in the Japanese invasion and World War II, and 5 million more killed in the final civil war.

1962- Happy Birthday Iron Man. The character Iron Man first appeared in the Marvel comic Tales of Suspense.

1966- The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” hit #1 in pop charts.

1967- R&B star Otis Redding and four of his band the Bar Kays were killed in a small plane crash near Madison Wisconsin. He was 26. Redding had recorded his hit “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” just three days earlier.

1974- Powerful Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Congressman Wilbur Mills resigned in disgrace after being busted by the DC police for getting drunk with a stripper named Fannie Fox and taking her for a 2:00 AM skinny dip in the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial. Fannie was later christened the “Tidal Basin Bombshell.”

1978- The world premiere of Richard Donner’s Superman, The Movie. The incomparable Christopher Reeve with Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman.

1994- The Unabomber sent an explosive device that killed Thomas J. Mosser, an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam who handled the public relations spin for Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster.

2013- Richard Williams unfinished epic animated film the Thief and the Cobbler: A moment in Time, received its premiere at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. It was begun 40 years earlier in 1972 and never completed.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is suet?

Answer: A beef or lamb fat runoff, collected and used in Medieval cooking.

Question: What is suet?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the name of the planet between Mercury and Earth?
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History for 12/9/2022
Birthdays: Sappho, John Milton, Jean De Brunhoff, Emil Waldteufel the composer of The Skaters Waltz, Admiral Grace Hopper who wrote the earliest computer language, Margraret Hamilton, Hermoinie Gingold, Dalton Trumbo, John Cassavettes, Broderick Crawford, Dick Butkus, Red Foxx, Cesar Franck, John Malkovich is 69, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Buck Henry, Felicity Huffman, Mario Cantone, Judy Dench is 88, Kirk Douglas

536- The legions of Byzantine General Belisarius captured Rome from the Ostrogoths.
This was part of Emperor Justinian’s unsuccessful plan to win back the western half of the old Roman Empire.

1641- Famed Flemish portrait artist Sir Anthony van Dyck died of a fever at his home in Blackfriars, London. He was 42.

1783- First executions began at England’s Newgate Prison, replacing the traditional
public hanging, drawing, quartering, branding, beheading place of Tyburn Hill- approximately where London’s Marble Arch is today.

1803- Congress passed the Twelfth Amendment calling for the President and Vice President to be of the same party. Before this, the system was the Vice President was the loser of the presidential election, thus the people’s second choice. But trying to govern with your bitter political enemy standing behind you proved impractical. The Amendment also defined the order of succession: President, Vice President, Secretary of State. Speaker of the House, Senate Leader Pro-Tem. In 1945 the 22nd Amendment excluded the Secretary of State, who was never an elected official.

1824- Battle of Ayacucho- Simon Bolivar defeated the last Spanish Army in the Americas.

1825- THE LATIN AMERICAN BUBBLE- The London Stock Exchange crashed over rampant stock speculation in the potential wealth in the new emerging Latin American republics. Financier Nathan Rothschild became a national figure when he lent the Bank of England millions to stay solvent. Thanks to new communications and international investment for the first time the London panic reached across national borders and caused the U.S. Stock Exchange and the Paris Bourse to also crash. This kind of speculation in futures caused the South Sea Bubble in France and the Tulip craze a century earlier. We’ve seen it in our own times with the global credit crash of 2008.

1835- First battle of San Antonio de Bexar. Angry Texas citizens forced Mexican
General Cos to abandon a post in an old mission called the Alamo and give up a store
of valuable cannon. This was the incident that provoked President Santa
Anna into attacking San Antonio the following Spring.

1840- Dr. David Livingstone set sail for Africa to do missionary work. He met Stanley
in 1871.

1854- Albert Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" published.

1861- The first ever government oversight committee formed. The Joint Congressional
Committee on the Conduct of the War. It was created because Congressmen were afraid
President Lincoln was a naïve hillbilly lawyer who was losing the Civil War. All they succeeded in doing was give Lincoln more stress and at one point they even accused First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln of being a Confederate spy.

1889- The Chicago Auditorium dedicated. The landmark building’s architect Louis
Sullivan had hired a new assistant to help with the drawings-Frank Lloyd Wright.

1899- BLACK WEEK-Battle of Stormberg Junction. A series of small battles in which
British forces were defeated by Boer guerrillas in South Africa.
The commanding British general Sir Redvers Buller, was considered so slow moving
that one wag suggested they periodically hold a mirror up to his nostrils to check
for signs of life. He was later replaced with the more energetic Lord Roberts of
Kandahar.-“Ol’ Bobs”.

1905- Richard Strauss’s opera Salome premiered in Dresden. The lead role demands
a soprano with big Wagnerian lungs but also a flat stomach to do the strip tease
The Dance of the Seven Veils. When the opera debuted in New York, old millionaires
like J.P. Morgan were shocked at its’ blatant sexuality. They threatened to cut
off funding until Sal and her skimpy veils was banished from the schedule.

1907- the first Christmas Seals go on sale to fight tuberculosis.

1909- Mary Harris a.k.a. Mother Jones speaks at the Thalia Theater in support of
the "The Strike of the 20,000" Immigrant seamstresses in New York's garment
district. "Every strike I have ever been in has been won by women!"

1917- During World War I, Field Marshal Allenby and the British army entered Jerusalem while Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab forces marched on Damascus. To promote harmony between Arabs and Jews, Allenby ordered the building of a huge YMCA in the Old City. The people that schvitz together….

1931- Disney short Mickey’s Orphans debuted.

1936- The first cookery show appeared on British television.

1937- In the path of advancing Japanese armies, Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai
Shek and his government abandoned his capitol Nanking and moved to Chunking.

1946- Damon Runyon died, the writer whose characters the musical "Guys and
Dolls' are based. His philosophy: "All life is six to five against."

1948- Actor Ossie Davis married actress Ruby Dee.

1960- Coronation Street premiered on British ITV.

1964- John Coltrane recorded his landmark jazz album “A Love Supreme”. Late on
foggy nights Trane liked to take his saxophone out onto the middle of San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Bridge in the night fog, and practice by himself.

1965- Bill Melendez's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" the first half hour animated TV special featuring the music of Vince Guaraldi. Producer Lee Mendelson had heard Guaraldi's jazz combo perform in San Francisco. He never scored a film before:" How many yards of music do you want? At the preview screening for CBS executives, the show was met with deathly silence; when the show concluded, one executive said to the director Bill Melendez, "Well, you gave it a good try." CBS hated its religious message, the idea of actual kids voicing the characters, not having a laugh track and having jazz as the soundtrack. They only aired it out of obligation for the sponsor, Coca-Cola. It was not screened for any critics sans one Time Magazine critic (who ironically gave it a positive review). Estimates are that 15,490,000 households and 36 million people watched Charlie Brown and his friends that night. A Charlie Brown Christmas won an Emmy and has run every year since.

1967- At a Doors concert lead singer Jim Morrison was sprayed with mace and arrested
by Miami police for “lewd behavior” on stage, but probably more for referring to
the cops as pigs.

1968- The MOTHER OF ALL DEMOS- In San Francisco, Dr Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the first personal computer workstation. He showed how people would use hot keys, a printer and scanner, cut and paste text. And he had a real time internet hookup to another workstation at Stanford Univ, 120 miles away. His student assistant was Stewart Brand, who would create the Whole Earth Catalog. In the audience was student Andries van Dam, who would one day create SIGGRAPH.

1967- Nicholas Ceaucescu became dictator of Communist Romania.

1992-Britains Prime Minister John Major announced the separation of Prince Charles
and Diana of Wales.

1994- Disney Animators in California move into their new Animation building designed
by Robert Stern.

1994- The Surgeon-General of the United States, Dr Jocelyn Elders, was forced to
step down after her statements that sex education in primary schools include masturbation outraged many conservatives.

2004- Mia Hamm and the stars of the Women’s National Soccer Team played their last
game, defeating Mexico 5-0.

2008- Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested for corruption and having a really bad haircut.

2340- Mr Worf, the Klingon officer of Star Trek Next Generation was born.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the name of the planet between Mercury and Earth?

Answer. Venus.

Question: Is the language of Finland -Germanic, Slavic, or Scandinavian in origin?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: A Christmas Carol commands, “Now bring us some figgy pudding...” What is figgy pudding?
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History for 12/6/2022
Birthdays: King Henry VI of England-1422, English Puritan General George Monck-1608, John Eberhard 1822, builder of the first large pencil factory in the US, John Singleton-Mosby the Grey Ghost, Henry Jarecki, Baby Face Nelson, William S. Hart, Ira Gershwin, Dave Brubeck, Agnes Moorehead, Tom Hulce is 69, Wally Cox, Lynn Fontaine, Steven Wright, JoBeth Williams, Judd Apatow is 54, Nick Park is 65

Today is the FEAST of SAINT NICHOLAS, the patron saint of sailors and children. In what is modern Turkey, in 350AD, Bishop Nicholas heard of a man so poor that he was about to sell his daughters into prostitution. Nicholas climbed into the man’s window and placed gold coins in the family socks drying by the fireplace. In some cities during the Middle Ages the custom was this day to elect a Boy Bishop who would reign in an honorary style until the Feast of the Holy Innocents December 28th.

1196- The northern coast of Holland was flooded, the Saint Nicholas Flood.

1240- The Mongol horde of Batu Khan destroyed the city of Kiev ( Kyiv). This ended the old kingdom of Kievan Russ.

1534- Spanish settlers in Ecuador found the city of Quito.

1648- PRIDE'S PURGE -The final move of the Cromwell’s Army to secure power in post-Civil War England. His army had occupied London after Parliament had given him a direct order to disband. Soldiers led by a Colonel Thomas Pride stood at the entrance to the House of Commons with a list and as the Parliament members walked in he pulled out 60 of them for arrest. Outraged politicians demanded to know what was his commission? Col. Pride sneered, " This sword point is my commission!"
Thus cowed, the truncated remainder was nicknamed The Rump Parliament. General Oliver Cromwell was discreetly out of town, but he was doubtless in on the planning of the purge. England was now a military dictatorship and would remain so for ten years until Cromwell's death, when General Monk summoned back the monarchy.

1757-Battle of Leuthen- Frederick the Great beats the Austrian Army outnumbering him three to one. Austrian commander Archduke Charles was contemptuous of the smaller Prussian army, calling them a “Berlin Watch Parade” i.e. a police patrol. But the Prussians defeated the Austrians badly, and sang their hymn Nun Danket Alle Gott on the blood soaked snow. Napoleon called Leuthen Frederick’s masterpiece.

1790- Congress moved from New York City back to Philadelphia to await construction of it’s final home in the new Federal City in Maryland, already being called by some Washington-City. George Washington himself would occasionally ride out from Mt Vernon and meet with Jefferson and Madison to inspect the construction site.

1825- President John Quincy Adams in his first message to Congress called for increased funding for scientific research, the founding of a national university and a national observatory. His political enemies ridiculed his ideas as idiotic and wasteful. They accused the president of wasting taxpayer money on depraved European luxuries like a billiard table. Adams also installed the first indoor toilets in the White House. People started calling the newfangled commodes a John Quincy, or simply a John.

1846- Battle of San Pasqual- A Mexican victory in the U.S.-Mexican War. The US Army was so sure that California was conquered that General Phil Kearny sent away half of his army to go join Zachary Taylor in Mexico while he pushed on to the Pacific Coast. Just outside of San Diego near Julian he was attacked by California Vaqueros, brandishing lances. The Yankee dragoons at first laughed at the silly “pig-stickers”, until they realized the previous nights rainstorm had made their gunpowder useless. Kearnys force was routed. Only with great difficulty did they escape under Kit Carson’s guidance to the sheltering guns of the US Fleet in San Diego harbor.

1849- Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland and began her underground railroad to smuggle runaway slaves from the South up North. After the Fugitive Slave Act was passed she extended her route to Canada. At one point she wanted to join John Brown’s insurrection in Harpers Ferry but illness prevented her, and probably saved her life.

1877- First edition of the Washington Post.

1915- MAX FLEISCHER PATENTED THE ROTOSCOPE- This system enables you to film an actor then draw the cartoons over the still frames of the live action to achieve a realistic motion. (an early form of Motion Capture) Max would film his brother Dave in a clown suit then draw Koko the Clown over him. Dave had already owned the clown suit because he had been seriously considering a change in careers. The Fleischer's New York studio would be Disney's chief rival for most of the 1920's-30's.

1921- Irish Home Rule- It had been an Irish dream since William Strongbow and the Norman English invaded in 1085. After decades of Parliamentary pressure from advocates like Charles Parnell and Daniel O'Connell, a long guerrilla war with the IRA and public exhaustion from the Great War, London was ready to talk terms. But the British Crown insisted on a compromise of letting the 6 Protestant Counties of Ulster remain under British rule and an oath of loyalty to the king. Prime Minister Lloyd George threatened a full war on Ireland with the full resources of the British Empire as the alternative.
Irish negotiators Michael Collins and Alexander Griffith knew this deal would cause resentment, but they felt it was the best they could get. In the following months both men would be dead and a civil war broke out. The loyalty oath was ignored and full Irish independence declared in 1946.

1929- Turkey under Kemal Ataturk gave women the right to vote.

1933- U.S. Federal Judge Woolsey decides James Joyce's "ULYSSES" is not a dirty book and can be published in the U.S by Viking Press. The book had been out in Europe since 1922.

1941- Admiral Nagumo turned his carriers into the wind and began to prepare to launch the attack on Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile in Washington DC, Colonel William Bratton of army intelligence decoded a message from Tokyo to the Japanese Embassy telling them after their final message to destroy their cyphers and all top-secret documents. He ran all over D.C. trying to get someone to listen, but it was a quiet weekend like any other.
Early Sunday morning Mrs. Dorothy Edgers of the Navy cryptographic division translated long decoded instructions to the Japanese Consul Kita in Honolulu to provide up to date intelligence on Pearl Harbor's ship movements and armaments, then destroy his ciphers. When she showed this to her supervisor, he told her, “Well, umm….We'll get back to this on Monday."

1941- NY City Council voted to build a second municipal airport- Idylwild Airport, later renamed John F. Kennedy Airport.

1942- Val Lewton’s movie The Cat People with Simon-Simon premiered.

1957- In their initial reaction to the Russians launching sputnik, the US attempt to launch a satellite into space failed- the Vanguard I rocket blew up on the launch pad.

1960- Baseball’s American League granted an expansion franchise team to old cowboy singer Gene Autry, the California Angels.

1963- Soon after the assassination, Jackie Kennedy had writer T. H. White to the White House for an interview. She was already shaping how her husband’s presidency would be remembered. She mentioned his favorite album was the soundtrack of the musical Camelot. White took this and expanded the idea in the piece he wrote for Life Magazine, “For President Kennedy, An Epilogue” which came out on this day. The JFK era would forever after being known as Camelot.

1964- The first concert at the Los Angeles Music Center.

1964- Rankin Bass' TV special 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer' first broadcast. And it has run every year since.

1969- The Rolling Stones do the last big rock festival of the 60s in Altamont California. The festival turned ugly when Hells Angels motorcyclists, hired to guard the stage, started fighting with fans. One man, Meredith Hunter, was killed.

1980- Reverend Jim Baker of the PTL ministry had sex in a motel room with Church volunteer Jessica Hahn. His reasoning to her was “when you help the shepherd, you help the flock”. But later he paid her hush money. This indiscretion would help pull down his Church. Baker’s ministry included a lavish lifestyle, air-conditioned doghouse for his pets and a Christian theme park called Heritage USA. Ex-evangelist turned comedian Sam Kinison joked: I can imagine up in heaven, Jesus is thumbing through the New Testament saying” Hey, where the hell did I ever say anything thing about a water slide?”
In recent years, Jim Baker has made a comeback. He has another big church and is a loud supporter of former President Trump.

1994- Orange County California, one of the richest counties in the United States declared bankruptcy because an official gambled and lost the county's funds on speculative investments like junk-bonds. One billion dollars disappeared in less than a week of day trading.
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Yesterday’s Question: A Christmas Carol commands, “ Now bring us some figgy pudding..” What is figgy pudding?

Answer: 14th Century English pudding were small cakes made of pork suet, heavily laced with sweet figs and other dried fruits. For many average people it would be the only sweet confection they’d get all year.

Question: A Christmas Carol commands, “Now bring us some figgy pudding..” What is figgy pudding?

Yesterdays Question Answered Below: What does it mean to egg someone on?
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History for 12/5/2022
Birthdays: Pope Julius II, Martin Van Buren, Walt Disney would be 121, Fritz Lang, Eugene Debs, George Armstrong Custer, Little Richard Penniman, Strom Thurmond, Otto Preminger, Lin Piao, Calvin Trillin, Joan Didion, Jim Plunkett, Jose Carrerras, Margaret Cho is 55

Faunalia- the ancient Roman festival for rustic god Faunus.

1212-THE WONDER OF THE WORLD.- Fredrick II Hohenstaufen became Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation at 18. The son of Henry VI the Lion, Freddy was called "stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis” The Marvelous Transformer and Wonder of the World”.

1349- People in Europe were at a loss to explain why the Black Plague was killing everyone. So, they settled on their age-old answer- It was the Jews fault! This day in Nuremberg, 500 Jews were killed by rioters.

1484- Pope Innocent VIII raises the practice of Witchcraft from a minor sin to a major heresy. Included in the definition of witchcraft is any remaining vestiges of local animist customs, herbalism or treating illnesses with home grown medicines. He ordered the Holy Office of the Inquisition to investigate all cases. From 1484 to 1750 maybe 200,000 people died in Europe and America. As late as 1784 a woman in Belgium was executed for bewitching a child. The last burning of the Spanish Inquisition was in 1817, when Lincoln and Darwin were 8 years old.

1492- Christopher Columbus, still looking for Japan, now discovered Haiti.

1502- Columbus’ last voyage was hit by a hurricane. For twelve days his ships were battered by wind and waves. At one point Columbus saw a waterspout in the ocean near them. He read a Rite of Exorcism at it and made the sign of the Cross with his sword. Tradition says it then went away.

1560- King Francis II of France died at age 16. His mom Catherine de Medici didn’t fret, she had more sons. She made her next son Charles IX king at age 10.

1704- In Hamburg, towards the end of his opera Cleopatre, composer Georg Frederich Handel and soloist Johann Mattheson started bickering over who should bow and receive the audiences applause. As the curtain came down and the cheers rang out, Handel and Mattheson began furiously wrestling over the harpsichord. Finally they rushed out into the snowy public square and fought with swords. The audience followed them and cheered on this unique encore. Neither was hurt in the end, and they even made up over their next collaboration.

1766- London auction house Christies held its first auction.

1791-MOZART DIED- The 35 year old composer was slaving away on a commission for a Requiem Mass when he died of scarlet fever and kidney failure complicated by exhaustion and alcoholism (and no, he didn't work in animation). His last words were telling his student Sussmeyer how to perform the percussion for the Requiem. Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave, and when his wife came to mourn him a few days later nobody could recall where he was buried.
The theories about Antonio Salieri poisoning him out of jealousy or the Freemasons doing him in began only a few years later. Schiller wrote a play in 1817 called Mozart & Salieri where he has Salieri doing the dastardly deed. Pushkin wrote a similar story in 1830. Antonio Salieri lived into his 80s. Peter Schaffer who wrote the play Amadeus in 1979, said his inspiration was reading notes of one of Beethoven's pupils in 1827 who wrote about going up to the sanitarium to visit the ancient composer: "Salieri is in one of his fits again, shouting “I killed Mozart! Mozart forgive me!”"

1791- First Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton presented his Report on Manufactures to Congress. This was considered a revolutionary document because here was this illegitimate snob telling his half wild nation of farmers and trappers with dead raccoons on their heads, that their future lay in developing heavy industry closely regulated by a strong centralized government. Thomas Jefferson among many others thought it was a big mistake, but modern scholars declare The Report on Manufactures as the true beginning of the US economy.

1804- The Presentation of the Eagles- Part of Napoleon’s reforming of the French Army after becoming Emperor was to standardize the battle flags. The old tattered flags of the Revolution were collected and a red, white and blue flag with gold trim was distributed, each surmounted by a brass Eagle patterned on an ancient Roman design. In 1807 the flag was standardized as the modern French tricolor we know today. Also given out was an emerald green flag with golden harps to the Irish Volunteer brigade. Jacques Louis David did a beautiful painting of the event, but the truth be told it was a lousy rainy day and there was a lot of confusion.

1837- Hector Berlioz chorale Requiem premiered.

1854- Aaron Allen of Boston patented the theater chair that folded up so you could exit.

1865-The steel industry is transformed when Sir Henry Bessemer received an American patent for the Bessemer Steel process, which made steel harder with less impurities.

1912- New York Hat directed by D.W. Griffith starring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore premiered. The first movie script written by 19 year old Anita Loos to be produced. The first American women to be a staff screenwriter, she became one of the finest Hollywood screenwriters and Broadway playwright, who penned films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Gigi. She helped discover Douglas Fairbanks and Audrey Hepburn. She died in 1981 at age 93.
Her autobiography was titled “The First Time I got PAID for It!”

1933- Prohibition was repealed in the U.S. with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. Interestingly enough the final state to ratify the repeal amendment was Utah. Canadian cities like Moose Jaw Saskatchuan, where Al Capone had set up huge distilleries to run-rum across Lake Michigan, went into mourning. Bootleggers like Josef Bronfman of Seagrams and Joe Kennedy Sr. had to look for new sources of income.

1938- The FCC concludes there was no malicious intent in Orson Welles Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds, and no fines would be imposed.

1941- Marshal Zhukov commenced the first Soviet counterattack since the Nazis invasion began in June. As the Red Army pushed the Germans 100 miles back from the outskirts of Moscow. The Germans first came up against the new Soviet T-34 Stalin Tank. German tank expert Heinz Guderian wrote to a colleague” I have just seen a most amazing tank, and if the Russians are mass producing them, we may lose the war!”

1941- Admiral Halsey moved his carrier fleet- USS Lexington & Enterprise out of Pearl Harbor to go on maneuvers. They would not be there for the Japanese attack on Pearl. This is why Admiral Yamamoto was disappointed with the battle’s final results.

1945- Flight 19, a routine training patrol of 5 Navy Avenger torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale at 2:00PM and flew into the Bermuda Triangle. Two hours later the commander radioed that his compass and backup compass had failed and his position was unknown. The 14 men and their planes were never seen again. In the next few months hundreds of planes and ships searched the waters for some signs of wreckage with no success. In 1986 and 1991 claims were made that wreckage was found, but so far but so far nothing definitive has ever been confirmed.

1947- Paramount’s “Santa’s Surprise” the first Little Audrey cartoon. The short was directed by Bill Tytla for Famous Studios. He designed Little Audrey based on his own daughter Tammy.

1951- Shoeless Joe Jackson died. The most powerful baseball batter of his age, he taught Babe Ruth how to hit. But he was implicated in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 and permanently banned from baseball. He spent the rest of his life running a hardware store near his rural Georgia home.

1952- The Abbott & Costello Television Show premiered. Hilary, Mr Fields and Stinky. “ Niagara Falls! Slooowwlly I turn! Step by Step! Step by Step!”

1952- A killer smog blanketed London and southern England for a week. Visibility was reduced to barely a yard. Before it dispersed it killed 4,000-12,000 people. The crisis spurred Britain to ban the use of coal fires to heat homes in major cities.

1953- Josef Stalin died. He was in a coma after a stroke, but his doctors were too terrified to treat him. They left him on the floor for hours. Before he died, Stalin was preparing a new purge, aimed at doctors.

1953- Russian Composer Sergei Prokoviev died, but the news was overshadowed by the death of Stalin.

1974- The Seattle Seahawks football team formed.

1974- The BBC aired the last Monty Python show.

1978- Under the Jimmy Carter administration, a federal judge ruled that religious schools could no longer be segregated, and still claim religious their tax-exempt status. This made many mega churches decide to shift their activities towards Republican politics.

2002- Peter Jackson’s second part of his Lord of the Rings trilogy “ The Two Towers” opened.
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What does it mean to egg someone on?

Answer: The Vikings had a word “eggja” which meant to urge a captive or slave to move on by prodding them in the back with your sword point. It sounded like egg in English. So, to egg somebody on came to mean to urge on someone who is reluctant.
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