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Sept 3, 2017
September 3rd, 2017

Quiz: Among the famous inventors of the early twentieth century, Ford, Edison, what important thing did George Eastman invent?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Who were Rosencranz and Guildenstern?
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History for 9/3/2017
Birthdays: Alan Ladd, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, Irene Papas, Memphis Slim, Eddie Brat Stanky, Mort Walker creator of Beetle Bailey is 94, Eric Larson, Mitzi Gaynor, Richard Tyler, Eileen Brennan, Phil Stern- former WWII Darby’s Ranger and personal photographer for Louis B. Mayer of MGM, Valerie Perrine is 74, Charlie Sheen is 52

401BC- THE MARCH OF TEN THOUSAND- Cyrus the Younger had begun a civil war to overthrow his brother the Persian King Artaxerxes The Mindful. In Cyrus’ army was ten thousand Greek mercenaries led by several generals including Xenophon, a writer who was once a protege of Socrates. Today at a Babylonian town called Cunaxa, Cyrus’s force defeated the Persian Royal Army, but Prince Cyrus was killed.

Without an employer and a thousand miles from home in a hostile country, these ten thousand Greeks were really in trouble. But they got themselves together, and in an epic march they fought their way through hostile armies from the Euphrates (Iraq) to the Greek colonies on the Black Sea (Northern Turkey). After 5 months their cry "Thalassa! Thalassa!" The Sea! Which meant they were at last safe and could get a ship home. They dedicated a monument which was discovered by archaeologists near Trapizond Turkey in 1997. Xenophon wrote a book about this adventure called Anabasis.

1189- King Richard the Lion-Heart crowned at Westminster. He declared his desire to fulfill his father Henry II’s vow to go on Crusade. Richard spoke French and only visited England twice more in his ten years as king. The Anglo-Saxon tongue would not become the official language of England until the 14th century. We don't know Richard's full opinion of London but he allegedly once told his minister William Longchamps:" I'd sell the whole place if they'd let me.." The people celebrate their new king by killing all the Jews they can find, including a mass burning in York. That didn’t stop good King Richard from keeping a Jewish man as his personal doctor.

1260- Battle of Ayn Jalut- Hulugau & the Mongol horde are turned back from Egypt by the Mamaluke army of Sultan Baibars. The Mongols had been in the saddle since China. They had already ravaged Baghdad, Moscow and the Holyland. The Mamelukes were originally an elite guard of slaves handpicked as children to be brought up as fanatical fighting machines. They eventually seized power and ran Egypt until 1798.
When emissaries from the Caliph of Baghdad asked the Mameluke Sultan who was his family and by what right did he rule, the Sultan shook his scimitar in their faces and declared "This is by what right I rule!' Throwing some gold coins on the floor and watching the slaves and eunuchs scamper for them he said "And That is my family!!'

1592- Retired London actor Richard Green wrote a pamphlet to his fellow actors complaining of an actor becoming popular in their midst "A new upstart crow filled with Bombast" - William Shakespeare.

1651-Battle of Worcester. Puritan Oliver Cromwell destroyed in battle the resurgent Royalists. Young King Charles II hid in an oak tree, forever called the Royal Oak. He then slipped out of the country in disguise as a chimney sweep. This is why a fair number of English pubs along the track bear the curious name "The Black Boy".

1657-Battle of Dunbar- Cromwell defeats the Irish.

1658- Oliver Cromwell doesn't defeat Death. As you can see Cromwell the Lord Protector liked things on lucky days. Even though he was a religious Puritan he believed in astrology and would send money to German astronomer Johannes Kepler to cast his horoscope. Kepler was the father of modern astronomy but it was horoscopes that paid the bills.

1697 - King William's War in America ends with Treaty of Ryswick.

1777- In a small skirmish with British redcoats near Cooch Maryland, the American rebels raise their new Stars & Stripes banner for the first time. They lost.

1792- Enraged French revolutionaries broke into the jail cell of the Princess de Lamballe, a confidente of Queen Marie Antoinette. She was gang raped in a kennel, beheaded and mutilated. One revolutionary pulled her heart out and bit it, another shot her legs out of a cannon. Finally they put her head on a spear and danced with it under the Queen’s window demanding she give its lips a kiss.

1833- The New York Sun began publication, the first American mass circulation newspaper.

1838- Writer Frederick Douglas escaped slavery by boarding a northern bound train disguised as a sailor. Later when he was making a living as a writer he returned to his former master enough money to compensate his loss. Southerners doubted anyone as intelligent and well read as Douglas could have really ever been a slave, but Douglas liked to remind them he "stole himself out of slavery."

1864- Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan was killed during a raid. He encouraged his raiders to disdain sabers as outmoded antiques and equipped them instead with rapid firing carbines and six-shooters. Once when attacked by union cavalry with drawn sabers, Morgan cried:" Hah, the fools! Mow ‘em down boys!"

1870- Napoleon III surrendered himself to Bismarck and the Kaiser after losing the Battle of Sedan. Louis Napoleon was suffering so from kidney stones that he was wearing rouge and lipstick to give color to his grey face.

1886- Geronimo gives up to the U.S. Army for the fourth and last time. He and his Chiracaua Apaches were promised no retribution would befall them. After they were disarmed they were packed up into railroad cars and shipped to prison in Ft. Myers, Florida to die in the malaria infested swamps. Geronimo in his time had as many Apache enemies as white men. The White Mountain Apaches helped guide the US cavalry in their pursuit. After Geronimo's Chiracaua's were exiled, the White Mountain Apache were rewarded by also being shipped to the everglades. Geronimo survived it all. After his release he retired to Santa Fe, where he died in 1910.

1895 - 1st pro football game played, Latrobe beats Jeanette 12-0 (Penn)

1898- After destroying the Mahdi army in battle, Lord Kitchener and the Anglo-Egyptian army re-entered the destroyed Sudanese capitol of Khartoum. Kitchener in a spotless white uniform held an Anglican memorial mass at the site of General Charles Gordon’s headquarters where he was killed. Thousands of recoat white pith-helmeted troops sang Gordon Pasha’s favorite hymn " Abide With Me ", to massed bugles. Meanwhile, the Moslem inhabitants looked on with curiosity.

1902- In Pittsfield Massachusetts, a trolley car crashed into the carriage carrying President Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was hurled from the wreck and landed on his face. A Secret Serviceman was killed. But Teddy survived.

1912- Los Angeles attraction Frazier's Million Dollar Pier destroyed by fire.

1930- The first issue of the Hollywood Reporter.

1937- Orson Welles Mercury Theater of the air produced its first play on nationwide radio- an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.

1939- Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany over the invasion of Poland, World War II results.

1939- British Prime Minister Chamberlain's war announcement interrupts a Disney Cartoon "Mickey's Gala Premiere" showing on the nascent BBC television service. Television shuts down for the duration.

1940 -Adolph Hitler sets the date for the invasion of England for Sept 21st. This after Goering’s Luftwaffe would destroy the Royal Air Force, which they never did.

1941-1st use of Zyclon-B gas in Auschwitz, on Russian prisoners of war.

1944- During the World War II U.S. pilots shot down by the Japanese were rescued by submarines. The submariners called the pilots Zoomies. This day off the coast of Ichi Jima, the submarine USS Tampico plucked out of the ocean a Zoomie who would one day be President of the United States. Second Lieutenant George H. W. Bush Sr.

1946- After the War, the BBC television service resumes and an announcer says:" Well now, where were we?" They continue the Mickey cartoon from where it was interrupted in 1939. World War II probably held back for a decade the development of television.

1950- Mort Walker's "Beetle Bailey" comic strip first appeared.

1960- The Hanna-Barbera show 'Lippy the Lion and Hardy-Harr-Harr" premiered.

1967- Sweden officially switched from driving on the left side of the street (UK style) to driving on the right, with the expected traffic confusion.

1970 - Al Wilson, "Blind Owl", guitarist/vocalist (Canned Heat), died at age 27.

1970 - Jochen Rindt, famed German racecar driver died in a car crash. He was 28.

1971- The offices of the psychiatrist of Defense Department attorney Daniel Ellsberg were burglarized by agents of the Nixon White House, to look for incriminating dirt on Ellsberg. They hoped to stop him from publishing the Pentagon Papers by resorting to blackmail. Chief White House counsel John Dean noted that agent G. Gordon Liddy was such a loose cannon, that as he stood watch outside the offices he invited a friend to take a photo of him! A true Kodak moment!

2003- Two crooks in Detroit hijacked a Krispy Kreme truck and tried to hold three thousand donuts hostage.

2004- Chechen separatists attacked a primary school in Beslan, Russia. After a three day siege the Russian authorities stormed the school after first pumping gas into it. 331 died, mostly little children.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who were Rosencranz and Guildenstern?

Answer: Two characters from Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

They are childhood friends for Hamlet's who have become, rather
unwittingly, spies for Hamlet's uncle, King Claudius. Claudius sends
them, with Hamlet, to England, with a letter instructing that Hamlet
be executed by the English King. (The contents of the letter are
probably not known by the two.) Eventually, Hamlet sees through the
treachery and, turning the tables, arranges for the duo to be killed
instead. This...
1) shows that Hamlet is now becoming more cynical and duplicitous
himself in setting up his old friends' deaths, and
2) actually sets up the showdown between Hamlet and Claudius, for once
the king hears of the deaths of the two dupes, he'll know that Hamlet
is wise to him.

The absurdity of their characters and their misunderstanding of what
is going on around them is the basis of Tom Stoppard's now famous
modern play, Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead."
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