QUIZ: Why does lowering a glass ball from a flagpole on top of a building signal the New Year?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean when you have Carte Blanche?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 12/30/2008
Birthdays: Rudyard Kipling, Gen. Hideki Tojo, W. Eugene Smith, Luther Burbank, Anna Magnani, Bo Diddley, Sir Carol Reed, Sandy Koufax, Solomon Guggenheim, Jeanette Nolan -Granny from the Beverly Hillbillys, Jack Lord, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, Joseph Bologna, Fred Ward, Tracey Ullman. Tiger Woods is 34, Heidi Fleiss, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary

1370- Pope Gregory XI is an example of the rather unconventional path one could take to the Throne of Peter in the Middle Ages. His genial uncle Pope Clement VI had made him a cardinal at age 18. Upon his election as Pope at age 39 someone noticed that he had never taken Holy Orders to become a Priest! So yesterday he was ordained a priest and today became Pope.

1672- Violinist John Bannister and his orchestra held a concert at Whitefriars chapel in London. It’s the oldest known music concert given not to a royalty, but to the general paying public.

1689- The opera Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell premiered in London.

1816- Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married Frankenstein author Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley.

1817- Coffee beans first planted on the Kona coast of Hawaii.

1853- The Gadsen Purchase- After the Mexican-American War the U.S. bought an additional 45,000 square miles from Mexico and finally settled the US border at the Rio Grande. The deal was brokered by U.S. Secretary of War and later President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis.

1862- During the Civil War the day before the Battle of Stone's River, Tennessee, Union and Confederate armies spent the day quietly facing each other across a creek under an icy rain. A battle of the bands started up. Blue and gray musicians serenaded each other across no-mans land with patriotic songs like Dixie and John Brown's Body, while the men sang along. Finally both bands synched up with a spontaneous rendition of " Be It Ever so Humble, There's No Place Like Home..". Thousands of throats from both sides took up the chorus.

1884- Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony premiered in Leipzig.

1894- Suffragette Amelia Jenks Bloomer died; she had gained notoriety for inventing "bloomers" a way for women to ride horses and do other physical actions without cumbersome hoops skirts.

1903 - A fire broke out in the crowded Iroquois Theater in Chicago killing 571.The Iroquois had a sign over the door that read “Absolutely Fireproof”.

1936- The Great General Motors Strike. The strike was violent and tied up steel, rubber tires and other manufactures for months. United Auto Workers invent the first "sit-down" strike at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Mich. "When they tie a can to the Union man-Sit Down, Sit Down! When the Boss won't talk, don't take a walk- Sit Down, Sit Down !"

1940- The Arroyo-Seco, the First L.A. Freeway opened by Mayor Fletchor Bowron, connecting downtown and Pasadena. ( interstate U.S. route 66 is in 1932, and The Imperial Highway opened in 1936., the Ventura freeway in 1958.)

1944- Manhattan project director Gen. Leslie Groves has a private meeting with FDR at the White House. Groves tells the President the two "cosmic bombs" (Atomic Bombs) they are building will end the war. The reason they were making two was one was uranium based and the other was plutonium based. Franklin Roosevelt wanted one dropped on Germany immediately to stop the Battle of the Bulge and kill Hitler. But Groves argued the A-bomb hadn’t been tested yet. He worried that if the bomb was a dud, the Germans were smart enough to take it apart and build their own from the fissionable material, which they might shoot in a V-2 at London.

1941- “I Vant to be Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion pictures and all public appearances. She made her disappearing act complete and was only seen fleeting on the streets of New York until her death in 1990.


1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with Monty Hall premieres.

1965- Ferdinand Marcos became president of the Philippines.

1988- Col. Oliver North, on trial for the Iran Contra Scandal, subpoenaed former President Ronald Reagan and then President-elect George Bush. Bush declined and Reagan testified on videotape.

2006- Saddam Hussein was hanged.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean when you have Carte Blanche?

Answer: Carte Blanche came from the 1700s when a vote of no contest was signaled with a white ballot submitted. Carte Blanche means you have the right to do something at your discression with no argument. It became one of the first popular credit cards, Diners Club being the oldest- about 1950.