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June 26, 2009 friday
June 26th, 2009

Quiz: Iranian protesters are calling conditions a coup d’etat. What is a coup d’ etat?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What was the origin of the phrase,the Real McCoy?
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History for 6/26/2009
Birthdays: Peter Lorre- born Laszlo Lowenstein, Pearl Buck, Abner Doubleday, Babe Deidrickson-Zacharias, Willy Messerschmidt, Claudio Abbado, Woolie Reitherman, Gregg LeMond, Vittorio Storaro, Colonel Tom Parker, Pat Morita, Chris Isaak, Derek Jeter, Chris O’Donnell, Sean Hayes is 39

363 AD- Julian the Apostate slain falls in battle. Julian was the Roman Emperor who decided his stepdad Constantine had made a mistake making the world Christian and we should go back to Zeus, Venus, Hercules and the lot. This is why he is called "Apostate". Despite his religious views, he wasn’t a bad leader.

During his invasion of Persia his camp was surprised by the army of the Grand Surenna, the Persian Prime Minister. Julian jumped on a horse without his heavy breastplate and rode into the melee. As he was struck in the chest by the enemy spear, he supposedly looked heavenward and said:" You have won, Galilean." The legions elected emperor a Christian General Jovian, and Europe never looked back.

1483- Duke Richard of Gloucester, having locked up his two nephew princes in the Tower of London "for protection", has them declared illegitimate, so he could become King Richard III. Even after Richard was killed in battle and the Tudor Dynasty in place the two little princes seemed to have disappeared. In 1903 their two little skeletons were discovered buried under a staircase in the Tower.

1496-Michelangelo Buonnarotti arrived in Rome to look for work. Coming from the city of Florence he was treated as the citizen of a foreign country.

1541- Francisco Pizzarro, the conqueror of Peru, was eating dinner in Lima when his enemies rushed in and stabbed him to death.

1815- After Waterloo, Napoleon requested a condition of his abdication be that he be allowed to go to the United States. He started to study books on America and the provisional French government prepared two frigates at Rochefort to take him across the Atlantic. Napoleon said his goal was now to be a scientist and study flora and fauna but he also said to another "Come, let us go to Texas and found a new Empire in the Desert!" But the allies would not allow this dream to manifest. The British took him instead to a lonely prison island off the coast of Africa, Saint Helena.

1830- Ascension of King William IV of Great Britain after the death of his brother George IV. While still Duke of Clarence, William kept a certain actress, a Mrs. Jordan as a mistress, by whom he sired ten illegitimate children. One day he told his mentally tottering father, George III, that he paid her 1000 pounds annually for this service. Reportedly, the feisty king was much agitated by this revelation and replied: "A thousand, a thousand--too much! Too much! Five hundred quite enough! Quite enough!" Some time later, following the collapse of his relationship with Mrs.Jordan, and after perhaps reflecting on his father's words, William demanded repayment of a portion of her "allowance." She responded by sending him the announcement for a play that read, "Positively no money refunded after the curtain has risen."

1858- The U.S. Army marched into Salt Lake City Utah. This was considered the end of the Mormon Rebellion. The city was deserted as Mormon leader Brigham Young had ordered the population to flee into the mountains. The US commander Col. Albert Sidney Johnston would later die at Shiloh leading Confederate forces. In the soldiers’ gambling tents, nicknamed FrogTown, was a teamster and card-shark named William Clark Quantrill, who would one day lead his rebel guerrillas-Quantrills Raiders in a bloody path across Kansas and Missouri.

1870- Atlantic City inaugurated its ocean side boardwalk; the first of it's kind in the US.

1888- Scots writer Robert Louis Stevenson embarked from San Francisco to wander the South Pacific and finally settle in Samoa.

1906- The first Grand Prix automobile race was held at Le Mans, France. The winner was Hungarian Ferenic Szisz with a top speed of 63 miles an hour! Szisz also was sporting those newfangled rubber tires on rims, which change faster than regular wood wheels.

1924 - The Ziegfeld Follies opens on Broadway.

1925- Charlie Chaplin has a lavish Hollywood premiere for his new film the Gold Rush. He had edited the film in secret in an upstairs hotel room in Salt Lake City to keep away from the public and his wife's bill collectors.

1926- From his London flat John Logie Baird invented television. The Boob Tube has no one single Tom Edison-like inventor but many claimants. The Englishman joined the ranks of others who claimed to have invented TV first, including Richard Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworkin, Dr. Lee DeForrest and Deutsches Kino.

1927- The Cyclone Rollercoaster ride debuted at Coney Island Amusement Park. It was built on the site of the Switchback Railway, the first modern rollercoaster. The Cyclone is still thrilling and scaring people today.

1945- The United Nations is born when 50 nations sign the U.N. Charter in War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. John F. Kennedy was there trying his hand as a journalist.

1961- John F. Kennedy makes his "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech at the Berlin Wall. He electrifies and inspires all Europe despite " ein berliner" also meaning a local brand of little jelly donut. The proper way to say I am a Berliner is "Ich bin Berliner”. I guess "The Proudest boast a free man today can say is, I am a little jelly donut!" has a certain cachet for some folks. The crowd smiled but was polite.

Today in Berlin tourist shops, you can buy a plastic donut with JFK’s speech coming from a hidden computer chip.

1964 - Beatles release "A Hard Day's Night" album.

1965-"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man " by the Byrds hits number one on the US pop charts. Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics. William Shatners version became the most well known.

1968- Pope Paul VI announced excavations in the ancient Roman cemetery located in the sub-sub basement of Saint Peters Basilica had discovered the bones of Saint Peter himself. There were a few red faces when it was also found out that a Vatican librarian had removed the crucial piece of stone with the inscription "Here is Peter" and had kept it for himself.

1990- The IRA detonated a bomb in the elite conservative hangout in London called the Carleton Club. The exclusive club's rules are so strict that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had to be named an "Honorary Man" before she could enter.

1992- Secretary of the Navy William Garnett resigned over the Tailhook Scandal, when Navy pilots went wild partying at a convention and sexually assaulted and groped 26 women including 14 fellow officers. Female officers testified of having to run a gauntlet of drunken pawing pilots tearing at their clothes.

2000- THE GENOME- Scientists announce they had cracked the human gene code and now had a rough sketch of how our DNA is assembled. Custom drugs could now e developed matching the DNA of an individual patient. It is called the biological equivalent of the landing on the moon.

2003 - Lenin said the Workers Must Control the Means of Production. Today a group of strippers bought the San Francisco bar the Lusty Lady.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What was the origin of the phrase, the Real McCoy?

Answer: During Prohibition bootleg booze made with shoe polish, Coke and rubbing alcohol was passed off in speakeasys as genuine brands like Johnny Walker or Seagrams. A rich young yacht owner named William McCoy ran his own boat to Jamaica and smuggled quality brand alcohol back. So to attest to the genuine quality of a drink was to say” It’s the Real McCoy.”


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