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January 16th,2009 sat.
January 16th, 2010

Question: What play featured Sir Toby Belch and Mrs. Malaprop?

Yesterday’s question answered below: 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?
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History for 1/16/2010
Birthdays: Yukon poet Robert Service, Andre Michelin 1853 the pneumatic tire inventor, Ethel Merman, Dizzy Dean,, A.J. Foyt, Marilyn Horne, Sade, Michael Wilding, Eartha Kitt, Debbie Allen, John Carpenter, Diane Fossey, Kate Moss is 36, Tsianina Joelson, Famed Spanish animation director Raul Garcia is 52

1891- Three weeks after the Wounded Knee massacre the last independent warrior bands of Sioux Indians came in and surrendered to the U.S. Cavalry at the Pine Ridge Reservation.

1917-THE ZIMMERMAN TELEGRAM- The reason other than the Lusitania that the U.S. entered World War One. The German Kaiser's generals fretted that the unrestricted U-Boat sinkings were strangling Britain but they may force America into joining the Allies. So they concocted a scheme to keep the Yankees occupied on their own side of the world. On this day British intelligence handed President Woodrow Wilson an intercepted message from Baron Zimmerman the German charge d' affaire in New York to the German Ambassador in Mexico City. It relayed an offer from Berlin of an alliance if Mexico would please invade Texas! The Kaiser promised President Huerta return of the entire U.S. southwest. The Mexican president wasn't exactly enamoured with the U.S. lately but he still declined the offer. Instead of checking U.S. participation in the European war the incident all but decided it. Wilson had run for re-election as an anti-war candidate but now became convinced Germany had to be stopped.

1920- THE VOLSTEAD ACT passed to give teeth to the new Prohibition Amendment outlawing all alcohol in the U.S.. The Roaring 20's really begin. Bootlegging and smuggling reach epidemic proportions.

1920- The League of Nations held it’s first meeting in Paris.

1935- Ma Barker’s gang has a furious shootout with the FBI at Ocklawaha, Florida. Legend has it they found Ma's body with the smoking tommygun still cradled in her lap. Others say she was only an ignorant hillbilly lady traveling with the gang as a cover.

Only one of Ma Barker's sons (Fred) was killed with her. Herman Barker committed suicide at Wichita, Kansas, August 29, 1927, after being blinded by police bullets in a gun battle in which he killed a policeman. Arthur "Doc" Barker was captured by the FBI in Chicago eight days before the shootout that killed Ma and Fred. He was killed attempting to escape from Alcatraz on January 13, 1939. Lloyd "Red" Barker was released from Leavenworth in 1939 after serving seventeen years of a 25-year sentence for mail robbery. He was murdered by his wife at their suburban-Denver home on March 18, 1949.

1936- the first racetrack photo-finish camera installed.

1936- Albert Fish, the Moon Maniac was executed at Sing Sing Prison. The 66 year old Fish had killed ten children and cannibalized their remains. He even went as far as to send a letter to the mother of his last victim describing how he had turned her daughter into a stew. The letter was traced back to him and he was arrested. He almost shorted out the electric chair because he kept his underpants filled with metal sewing needles. As he went to his death he told guards he was looking forward to the electric chair. "it is a thrill I never tried."

1938- Benny Goodman brought the new Swing Music to staid old Carnegie Hall. Count Basie and Harry James joined in to get the tuxedoed crowd dancing in the aisles, then afterwards they all went uptown to the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem to watch Count Basies band square off against the legendary Chick Webb. After this triumph Benny Goodmans’ band would never be the same- Lionel Hampton, Harry James and Gene Krupa all split off to form their own orchestras."That band I had the night I played Carnegie Hall was the best I think I ever had." Goodman said later.

1938- Nylon invented by the Dupont Company.

1939- Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr announce the successful fission of uranium and asked that it be used for peaceful purposes only. One of their colleagues Dr. Leo Szilard immediately warned the U.S. that they better start a nuclear bomb program because another friend of Bohr's, Dr. Rudolph Heisenberg, was building one for Hitler.

1940- Lee Francis, then Hollywood’s top madam, was busted for prostitution.

1942-Actress Carol Lombard and her mother died in a plane crash in the Sierra Mountains while returning from a war bond drive. Her husband movie king Clark Cable was so disconsolate that he joined an airforce combat squadron instead of doing USO work and took dangerous missions trying to get killed.

1945- Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappeared. The diplomat had been covertly smuggling hundreds of Jews out of Nazi occupied Austria by giving them neutral Swedish passports. When the Soviets overran Vienna Wallenberg dropped out of sight. In 1991 The Russian government at last admitted that Wallenberg died in Leningrad’s Lubyanka Prison.

1954-THE WAR ON COMICS- Senator Estes Kevfhauer chaired a U.S. Senate subcommittee to study juvenile delinquency. They conclude that one of the contributing factors to adolescent moral decay was four-color comic books. The probe was sparked by the publication of a book called The Seduction of the Innocent. It charged among other things that Batman & Robin were gay because when not fighting crime, Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson lounged around all day in silk pajamas!

Despite testimony by Walt Kelly, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Bill Gaines 350 comic book companies including the EC "Tales from the Crypt" label were driven out of business. The strict comics-code was established. The comic book industry, which had been selling one million books a month, never regained that level of prosperity in the US again.

1962- Television pioneer Ernie Kovacs died when he plowed his Corvair into a tree at Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Blvds. Kovacs had a fondness for all night poker and vodka parties. Friend Jack Lemmon said Ernie was so fanatical for a good card game that once when over a friend's house no table large enough could be procured for a game, Kovacs ordered the front door taken off it's hinges and a tablecloth thrown over it so they could all play.

1962-First day of shooting on the film Dr No with a young actor named Sean Connery.

1974- Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws first published.

1979- The Shah of Iran Reza Pahlevi fled Teheran in the face of the Ayatollah’s fundamentalist revolution.

1991- GULF WAR I -U.S., French, British and Arab airforces begin attacking Iraqi-held Kuwait. Sadam, Wild Weazels, Gen Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, Republican Guards, Scuds, Smart Bombs and CNN's Peter Arnett hanging a mike out the window of his Baghdad office as the bombs rained down.


1995- The UPN Network (Universal-Paramount Network) began telecasting.
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Yesterday’s 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?

Answer: Australian actor Rod Taylor. In 101 Dalmatians he was the voice of Pongo. In Inglorious Bastards he was the Churchill-looking guy.


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