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May 31, 2018
May 31st, 2018

Quiz: What kind of food is mullet?

Answer to Yesterday’s Quiz Below: What does the term mean, to be as thin as a rail?.
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History for 5/31/2018
Birthdays: King Manuel I of Portugal 1495, Walt Whitman, Fred Allen, Don Ameche, Prince Ranier, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Ranier Fassbinder, Brooke Shields, Joe Namath, Richie Valens, John Kemeny-the co-creator of the computer language BASIC, Tom Berenger, Denholm Elliot, Peter Yarrow, Lea Thompson, John Bonzo Bonham of Led Zepplin, Colin Ferrell is 42, Clint Eastwood is 89

1578- A farmer plowing a vineyard near Rome caused the ground to collapse beneath him revealing the long buried Ancient Roman catacombs. Antonio Bosio studied them and in 1632 published his study, "Underground Rome".

1669 -Samuel Pepys was forced to discontinue the diary he had kept from 1660 due to failing eyesight.

1759- Under pressure from religious groups, the Royal Colony of Pennsylvania banned theatrical plays. You could be fined 500 pounds for trotting the boards.

1790- The U.S. Congress passed its first laws protecting the copyright of written works. This law was lobbied for by Noah Webster, who later wrote the first American dictionary.

1793- LA TERREUR- THE REIGN OF TERROR BEGAN- French extremists the Jacobins named for their meeting place, near the monastery of St.Jacob- Danton, Robespierre and Marat take over the French Government. They declare anybody who doesn't agree with them to be counterrevolutionary dead meat. Robsepierre said: “Virtue without Terror is Impotence, Terror without Virtue is Criminal.”
Until 1794 their Committee of Public Safety guillotined 17,000 people, including Madame DuBarry, the great scientist Lavoisier, poet Andre Chenier and finally even fellow revolutionaries Danton and Camille Desmoulins. They also drowned hundreds in barges. One method of execution was the Republican Marriage- that meant tying up a man and woman face to face then throwing them into the sea to drown.
Napoleon, Josephine, Roget Du Lisle -who wrote Le Marseillaise, even American Thomas Paine barely escaped with their heads. Marat said: "If we cut off 10,000 heads today, it saves us having to cut off 100,000 tomorrow!" Robespierre kept a servant playing a little accordion in his office so he wouldn't have to listen to the screams and pleas of the condemned dragged off to execution. To their credit they enacted much needed social reforms, For the first time the public could enjoy the Royal art collections like the Louvre and the royal parks like the Luxembourg Gardens.
The modern concept of the restaurant also arises at this time. The name comes from a place to Restore-Your Health- Restaurant. In previous ages you could get a meal at an inn or public house, but it was never very good. The former chefs of great estates, now unemployed because their employer’s decapitated heads were in baskets, opened shops and cooked their grand cuisine for the average Jacques & Jill.

1837 - Joseph Grimaldi, England’s greatest clown (king of pantomime), died at 57. On stage since the age of 3 at Sadler-Wells, he never appeared in a circus ring. Instead, his
act was stage pantomime. In tribute to him, all English clowns are known as “Joey’.

1859- The famous clock in the Elizabeth Tower of Parliament called after its bell Big Ben began running, and its chimes sounded out across London for the first time.

1866- The FENIAN BROTHERHOOD, 1,500 Irish Union Army veterans decide the way to liberate Ireland from Britain is to invade Canada from New York State. - (?)
They don't get very far.

1870- President Ulysses Grant calls for the U.S. purchase and annexation of Santo Domingo (modern Haiti). Congress defeats the measure as being too costly. Grant was disgusted, hadn't the gov't wasted millions already to purchase the frozen wastes of Alaska in 1868? Other times in American history we've made moves on Cuba and Nicaragua and occupied Haiti in the 1920s and the Dominican Republic in the 1960s.

1873- SCHLEIMANN FOUND TROY. German archaeologist Heinrich Schleimann unearthed the horde of gold known as Priam's Treasure in a mound near Hysarlik Turkey. This proved this site was the Troy of Homer and the Trojan War was not a myth but a real historical event. There were actually 9 Troys on the site- from a Bronze Age village to a Late Roman Empire city. The Troy of the Trojan War was Troy number 4. It showed signs of destruction by fire.

1879- New York’s Madison Square Garden opened. Designed by Stanford White to resemble a Venetian Palazzo. The modern sports complex was opened in the 1960s.

1889-The Johnstown Flood. The South Fork Dam swollen by heavy rains burst and sent a 35-foot wall of water and debris over the town. 2,295 were killed.

1894- Happy Birthday Kellogg’s Corn Flakes! Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek Michigan patents "flaked cereal and the process for making same." He felt whole foods like Corn Flakes could help Victorian people curb their sexual urges.

1902-THE BOER WAR ENDED. After English troops entered Praetoria, Boer survivors signed the Treaty of Vereeniging. Transvaal President Kruger "Oom Paul"-Uncle Paul- fled to Holland. When the Queen of Holland appealed for help for the Boers, who were ethnically Dutch-German. The Kaiser was noncommittal. The leader of the second largest population of Germans, President Teddy Roosevelt of the United States, said, "It is right and natural that the larger nations should dominate the smaller."

On a troopship returning from South Africa volunteer doctor Arthur Conan-Doyle was told by a Welsh doctor of a legend of a big ghostly dog that attacked people on the moors of his home estate. Conan-Doyle thought this would be a swell story for his character Sherlock Holmes to solve. The Hound of the Baskervilles was the result.

1904- On the first day of a new Parliament the right honorable Tory member Mr. Winston Churchill entered the House of Commons, bowed to the Speaker, then took a seat with the Liberal Benches, publicly abandoning his Tory Party. In 1924 he changed his mind again and rejoined the Tories. This was why he was so shunned in the 1930’s. He was seen as a shameless opportunist, and not trusted by many of his peers.

1910- Not even ten years after the Boer independent state was defeated in the Boer War, the British formed it into the self-governing commonwealth known as The Union of South Africa, with former Boer General Jan Christian Smuts as it’s head.

1911- RMS Titanic launched from the Belfast shipyards. In a strange premonition of her eventual fate, she was never christened at launch time.

1913- The 17th Amendment was ratified. It called for senators to be elected by popular vote instead of nominated by the various state legislatures.

1916-The BATTLE OF JUTLAND. German and British battleships boom away
at each other in the only major fleet engagement of World War I. Giant battleships called Dreadnoughts were the nukes of the turn of the century power game. Yet when the first and third largest fleets in the world finally clashed, it was a tie. British Admiral Beatty was annoyed with the performance of his fleet: "Blast! Why are all me bloody battlecruisers sinking?” But the German High Seas fleet went back into Kiel harbor and didn't emerge again for the rest of the war.

1921-The deadliest race riot in US History. After a white woman in Tulsa Oklahoma claimed a black man grabbed her arm, marauding white mobs attacked the black neighborhood of Greenwood. They burned 35 blocks of houses and kill at least 300 innocent people. The Tulsa community finally apologized in the year 2000.

1928- The song “ Old Man River “sung by Pail Robeson came out as a single.

1929- Steamboat Willie was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, but Mickey didn’t speak much. He just whistled, yelped and laughed. In the cartoon released this day “the Carnival Kid” Mickey spoke his first words “ Hot Dogs!” The voice was musician Carl Stalling. Later Walt Disney decided to voice the mouse himself.

1948- The various guerrilla groups fighting for the new state of Israel, the Palmach, Haganna and Irgun, combine to officially become the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force,

1957- Malaya received its independence from Britain.

1958 - Dick Dale invents "surf music" with "Let's Go Trippin".

1962- Israel hanged Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered in the sea.

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono record "Give Peace a Chance." It became the theme song of the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Because of this song and Lennon’s support of the Hippie protesters the Nixon White House kept a file on him. Lennon spent most of 1972-73 under a constant threat of 60-day deportation from the US.

1979- The nation of Rhodesia reformed as the Republic of Zimbabwe under rebel leader Robert Mugabe. But unlike his contemporary Nelson Mandela, Mugabe made himself president for life and crushed all opposition. He was only recently forced to retire in his 90s.

1984- Martial arts movie star Steven Segal married soap opera star Adrienne LaRussa. But what Adrienne didn’t know was he already had a wife named Miyako Fujetani and two kids waiting for him in Japan. A few months after this he fell for another actress named Kelly LeBrock.

1985- John Sculley was a former exec from Pepsi brought in by Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to help run the company. This day his solution to help the company run better was to fire Steve Jobs. Wozniak retired and Sculley eventually moved on. Before his death, Steve Jobs came back to Apple and make it the worlds most profitable company, as well as run Pixar, and be on the board of the Walt Disney Company.

1989- "Skinhead Day at the Magic Kingdom" Disneyland refused to admit a rally of skinheads, Nazis and Klansmen.

1990- Television sitcom Seinfeld premiered based on a TV special about the standup comedian called the Seinfeld Chronicles. No Soup for You!

1995- A young Mexican-American Tejana singer named Selena was gaining a growing crossover appeal in pop music and there seemed no limit. This day her career was cut short when she was shot and killed by the Yolanda Saldivia, the president of the Selena Fan club.

1996- Despite grief over the assassination of Labor Prime Minister Ytshak Rabin, the Israeli public voted for the right wing Likud today, making Benjamin “Bibi” Netnayahu Prime Minister. He was turned out in 1999 over corruption, but re-elected in 2009. Currently his government is under several criminal investigations.

2000- The first Survivor show premiered, shepherding in the era in America of TV Reality shows.

2003- A wild dove got into the Pentagon and flapped around the Air Force Secretary's office on the 4th floor. Can we say- symbolic?
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Yesterday’s Question: What does the term mean, to be as thin as a rail?

Answer: A rail is a tiny, thin bird from the Louisiana bayou.


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