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August 29, 2009 sat.
August 29th, 2009

Quiz: What is a tefillin?

Question: What do the films Barry Lyndon and Last of the Mohicans have in common?
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History for 8/29/2009
Birthdays: King James II Stuart, John Locke, Oliver Wendel Holmes Sr., Jean Dominique Ingres, Charlie Parker, Preston Sturges, Ingrid Bergman, William Friedkin is 71, Dinah Washington, George Montgomery, Slobodan Milosevic, Robin Leach, Richard Attenborough is 86, Donald O’Connor, Elliot Gould, Rebecca DeMornay, Joel Schumacher, choreographer Mark Morris, Charles Kettering inventor of the automobile ignition, Sen. John McCain is 73, Michael Jackson would have been 51. 29 AD- Estimated date of the beheading of John the Baptist.

1664- The name of the colony of Niew Amsterdaam is officially changed to New York by the occupying British forces. This was a birthday present to the King Charles’s brother James, the Duke of York.

1756- THE SEVEN YEARS WAR began. This could arguably be called the true first World War. Britain, France, Prussia and Russia, Austria, Poland, Sweden and Turkey fought each other all over the globe. Armies battled from Prague to Pennsylvania, Belgium to Gibraltar, to Madras, Quebec and Sri Lanka. In America it is called The French & Indian War. If you are a film buff consider this: Barry Lyndon and the Last of the Mohicans are happening at the same time as part of the same war.

1776- The Long Island Campaign ends. George Washington's army was badly beaten in open battle by the British, and pinned up against the East River. All night the fishermen of Marblehead Massachusetts succeeded in ferrying the remainder of his troops across to Manhattan while the British Navy sat strangely inactive around Staten Island. Even the weather helped with a thick fog that shrouded all activity until 8:00AM in the morning. A Loyalist homeowner named Mrs. Rapalie sent her slave to warn the British that the rebels were getting away. The man was intercepted by some German Hessians who couldn’t understand anything he said in his thick Brooklyn-Colonial accent, so they arrested him as a spy.

1885 - Boxing's 1st heavyweight title fight with regulation 3-oz gloves & 3-minute
rounds fought between John L Sullivan & Dominick McCaffrey. Before this bareknuckle fights could go on for 75 rounds and only be stopped when one of the other opponent was too bloody to continue.

1893- Whitcomb Judson invented the zipper.

1896- Chop Suey invented in New York City.

1897- The FIRST WORLD ZIONIST CONGRESS opened in Basel, Switzeland. Jews from all around the world met to agree on a strategy of returning to Palestine to build a Jewish homeland and getting a major world power to sanction their efforts. They also agreed to adopt the revived Hebrew language as the common mother tongue. Russian Socialist Theodore Herzel, called the Father of Zionism , at one point almost split the movement with a scheme for all Jews to move to Uganda,. There was also another group who wanted Argentina to be the Jewish Homeland, but Palestine finally won out over all.

1908 - NY gives a parade to returning US Olympians from London. Wall Street brokers come up with the idea of throwing shredded stock ticker tape out the windows.
The first ticker tape parade.

1914- Mass march of women in black with muffled drums down New York’s Fifth Avenue to demand the U.S. stay out of World War One.

1929- New York City was having competitions between builders for who could build the tallest office building. The Chrysler Building had recently surpassed the Bank of Manhattan Building. On this day William Ratzengauer and former Presidential candidate Al Smith announced they would build a monster building, much higher than any other. It would be on the site of the old Waldorf Astoria Hotel and they would call it the Empire State Building.

1949- Soviet Russia detonated it's first atomic bomb "First Lightning". The scientists won medals, automobiles and dachas. They knew that if it had not worked they all would have been shot. Yet Stalin made no public announcement until he could fill his larder with nukes. A CIA sniffer plane picked up the evidence of the bomb and dubbed it "Joe-1" after Joe Stalin. It was announced on Sept 23rd. The U.S. reacted to this news and the news of Mao's taking over China with shock. It fueled the great Red-scare of the 1950's.

1958 - George Harrison joins the Quarrymen -Lennon-McCartney and Sutcliffe. The later rename themselves the Beatles.

1962- The Kennedy State Department sent poet laureate Robert Frost on a goodwill tour of Soviet Russia.

1966- Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb was executed for plotting against the government. Qutb is considered by many the philosopher of the new radical offshoot of Islam in the world today. His pupil who took up his cause was Ayman Al Zuwahiri. He is the man in the horn rimmed glasses we see today standing next to Osama Bn Laden.

1967- Final Episode of the television series "The Fugitive". Dr. Richard Kimble catches the one-armed-man and clears his name.

1974- THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE- Prizefighter Mohammad Ali wins back his heavyweight crown from George Foreman in a wild showbiz event set up in Kinshasa, Zaire. While the African government was trying to use the press attention to highlight the modern society they had developed, Ali was making jokes about witchdoctors, missionaries in stewpots and other cliches. "Tonight they'll be a thousand guys named Mohammad out there rooting for me, and another thousand guys named Ali rooting for me, but their won't be anybody else out there named George Foreman!"

1976 - Anissa Jones, the child actress who played Buffy on the television show Family Affair), died of a drug overdose at age 18.

1989 -Hotel millionaire Leona Helmsley had said : "Only little people pay taxes". This day she was sentenced to four years in prison and fined two million dollars for 33 counts of income tax evasion. According to a London newspaper one servant under oath admitted he hated The Queen of Mean so much that whenever he had to bring her a Perrier, he would unzip his fly and use a rather unique stirrer for her drink. Leona died in 2007 and left the bulk of her estate to her lapdog.

2002- Peep-O-Rama, Times Square’s last remaining peep show, closed.

2005- HURRICANE KATRINA destroyed the cities of New Orleans, Gulfport Louisiana, and Biloxi, Mississippi. Tidal surges up to 30 feet collapsed levees, sending walls of water across the Big Easy. Thousands died, 800,000 homeless and billions of dollars in damage. The tragedy proved that for all the fuss about preparedness after 9-11, America was woefully confused in a real crisis. While people drowned in their attics and critical care patients were abandoned on the sidewalks to die, the government fumbled for almost a week. Long lines of relief trucks and ambulances were kept waiting outside the city with no permission to move in. Meanwhile President Bush played air guitar at a Navy base in San Diego and compared himself to Franklin Roosevelt, then partied with John McCain on a golf course for his birthday. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff attended a Bird Flu seminar and FEMA head David Brown was sending e-mails to friends like “Did you see me on camera with my new tie? -Fabulous!”

2008- CARIBOU BARBIE- Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain surprised the political world when he named Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his choice for running mate. It is still argued today whether this unconventional choice was good or bad. She energized the far right wing base of her party, but her obvious unpreparedness for high office offended Republican intelligentsia and scared off their few remaining independent voters.
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Question: What do the films Barry Lyndon and Last of the Mohicans have in common?

Answer: They were both part of the same war. See above- 1756.


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