Question: In the original movie Rocky, what was the name of the heavyweight champion that challenged Rocky?

Answer to yesterday’s question below- Today people call each others comments “snarky”. Where did the term snarky come from?
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History for 2/8/2010
Birthdays: St Proclus of Constantinople 412AD, Jules Verne, Dmitri Medeleyev- inventor of the Periodic Table of Elements, James Dean, William Tecumseh Sherman, John Williams, Ivan Ivano-Vano, Lana Turner, Jack Lemmon ,Alejandro Rey, Ted Koppel, Nick Nolte, Buck Henry, Gary Coleman, Robert Klein.

1587- MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS BEHEADED at Fotheringay Castle. Circumstantial evidence proved Mary had not discouraged plots to overthrow and kill Queen Elizabeth. Truth was Elizabeth could never sit on her throne securely while Mary lived. While some could argue Elizabeth’s legitimate birth, Mary’s mother was the sister of King Henry VIII. Apologists for Queen Elizabeth argue she did ordered the execution with great sadness but others say she cracked jokes as she signed the death warrant. Elizabeth and Mary never met face-to-face. Mary’s son James accepted his mothers death calmly, he hadn’t seen her since he was a toddler and his Presbyterian tutors were all filled him with hate for her.

It must have been a hard day at work for the headsman. First in order to ensure a good job, Mary gave a bribe to the executioner, but he muffed the first chop and had to do it in a couple of swings. Then, when the headsman picked up the head it plopped out of it's red wig. She had lost a lot of her hair to smallpox, as did Elizabeth and a lot of other folks. Finally, when they moved Mary's body, a yelping lap dog jumped out of her skirts and bit him. The heartbroken little lap dog refused all food, and died soon afterwards.

1608- Fire burns down what there is of Jamestown and most of the food supply.

1672- THE SPECTRUM- Earlier in 1666 Sir Issac Newton bought a little prism stone at Stourbridge Fair. It inspired him to think about the principles of light. On this day he presented his paper to the Royal Society “New Theory about Light and Colors”. Newton discovered the Spectrum. That white light is not light devoid of color but made up of all colors which when broken up in a prism always assume the same spectral pattern Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

1836- Davy Crockett with twelve Tennessee leathershirts arrived at the Alamo.

1864- Abraham Lincoln visited Matthew Brady's Photo Studio and posed for the photo's that would one day be on the Penny and Five dollar bill.

1865- Russian monk Gregor Mendel publishes his laws of heredity. The science of genetics is born.

1866- Elizabeth Cady-Stanton pleaded in the New York State legislature that neglect, abandonment and wanton cruelty on the part of a husband be made grounds for divorce. Her ideas became law one hundred years later, in 1966.

1887- Congress passed the Dawes Act, which said any Indian who left his tribe and moved into white society would be granted American citizenship. All native Americans were not granted unconditional U.S. citizenship until 1924.

1893- THE FIRST RECORDED STRIPTEASE -discounting Salome’ of course. At Paris's famed Moulin Rouge an artist's model named Mona decided to get an edge in a beauty contest judged by art students by disrobing to music while walking up and down the stage. She was arrested and fined 100 francs and the students rioted over her arrest.

1910- HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY- The Boy Scouts of America incorporated on the British model.

1915- THE BIRTH OF A NATION or The Clansman premiered at Clunes Auditorium in Los Angeles. Film pioneer D.W. Griffith's racist movie was considered for years the first American feature length film. Only recently the discovery of a 1913 Richard III film predates it. Son of a Confederate veteran it’s been thought that Griffith was making a personal statement, truth is there was a flood of films to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil War and the book the Clansman by Thomas Dixon was a hot property. President Woodrow Wilson ( another son of the South ) called it :"History written with a thunderbolt and I’m afraid all too true."

Birth of a Nations’ inflammatory imagery and this politically incorrect Presidential endorsement helped a rebirth of the defunct Ku Klux Klan, and caused a marked increase in lynchings of African Americans. But despite the film’s politics, it’s technique influenced world cinema and established once and for all the feature film length as the standard for all future motion pictures. It’s original running length was 3 hours.
D.W. Griffith in latter years lost his fortune and became a drunken has-been. Watching him at Chasen's Restaurant in the 1940’s beg MGM studio head Dore Schary for work, inspired Billy Wilder to write SUNSET BLVD.

1924, the first execution by gas chamber in the United States took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. It took Chinese gang member Gee Jong took six minutes to die.

1928- Englishman John Logie Baird transmitted a still television image across the Atlantic from England to Hartsdale New York. It was a still image of a woman. Baird was one of the fathers of Television with Vladimir Zworkin, Lee DeForrest, Philo Farnsworth and Deutches Telefunken.

1949- Cardinal Mindzenty, the Roman Catholic primate of Hungary was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Communist government for treason. Nine years earlier Mindzenty had been imprisoned by Pro-Nazi Hungarians after he spoke out against the regimes treatment of Jews. He was imprisoned until 1956 when he was released and escaped to the west in 1971. Cardinal Mindzenty was then lauded a champion of human rights the way Nelson Mandela or Ang San Soo Chy is today.

1960- Adolph Coors III the heir to the Coors beer empire was killed in a failed kidnapping attempt. Joseph Corbett Jr was apprehended in Canada and charged with the crime. Ironically, Adolph Coors was reputedly allergic to beer.

1961- Nebraska teenager and future movie star Nick Nolte was busted for the first time. He was accused of selling fake Draft cards so his friends could buy alcohol to celebrate his birthday.

1966- The Vatican closed it’s office of censorship.

1967- Georgy Girl by the Seekers goes to #1 in pop charts.

1994- Jack Nicholson destroyed the windshield of a neighbors car with a golf club, screaming “You cut me off!” He settled the matter out of court.

2002- The death of Sheldon Allman. He was 77. Sheldon was the lyricist of television songs like George of the Jungle and Mr. Ed .” A Horse is a Horse Of Course, Of Course”

2007- Penthouse centerfold, pole dancer, heiress and reality TV star, Anna Nicole Smith, died from an overdose of prescription drugs. She was 39.
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Yesterday’s Question: Today people call each others comments “snarky”. Where did the term snarky come from?

Answer: The term is from the Lewis Carroll story The Hunting of the Snark, about a mythical monster. Other authors picked up on the funny word and used it. Jack London named his boat The Snark. Today it means irritably critical or bitchy.