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October 30th, 2010 sat
October 30th, 2010

Pretty funny piece about how ugly American elections have always been. All the quotes are genuine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI&feature=player_embedded

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Question: What does it mean to be sanguine? Bloody?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a Walter Mitty story?
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History for 10/30/2010
Birthdays: John Adams, Christopher Columbus, English playwright Richard Sheridan,
Ezra Pound, Emily Post, Louis Malle, Henry Winkler, Charles Atlas, Ruth Gordon,
Claude LeLouch, Dick Gautier, Louis Malle, Ted Williams, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona

1270- The Pope declared the 8th Crusade to try to save the city of St Jean D’Acre, the last Christian bastion in Palestine.

1501-THE BALLET OF THE CHESTNUTS, or His Holiness throws an Orgy.
One of the most notorious examples of depravity in PreReformation Rome. Pope
Alexander VI Borgia, with his children Cesare and Lucretia Borgia throw a party
of parties at the Vatican. The wild revelry was highlighted by a race of nude prostitutes
on hands and knees through an obstacle course of silver candlesticks gobbling up
chestnuts. The pope later gave gifts to the courtiers and ladies who demonstrated
the greatest sexual stamina.
On another occasion His Holiness closed off St. Peter's Square to worshipers
to stage a bullfight. This was the kind of holy hedonism that drove the Protestant
reformers nuts and caused the eventual rift in the Christian world. One participant
in these revelries was the chef of the French ambassador, who was intrigued to see
the guests getting their own plates of food from large tubs set in a row. He though
this was a neat way to serve food. His name was Pierre Buffet.

1628- The French City of LaRochelle had been acting as the capitol of an independent
Huguenot nation- electing officers and collecting taxes independent of Catholic
Paris. But France was now in the hands of the wily Cardinal Richelieu. Although a Catholic priest, Richelieu really didn’t care a figgy about Protestants, but this independence thing had to go. The Cardinal had LaRochelle under siege for months. When the starving citizens finally surrendered it was the Cardinal who entered the city on
a white charger in armor. But rather than sack the city, and burn heretics, Richelieu
had his men distribute bread and medicine. He granted freedom of worship to all
Huguenots.

1811- Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility published.

1864- Gold miners founded the boomtown of Helena Montana.

1891- Henri Boulanger, a French general who dreamed of Napoleonic power before falling into disgrace, shot himself over his mistress’s grave.

1905- THE OCTOBER MANIFESTO- Trying to calm his rebellious subjects, Czar Nicholas II issues an imperial ukase (edict) transforming Russia from a completely autocratic state to a semi-constitutional monarchy. He created the Duma, Russia's elected
parliament. However all didn't go well. When the elected representatives called
for more freedom, release of political prisoners and dismissal of all government
officials not approved by the Duma, Nicholas shut it all down.

1918- The Empire of Turkey signed an armistice at Modras with Britain, France and
America to get out of World War One.

1918- While Karl the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor desperately tried to hold his
disintegrating empire together, today even his German speaking subjects declared
themselves to be the new Federal Republic of Austria.

1918- Kaiser Wilhelm moved his staff from riot-ravaged Berlin to Spa on the Belgian
frontier to prepare for the armistice to end the Great War. Socialist leader Franz
Ebert told Chancellor Prince Max of Baden the Kaiser had to abdicate to avoid civil
war. But Wilhelm still imagined that after making peace with the Allies he could
turn the German army around and put down his own rebellious subjects. But after
four years and two and a half million dead, all his exhausted army wanted to do was
go home.

1931- first day shooting on the movie Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic Gold Medal swimming champ Johnny Weissmuller.

1938-"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA- 27 year old Orson Wells broadcast a radio update of H.G. Well’s story "The War of the Worlds". Despite periodic
station announcements that it was only a fictional re-enactment, people across the
U.S. go bonkers that an actual Martian invasion had landed in Grover’s Mill New
Jersey. In Hollywood famed actor John Barrymore, drunk as usual, went over to his
kennel of prize winning racing greyhounds and open their cage doors, saying: "Fend
for yourselves!"

1941-The REUBEN JAMES INCIDENT-Five weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack the neutral U.S. destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German U-boat, drowning dozens of American sailors. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill thought this would be the incident to anger Americans enough into getting into World War Two like the Lusitania did a generation earlier. Woody Guthrie sang: "Oh tell me what were
their names, tell me what were their names? Did you have a friend on the good old
Reuben James?" However Adolf Hitler apologized and offered immediate monetary
reparations. Popular anger cooled. Roosevelt told his cabinet:" I think I can keep us out of this war for one more year unless Germany or Japan does something stupid."

1947- Bertholt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and the Threepenny Opera,
testified to the McCarthy HUAC committee. He smoked a large cigar through the whole
session. Next day, as he had once fled Hitler’s Germany, he fled the U.S. and settled
in East Germany.

1961- Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev has his old boss Stalin’s body removed from
it’s glass case pickled next to Lenin, and has it buried in the back.

1963- The first Lamborghini 350GTV went on sale.

1966- An inventory done at the National Archives revealed that medical evidence
of John F. Kennedy's assassination autopsy were missing. This included JFK’s brain.
They have never been found. Kennedy’s brother Robert was still attorney general
at the time. Some historians think he hid evidence of conspiracy to hide his
brothers mob connections, and so preserve the purity of the Camelot myth.

1973- The Carlin Case- Radical radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air. I can’t write them because children read this column but you all
know what they are anyway. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!

1975- King Juan Carlos assumed the throne in the restored monarchy of Spain.

1991- Middle East Peace Conference began in Madrid Spain. These first days about
the only thing the Arabs and Israeli’s could agree upon was to politely refuse the
lunch the Spaniards had set out for them- smoked ham sandwiches.

1992- QUANTRRILL’S FUNERAL- The remains of William Clark Quantrill were buried in a cemetery in his birthplace of Dover Ohio. Quantrill’s Border Raiders were infamous during the Civil War for their guerrilla depredations in Kansas and Missouri. After being shot dead in 1865 an admirer dug up his bones and kept them. After passing
through several hands the bones were put up for sale, displayed in a glass case
and even used by Ohio State fraternities for their initiation rituals. Billy Quantrill’s
head was discovered in a refrigerator behind the tuna sandwiches and Coca Cola in
the Dover Historical Society.

2002- Rap star of Run-DMC Jam Master Jay was shot dead in the lounge of his recording
studio in Queens NY. The killer was never found.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a Walter Mitty story?

Answer: From a story by James Thurber about a dull mundane man named Walter Mitty who daydreams he is in romantic and thrilling adventures.


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