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Oct. 26, 2016
October 26th, 2016

Question: What does it mean when something is chintzy?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who was the last presidential candidate to sport facial hair?
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History for 10/26/2016
Birthdays: Danton, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir “Bill” Tytla - Disney animator who gave life to Dumbo, Grumpy and the Devil from Bald Mountain, Francois Mitterand, Domenico Scarlatti, Charles W. Post of Post Cereals, Bob Hoskins, The last Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Mahalia Jackson, Clive Barker, Bootsie Collins, Marla Maples, Count Helmuth Von Molkte the Elder -German strategist of the Franco-Prussian War, Dylan McDermott, Cary Elwes, Jaclyn Smith, Hilary Rodham Clinton, Seth McFarlane, and Pat Sito!

Feast of Saint Evaristus, a Hellenic Jew who was made pope during the Roman persecutions. He is counted as a martyr even though there is no evidence that he did die that way. It's just assumed that all those early popes all became toast sooner or later.

901 AD- English King Alfred the Great died. One of two English kings ever to be called The Great. (the other being the Danish Canute). He drove the Vikings from England and unified most of the island under his rule.

1326- Hugh Despenser, the boyfriend of King Edward II, is hanged on orders of Edward's wife, Queen Isabella the" She-Wolf of France".

1440- French nobleman Giles De Rais beheaded. If the concept of "medieval justice" always seemed like an oxymoron, the case of Giles De Rais is a notable exception.
Giles was a powerful warlord of Joan of Arc who went bizarrely wrong in his later years. He was so paranoid about losing his fortune, he listened to a sorcerer who told him the Devil would help if Giles sacrificed some children to him.

When children began disappearing in large numbers from around his castle, even the Royal court and aristocracy couldn't ignore the outcry. The knight was tried, beheaded and his remains burned without Christian rites. His castle Chevrenault outside Tours was leveled, so no memory of the horrible episode would remain. Giles De Rais is sometimes called Bluebeard, a name also given to the insurance murderer Nicholas Landru in 1928.

1555- After being given the kingdom of the Netherlands by his father Charles V, this day King Phillip II of Spain pledged to respect Dutch freedom. But his Catholic zeal was offended by the rising conversion rates to Calvinist Protestantism. One Dutch bishop fed Holy Communion wafers to his pet parrot. Phillip soon unleashed the Dukes of Alva and Parma to tortured and executed thousands. The Dutch responded with revolutionary force and after an 80 year struggle, won their independence.

1825-THE ERIE CANAL COMPLETED, on budget and ahead of schedule. Governor Dewitt Clinton poured a ceremonial bucket of Great Lakes water into the Hudson River. Once called Clinton’s Big Ditch, even elderly Thomas Jefferson thought the plan was madness. The 350 mile Erie Canal tied the Midwest interior of America to it’s Atlantic coast and makes New York the economic capitol of the nation. It also set off a boom in canal boat building. Remember at this time trains weren’t invented yet and roads were so poor, it took Jefferson two weeks to travel from Washington to Charlottesville Virginia, a distance today driven in two hours!

1858- The rotary drum washing machine patented by H. E. Smith of Philadelphia.

1863- The English Football Association formed to standardize the rules for soccer.

1863- We all know the Transcontinental Railroad was completed when the Golden Spike was driven in, on May 10,1867. Well today the first nails of that four year, 800 mile track were hammered in ceremonies in Missouri on the East and Sacramento on the West.

1881-The GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL- The grudgefight between the Earp Brothers and the Clantons only lasted about 90 seconds but remains one the most famous fight of the Old West. The fight may have actually happened in front of McFly's Photo-Parlour, but the Tombstone Gazette decided the OK Corral, a block away sounded more macho. Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp later told so many different versions of what happened that he's totally discredited as a witness today. Before the encounter, Morgan Earp had been discussing with his brothers whether there was a life after death. As Morgan lay dying, he looked up at his brothers and said:" I guess you're right Wyatt, I can't see a damn thing!"

1918- As the German war effort in the Great War was falling apart, the Kaiser’s government had asked for secret talks to get a ceasefire. Everyone knew this meant defeat and General Erich Ludendorf was having none of it. He denounced liberal Chancellor Prince Max of Baden’s peace efforts and vowed to fight on. Prince Max went to the Kaiser and said" He’s got to go. It’s Ludendorf or me!" Kaiser Wilhelm convened a meeting of his war council and ordered Ludendorf to submit his resignation.

Ludendorf refused a limousine; he walked alone to his house and sat silent in his parlor chair for several hours. Finally he emerged from his meditation and said to his wife:" In a fortnight we shall have no more Empire and no more Emperor. You will see." He was right to the day. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated November 9th.

1929- Henry Ford invited President Herbert Hoover out for a picnic at Greenfield Michigan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the invention of Electricity. Greenfield was a theme park recreation of a pre-industrial American farm town Ford's innovations had done so much to change forever. Other guests include Thomas Edison, William Dupont, Henry Firestone and Madame Curie. During their picnic the President gets ominous news of a growing crisis on Wall St.. Hoover tells Ford not to worry, but later quietly advises his own broker to sell all his personal stocks.
The Stock Market Crash happened three days later.

1942- Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands- American and Japanese planes dogfight for supremacy in the fourth carrier battle of the Pacific War. The carrier USS Hornet was sunk but the damaged Japanese fleet had to draw off and give up plans to re-supply their troops on Guadalcanal. In a strange bit of bad luck a torpedo rigged under the wing of a damaged PBY Catalina flying boat accidentally dropped into the ocean and after several mad circles sank the destroyer USS Porter.

1944- End of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

1947-HOLLYWOOD FIGHTS BACK.- Members of Hollywood's progressive elite tried to answer the McCarthy hearings and the blacklist with a nationwide radio broadcast "Hollywood Fights Back' -Starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, John Huston, Gene Kelly and Edward G. Robinson.
The event was a public relations fiasco. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann used his airtime to launch into a longwinded intellectual defense of Communism. When word reached them that some of the Hollywood writers they were defending really were communists Bogart and Bacall felt they had been hoodwinked. "As politicians we stink!" quote Bogie.

1951- Despite being past his prime famed heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis The Brown Bomber came out of retirement to attempt a comeback and pay off back taxes. This day he was knocked out and finally retired by young champ Rocky Marciano. Growing up Marciano had idolized Louis and afterwards apologized to him.

1952- David Wolper’s documentary Victory at Sea, with it’s majestic score by Richard Rogers first premiered.

1955- The Greenwich Village Voice, later called simply The Voice, first published.

1957- Vatican Radio began broadcasting.

1962- During the tense standoff of the Cuban Missile Crisis, this day a KGB contact named Frohman met Peter Scholly, an ABC news correspondent, at a quiet Washington DC coffee shop. He gave the newsman a letter containing an offer from Khruschev to take to the White House that would eventually end the superpower standoff. No personal emails then.

1965- The rock band the Beatles received MBEs ( most excellent Member of the British Empire ) medals at Buckingham Palace. John Lennon later returned his as a protest.

1970- Doonesbury born. Yale law graduate Gary Trudeau was convinced by Jim Andrews his classmate now an editor at Universal Press syndicate, to recreate his funny comic he did in the campus newspaper. It's original name was 'Bull Tales".

1972- Nixon advisor Dr Henry Kissinger announced "Peace is at Hand" in Vietnam.

1979 - Kim Jae-kyu, head of the South Korean intelligence agency, blew away their country's President, Park Chung-hee with a machine gun at a state banquet. Park had been president/dictator since 1961. The assassin was executed some months
later. He claimed it was an accident.

1984-" I’LL BE BACK…" James Cameron’s sci-fi thriller THE TERMINATOR first released. Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered a Hollywood joke before this film made him a major star. An interesting what-if, was that before Arnold was cast in the role of the cyborg assassin, the producers were first considering O.J. Simpson.

1985- The original date Marty McFly time travels from in the film Back to the Future.

2001- President Bush signed the USA Patriot Act, which gave him power to read your mail, tap your phones, bypassing all the safeguards demanded by Congress and the Bill of Rights, even the Magna Carta.

2028- Asteroid 1977 FX11 will pass within 600,000 miles of the Earth. In 1998 The Smithsonian announced the asteroid would hit the planet or maybe pass closer than the moon's orbit 30,000 miles, causing global meteorological convulsions. The following day the Jet Propulsion Lab and Mount Palomar Observatory announced a correction of the calculations to prove it will miss us by a wide distance. Stick around, we're gonna find out.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was the last presidential candidate to sport facial hair?

Answer: Jesse Jackson sported a small mustache when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988.


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