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June 02, 2009 tues.
June 2nd, 2009

Quiz- Who said- The Pellet with the Poison is in the Vessel with the Pestle?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was the original colonial name for Alabama?
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History for 6/2/2009
Birthdays: John Randolph, The Marquis DeSade, Martha Custis Washington, Thomas Hardy, Hedda Hopper, Sir Edward Elgar, Johnny Weismuller, Charlie Watts, Disney animation story artist Dick Heumer, Lotte Reinniger Marvin Hamlisch, Barry Levinson, Jon Peters, Dana Carvey, Garo Yepremian, Jerry Mathers the Beaver of the old TV show Leave it to Beaver is 65, Dayvid Haysbert, Lasse Halstrom is 63

303AD-Martyrdom of St. Elmo. This guy has to win the endurance record. The Emperor Diocletian had him starved, beaten with clubs, flogged with lead balled whips, rolled in tar and set on fire, roasted again in an iron chair, and he finally died after having his intestines wound out around a windlass. He is the patron saint of seafarers. When the blue electrical phenomenon appeared on ship's masts during a storm, it is called "St. Elmo's Fire".

1453-At Breslau, Papal Legate John of Capistrano presided over the torture of six Jews. After they confessed to Jewish practices, he had them burned at the stake. After John died the Protestants dug up his bones and threw them to their dogs. John was canonized San Juan Capistrano in 1690. A century later Franciscan monk Fra Junipero Serra named the picturesque little mission in California after him. And the swallows do migrate there.

1763- At the British Fort Michilimackinac near Lake Superior some Sauk and Chippewa Indians were playing lacrosse. While the British sentries were engrossed in the ball game Indian women gathered near the forts’ open gates. When one player hurled the ball up over the wall as a signal the women tossed concealed knives and tomahawks to the players who rushed the fort and massacred its garrison.

1886- President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony. She was the daughter of his former law partner and Cleveland became her legal guardian after his death. Despite her being half his age and his earlier reputation for fathering cxhildren out of wedlock they were much in love and she especially charmed the American public. At age 21 she became the youngest woman to be First Lady. Songs were written for her and their first baby was honored with a candy bar- the Baby Ruth.

1896- Gugielmo Marconi took out a patent on wireless broadcasting - radio.
At the time his device could be heard from almost 12 miles away !

1920- Eugene O’Neill won a Pulitzer Prize for his first play Beyond the Horizon.

1920- THE WAR ON TERRORISM- Anarchists set off several bombs in the US, including at the home of the U.S. Attorney General. This year they also set off a bomb in a wagonload of scrap metal on Wall Street and tried to assassinate banker J.P. Morgan. This sparked a large government crackdown called The Palmer Raids. Many innocent immigrants, suffragettes and union organizers were jailed or deported as criminals. The progressive reaction to the crackdown was the birth of the American Civil Liberties Union. One junior member of Palmers investigator staff was J Edgar Hoover.

1924- Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all American Indians, whether they wanted it or not.

1928 - Velveeta Cheese invented.

1928- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek recaptured the city of Peking (Beijing) from warlord Chiang Zhou Lin, called the Old Marshal.

1932- The Screen Publicists Guild formed

1940-Will Eisner's "The Spirit" comic first appears.

1941- Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's disease at age 38.

1952 - Maurice Olley of General Motors began designing the Corvette.

1952- Queen Elisabeth II of England crowned. The date was set by meteorologists who predicted it would be one of the few days that year that would have bright sunshine. And-you guessed it... it rained all day. It was also the first Royal Coronation to be seen on television.

1958- An L.A. referendum allowed the county to buy Chavez Ravine from its inhabitants to build Dodger Baseball Stadium.

1961- Humorist writer George F. Kaufman died. He wanted on his headstone:
"Over My Dead Body!"

1973- London animator Richard Williams closed down his Soho studio for a month so his staff could be lectured by Disney legend Art Babbitt. The notes from these lectures have been xeroxed and rexeroxed and have become the most famous unpublished animation manual of all time.

1996- Roy Coombs, who took over the job as host of the TV game show Family Feud after Richard Dawson, hanged himself with his bed sheets at Glendale Adventist Hospital.

1999- Pope John Paul II blessed the new Vatican Parking garage!

2003- Thousands of unemployed Iraqi soldiers demonstrated in front of American Occupation Headquarters in Baghdad demanding to be paid. One secret to the American victory in Iraq was Saddam’s army heeded an appeal from the invaders not to resist and they would be taken care of. After the victory the occupation authority announced the Iraqi Army would be disbanded and all career soldiers lost their pensions and benefits. It is the first time a defeated army demanded wages from their opponent.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What was the original colonial name for Alabama?

Answer: West Florida. While Spain was preoccupied with Napoleon’s French invasion, in 1808 American troops occupied the territory. The acquisition was settled in 1814 with the capture of Mobile. Alabama is an old Choctaw Indian word meaning " clearing weeds, or gathering herbs".


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