Question: Why is the Halloween celebration in October? The ancient Greek festival of the Dead was in February, the Roman one was in May.

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What American entertainment guild first called itself the Society of the White Rats?
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History for 10/28/2009
Birthdays: Elsa Lanchester, Cleo Lane, Charlie Daniels, Evelyn Waugh, Jonas Salk, Bruce Jenner, Joan Plowright, Bill Gates, Chef August Escolfiere the great French Chef who created Peche Melba and moved French cuisine to the front rank of world cooking , Charles Grovesnor the founder of National Geographic magazine, Joaquin Phoenix is 36

FEAST OF SAINTS SIMON ZEALOT & ST. JUDE- In the Middle Ages people mixed up St. Simon with St. Simeon the " Hobgoblin Saint", and St. Jude ( The patron saint of Lost Causes) with Judas Iscariot- I guess they felt God made him a saint as a consolation prize. So today was considered a good day for conjurers, sorcerers, necromancers and other practitioners of the Black Arts. One 17th century sorcerer, Bruno of Prague, claimed he could summon up St. Jude this day to grant you a wish. But if you showed any sign of fear or hesitation, St. Jude would smack you upside of the head.

312AD BATTLE OF THE MULVIAN BRIDGE-The day before his showdown with his enemy emperor Maxentius at the gates of Rome, Roman Caesar Constantine had a vision: a fiery Cross appeared in the sky with the device "IN HOC SIGNO VINCE" -By This Sign shalt thou Conquer". He decided this must be Christianity calling, so when Constantine won the battle, he lifted Nero's 300 year ban on the outlaw religion and later made it the official religion of the Empire.

1492- Christopher Columbus reached the island of Cuba. Here the Indians showed him how to smoke tobacco, which they called cochiba.

1726-Johnathan Swift published "Gulliver's Travels"-"To Vex the World rather than Divert it."

1872- EVANGELIST SEX SCANDAL! After the Civil War, minister Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church was the most famous clergyman in America. He was a great abolitionist, friend of Presidents and brother of writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. On this day feminist Victoria Woodhull revealed Beecher's habit of seducing the ladies of his congregation. Woodhull was a radical socialist who believed in Spiritualism and Free Love, and she admitted she herself had slept with the good reverend and even participated in a ménage a' trois with Beecher and publisher Charlene Tilton! Beecher's friends locked up Woodhull for slander and tried every lawsuit possible and his sister Harriet wrote lampoons of Mrs. Woodhull calling her Aurelia Dangereyes. But the famous reverend fell from grace in American eyes. In later years Rev Beecher preached a sermon that Hell didn’t exist. Critics said it was because he was afraid that was his eventual destination.

1918- The Czechs, Bohemians, Sudetens, Moravians and Slovaks form themselves into the Republic of Czechoslovakia. In 1991 the Slovakians split off from the Czech Republic.

1919- Congress overrides the veto of President Woodrow Wilson and passed the Volstead Act. The act gives enforcement powers to the Prohibition (XIX) Amendment forbidding the sale and consumption of alcohol. The Volstead Act gave government the power to seize and destroy alcohol and distilleries and shut down bars. This set the stage for the Roaring Twenties.

1928- Mussolini and his Fascists complete the March on Rome. Mussolini had started his political career as a socialist labor leader but soon decided there were more opportunities on the other side. He was Italy's youngest Prime Minister before forming his right wing extremists into a party and seizing power. He actually already had control of the government, he had just promised his men a dramatic march and didn’t want to let them down. Pope Pius XI said:” Mussolini is a man sent by Divine Providence.”

1929- Composer Irving Berlin scolded George Gershwin for his lack of patriotism that he unloaded his stocks and bonds. The Stock Market crashed the following day ruining Berlin but left Gershwin unscathed. Stick advice on music, Irv...

1948- Swiss chemist Paul Mueller received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. It was for inventing DDT. After the world war whole populations and jungles were sprayed with DDT to kill bugs and parasites. It wasn’t until 1970 that someone finally noticed it also caused cancer.

1949- A top secret meeting of the Special Advisory Committee met at the Atomic Energy Commission to discuss whether to respond to the Russian atomic bomb by building a Super or Hydrogen Bomb. The Special Committee included father of the A-Bomb Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Ferme, two Nobel Prize winners and the President of Harvard. The scientists unanimously concluded that the H-Bomb “would not be a weapon of war but a weapon of Mass Genocide, and so a Moral Evil.” They advised against it. The US government ignored them and built one anyway.

1962- THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS ENDED- Soviet Chairman Nikita Khruschev withdrew his nuclear missiles from Cuba in exchange for a promise from Kennedy not to invade Cuba and to withdraw missiles from Turkey -they were obsolete and had been planned for de-activation anyway. Kennedy told the U.S. public there was no deal made. Generals on both sides were furious. Gen. Curtis LeMay called it America's greatest defeat. But the world breathed a sigh of relief. And Fidel Castro? Well, nobody bothered to tell him. He came out of his bunker after he found out the news on the Voice of America broadcast that evening.

1963- First day of demolition of New York’s City Pennsylvania Station, a massive Beaux Artes Temple that signaled the triumph of the automobile over the train. It took three years to demolish and today it is considered a great cultural crime. The remade Pennsylvania station was an all underground facility. One writer said:” We used to enter New York like gods, now we come in like rats.” The anger over the destruction fostered the creation of the New York Landmarks Commission.

1965- Pope Paul VI published an encyclical Nostra Aetate, that officially absolved the Jewish people for any guilt in the death of Jesus Christ.

1976- Top Nixon White House aide John Ehrlichman began serving his jail sentence for the Watergate scandal at Swift Trail minimum security prison in Arizona.
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Yesterday’s Question: What American entertainment guild first called itself the Society of the White Rats?

Answer: Actors Equity, formed by Broadway performers in 1896. Then they called themselves in secret the White Rats, because Rats spelled backwards is Star.