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Nov. 2, 2018
November 2nd, 2018

Question: What does it mean to speak pejoratively?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Why is New York City called The Big Apple? Nobody grows apples there.
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History for 11/2/2018
Birthdays: Daniel Boone, Pres. James Knox Polk, Jean Chardin, Luchino Visconti, Giusseppi Sinopoli, Burt Lancaster, Pat Buchanan, Steve Ditko, Ray Walston, Stephanie Powers, k.d. lang, David Schwimmer is 52

Today is Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It derives from the Aztecs, who believed the life you are now living is a dream. When you die, you awake to your real life.

472AD- Next to last Roman Emperor Olybrius died. Put in his place was the boy Romulus Augustulus, while the real power was his general, the barbarian chieftain Odoacer.

1164- Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, fled into exile over his dispute with King Henry II of England.

1483- Whether you believe Shakespeare’s portrayal of King Richard III as a hunchback usurper or modern revisionist scholars who call him a maligned monarch, this day Richard III shows his friend the Duke of Buckingham how much he appreciated his help in becoming king, by cutting his head off.

1541- Archbishop Thomas Cranmer handed King Henry VIII a spy’s report that his hot young wife Queen Catherine Howard was getting-it-on with at least three other men.

1783- The American Revolution now over, General George Washington published his final orders to his disbanding army, congratulating them for their courage and allowing them all to go home now to their farms.

1789- The French Revolution seized all Church property in France.

1789- President George Washington had borrowed two books from the New York City Public Library that were due this day. The Chief Librarian noted that they were still overdue, in April 2010. A total of $4, 577.00 late dues were owed.

1804- Pope Pius VII was brought by French cavalry from Rome on to French soil so he could crown Napoleon emperor at Notre Dame in Paris. Napoleon later had the Pope locked up from 1809 to 1814. His Holiness excommunicated him.

1830- American Methodist reformers opposed to bishops met in Baltimore to form the Protestant Methodist Church.

1889- North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted into the Union. They argued for twenty years the position of a joint state capitol. Finally they decided to go separately.

1904- London newspaper The Daily Mirror first published.

1915- Battle of Coronel. In World War I, German Admiral Max von Spee’s battle cruiser fleet defeated and sank a British cruiser fleet of the coast of Chile. This was very upsetting back home, since it marked the first British naval defeat in 100 years.

1917- Britain passed the Balfour Declaration, calling for a national home for Jews in Palestine. Sir Arthur Balfour was the British Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George. Britain once considered Uganda and Argentina for a Jewish homeland before settling on Palestine, then a sleepy border province of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

1920- The first US Radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began the nation’s first broadcasting with news of election results.

1921- On the fourth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration a huge mob of Palestinian Arabs attacked the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem. After the Great War, sporadic violence had been happening since Arab nationalism had arisen as well as increased Jewish immigration from Europe as a result of the Balfour Declaration. But for the first time the rioters were fought off in a pitched battle by an organized Jewish militia called the Hagannah. This force was formed by Av Avram, and made up of Jewish World War I veterans. The leader of the Palestinians, Al Husseini, would be later elected the Grand Mufti of Palestine. This was the first large clash of Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, and sadly, it would not be the last.

1928- The Little Carnegie Theater in New York opened. Until its closing in 1982, it was one of the premiere art-house cinemas.

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Halie Selassie I, Ethiopian Emperor. The Jamaican movement Rastafarians are named for him.

1932- Young star Katherine Hepburn first shines in the film A Bill of Divorcement, co- starring with John Barrymore.

1936- The School of Industrial Arts founded in New York City. In the 60s it became The High School of Art & Design, a magnet public school for commercial artists. It was my school 1970-1973.

1937- LaGuardia Airport opened. New York City’s first municipal airport.

1944- RAOUL WALLENBURG- The Jewish population of Budapest was driven off to Nazi concentration camps, but not after Swedish envoy Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands by granting Swedish (neutral) passports to them. Wallenberg once walked alongside an SS officer ordered to execute 25 people and pleaded for each person as they were shot. The SS officer finally tired of Wallenburgs pleas and spared the last two. When Wallenburg’s aide asked him “What good did all that begging do?” He replied: “What Good? We just saved two human lives!” When Hungary was conquered by the Red Army, Raul Wallenburg was arrested and died in one of Stalin's gulag prison camps. Russia didn’t officially admit this until 1991.

1947- Howard Hughes pilots his monster wooden airplane, the Hughes H-1 Hercules, known as “The Spruce Goose" for it's only test flight, one minute over Long Beach Harbor. Two hundred tons, Eight engines, a wingspan longer than a football field, it was conceived as an aid to win World War II, but was not ready until long after it ended.

1950- Writer George Bernard Shaw died at 94. His last words were:" Oh well, it will be a new experience anyway."

1963- South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were assassinated by a military coup of ARVN generals. President Kennedy was aware of the coup, and pledged the US would not interfere. Still, he was surprised that Diem was murdered.

1964- CBS television purchased the NY Yankees Baseball club. This is one of the dumber business deals in entertainment history. CBS thought they were buying the world champion Murderers Row team, if they had done their research they would have known most the Yankee top stars including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra were scheduled to retire. Within a year of the deal the Yankees went from first to last place, and played bad until George Steinbrenner bought them in 1977.

1983- Yielding to nationwide lobbying, President Ronald Reagan created the Martin Luther King holiday in January. Arizona was the last state to officially celebrate the holiday.

2001- Pixar’s Monsters Inc. opened.

2005- The NY Times revealed the CIA was operating black sites in third countries like Poland and Thailand, where they could take Al Qaeda and Iraqi prisoners and torture them free of oversight.

2012- Walt Disney’s Wreck it Ralph opened in theaters.

2016- Ending generations of frustration, the Chicago Cubs defeated the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in ten innings to win one of the more exciting World Series of baseball. The last time the Cubs won a world series was in 1908.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is New York City called The Big Apple? Nobody grows apples there.

Answer: When the early jazz performers spoke of getting great gigs to play, the phrase was “ There are many places to play, like there are many apples on the tree. But when you play in New York, you got the Big Apple”. The phrase stuck, and became a promotional campaign for tourism.


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