Question: What does it mean to say someone has a picaresque sense of humor?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is the skull and crossbones pirate flag called a Jolly Roger?
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History for 11/15/2019
B-Days: Georgia O'Keefe, Bill Melendez, Irvin Rommel the "Desert Fox", Avrial Harriman, Daniel Barenboim, George Bolet, William Pitt the Elder, Veronica Lake, Beverly D'Angelo is 68, Mantovanni, Ed Asner is 90, Sam Waterson is 79, Otis Armstrong, Petula Clark is 87

64 AD- THE ROMAN EMPIRE OUTLAWED CHRISTIANITY- It is hard to believe today, but the Roman Empire was proud of its religious toleration. There was a harmony to the pagan world, A Goth knew his god Odin or Wotan was called Jove in Rome and Zeus in Athens and Mithra in Persia. So, the Judeo-Christian concept of One God just didn't quite fit in.
The only other religion persecuted as vigorously as Christianity was the Druids, but that was because the Druids preached rebellion to Roman rule. The Romans dispersed the Jews as a nation, but Julius Caesar left strict laws about never violating Jewish dietary or Sabbath Laws.
Anti-Semites claim Messalina, the wife of Nero, was a Jewish convert and convinced her husband to ban the Christian cult, but the answer goes deeper than that. Secrecy and fear of its alien practices bred suspicion that would last 300 years.

1532- After marching his Spanish conquistadors for six months through steaming jungles and over tall mountains Francisco Pizarro reached the border of the mysterious Inca Empire. At the little border town of Cajamarca his 200 men suddenly found themselves face to face with 40,000 Inca warriors. The Imperial Inca Army was outfitted in gold armor, and “they shined like the sun!”

1754- First use of the modern trombone. It was played at a child's funeral.

1777- The ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION passed by Congress. An early attempt at a U.S. Constitution that gave all real power to the individual states, similar to the provincial system in Canada. It required a majority vote of 9 out of 13 states to get anything done and had no president. With rules like that, indeed nothing did get done. There were no laws regulating national commerce so goods travelling state to state paid tariffs like they were going through foreign countries!
By 1787 the Articles were junked for the more centralized U.S. Constitution but States Rights supporters would resurrect it later for their Southern Cause, hence the Confederacy.

1828- Author Victor Hugo signed a contract with Gosselin's Publishing House to write a story about the cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris. He was paid 4,000 francs in advance, The HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME was the result.

1849- In Rome, Vatican lay government minister Count Pelligrino Rossi was stabbed and as he walked through a crowd of Italian nationalists. Italians desiring the unification of Rome to the newly forming State of Italy rioted and looted the Popes Palace. Pope Pius IX,” Pio Nono” had to flee disguised as a plain priest. He returned a year later with a French army to reinstate the Papal States. Rome was annexed into Italy in 1870.
Pius IX came to power professing liberal reforms but soon went back on his word and threatened excommunication against “Treasonous Democracy”. In Italy another name for liar was a Pio Nono.

1860- Shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s election as president a large meteor was seen in the skies over the Eastern U.S. Most took this as a bad omen of troubles to come.

1864- SHERMAN BURNED ATLANTA- Atlanta was the economic center of the South, an enormous industrial depot far from the front with railroad tracks linking all the coastal ports. William Tecumseh Sherman drove out the civilian population of the city at bayonet point and torched it. He claimed his men were only destroying military stores, but he didn’t stop them burning everything.
When his Confederate opponent complained what he was doing was barbaric, Sherman replied" You might as well protest to a thunderstorm, and against these terrible hardships of war. War is all cruelty. and the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."
Sherman had an army band serenade him beneath his window, playing the "Miserere'" from Verdi's "Il Trovatore", while he watched the city burning, impatiently chewing on an unlit cigar.

1881- The American Federation of Labor AF of L formed under the leadership of former cigar-maker Samuel Gompers. In 1951 they merged with the CIO.

1889- Emperor Pedro II abdicated, the Republic of Brazil is declared.

1907- The comic strip A. Mutt by Harry “Bud” Fisher debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle. The name was later changed to Mutt & Jeff. It was the first 6 day consecutive daily newspaper strip. The strip was so popular that its creator Harry “Bud “ Fisher became a celebrity, and negotiated the first large backend deal.

1920- The League of Nations held its first meeting in Geneva.

1926- FIRST NETWORK BROADCAST- NBC hooks up 20 cities across America and Canada for a radio program "The Steinway Hour" with Arthur Rubinstein. It came from the Steinway building penthouse on 57th St. in Manhattan.

1934- Animator Bill Tytla started work at Walt Disney's on a trial basis for $150 a week. He would create Grumpy the Dwarf, The Devil in Fantasia and Dumbo.

1937- The U.S. Congress gets air-conditioning.

1941- Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordering the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of all homosexuals and gypsies.

1957- Patriarch Ignatius Yacoub III established the Archdiocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the U.S. and Canada.

1958- Movie star Tyrone Power was filming a sword duel with George Sanders on the film Solomon and Sheba. He paused and told the director “ I have to stop, I don’t feel well”. He then dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 44. His father Tyrone Power Sr. had also died on a Hollywood movie set in 1931 of a heart attack,

1965- Walt Disney announced he planned to build a second Disneyland, this time in Orlando Florida.

1977- The BeeGees soundtrack for the film Saturday Night Fever came out.

1979- ABC news announced they would broadcast a daily update of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The late night show became Nightline.

1989- Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid opened.

1990- It was revealed that the Grammy winning pop group Milli Vanilli didn’t sing on their own album but lip synced to the music.

1995- According to the Starr report, President Clinton had his first sexual tryst with intern Monica Lewinsky. At one point he was on the phone to a member of Congress while getting serviced by the chubby chick from Beverly Hills High.

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Yesterday’s Question Why is the skull and crossbones pirate flag called a Jolly Roger?

Answer: In the 1750s a French pirate who wore all red, flew that skull and crossbones flag. People called him Le Jolie Rouge, which English speakers corrupted into the Jolly Roger.