Question: What famous character from fiction rode a horse named Rosinante?

Question Answered below: Of the great battles of history, which of these famous rivals never met face to face? A)- Napoleon vs. Wellington, B)- Hannibal vs. Scipio Africanis, C)-Lee vs. Grant, D)- Richard the Lionhearted vs. Saladin?
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History for 3/15/2009
Birthdays: Andrew Jackson*, Lee Schubert-one of Broadways Shubert Brothers, Ry Cooder, Sly Stone, Harry James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Judd Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Sabu, Fabio, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, Reni Harlin, David Cronenburg is 66, Eva Longoria Parker is 34, Chris Sanders the co-director of Lilo & Stitch is 49, David Silverman the director of the Simpson's Movie is 52.

* For many years in America Andy Jackson’s birthday was a public holiday.

508BC-525AD- In the Roman Republic this was the traditional day the newly elected Consuls and Senate assumed their offices and began governing.

44 B.C. -BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH- While attending the first day of the new Senate, Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by radical senators beneath the statue of his old enemy Pompey Magnus. Two of the murderers, Brutus and Cassius were former officers of Pompey to whom Caesar granted amnesty. Marcus Brutus was a descendant of Junius Brutus the founder of the Roman democracy. He was even rumored to have been Caesar's illegitimate son. Even though he was stabbed 35 times, it still took him several hours to die, lying alone on the floor.



Unlike Shakespeare, Julius Caesar never said "Et Tu Brute'" Even you, Brutus? In Latin. His last words were the equivalent in Greek-"Touto kai teknon mou" which translates, "Even this my child?". Greek was to the Romans like French is to us. Proving you can suffer multiple stab wounds, yet still be chic’.

1517-Pope Leo X was left a full treasury by his predecessor Pope Julius II. But being a major party animal he quickly blew it all. This day he decided to pay his bills by ordering a new campaign to sell indulgences. Indulgences were sort of "after-life insurance" By paying a donation the bearer could be forgiven some sins and time in Purgatory. Leo extended it to forgive sins you may intend to commit. You could also buy a reprieve to someone already dead. When this refinance scheme reached Germany it was the provocation that sent Martin Luther to pin up his 95 Theses challenging the authority of Rome and start the Reformation.

1582-WILLIAM OF ORANGE ASSASSINATED. The Spanish Viceroy of the Netherlands the Duke of Parma didn’t know how to cope with the Dutch Independence movement led by William of Orange, also called William the Silent. They defeated him in battle but they could never capture him or destroy his forces. Finally Parma came up with a solution. He published a decree declaring William "A criminal and outcast from God and Society" That anyone who killed William would receive 25,000 gold pieces and be made a noble. Such a deal! Within three days a man shot William in the head, but he recovered. Then a year later this day Belgian Bartholemew Girard shot William three times and killed him. Girard was executed but his family received the reward and his head was displayed in Cologne Cathedral. For year afterwards and German Catholics tried to get Girard made a saint. William of Orange was dead but his 12 children carried on the fight for Dutch Independence and his family still rules Holland today.

1780- BATTLE OF GUILFORD COURTHOUSE, Virginia. Colonial General Nathaniel Greene battled British Lord Cornwallis to a draw but his Lordship has to withdraw to Delaware for supplies. Lord Cornwallis at one point ordered his artillery to fire on his own men to get through to the rebels to win.- not exactly a great morale booster. Back in London Sir Horace Walpole remarked: " Lord Cornwallis has conquered. He has conquered his troops out of shoes and provisions and conquered himself out of troops." Today not much credit goes to Nathaniel Greene that while Washington was stalemated outside occupied New York, Greene outmaneuvered Lord Cornwallis's superior army and backed it into Yorktown where it could be trapped to win the war. Before the final victory Greene’s health broke down and he had to leave the service.

1781-THE NEWBURGH CONFERENCE- The closest the United States ever came to a military dictatorship. George Washington's officers were fed up with the indecision of their bankrupt Congress. The Revolutionary War was over, but the army hadn’t been paid in months. Like Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army a century before, there were loud calls to march on the government. They even talked of establishing a junta of generals to run the United States! But what of their commander? The ringleaders assured: "we can handle the old man." General Washington called a meeting at his HQ at Newburgh, New Jersey and faced down his angry troops. He appealed for understanding and patriotism. Tears were shed when he put on his spectacles, implying he'd broken his health and had aged prematurely in the service of his country. He was only 49, yet he looked much older. That won them over. George Washington not only wasn’t "handled", but convinced the army to go their homes peacefully, paid with nothing but a paper IOU.

1782- The English House of Commons, fed up with the bungled American Revolution and the heavy-handed style of Lord North’s government, voted the first ever vote of no-confidence. The Lord North government resigned five days later.

1820- Maine became a state.

1865- Cross-dressing rebel guerrilla Sue Mundy was hanged in Kentucky. Long haired soldier Jerome Clark once got drunk, and for a gag his buddies put him in a dress and declared him Queen of the May. Instead of being insulted, Clark liked being in drag and ravaged the countryside as the partisan leader Sue Mundy. Until the Yankees caught him no one was quite sure whether he was a man or woman.



1892- The first voting machines in the US went into service. After 1972 metal voting machines were phased out in favor of the cheaper punch card system but the controversy over presidential elections fraud continues to cause new change.

1913- President Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential news conference.

1915- Universal Studios formed. Carl Laemmele bought a huge track of Burbank farmland and set up his studio. Laemmele had wooden bleachers built next to the movie sets where he charged people a nickel to come watch the filming. He used so many of his relatives in production that Ogden Nash quipped: "Carl Laemmele has a very large Fammele." Universal actually had been operating as a film company since 1912 but the company counts today as it’s birthday.

1919- American veterans of World War One founded a veterans society on the model of the Civil War’s vets Grand Army of the Republic. This they called the American Legion.

1929- Scarface Al Capone was called before a Chicago grand jury to explain his involvement in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Big Al’s alibi was he was in Key Biscayne Florida at the time having lunch with the Dade County prosecutor. They couldn’t pin nothing on him and no one was ever charged with the massacre.

1933- Young animator Chuck Jones first hired at Leon Schlesingers Looney Tunes cartoon studio.

1941- The daughter of Cecil B.DeMille Katherine DeMille had married actor Anthony Quinn. This day tragedy struck the family. On a visit to Cecil B.’s estate the couple’s three year old son Christopher walked off into neighbor W.C. Fields yard where he fell into Fields unsupervised swimming pool and drowned. The parents were so shattered they divorced afterwards. Anthony Quinn refused to talk about the rest of his long life. Fields was so depressed he had the pool filled in and landscaped so no sign of the tragedy would remain.

1944- The DeHAVILAND CASE- A judge rules actress Olivia DeHaviland free of her exclusive seven year personal contract to Warner Bros. For years movie stars like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney had been fighting in court the system of exclusive contracts the studios used to keep them under control. They had no choice in the type of films they did, no residuals and studios could rent them out to other studios for higher fees and keep the money. If the actor complained they were put on disciplinary leave by the studio without pay and the penalty time added onto the end of their contract. Garbo called it the closest thing to White Slavery. Some contracts even ordered some stars not to get married for fear it would erode their sex appeal. After the DeHaviland Case movie stars got more freedom to choose roles.

1950- Disney’s "Cinderella" opens. Their first animated fairy tale story since 1942.

1956- Lerner & Lowe’s musical "My Fair Lady" premiered.

1962- The discovery of anti-matter.

1964- Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton, for the first time.

1969- Worst clashes between Soviet Russia and Red China across their long mutual border. While the free world feared a monolithic Global Communist conspiracy the fact was the animosity between Russia and China got so bad it threatened to go nuclear. During a lighter incident the Chinese People’s Army showed what they thought of their Russian comrades by lining up along a river bank, dropping their trousers, bending over and giving them a mass-mooning. The next time the Chinese did it the Russians were ready. As their butts went up the Russians held up portraits of Mao Tse Tung, the Chinese leader. The moonings stopped.

1969- Two young heirs to the Polident false Teeth Company and two hippy promoters announced a rock festival would be held that summer in the farm community of Woodstock New York.

1977- Television sitcom Threes Company debuted.

1979- Strange lights danced in the night skies over Phoenix Arizona from 8:30 pm until 11:00 pm. The military dismissed them as experimental flares but the duration and patterns seemed unusually long for mere flares. Was it a UFO light show?

1985- THE SAVINGS & LOAN SCANDALS- The Reagan White House’s policy of removing all business regulation played havoc with the savings & loan system. The problem became a public issue when this day Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio suspended business in thrift banks in his state to stop the collapse of the system. One of the most underreported and little understood stories of the 1980’s the cost to clean up the Savings & Loan mess came out to be near $28 billion dollars, double the total cost to win World War Two. Scores of crooked Savings & Loan execs like Charles Keating accumulated vast fortunes, leaving you and I to pay the bills.

1985- Symbolic.com is assigned the first registered domain site on the Internet.

2004- Cal Tech Scientists announce the discovery of Planet Xenia, the tenth planet orbiting our Sun, beyond Pluto. Some want to call it Sedna, an Inuit goddess who lived under the ice.
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Yesterday’s question: Of the great battles of history, which of these famous rivals never met face to face? A)- Napoleon vs. Wellington, B)- Hannibal vs. Scipio Africanis, C)-Lee vs. Grant, D)- Richard the Lionhearted vs. Saladin?

Answer: A-no, B-Yes, C-Yes, D- no.