Question: The Medieval artist named Ghiselbertus is not as famous as Giotto or Da Vinci, but what is he known for?

Yesterdays Question answered below: When Christopher Columbus reached Cuba, the local Indians greeted him with something they called cohiba. What did Columbus do with it?
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History for 6/20/2010
Birthdays: Wolf Tone, Jacques Offenbach, Lillian Hellman, Errol Flynn, Audie Murphy, Andre Watts, Cyndee Lauper, Bob Vila, Chet Atkins, Stephen Frears, Brian Wilson, Robert Rodriquez, John Goodman, John Mahoney is 70, Nicole Kidman is 43

1389 -Battle of Kosovo Polje, where a coalition of Serbs, Croats, Bulgars and Albanians under Prince Lazar I of Serbia were annihilated by an Turkish army under young Sultan Bajazet called Ilderim- Lightning. The Sultan was presented with King Lazar’s head on a spear. The Ottoman Turkish Empire would rule in the Balkans for 500 years.

1397- The Union of Kalmar unites Sweden, Norway and Denmark under one crown.

1605-The False Dmitri invades Russia. A defrocked Lithuanian priest named Grishka declared himself the dead infant son of Czar Ivan the Terrible grown up and convinced a powerful Polish noble family, The Mniszechs, to back him. Historians wrongly call this a Polish-Russian War but actually it was a privately run freelance invasion. I hope they paid 401k benefits and dental. Dmitri succeeded in toppling Czar Boris Gudunov and occupying Moscow. When the Polish Army went home the Russians killed him, burned his body, mixed the ashes with gunpowder, stuffed it in a cannon and fired it back in the direction of Poland.

1756- THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA- Bengal Rajah Siraj ud Daula stuffed 146 captured British officers in a cell the size of Dilbert’s cubicle. Most died of asphyxiation by morning. 23 survived. It's a phenomenon discovered here as well as during the London Blitz of 1940 in crowded shelters that if you pass out in a perfectly upright position you may die because the blood literally drains out of your brain. Ick!

1782- Angry Revolutionary soldiers, who had not been paid for months, surrounded the US Congress at Independence Hall. They waved their bayonets and muskets and threatened violence if they weren’t paid. Congressmen fled to Trenton to reconvene.

1782- Shortly before they fled, Congress approved the final design of the Great Seal of the United States, choosing the Bald Eagle over the Wild Turkey as the symbol of America.

1789- THE TENNIS COURT OATH- French King Louis XVI got annoyed with his parliament or Estates General for constantly asking for permanent power and the right to rule by laws. So this day he tells them to disband. Of the Estates three divisions the First Estate- Nobility and the Second Estate – Clergy quietly obey and go home. But the Third Estate -the common folk- refused and when they were turned out of their meeting hall by the guards they reconvened in the Royal tennis court. There the members pledged not to disband until Liberty was established. "Go tell your master that here the People rule!"- Said Mirabeau to the royal herald.

1790- THE US CAPITOL CONCEIVED- In the then American capitol, New York City, Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, went over to have dinner with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Senator James Madison. There were no real American political parties yet, but Jefferson had been leading the opposition to Hamilton’s plan for the US Government to assume all the debt incurred by the individual states in the Revolution. This act would strengthen the central government at the expense of the states. Everyone knew Jefferson worked through Madison but he presented this dinner as his arbitrating a peace between Madison and Hamilton! No one recorded what was said at the meal but it is assumed Hamilton proposed a deal in exchange for the debt assumption- move the American capitol south. This night they agreed to move the planned US capitol to a new site on land suggested by President Washington near his Mount Vernon estate. It would become Washington, DC.

1815- NATHAN ROTHSCHILD'S BIG SCORE. -When The Battle of Waterloo happened in Belgium no one in England knew who had won for 72 anxious hours. The House of Rothschild Bank had a Dutch agent at the battlefield who galloped to Ostend then across the Channel to Nathan before the official news reached the London. This morning, Nathan Rothschild walked into the London Stock Exchange and took his usual stance by his favorite pillar. Everyone was sure Rothschild knew something. He said nothing himself but his agents started to sell off Government bonds. Day traders took this as a sign that the French were victorious, so the price of Government securities plummeted in panic sales. When the prices had fallen low enough Rothschild gave the signal to start buying. By the time the real news that Wellington had beaten Napoleon arrived, Nathan Rothschild had made a fortune. He later became the first of the Jewish faith to enter the House of Lords.

1819- The first steam powered ship successfully crossed the Atlantic. The SS Savannah made it to Liverpool after a trip of 27 days.

1837-QUEEN VICTORIA-Upon the death of her uncle King William IV, little, 19 year old Princess Victoria becomes Queen of the British Isles. She will rule until 1901 and give her name to the era, Victorian. She came to the throne when veterans of the American Revolution and Waterloo were still alive and she lived to use electric lights, telephones and was the first monarch to watch a movie. Before Victoria, the British Royals were never considered examples of morality. It was said her grandfather George III was insane, her Uncle George IV a bigamist, her other uncle, William IV, a glutton and her mother the Duchess of Kent was living openly with an Irish adventurer named James Conroy. If you wanted to meet the great men of the nation you had to look in the gambling houses or brothels. Victoria changed all that. She and her husband Prince Albert made the pursuit of Morality and family the highest standard of polite society.

1900- THE BOXER REBELLION- In Beijing, the Chinese Boxer Rebellion traps the foreign diplomatic corps in their compound in the Forbidden City. The Chinese mobs were led by martial arts societies like the I Ho Chu Huan- The Righteous and Harmonius Fists. Their goal was to drive out the hated foreigners who were ruining China the way they had carved up Africa and India. The German ambassador Baron Von Kettler was shot down in the street and the Japanese ambassador was pulled out of his sedan chair and beheaded. Women in western clothing were doused with gasoline and set ablaze. The Chinese Manchu Empress Zhou Zsi permitted the regular Chinese Army to support the Boxers. They held out until an international force rescued them- the "55 days in Peking".

1940- Thirty thousand people gather at the Hollywood Bowl and the surrounding hills for an America First rally. There they listened to isolationist celebrities like Lilian Gish and Charles Lindbergh and leading Republicans protest President Franklin Roosevelt’s plans to aid Britain and get us into World War Two.” It is obvious that Britain will lose the war…. It is not freedom when one fifth the country can drag four fifths into a war it does not want!” –quote Lucky Lindy. Students like future President Gerald Ford were in the crowd.

1940- Artist Alberto Vargas signs a contract with Esquire Magazine to paint the ‘Vargas Girls’ pin ups that made the magazine famous. He replaced artist Richard Petty who was demanding $1500 a week. Vargas was paid $75 a week. Today an original Vargas goes for $200,000.

1941- Two days before Hitler’s invasion of Russia, Richard Zorga, a Russian spy in the German Embassy in Tokyo, sent home to Moscow microfilm with complete information on the attack. He even revealed it’s codename- Operation Barbarossa. A Russian agent in Hungary, code-named “Lucy”, and the Chinese agents of Mao Tse Tung confirmed the information. Yet despite this warning Soviet leader Josef Stalin refused to believe it. On June 22 Stalin and the Red Army were taken completely by surprise.

1941-Disney's "the Reluctant Dragon" premiered with cartoonist's pickets around the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Police actually have to close part of Hollywood Blvd. out of concern for what the rampaging animators might do. Future UPA producer Steve Bosustow drove up in a limo and picketed in tuxedo and top hat. His chauffeur was Maurice Noble, the designer of the RoadRunner cartoons. Ironically the movie was part documentary about how wonderful life was working at the Disney studio.

1947- Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, the mobster creator of Las Vegas, was murdered while reading his evening paper in his Beverly Hills home. He had bought the mansion from opera singer George London for his girlfriend actress Virginia Hill. The order to whack Bugsy was probably given by his old friend Mayer Lansky. The Mafia syndicate back east was fed up with Bugsy’s Las Vegas’ cost overruns. The second owner of his Flamingo casino Moe Greenberg had his throat cut with a butcher knife. Still, the Flamingo Hotel & Casino and the Las Vegas Strip went on to become a great success.

1948- The Ed Sullivan Show "Toast of the Town" later to be “the Ed Sullivan Show” premiered. Sullivan's show was the showcase that brought new acts like Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones into the average American living room. Prior to this, Mr. Sullivan was a columnist and radio show personality who co-authored "Red Channels", a book accusing dozens of his compatriots as Communists. His “really, really Big Shewww” may have been given to Sullivan to make him lay off.

1972- In the first reaction to the news of the Watergate Break in, Nixon Presidential spokesman Ron Zeigler dismissed it: “It is not for the White House to comment on the investigation of a third-rate burglary”. The Third-Rate Burglary drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

1972- THE SMOKING GUN- All through the Watergate scandal the big question was how involved was President Richard Nixon? A conversation in the Oval office was taped this day between Nixon and his aide H.R. Haldeman. Whatever was said on this tape it took two years of lawsuits and a Supreme Court ruling to get Nixon to surrender it. This tape for June 20th had 18 missing minutes. Experts say five separate manual erasures caused the gap. After a feeble attempt to blame it on the fumble fingers of Nixon’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, it’s generally believed, although never admitted ,that Nixon himself probably erased the incriminating parts of the tape. It was called the “smoking gun”. Three days after the tape was made public in 1974 President Nixon resigned. If Nixon had simply popped this tape into the White House incinerator, he may have completed his presidency with honor.

1977- The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline began flowing.

1993-Deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster shot himself. The extremists of the Republican conservative movement, still smarting from their election loss and looking for anything to throw at Bill and Hilary Clinton, began making unsavory accusations of murder and calling for Congressional investigations. Nothing was ever proved.
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Yesterdays’ Question: When Christopher Columbus reached Cuba, the local Indians greeted him with something they called cohiba. What did Columbus do with it?

Answer: He smoked it. Cohiba was what the Indians called cigars.