Question: When Christians pray to God, they clasp their hands. When Muslims pray, they bow down. How did ancient Romans pray?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Which Shakespeare play was never made into an opera by Giuseppe Verdi? Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello or Henry IV?
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History for 11/14/2010
Birthdays: Robert Fulton, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, McClean Stevenson, Jarahwahal Nehru, Mamie Eisenhower, Brian Keith,Louise Brooks, Ellis Marsalis, Harrison Salisbury, Dr. Condoleeza Rice, Yanni,P.J. O'Rourke, George Petrovic' called KaraGeorge "Black George" Serbian nationalist-1762, Astrid Lungren the creator of Pippi Longstockings, Prince Charles is 62

Happy Birthday SPAM! See below 1937

1565- King Phillip II of Spain ordered the Holy Inquisition to enforce his edicts against heretics in the Netherlands. When Dutch emissaries like William the Silent for his urged moderation towards the growing population of Dutch Calvinists, Phillip said: “I would rather that thousands lose their lives, than reign over a kingdom of heretics”.

1666- English diarist Samuel Pepys recorded witnessing the first experimental blood transfusion done on two dogs.

1805- Napoleon’s French Army captured Vienna. Composer Ludwig Van Beethoven had dedicated his Symphony #3 Eroica to him when he considered Bonaparte a force for human rights, but after Napoleon became an emperor he angrily crossed it out. “So, he is just a man after all!” Now ironically with all the Austrian society run out of town Beethoven was forced to premiere his symphony to a group of French army officers.

1832- The First regular horse drawn streetcar service began in New York.

1851- Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick, or the Whale” was first published in the U.S. by Harper & Row. Melville in part was inspired by a report of a whale named Mocha-Dick who had sunk seven ships off the coast of Java and a New Bedford whaling ship Nantucket that was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in 1839. For the famous author of Typee and Billy Budd, Moby Dick was a critical and financial disaster. What's now considered one of the greatest works of American literature was ridiculed in its time. Melville, broken in spirit, sank into obscurity and finished his life as a customs agent for the Port of New York. He was so forgotten the New York Times misspelled his name in his obituary. Today his great-great grandson Moby is a rock star.

1883- London’s World newspaper printed an exchange of telegrams between writer Oscar Wilde and painter James MacNeil Whistler. “ When you and I are together we never talk about anything but ourselves.”-Wilde. Whistler:” No, no, Oscar. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except me.”

1889- Inspired by Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days, New York World reporter Nellie Bly real name Elizabeth Cochrane, set out to travel the world in the declared time. She did it in 72 days. Bly was considered by Victorian society scandalously independent, she was a war correspondent, she had herself committed to a lunatic asylum to report on mistreatment of the mentally ill, she went up in a balloon and was the first woman to go down in a diving bell- bathosphere.

1918- The Czechs declared their independence from the collapsing Austrian Empire.

1921- Winston Churchill told his political constituents that so far the "Twentieth Century has been a terrible disappointment." Just wait, Winnie, you ain't see nothing yet.

1922- Happy Birthday B.B.C.! the British Broadcasting Companies first regular radio service 2LO goes on the air with general election results.

1937- SPAM introduced! Shoulder-Pork And something else.

1942- THE SULLIVAN BROTHERS- Five brothers of one Iowa family all enlisted in the Navy and were all posted on the same ship –the USS Juneau. All five were killed when the Juneau was sunk off Guadalcanal. After the Sullivan Brothers incident laws were passed that US Selective Service could not draft in its initial call up all sons of a family without leaving one and that close relatives were not allowed to serve on board the same ship.

1943- Bruno Walter was too ill to conduct the New York Philharmonic this night so 24 year old Leonard Bernstein was asked to assume the baton. Bernstein becomes an overnight sensation.

1943- During naval maneuvers in the South Atlantic the destroyer William S. Porter accidentally fired a live torpedo at the battleship Iowa carrying President Franklin Roosevelt! The Porter reported the mistake in time so the Iowa could take evasive actions and the torpedo exploded harmlessly in her wake. But the captain of the William S. Porter was arrested and courtmartialed back at port and the incident kept top secret until the 1970’s. For years afterwards whenever the William S. Porter came into harbor she was greeted with the cry “DON’T SHOOT, WE’RE REPUBLICANS!”

1957-THE APALLACHIN CONFERENCE- The top Dons of the Mafia decided to meet at a small upstate New York town near Binghampton at The estate of Joseph Barbara, the President of the Canada Dry soda pop company All the heads of the Families were there, Joe “Bananas” Bonano, Joey Profacci, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Paul Castellano, Joey Catena and Louis Tafficante. To this day no one’s quite sure what this meeting was about.
As luck would have it two New York State troopers investigating a bad-check case noticed the gangland gathering and called for the estate to be surrounded. Once the cops raid commenced it was a free for all of mobsters jumping out of windows and running like rabbits through the corn stalks.
The raid produced few convictions but the headlines focused national attention on the Mafia. It proved without a doubt what had always been feared, that the Mafia was not a loose term for some local immigrant gangs but an highly centralized national organization.

1957-The Supreme Court refused to review the challenge to government obscenity laws brought by Irving Klaw and his wife, producers of the Betty Page kinky pinup photos.

1959- In Holcomb Kansas two men break into a farm home and murder four people. The subsequent trial and execution was attended by writer Truman Capote, who wrote the book “In Cold Blood”.

1960- Anthony Mann began shooting the film El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren with her pre-collagen Lips.

1961- President John F. Kennedy ordered the number of U.S. military advisers in Vietnam increased from 1,000 to 16,000.

1965- BATTLE OF IA DRANG- The First major engagement between U.S. combat troops and Vietnamese regulars. Ho Chi Minh wanted to see how his troops could withstand a major engagement with this new adversary. Based on this defeat the Vietnamese would not challenge the Americans again in open battle like they had defeated the French but went underground and fought a guerrilla war for the next three years.
Ia Drang was also the first battle where troops where brought in, out, and supplied totally by helicopters. Sergeant Major Basil Plumley was a veteran of the Korean War. He calmly walked upright through the whizzing bullets telling his cowering troopers:” Stand up son, you can’t hit anything down there.” After his retirement, Basil Plumley was killed in the World Trade Center collapse of 2001.

1967- Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sells out his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts.

1998- Colorful and eccentric NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman married beautiful supermodel Carmen Electra. There was some doubt at first as to the validity of the story as Rodman admitted he was blind drunk throughout and didn’t remember the ceremony. They divorced shortly after.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which Shakespeare play was never made into an opera by Giuseppe Verdi? Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello or Henry IV?

Answer: Verdi was a lifelong fan of Shakespeare, but he never made an opera of Hamlet.