Question: What is a liberty ship?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is June 14th called Flag Day in the US?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 6/14/2010
Birthdays: Tomaso Albinioni, Senator Fighting Bob LaFollette,, Margaret Bourke-White, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sam Wanamaker, Dorothy McGuire, Burle Ives, Gene Barry, Jerzy Kosinski, Marla Gibbs

451 A.D. Battle of Orleans- Attila the Hun was defeated by Theodoric the Visigoth and the Roman general Aetius. Attila was told by his shamans that a great king would die that day. But even though Attila lost, it was Theodoric who fell. Attila was not killed in battle like that Jack Palance-Jeff Chandler movie but died on his wedding night years later with wife #20. He was 45, she was 16. He was dead by morning.

1497- Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, son of Pope Alexander VI and brother to Caesar and Lucretia Borgia, had dinner with his family then disappeared on the way home. Next day his body was found in the Tiber River with nine stab wounds in it. No one ever found out who was the murderer was. Suspects included everyone from scholar Pico Della Mirandola to his own brother Cesare Borgia. Heart-broken dad Pope Alexander told his cardinals "This is God’s punishment for our sins, I hereby promise to renounce Nepotism and Simony and reform the Church." But Alexander soon got over it and resumed his corrupt ways.

1645- Battle of Naseby- Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army defeated King Charles Ist's army in the decisive battle of the English Civil War. After this the King never again could put a large army in the field. Charles Ist had as one of his generals his German nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Rupert rode into battle with a white poodle under his arm named Bobbie. He made insensitive declarations like: "We will strew the field with English dead !" Considering it was a civil war, that fact seemed unavoidable.

1718- The later years of Czar Peter the Great’s rule were clouded by a feud with his son and heir Alexis. While Peter was dragging Russia forcibly out of medieval backwardness his son was educated by priests to hate his fathers new ideas. Alexis pledged to undo all his father’s reforms when he became Czar. At one point Alexis fled to Italy to escape his father’s anger but returned when promised amnesty. This day Peter went back on his pledge and had Alexis arrested. In the Saint Peter & Paul fortress dungeons Alexis was beaten to death with whips. Papa himself administered the first blows.

1727- George II of England told by Sir Robert Walpole that his august father George Ist had died and he was now king. George thought it was one of his dad's cruel jokes and said" Dat ist von big lie!"( they had German accents remember). He always resented his dad’s cruel treatment of his mom like having her lover murdered while he himself kept a regular mistress. George Ist didn’t trust his English subjects and was always homesick for his birthplace in Hanover Germany. He was always visiting. So when he died and was buried over there truth be said nobody in England really missed him. While his grandson King George III’s death was cause for national mourning, George I’s death was only casually mentioned in the society newspapers.

Happy Flag Day -in 1777 The Continental Congress orders the Stars and Stripes flag to be the official U.S. flag. It replaced the Cambridge Flag (The Tree and Stripes) and the Snake and Stripes and all those other things silly things and stripes.

1789- Capt. Bligh reached East Timor after floating 4,000 miles in an open boat . He and his followers were cast adrift by the Bounty Mutineers.

1800- Battle of Marengo- Napoleon defeats the Austrian army and conquers most of Italy. At first he was losing and his men were fighting so furiously against high odds that some could be seen urinating into their rifle barrels to cool them off. Just when things seemed lost his regimental commander General Desaix, arrived in the nick of time, won the battle and was conveniently killed in action so Napoleon didn’t have to share any of the credit. This led Napoleon to observe "The difference between victory and defeat can be 15 minutes."
Napoleon’s cook at 5 p.m. was told the battle was lost and not to fix supper. At 7:00 pm Napoleon had won the battle and asked for dinner. Frantically the cook grabbed some chicken, prawns and garlic and invented Chicken Marengo. Believe it or not the cook’s name was Pierre Goufee’.( Garsh!)

1801- Old Revolutionary War traitor Benedict Arnold died in London of dropsy. He was living on a major generals half pay but was shunned by polite British society as he was hated by Americans. Tradition has it that in his last days he had his wife Peggy help him back into his old Colonial Generals uniform:" My country’s uniform, woe to me that I ever put on another!" After his death the London Post wrote: Poor General Arnold departed this life, unmourned and without notice. A sorry reflection for other turncoats."

1816- Writers Shelley, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley were spending the summer at the Villa Deodati on Lake Geneva. This day among the revels, drinking, partner swapping and opium taking Byron suggested they all write a ghost story. They all tried but failed except for 19 year old Mary who invented the tale of a Swiss scientist who created an artificial man. She called it Frankenstein.

1822- Charles Babbage presented a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society in London proposing to build a "Difference Engine" a machine that could calculate equations and print the results-i.e. a computer. His early machine required 8,000 moving parts. After ten years and a small fortune it never quite comes off.

1834- Isaac Fischer Jr. of Vermont invented sandpaper.

1846-THE GREAT BEAR REBELLION- U.S. citizens living in Spanish California led by a school teacher named William Ide and Ezekiel Merritt declared themselves an independent country, not knowing that back east the U.S. government had already declared war on Mexico and annexed California to the U.S.. Remember information took months to get back East across Indian territory and burning deserts. The Anglo-Californians seized a Sonoma military post and arrested the owner of the largest hacienda in the area, a retired Mexican General named Mariano Vallejo. Ironically Senor Vallejo himself desired AltaCalifornia to have independence from Mexico City. They chose as their flag for the new republic the grizzly bear and the polar star, which is now the state flag. It wasn’t well drawn and a Mexican noblewoman watching the events thought the flag looked like a large towel with a pig painted on it. US Col. John Freemont took over the Great Bear settlers and raised the US flag over the Presidio in San Francisco July 1st.

1865- A group of Englishmen climb the Materhorn Mountain in Switzerland, inventing the sport of mountain climbing. Why? Because it’s there.

1934- Hitler meets Mussolini for the first time for a conference in the city of Padua. They didn't trust any interpreters and neither could speak the others language, so it wasn't much of a meeting. Il Duce's first impression of the German Chancellor wasn't impressive. He called him " A comical little monkey."

1940- The German Army goose-stepped down the Champs Elysees into Paris. The Nazi propaganda that night broadcast from Berlin declared"The decadent, democratic Paris of Jews and Negroes is gone never to rise again!!" Not quite, Adolph.

1941- First day shooting on John Huston’s film "The Maltese Falcon". It was Huston’s first director gig. After George Raft turned down the role of Sam Spade the lead went to an actor named Humphrey Bogart. He had started well as the hood Duke Mantee in Petrified Forrest but had since been typecast in character roles. At the time no one thought that Bogie was romantic leading man material. Bogart even had to wear his own suits in the role.

1942- A secret coded message sent by Moscow's intelligence service to all their agents in Germany, England and the U.S.A. showed that Russia was aware of these countries attempts to build an atomic bomb and that Soviet agents should use all means to secure information about these programs.

1951- Univac I, built by Dr John W, Mauchly and J. Prosper Eckert Jr. of the Remington Rand Company to be the first U.S. commercial built electronic computer, went on line for the census bureau in Philadelphia.

1954- The Eisenhower Administration ordered the adding of the words "Under God" to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.

1964- THE FIRST HIPPY BUS- Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, bought an old school bus, painted it psychedelic colors, took of troupe of 14 fellow free spirits called the Merry Pranksters and spent the next few months driving across the country taking LSD and staging Happenings in various cities and towns. The Bus’s name was Further and it’s driver was Neil Cassidy, friend of Beatnik author Jack Kerouac. A book documenting the escapades of the "hippy bus" was "The Electric Koolaid Acid Test.". Kesey became interested in LSD when he volunteered for a college program to experiment with the drug, secretly funded by the CIA. The Merry Pranksters were invited in 1969 to be the security for the Woodstock Rock Festival.

1966- The Vatican officially abolished the Index of Forbidden Books.

1977- Skinny Carnaby Street fashion model Twiggy got married to Michael Whitney.

1983- The Pioneer 10 space probe left it’s orbit around Jupiter and headed off into deep space. NASA lost all contact in 1997. Pioneer 10 is expected to reach the solar system of the star Ross 246 in the Constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 AD.

1989- Elderly actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills policeman who was writing her a traffic ticket.

1995, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MP3. The researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits decided to use ".mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Development on this technology started in 1987. By 1992 it was considered far ahead of its times. MP3 became the generally accepted acronym as the popular standard for digital music on the on the Internet."

2001- The Oxford English Dictionary admitted the slang expletive of Homer Simpson "DOH!" into its august pages.

2002- An asteroid the size of a football field bypassed the Earth by just 75,000 miles, about one fifth the distance to our moon. If it had hit us, the cataclysm might have rivaled the one that eliminated the Dinosaurs. Little was said about it in the media because it came from the direction of the Sun and was undetectable until almost on top of us. So sleep well tonight, modern science is on guard! Nyaaahhhh!!
-------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: Why is June 14th called Flag Day in the US?

Answer: See above- 1777

Question: Why is June 14th called Flag Day in the US?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: American presidents have been generals, governors and plantation owners. What president was once a union leader?
------------------------------------------------------
History for 6/13/2010
Birthdays: Gnaeus Agricola-40AD, Harriet Beecher Stowe, W.B.Yeats, Red Grange, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Sayers, Ralph Edwards, Paul Lynde, Tim Allen is 57, Darla Hood, Ally Sheedy, Simon Callow, Joe Roth, Christo, Malcom McDowell is 67, Stellan Skaarsgard, The Olsen Twins are 24

The Festival of the Roman Goddess Minerva.

313 A.D. Constantine, the Roman Emperor of the West and Licinius the Emperor of the East publish a joint edict throughout the Roman Empire granting religious toleration : "All men to worship what Gods they will." This edict lifts the 250 year persecution of Christianity.

1381-THE ENGLISH PEASANT REVOLT OCCUPIES LONDON. -Wat the Tyner and his pissed-off peasants chase young King Richard II into the Tower of London and drag the Archbishop of Canterbury up to Tyburn Hill to chop his head off. The Archbishop was in charge of economic policy and taxation for the young king, so he was the focus of the people's rage. They used a non-union headsman so it took several whacks to get the job done...

1777- General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne began his invasion down from Canada into New York State to smash the American Revolution. The Great North River, called the Hudson, was the jugular of America, because it divided militant New England from the moderate Mid-Atlantic and Southern States. Before Burgoyne left London he had wagered politician Charles Fox 20 guineas that he would finish off the Yankees by Christmas.

Burgoyne immediately annoyed senior British officers in America. He refused orders from Canadian Governor General Carleton. He declared that his was an independent command and so could not be ordered about by anyone but London. By October, defeated and surrounded by hordes of rebel soldiers at Saratoga he got a letter out to Carleton “requesting instructions”. Carleton understood a weenie attempt to shift the blame, so he ignored him, Burgoyne surrendered and was exchanged. He did get home by Christmas, just without his army...

1777- Count Casimir Pulaski embarks from Marseilles to join the American Revolution. Pulaski was a hotheaded Polish patriot who had fought Russians, served in the French and Turkish armies, and had been in a conspiracy to kidnap the King of Poland. The American ambassadors trying to recruit European military experts found Pulaski in a Marseilles prison for non-payment of bills. Pulaski thought the Americans had paid his debts as part of his enlistment, but the truth was the French forgave his debts because they were glad to be rid of him. Count Pulaski became the Father of the American Cavalry and the only person to ever hold the rank in the U.S. Army of Commander of Horse. He was killed in battle outside of Savannah Georgia at age 31.

1878-The CONGRESS OF BERLIN OPENS- German Chancellor Bismarck offered to mediate the argument between Russia and Britain and Austria over the Russo Turkish War. It is the first world conference where all the great powers and statesmen appear not to divide conquered spoils but actually prevent a larger war from happening. As Bismarck joked in English to retired U.S. President Ulysses Grant then vacationing: "Russia has bitten off a bit too much Turkey, and we must make him give some back." Bismarck loved meeting British Prime Minister Disraeli. He said:"Ach! Das Alte Juden! Das ist der Mann!- Ah, it's the Old Jew! You da Man!" Disraeli was of Jewish ancestry.

1905- The workers of the Russian city of Odessa go on strike and the Tsar's troops shoot them down on the Odessa steps. This causes the Battleship Potemkin's sailors to mutiney. Twenty years later Sergei Eisenstein to make a famous film of the same name.

1920-The US Government rules Americans cannot mail their children through the Parcel Post System.

1927- Wall St. tickertape parade for Lucky Lindy- Charles Lindbergh.

1941-The American Federation of Labor the AF of L called for a nationwide boycott of all Disney products and films. This was to support the Disney Cartoonists strike.

1942- President Roosevelt by executive order created the Office of Strategic Services or the OSS. Under director Wild Bill Donovan its job was to coordinate espionage and intelligence gathering against the Axis powers in cooperation with its British counterpart , the SOE. On the agencies personnel roster were experts from spymasters Bill Gates and William Casey to tourist book author Eugene Fodor and chef Julia Child. Child recalled the outfit was nicknamed “Oh So Secret!” and “Oh, So-Social” for all the society notables in it. After World War Two the OSS transformed into the CIA.

1944- The first Vengence-1( V-1) Buzz Bombs hit London. The first 21 launched missed most targets and one even spun around and landed near Hitler's western headquarters. This is when the auto-destruct button was conceived. Of the ones that hit England the worst damage was to Bethnel Green tube station. Unlike bombers these rockets were almost impossible to shoot down. By wars end 1,800 would hit London along with 5,000 V-2s and drive a lot of the population into the countryside.

1958- rock & roll great Frank Zappa graduated Antelope Valley High School.

1962- Three convicts, Frank Lee Morris, and the brothers Anglin, escape from Alcatraz with a crude rowboat. They are the only prisoners to have successfully escaped from the Rock. Alcatraz was closed by attorney general Robert Kennedy later that year.

1967- President Lyndon Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshal to the Supreme Court. Marshal was the first African American to sit in the nations highest court and as an attorney successfully pled the 1955 case Brown vs. Board of Education that struck down school segregation.

1971 -The day after Tricia Nixon's wedding the Washington Post and the New York Times began printing THE PENTAGON PAPERS. They were leaked by dissenting intelligence specialist Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was on the staff of Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara when McNamara ordered a fact paper drawn up explaining step by step just how the U.S. managed to get in as big a mess as Vietnam. The papers revealed publicly such damaging secrets as the U.S. had secretly been fighting alongside the South Vietnamese much earlier than the "Tonkin Gulf Incident" of 1965, all the while claiming neutrality. The U.S.S. Maddox, the ship that was fired on in the Tonkin Gulf, was ordered to violate Vietnamese waters and provoke a Communist attack; and that the opinion of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs in 1965 was that we knew the war was unwinnable, yet we kept fighting anyway until 1973.
The publication was very damaging to the Nixon White House even though it was all about events taking place in the previous Democratic administrations. Robert McNamara said he himself never got around to reading the Pentagon Papers but had a copy in his garage.

1978- Henry Ford II fired Lee Iacocca from the Ford Corporation. The creator of the Ford Mustang would later move on to run Chrysler. When asked why Ford said: “Sometimes you just don’t like somebody.”

1991- Boris Yeltsin becomes the first popularly elected leader of Russia.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday's Question:American presidents have been generals, governors and plantation owners. What president was once a union leader?

Answer: Ronald Reagan was vice president then later president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947-1952, and then again 1960-1961.

Quiz: When was the period of English history we call Jacobean?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who coined the term OnLine?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 6/11/2010
Birthdays: Ben Johnson, Richard Strauss, Jacques Cousteau, Nelson Mandela, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Joe Montana, John Constable, Gustav Courbet, Vince Lombardi, Adrienne Barbeau, William Styron, Chad Everett, race car driver Jackie Stewart, Gene Wilder is 77, Hugh Laurie is 51, Shia LeBoeuf is 24.

1174- Crusader king of Jerusalem Amalric IV dies, he is succeeded by his son Baldwin IV the "Leper King of Jerusalem". That this disease afflicted Baldwin did not stop him from marrying (unconsummated) and fighting battles -no one would get close enough to fight with him. Ed Norton played him in the Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven.


1685- MONMOUTH'S REBELLION- The Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of English King Charles II felt he should be king instead of his prissy Roman Catholic Uncle King James II. Being illegitimate was to him a mere technicality. This day The Duke of Monmouth landed in the U.K. and raised the banner of revolt. He got some of Oliver Cromwell’s old roundheads to join him but they were soon crushed by the regular army. Monmouth was executed and many of his men shipped off to be slaves on the sugar plantations of Bermuda and the Bahamas by the infamous Judge Jeffries during the Bloody Assizes. The novel Captain Blood is about one such slave-survivor of Monmouth's Rising.

1775- 33 year old Virginia planter Thomas Jefferson leaves Monticello to ride to Philadelphia where the representatives of all the colonies were gathering in a Congress to decide how to respond to the violence lately broken out between Americans and British troops around Boston.

1790- In Hawaii this is King Kamehameha day in honor of the king who united all the Hawaiian Islands under one rule.

1809- The Pope excommunicated Napoleon. "Good," he said, "This will bring me even more followers."

1913- Turkish Grand Vizier Shevket Pasha was assassinated by revolutionaries. The Young Turk officers had the conspirators rounded up and hanged.

1928 - Alfred Hitchcock's film, "The Case Of Jonathan Drew," is released

1934- the first Mandrake the Magician comic strip.

1936- Shy, quiet, 30 year old Texas writer Robert E. Howard had created the macho warriors Conan the Barbarian, Kull and single handedly defined the genre we call Sword & Sorcery. This day after he learned his mother was dying and would never regain consciousness, he went into his garage and blew his brains out. Some say he had an Oedipal fixation, others that he always intended to end his life and was waiting to spare his mother the pain. On his typewriter he left a short message: "All fled, all done, so lift me upon the pyre. The feast is over and let the lamps expire."


1937 –" Getta’ yu tutsie-frutsie Ice-a Creem!"the Marx Brothers' "A Day At The Races" premiered.

1939 – President Franklin Roosevelt hosted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the White House. There the rulers of the British Empire ate Hot Dogs for the first time. Whether they in turn gave FDR some Marmite is an open question.

1948- Col. Eddie Marcus was a career West Point grad US Army officer who spent World War Two on General Eisenhower’s staff planning the campaigns in Europe. Eddie Marcus was also a Jew. When the new state of Israel needed military experience, Marcus volunteered and was made the commanding Aluff -General of the Jerusalem Front. He was given the name Mickey Stone as a code name. After furious fighting against Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi forces, a UN ceasefire went into effect. This night when Marcus stepped out of his tent during a curfew to relieve himself he was accidentally shot and killed by a young Israeli sentry. The boy only spoke Hebrew and Marcus only spoke English. He was also wrapped in his bedsheet and the boy thought it was Arab dress. Eddie Marcus’ body was flown back to America and interred at West Point. The incident was made into a film with Kirk Douglas called "Cast a Giant Shadow."

1955- The deadliest day at Le Mans. During this particular running of the famous 24 hour car race a Mercedes crashed into an Austin Healy at high speed and the cars disintegrated spewing metal parts into the crowd of spectators. 85 died and 100 more were hurt.

1959 – The US Postmaster General banned D H Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover as pornography. He was overruled by US Court of Appeals in March 1960.

1963- Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door and refused to allow two black students to integrate Alabama University. He eventually stood aside before federal troops but his stand made him a national figure. Ironically Wallace was originally a liberal judge but after being defeated for Governor in 1958 changed his tone to conservative racism.

1964 - Chicago police break up a Rolling Stones press conference.

1964 - Manfred Mann recorded Do Wah Diddy Diddy.

1966 - "Paint It, Black" by The Rolling Stones peaks at #1

1966 - Janis Joplin played her 1st gig in San Francisco.

1968- After the carnage of the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Que Sanh, General William Westmoreland stepped down as commander of all US forces in Vietnam. Unlike Defense Secretary Robert McNamara General Westmoreland remained unrepentant for the rest of his life. He blamed his failures in Vietnam on the media, hippies and the racial mixture of his army.

1972- THE MOST PROFITABLE FILM IN HISTORY. The film Deep Throat premiered. The first full length blockbuster porn film. The film was shot in just three days, by an ex-hairdresser turned director. It cost $22,500 to make and grossed $600 million. It became a counterculture cause celebre. Frank Sinatra screened a print for Vice President Spiro Agnew. Star Linda Lovelace later disavowed her career and claimed she did the sex scenes under duress from her husband Chuck Trainor. She died in a car accident in the 1982. Today the term Linda Syndrome denotes former porn actresses who try to deny their past.

1977 - Main Street Electrical Parade premiered at Disneyland.

1979- John Wayne died after a long struggle with cancer. Many believed his condition began as a result of filming the movie "The Conqueror" near the Nevada Atomic Test site. Half the crew of that film including all the stars and director died of cancer. When Wayne made a final appearance at the Academy Awards two months earlier he had purchased a small size tuxedo to hide his emaciated frame, but he was still too thin even then so he filled it out by wearing a scuba wetsuit underneath

1984- In the freewheeling economy of the 1980’s tycoons conducted hostile takeovers of companies by buying a majority of their stock on margin. When Wall Street corporate raider Saul Steinberg announced he intended to target the ailing Walt Disney Company for takeover CEO Ron Miller paid him $23 million just to make him go away. The Disney shareholders are outraged at this payment of "greenmail’ and demanded Miller’s resignation, which some say was exactly as Roy Disney had planned.

1987- Margaret Thatcher was re-elected to a second term as Britain’s Prime Minister.

1987- Britain noted the first outbreak of Mad Cow Disease.

1993 –Steven Spielberg’s "Jurassic Park" opened. The film set a box office record of $931 million. It was begun with modelers and puppeteers about to do the dinosaurs with clay and beeswax. But after seeing tests using the new 3D CGI –computer graphic imaging software, Steven ordered all of ILM to do it digitally. Jurassic Park clinched the digital takeover of Hollywood and set the standard for future special effects.

2002- Fox TV’s show American Idol premiered.
----------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: Who is the main character in Ben Johnson’s 1606 play Volpone?

Answer: Volpone.

Quiz: Who is the main character in Ben Johnson’s 1606 play Volpone?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who was barbarossa?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 6/10/2010
Birthdays: Charles James Stuart the Old Pretender, Yamaoka Tesshu (1832- Japanese swordsman), Saul Bellow, Judy Garland, Hattie McDaniel, Frederick Loewe (of Lerner & Loewe) Howlin’ Wolf, Maurice Sendak, Gina Gershon is 47, Leilee Sobieski is 26, Jean Triplehorn is 46, Britain’s Prince Phillip, Jurgen Prochnow, John Edwards, Elizabeth Hurley is 44

Happy 100th Birthday!!read on-1910

1190- Emperor Frederick III Barbarossa (red-beard) died. Barbarossa (not to be confused with the Algerian-Barbary pirate Nur Al Din of the same name in the 1700's) was the great Hohenstaufen German Emperor who decided to go on Crusade at the same time as Richard Lionheart and Phillip Augustus of France. Frederick was very old but insisted he make the trip. This day while crossing a stream in Turkey, Frederick Barbarossa had a fatal heart attack and fell into the water. His men, never being that thrilled about the whole thing and taking their king's death as the clincher, turned around and went home.

1682- English colonists in Connecticut observed a phenomenon unique to the Americas, a dark windstorm taking the form of a funnel. The first recorded Tornado.

1750- Francois Voltaire accepted the invitation of King Frederick the Great of Prussia to come live at his court. French King Louis XV laughed: “ Now there will be one less nut in Versailles and one more nut in Berlin.” The friendship between Frederick and Voltaire is fascinating- night after night over dinner, the enlightened gay despot matched wits with the commoner who was the greatest philosophical mind of the century. When Voltaire argued that the world would be better off with no religion or belief in God, King Frederick retorted:” But my dear Voltaire, if you did away with God, then common people would raise statues to you and pray to them.” At times Voltaire’s arguments would get Frederick so angry that the Frenchman would flee fearing for his life. Frederick ordered the borders closed and sent a troop of cavalry to drag him back, so they could finish their argument.

1752- BEN FRANKLIN FLIES HIS KITE- The wizard of Philadelphia was not the actual discoverer of electricity, Leyden Jars and Volta's experiments predate him. He did make the connection between lightning and electric currents and created the lightning rod and the first electric battery. He didn't tell anyone about the kite experiment until 15 years later for fear people would think him a silly fellow. There’s a famous painting of Ben with his kite being assisted by his young child William. In actuality William was about thirty at the time and during the Revolution he became Royalist Governor of New Jersey and couldn’t stand his old man.

1776- The great English actor David Garrick went on stage for the last time, playing in a benefit for the Decayed Actor’s Fund. Hmm, I wonder if could start a Decayed Animator’s Fund….

1776- The Continental Congress appointed a committee of Ben Franklin, John Adams ,William Rutledge and Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. Most of the hard work devolved upon Jefferson. Franklin glibly noted:` It has been my practice to avoid being the author of any paper which would be reviewed by a public body. Tom Jefferson borrowed much from enlightened European writers like Burke and Montesqiou. There were 46 revisions before the final draft was voted on, including taking out any references to outlawing the slave trade. Yet Jefferson’s great prose but it perfectly “All Men are Created Equal, endowed by their Creator with certain Inalienable Rights, among them Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Ever since these words were thrown at tyrants and inspired leaders as diverse as Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro.

1801- The Barbary Pirates of Tripoli declared war on the little nation called the United States. These Mediterranean buccaneers would extort tribute money from countries whose ships passed through their waters. So long as Yankee shipping was protected by the British Navy this wasn't a problem, but America was on its own now and the Dey of Algiers demanded payment. One senator's famous cry was Millions for Defense, but not one cent for Tribute!

1847 –The Chicago Tribune begins publishing

1860- The Comstock Lode- Near Virginia City Nevada Two grubstake miners, one named Old Pancake McGaughlin hit a vein of silver so big and pure that it will eventually yield $300 million dollars worth of ore and make millionaires of men like William Randolph Hearst's father.

1865- Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde premiered in Munich. To meet the demands of Wagners music the orchestra needed to be so much larger than usual that they had to take out the first two rows of seats to enlarge the orchestra pit. Conductor Franz Von Bulow , whose wife Cosima was busy schtupping Maestro Wagner at the time, committed a brilliant blunder when he announced within earshot of the news reporters:" Take out the seats! One or two extra schweinhunts won't matter!" Not the way to get good reviews..
.

1902 - Patent for the window envelope granted to H F Callahan.

1905- Japan and Russia accept the offer of peace talks to be mediated by American President Teddy Roosevelt. For ending the Russo-Japanese War Roosevelt received the first Nobel Peace Prize.

1910- The first Krazy Kat comic strip- Cartoonist George Herriman was doing a strip for Hearst called "The Family Upstairs". He was amused at the idea of a friendship between a cat and a mouse. So Herriman put them in the corner playing marbles while the family quarreled. First an office boy and later editor Arthur Brisbane suggested they have their own strip. The immortality of the denizens of Coconino County follows, loved by the likes of H.L.Mencken, e.e.cummings and Jacques Kerouac. Krazy herself explains:"It's wot's behind me that I am."

1926- Artist Antonio Gaudi was run over by a streetcar while crossing in front of his famous cathedral in Barcelona. Begun in 1886 The Cathedral Sacreda Familia is still scheduled for completion- in the year 2035.

1935- A New York stockbroker and an Ohio physician, both recovered alcoholics, invent a twelve step recovery program called Alcoholic's Anonymous.

1939 - Barney Bear, cartoon character, by MGM, debuts

1942- LIDICE- In occupied Czechoslovakia the Czech underground scored a big victory when they assassinated the Nazis occupation Gauleiter or governor Richard Heydrich, a personal friend of Hitler. Hitler ordered in revenge a Czech village selected at random and destroyed. The SS surrounded the village of Lidice and shot the whole population of 1,300, then burned and tore down the buildings.

1944- A USO troop was entertaining soldiers in Normandy from the back of a truck but they needed a piano player. They called out to the audience if anyone could play. A shy cattle rancher’s son from Modesto California came up and played so well his colonel ordered him out of the line to form his own G.I. band. Dave Breubeck’s jazz career began.

1945- General Eisenhower was given a massive ticker tape parade down Broadway in New York City. Looking down on Ike from an office building 20 floors up, was a rumpled Navy Reserve Second Lieutenant named Richard Nixon.

1947- Sweden’s Saab motorcar company introduced it’s first model car. Saab in neutral Sweden had made planes and tanks for World War Two, but after the war was over they recognized that combat was not a growth industry and they switched to autos.

1948- Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and achieved Mach I in the Bell XS-1 Glamorous Glennis.

1948- THE JOHNSON CITY WINDMILL- Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson was trying to win a senate seat from Texas but he was lagging far behind a popular ex-governor named Coke Stevenson. So he hit upon a novel way of campaigning. He hired a helicopter and barnstormed the rural towns and districts of the Texas hill country. People came out just to see the newfangled flying machine land and take off and this gave Johnson a captive audience. They nicknamed it the Johnson City Flying Windmill. Johnson also mounted a massive outlay of posters and pamphlets. He told his staff:” Ah don’t want a voter to wipe his ass with a piece of paper that ain’t got my face on it!” He pulled even to Stevenson and with a little extra ballot box skullduggery won the election.

1957- “Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog” cartoon debuts on the Captain Kangaroo show.

1980- Comedian Richard Pryor had been doing so much cocaine even his dealers were worried about him. This day, while trying to freebase he exploded in flame, and ran screaming down his street. Another version of the story said he tried to commit suicide by pouring tequila on himself and setting it alight. During his long recovery in the Sherman Oaks burn unit his nurse once put on the news and he watched CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite report his death. `He thought to himself: "If Walter Cronkite said I died, it must be true !" He recovered but developed Muscular Dystrophy in the late 1990s.

1995-110,000 people jam Central Park in New York to see Disney's Pocahontas, the largest audience ever to attend a single movie premiere.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: Who was barbarossa?

Answer: See above, 1190.

Question: Who was barbarossa?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What does it mean to be Shanghaied?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 6/9/2010
Birthdays: Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cole Porter, John Bartlett of Bartletts Familiar Quotations, Boy George O’Dowd, Les Paul, Burl Ives, Lash LaRue, Happy Rockefeller, Robert MacNamara, Major Bowes, Carl Neilsen, Donald Trump, Jerzy Kosinski, Pierre Salinger, Steffy Graff, Marvin Kalb, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, physicist who formulated Coulomb's Law, Dr. Alois Alzheimer, Aaron Sorkin, Michael J. Fox is 49, Johnny Depp is 47, Natalie Portman is 29

Today is the Feast Day of St Columba, and St. Maximian of Syracuse.

68 AD- Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide. Nero saw the jig was up when the Roman people welcomed the Spanish Legions of Servius Galba into the city, shouting "Death to the Incendiary! Death to RedBeard!” a nickname implying his fatherhood may not have been pure Latin. He took his life on the anniversary of the murder of his wife, whom he had kicked to death while she was pregnant. He had his servant Epaphroditus push a knife into his throat. Nero died saying "Oh, what an artist dies in me!” Nero was descended from Augustus on his father’s side, and on the other side from Marc Anthony. His death ended the direct bloodline of Julius Caesar's family. For the next few months four generals would turn their armies homeward to fight for power. The Roman called this period "The Long Year".

1358- The Massacre of Meaux. In a France already ravaged by the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, a violent peasant revolt broke out called the Jacquerie -Poor Jacques. On this day two top knights, one from the English side and one from the French- Gaston Phoebus and the Captal De Buch, took time out from their war to join forces and chop up dozens of rebellious peasants in the town of Meaux. Phoebus later became a character in Hugo's novel the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

1732- James Oglethorpe, a British Parliamentarian, was granted a charter by King George II to found a penal colony south of the Carolinas. He would call it Georgia in honor of the king.

1798- Napoleon's fleet, on the way to Egypt, stops to attack the strategic island of Malta. The keepers of the Island fortress, the once valiant Knights of Malta, had become so stodgy and decrepit that the French easily burst in. When Napoleon inspected the massive defense works, capable of holding an attacker at bay for months, he said: " This conquest is embarrassing." After the Napoleonic Wars Britain took over Malta until the 1950's. The Knights went from an order of warrior-monks, to a jet-set club, with members like Prince Rainier and Sir Frank Sinatra and charity work like Saint John's Ambulance.

1817- A defective boiler destroyed the experimental riverboat Washington. Despite this unfortunate occurrence, the S.S. Washington was the prototype of Mississippi riverboats- a flat bottomed side wheeler with the engine machinery above the waterline instead of down in a deep hold like Robert Fulton’s model.

1834 – Brass helmet deep-sea diving suit was patented by African-American inventor Leonard Norcross of Dixfield, Maine. The design remained unchanged for 100 years.

1834 - Sandpaper patented by Isaac Fischer Jr., Springfield, Vermont

1839 – The first Henley Regatta held

1847 - Robert von Bunsen invents the Bunsen burner.

1860- DIME NOVELS & PULP FICTION. Mr. Erastus Beadle (don’t you love 19th century names?) published the first dime novel, Maleska, Indian Wife of the White Hunter by Anna Stephens. Sometimes called the Penny Dreadfulls, pocket-sized stories printed on cheap pulp paper became popular reading. They fantasized the West, extolling two-gun chivalry and virtuous maidens, roaring desperadoes and wild savages. This early form of mass media made celebrities out of fringe yahoos like Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid and Belle Starr.

1863- BRANDY STATION-The largest cavalry battle of the Civil War- Union cavalry caught Jeb Stuart's reb cavalry in camp. Stuart's horses and men were spent because they had spent the previous day holding a pageant showing off for the ladies. A huge confused swirl of horse flesh, sabers and guns ensued. The rebs eventually drove off the Yankees, but Stuart looked pretty dumb being surprised so badly. Yankee cavalry finally proved that under tough new leadership like Sheridan and Custer they could hold their own with the excellent Southern gentlemen horsemen.

1902- Woodrow Wilson was named President of Princeton University. One of the Board of Trustees that selected the future US President, was the former US President, Grover Cleveland.

1918- Louella Parsons began her Hollywood Gossip column. Louella became one of the most powerful and widely read columnists in Hollywood’s golden age. Stories say Louella got as much pull as she did in the Hearst newspaper empire for helping cover up the killing of director Thomas Ince and also trying to stifle the release of Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane.

1920- King George V dedicated the new Imperial War Museum, comprising artifacts from the recently concluded Great War. In 1936, the War museum moved to its present home in the former building of the infamous mental asylum, Bedlam.

1930- Chicago Tribune reporter Jack Lingle was shot and killed by Al Capone’s hoods. The hit was done right in broad daylight on Michigan Ave and Randolph St at the Illinois Central underpass at the height of rush hour. It was first thought that Lingle was going to do some kind of courageous crusading journalist expose, but Big Al had him rubbed out because he welched on a $100,000 gambling debt.

1934- Happy Birthday Donald Duck! Walt Disney's short cartoon"The Little Wise Hen".

1934- The film the Thin Man with William Powell. Myrna Loy and Asta the dog premiered.

1938 - Chlorophyl isolated by Benjamin Grushkin

1938 - Dorothy Lathrop wins the 1st Caldecott Medal for outstanding childrens books.

1941- First day shooting on the film, the Maltese Falcon. It was John Huston’s first directorial effort and Humphrey Bogart had to provide his own wardrobe.

1942 - The1st bazooka- shoulder held rocket launcher, produced in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The name Bazooka was from a Fred Allen and Allen’s Alley radio show name for a home-made musical instrument made from a stove pipe. Bazookas became vital in the US infantry’s ability to stop tanks and other obstacles. Chicago writer Mike Royko once noted that in 1967 Congress passed a law forbidding private citizens from owning bazookas at home for recreation, which probably annoys some NRA-Second Amendment advocates.

1942- LBJ in the USN- Young, Texas Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson spent 1941 loudly declaring if war came, he’d be the first in the trenches. After Pearl Harbor, he joined the US Naval Reserve and was made a lieutenant-commander. He spent the next few months inspecting naval facilities in Hollywood and Squaw Valley, Idaho while partying hard. Finally, friends warned he better go to the battlefront before too much talk hurt him politically. He flew as an observer on one mission of B-26 bombers over the Japanese held island of Leii, New Guinea. To his credit, he reacted coolly as Japanese Zeroes attacked. The original plane he was supposed to be on got shot down over shark-infested waters. After the mission, General MacArthur gave him a Silver Star, whose ribbon he wore proudly for the rest of his life. After 13 minutes in actual combat, the next day he was on a plane Stateside. By July 18th he had resigned his commission (by Presidential Order he added), and was back at his desk in Washington. Presidential aide Harry Hopkins quipped:” Lyndon Johnson is back from his politically expedient dip in the Pacific.”

1942 - Anne Frank began her diary.

1943- The Internal Revenue Service introduced the Pay-As-You-Go system of tax collection, or today we know it as tax withholding from your paycheck.

1945- First heavy B-29 Superfortress bombers leave Tinian and Saipan to attack Tokyo.

1950- After all appeals fail, the first of the Hollywood Ten, screenwriters Dalton Trumbo, Philip Dunne, Alvah Bessie, Waldo Salt, Edward Dymtytrk, David Ogden Stewart, Ring Lardner and John Howard Lawson are sentenced to prison. In the L.A. Municipal Jail one felon greeted the leftist writers with a smile and said: "Hi Ya, Hollywood Kids!”

1953 - Elvis Presley graduates from L.C. Humes High School in Memphis, Tennessee.

1972- Rapid City, South Dakota destroyed by a flash flood. 280 died.

1973- The thoroughbred horse Secretariat ridden by Ron Turcott won the Belmont Stakes, taking the first Triple Crown since Citation did it in 1948. He won it by an amazing 31 lengths! Secretariat was sired by Bold Ruler, the 1957 Preakness winner. The Triple Crown is three high stakes races each progressively of greater length than the previous-The Kentucky Derby 1+1/8th miles, The Preakness 1+1/4 miles and the Belmont Stakes 1+1/2. Secretariat becomes the only non-human to appear on Greatest Sports Legends of the Twentieth Century lists.

1976 – Chuck Barris’ the" Gong Show" premiered. Where’s Jean-Jean the Dancing Machine?

1989 - Queen Elizabeth II knighted Ronald Reagan.

1992- Congress passed the Internet Communications Act, opening up the Internet to the public. At this time, when only defense contractors used it, the Internet had 50 websites; by 2000, it had 77 million websites, now in the hundreds of millions.

2002 –The Canadian Supreme Court lifted the ban on Gay marriages as unconstitutional; the first couple in Ontario was legally married.

2160 - Montgomery Edward Scott, called Scotty or Mr. Scott, born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the engineer of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek. “ Cap’n, Ah dunno know how much more the engines can take!”
------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean to be Shanghaied?

Answer: In Gold Rush San Francisco, shipmasters had a problem finding enough men to take a ship out, since all their crews had run off to prospect for gold. So ship owners paid innkeepers to get sailors by drugging & kidnapping them, When asked about a missing man’s whereabouts, the innkeeper said ” He shipped off to Shanghai”. The furthest place he could think of.