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January 21,2011 fri.
January 21st, 2011

Quiz: One thing the George W. Bush Presidency accomplished was to forever break the Curse of Tecumseh. What is that?

Question: The stories of the 150th Anniv of the Civil War have started. Here’s a trivia point. Which one of these men is an American citizen? Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis
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History for 1/21/2011
Birthdays: Leadbelly (Harlan Ledbetter), Thomas J."Stonewall" Jackson, J.Carol Naish, Tele Savalas, Christian Dior, Placido Domingo is 70, Wolfman Jack, Akeem Olajuwon, Paul Scofield, Robby Benson, Jack Nicklaus, Benny Hill, Emma Bunton- Baby Spice of the Spice Girls, Gena Davis

1198- THE THIRD CRUSADE DECLARED- In reaction to the news of Salladin's capture of Jerusalem, King Henry II of England, Phillip Augustus of France and Conrad the Emperor of Germany "take the Cross", to invade the Holyland. Henry died before the army departed and was replaced by his son Richard the Lionhearted. Every morning before breakfast and every night before retiring, all the knights of the Crusade would raise one steel-clad fist towards the east, and to the sound of massed trumpets they would shout: " AEIDEUVA, AEIDEUVA, SANCTUS SEPULCHORUM!!" "Help, Help to the Holy Sepulchre!"

1649- King Charles Ist was put on trial by the English Parliament for treason.

1789- The first American novel published- The Power of Sympathy: An Epistolary Romance by William Hill Brown.

1793- KING LOUIS XVI GUILLOTINED- Citizen Capet, so named for an old family name of French kings, mounted the scaffold at Place de La Concorde currently where the U.S. Embassy is. He tried to speak to the people but the drummers were ordered to drown him out. As the blade fell his chaplain shouted: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven!" The revolutionaries then stuck his head between his legs and threw him in a hole. Where the site of the Chapel Expiatore is today.

1861- SECESSION! COLLAPSE! President-elect Lincoln was still packing his bags in Springfield and writing out the luggage tags in his own hand "A.Lincoln, White House, Washington, D.C.", while state after state of the South voted to leave the Union and join the new Confederacy. On this date Mississippi senator and former Secretary of War Jefferson Davis resigned from the Congress. As he left the Senate Georgia senator Robert Toombs declared out loud to the Speakers chair:" The Union sir, is Dissolved !" Toombs had to hire a carriage to take him South because his personal servants had run off to be free. The Mormons of Utah were in an open state of rebellion, New Jersey and New York City talked of secession, California talked of pulling out of the union and joining Oregon to make a new country called TransPacifica. Mobs in Baltimore proclaimed Abe Lincoln would never get to Washington alive. Outgoing President James Buchanan said gravely: "I fear I may be the Last President of the United States.."

1899- The Opel motorcar company opened for business.

1916- The National Board of Review outlawed nudity in Hollywood movies.

1923- LENIN DIED. The Soviet dictator died of respiratory failure and cerebral hemorrhage at 54. The lack of a reliable system of succession plagued Communist states. As Lenin lay dying Leon Trotsky, Zioniev, Kamieniev, Krupskaya and a dozen others began a backroom scramble for power. Finally a minor bank robber and terrorist from Tblisi in Georgia who had risen rapidly in the last two years came out above them all- Comrade Kobal, also called Josef Stalin.

1935- the conservation group The Wilderness Society created.

1938 -Max Fleischer tells his New York cartoon studio they are relocating to Florida.

1938- George Melies, the father of Motion Picture Special Effects, died selling chocolates in a Paris train station -Gare du Norde to be exact.

1950-After a highly publicized trial top State Department official Alger Hiss was found guilty of perjury in a trial that accused him of covering up his connections to Communist agents in Washington. The trial made a national figure of a then little known congressman named Richard Nixon. Hiss served four years in prison, and lived the rest of his life maintaining his innocence.

1958- BADLANDS- Teenagers Charlie Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate kill her family and go on a Bonnie & Clyde style crime spree throughout Nebraska, killing 11 people. When they were caught Starkweather pleaded self defense, even against the murder of Fugates infant baby brother. He went to the electric chair. Carol Ann Fugate did twenty years, yet always denied she was anything more than an unwilling accomplice. Starkweather had a 'James Dean-Marlon Brando' leatherjacket look and the two teen killers seemed to typify America's dread of juvenile delinquency and the 'degenerate Rock and Roll' culture of the 1950's. Their story inspired several films including 'Badlands" .

1977- President Jimmy Carter declared a pardon for most Vietnam War draft resistors.

1992- Disney's Beauty and the Beast becomes the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

2010 The Supreme Court handed down the Citizen's United Decision. In the case Citizens' United vs. the Federal Election Commission, the Roberts Court ruled that restrictions on corporations are limits on free speech. This ruling opened the floodgates for businesses spend unlimited money on candidates.
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Yesterday’s answer: The stories of the 150th Anniv of the Civil War have started. Here’s a trivia point. Which one of these men is an American citizen? Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis

Answer: All three Confederate leaders renounced their citizenship and loyalty oaths to the USA. Jackson was killed in battle in 1863, Robert E. Lee's US citizenship was restored by a big action by Southern Republican Senators and signed by Pres. Gerald Ford in 1975. Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott, who said Jefferson Davis was his role model, tried to get Davis' citizenship restored in the 1990s, but got no where. For some reason other Congressman thought there was more important things to do....


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