Question: Which country was the first nation to adopt the metric system?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the difference between a bee and a hornet? Or is there one?
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History for 10/12/2020
Birthdays: "God's Imp" King Edward VI- only son of Henry VIII, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil 1798, Helena Modjeska, Ralph Vaughn-Williams, Alastair Crowley, Luciano Pavarrotti, animator Izzy Klein, Corny Cole, Joan Rivers, Dick Gregory, Tony Kubek, Susan Anton, Kirk Cameron, Hugh Jackman is 52

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! Societies have celebrated bringing in the harvest since primitive times. About forty years before the pilgrims of Massachusetts, English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew exploring Canada celebrated at a harvest feast with the indigenous peoples in 1578. The first official celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving was in November of 1879, and in 1957, it was set as celebrate the second Monday in October.

1285- 180 Jews of Munich who refused to be baptized were burned to death in their synagogue.

1492- COLUMBUS STEPS ASHORE IN AMERICA. The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria drop anchor off San Salvador in the Bahamas after sighting land around 2:10am, Oct 22nd Old Style. It was a full moon. Columbus had offered a reward for the first man to see land. Juan de Boromeo aboard the Pinta sighted land first, but Columbus claimed he did and kept the money- cheap bugger. Expecting to meet Chinese people, Columbus brought with him a translator who could speak Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish and Hebrew. He also carried a letter from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to the Great Khan of Cathay. None of these were much help speaking with the Taino Indians.

We can argue about his brutalizing of the natives, but one thing is undeniable, Columbus’ landing is the first step of one of the largest migrations in human history. The migration of the European and African peoples into the Western Hemisphere.

1776- Battle of Throgg's Neck- The British amphibiously land a force behind George Washington's army in the Bronx and force the Americans to fall back to White Plains and then across the Hudson into New Jersey. Throgg's Neck is a Dutch form of 'frog's neck'.

1800- The Independent Chronicle reported the national debt of the United States was around $70 million dollars. The Bank of the United States refused any additional loans to the government to help complete construction of Washington D.C. Today the debt of the United States is over three trillion.

1886- Beginning of Sherlock Holmes story:” Adventure of the Second Stain”.

1915- British nurse Edith Cavell was put up against a wall and shot by a German firing squad. She remained behind when allied armies retreated, and was accused of espionage for helping wounded soldiers escape to neutral Holland. The execution of a 49 year old English matron, non-combatant outraged opinion in Britain and the US, and was played up by the press to drum up enthusiasm for the war.

1920- Thoroughbred racehorse Man O’ War won his last race.

1928- The Winnie the Pooh stories featuring Tigger are first published.

1937- Under pressure from parent Paramount Studio, Max Fleischer signed the first animation union contract and settled the cartoonist strike begun May 8th. A year later Fleischer tried to escape unions by moving his studio to Right-To-Work State Florida, but the additional expense and poor box office ruined his studio.

1940- Retired movie star Tom Mix “The King of the Cowboys” died in auto crash outside of Florence, Arizona. The 60 year old actor ignored signs that a bridge was out and drove into a dry gulley. A large overpacked suitcase popped out of his back seat, hit him in the back and broke his neck. The “Suitcase of Death” is preserved along with Tony the Wonder Horse at the Tom Mix Museum in Oklahoma.

1942- Louis Armstrong married his second wife, singer Lucille Watson. She made a home for him in a suburban neighborhood in Queens New York that Sachmo always returned to after traveling the world.

1960- During a long loud debate on colonialism during a speech by the Philippine Ambassador, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev got the attention of the U.N. General Assembly by taking off his shoe and banging it on the table. This caused an uproar so uncontrollable that the Secretary General U-Thant broke his gavel trying to restore order.

1964- Adding to their string of success in the Space Race, the Soviets launched Vokshod 1, the first capsule with a multi-person crew and the first ship where Cosmonauts didn’t need to wear their space suits inside.

1966- Sammy Davis Jr. appeared on the Batman TV Show. Sock-it-to-me!

1969- Police arrested Charles Manson inside Death Valley National Park.

1971-Weber & Rice’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger theater.

1977- Script completed for the classic film comedy Animal House. 1994- Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg announce their new studio would be named Dreamworks SKG.

1997- 53 year old singer John Denver died when he crashed his ultra-light Long E-Z plane into the ocean near Monterrey California. Later reports showed he was flying inebriated. An open sixpack of beer was next to him. The impact was so great his body had to be identified by fingerprints.

1998- Matthew Shepard, an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming, was taken out to a field by a gang of other boys, tied to a rail fence and beaten savagely with a pistol. His assailants left him tied to the fence all night with no way to call for help. He was dead by morning. Matthew Shepard’s death caused a wave of revulsion nationwide against anti-gay violence.

2000- A suicide bomber in a speed boat blew a hole in the USN destroyer Cole in a harbor in Yemen, killing 16 American sailors. The attack was done by Al Qaeda, the same terrorist group that did the World Trade Center attack.

2001- After the 9-11 attack, NATO AWAC planes began patrolling the East Coast of the US. This is the first foreign aid for America since Lafayette helped General Washington in the American Revolution.

2005- Chinese archaeologists near the Yellow River discover the world’s oldest bowl of noodles. Someone’s fossilized noodle lunch from a bowl that tipped over in 2,000BC, and remained that way for 4,000 years.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the difference between a bee and a hornet? Or is there one?

Answer: Bees have a formal social structure, live in hives they make of wax and manufacture honey from the pollen they collect. Also, when a bee stings, it is fatal to the bee. The stinger stays in the victim as the bee pulls away, which disembowels the bee. Hornets are large wasps, make their nests out of a paper-like substance, and are carnivores, eat other insects, do not make honey and can sting repeatedly. (Thanks FG)