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January 15th, 2010 fri
January 15th, 2010

Quiz: One actor worked on Hitchcock’s the Birds (1963), The Time Machine (1960), the Disney Cartoon 101 Dalmatians (1961) and Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009). Who is it?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What future US president went on a diplomatic mission to China, and brought his mistress as his private secretary?
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History for 1/15/2010
Birthdays: Dr. Martin Luther King, Moliere, Gamal Abdel Nasser, outlaw Cole Younger, Charro, Matthew Brady, drummer Gene Krupa, Lloyd Bridges, Mario Van Peebles, Josef Broyer the mentor of Sigmund Freud, Margaret O’Brien, Aristotle Onassis, Captain Beefheart, Dr. Edward Teller “father of the H-Bomb”.

Happy Druid New Year

1208-THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE- Count Raymond of Tolouse, son in law of King Pedro the Lecher of Aragon, was thought to be sympathetic to a heretical Christian cult called Cathars, from the French region of Albi (so Albigensians).They believed in a Zoroastrian dualism in direct conflict with the Church. When a papal representative named Peter De Castellan was sent from Rome to tell Count Raymond to knuckle under, he was assaulted. So a crusade was declared not against Moslems in the Middle East or the Moors of Spain but against other Christians in the heart of France. The holocaust was terrible, for the first time the answer of how we tell the guilty from the innocent was :”Kill them all and God will recognize his own.” The leader of the crusade Simon de Monfort, had his head flattened by a catapult stone. His son went to England and started the House of Commons. Raymond of Tolouse’s descendant was Henri Tolouse-Lautrec.
The Holy Office of the Inquisition was invented to finish things off. The Cathar religion disappeared except for cult fans like Alastair Crowley and the author of the DaVinci Code.

1520- Pope Leo X tells little monk Martin Luther he has sixty days to knock off all this Reformation stuff and stop complaining, or he's going to excommunicate his butt !

1559- Queen Elizabeth Ist was crowned at Westminster Abbey. The daughter of Anne Boylen was twenty five and reigned 42 years. Only Victoria and the current Queen Elizabeth II reigned longer.

1829- The first of two commercial working railroad locomotives arrived in the U.S. from England. Named the Pride of Newscastle back home, it was renamed the America. The Stourbridge Lion followed in May. These two trains began the U.S. Railroad system.
Historian Stephen Ambrose noted that until this time society moved a the speed of a walking horse, that Washington and Jefferson could travel no faster than Socrates or Shakespeare did in their day.

1929- Most of the nations of the world sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which states that War is a Bad thing. Ten years later World War Two breaks out.

1935-The Tsuni Conference- Chinese Communists confirm Mao Tse Tung (or MaoZseDong) as their overall leader.

1936-THE DGA- Several top Hollywood directors including Lewis Milestone, Ruben Mamoulian and William Wellman meet at King Vidor’s house and pledge $100 dollars each to form the Screen Director’s Guild, later the Director’s Guild of America. It was a risky thing to do, previous attempts to form a directors union were broken up with threats by the producers of perpetual blacklisting. Final recognition and contracts were signed by President Frank Capra in 1940. One provision insisted on in the contract was that the director’s credit be the final name in the opening titles before the movie began. And so it remains.

1943- The Pentagon completed. First conceived as a medical research facility, it grew to become the headquarters of the massive US military Industrial Complex, the largest office building in the world. The supervisor of construction was General Leslie Grove, who was also head of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.

1945- As the Nazi war effort was caving in on all sides Adolph Hitler relocated his headquarters from East Prussia to the Reichchancellory building in Berlin. One SS major cracked up der Fuhrer by joking that “now we can take a street car from the Western Front to the Eastern Front.”

1947-”THE BLACK DAHLIA”- One of the most lurid murder cases in Los Angeles history. A little girl playing in a vacant lot discovered the remains of high priced prostitute Elisabeth Short, 22, who used to work the Biltmore Hotel. She was named the Black Dahlia because of the black pullover sweaters and black lingerie she favored. Her body had been sawed in half and completely drained of blood, and the initials 'BD' carved on her thigh. She showed signs of torture before death. The murderer was never found. The incident was the basis for a movie called “True Confessions” with Robert DeNiro and Robert Duval. The last detective on the case died in 2003.

1949- Chinese Communist armies captured the city of Tientsin after an all day battle with Nationalist forces.

1951- ILSE, THE SHE-WOLF OF THE SS. Ilse Koch was the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald Concentration Camp and every bit as sadistic as her husband. She participated in torture and experiments on inmates to turn them into soap and their skin into lampshades. This day in her second war crimes trial she was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Sixteen years later in 1967 she committed suicide in prison. In the 70’s Roger Corman revived interest in her by creating an sexploitation film about her life.

1967- THE FIRST SUPER BOWL- After a decade of professional football conference title games, the AFL and NFL combined to make a single championship game- Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10.

1968- Jeanette Rankin, the 87 year old Congresswoman who voted against US participation in World War One and World War Two, today led a protest against the Vietnam War.

1974- Eeehhhhhh-The first episode of Happy Days premiered with Ron Howard as Richie Cuningham and Henry Winkler as Da Fonz.

1983- Meyer Lansky, the elderly retired Mafia boss denied the right to move to Israel, died of a terminal nosebleed.

1998- Investigators from special counsel Kenneth Starr’s office have their first meeting with President Bill Clinton’s tootsie Monica Lewinsky in the lobby of the Watergate Hotel. They tried to pressure the 25 year old to admit her affair. They verbally denigrated her when she asked that her lawyer or her mother be present. But the Bimbo from Beverly Hills High was smart. She held out for 8 months to get the immunity deal she wanted before speaking out about those well placed cigars.
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Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What future US president went on a diplomatic mission to China, and brought his mistress as his private secretary?

Answer: In 1974, President George H.W. Bush was appointed by Nixon as the first U.S. ambassador to Red China. He left his wife Barbara back home during the two year appointment, but brought pretty staffer Jennifer Fitzpatrick as his official “ special assistant.” Bush has always called it a lie, but people on his staff referred to Fitzpatrick as his “ office-wife”.
Not Jennifer, but a great photo. Courtesy of Wonkette


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