BACK to Blog Posts

June 19, 2021
June 19th, 2021

Question: Why is the uprising in 1900 of Chinese people against foreign imperialists called the Boxer Rebellion?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What was the difference between the god Vulcan and Hephaestos?
---------------------------------------------------
History for 6/19/2021
Birthdays: Euclid, Blaise Pascal, King James I Stuart, Wallis Simpson Duchess of Windsor, Moe Howard, Kathleen Turner, Lou Gehrig, Guy Lombardo, Mildred Natwick, Charles Coburn, Pat Butram, Louis Jourdan, Pauline Kael, Salman Rushdie, Dame Mae Whitty, Lucie Sloane, Ang Sung Soo Chi, Paula Abdul is 59, Zoe Saldana is 43, Gena Rowlands

240 BC- Greek mathematician, Erastosthenes, measuring the cast shadows made by sticks placed in the ground, first calculated the total circumference of the Earth. He was only off by a few miles.

1312- Piers Gaveston- royal courtier and openly gay paramour of English king Edward II, was executed by angry barons. The King then went on to another boy-toy named Hugh Despenser. The memory of Piers Gaveston is preserved as the name of a men’s fraternity at Oxford University.

1389- At Kosovo, the huge Ottoman Turkish army of Sultan Murad I, faced the Balkan warriors of Serb Prince Lazar I. A Serb knight named Milosh Obilic’ got an interview in the Sultan’s tent by claiming to be a deserter with vital information. Once there, he sprang upon Sultan and stabbed him. Obilic’ was hacked to pieces by the Sultans’ guards. This should have been decisive, but unfortunately for the Serbs, Murad’s son, Bajazet, turned out to be an even better general than his dad. The next day the Turkish army destroyed the Serb Army.

1588- The Spanish Armada sailed from Cadiz and Lisbon to invade England.

1619- THE OLD GLOBE THEATER FIRE. During a performance of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, a prop cannon fired a salute that set afire the straw thatch on the roof. Soon the blaze consumed the old theater. Shakespeare, as a partner in the company that owned the Globe, paid to rebuild it. He soon retired home to Stratford. Fifty years later, during Cromwell’s Puritan rule, the Globe was pulled down because the Puritans frowned on theatrical entertainment as ungodly.

1754- Six American colonies and three Iroquois Indian tribes sent delegates to a meeting in Albany, New York to discuss how to work together more closely. Ben Franklin and Thomas Hutchinson submit plans to form a congress of all the Anglo colonies except Georgia and Nova Scotia (remember Canada was still New France at this time), with a President-General appointed by the King. But London rejected the whole plan.

1803- Captain Meriwether Lewis sent a letter inviting Captain William Clark to come join him and explore the route from the Mississippi to the Pacific Coast. Lewis had a backup in mind in case Clark said no, a Lt. Moses Hook. But Clark said yes, so today we remember Lewis & Clark, not Lewis & Hook.

1815- The day after the Battle of Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna published their final declarations. The Congress was a grand summit- England, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Naples, Portugal, Holland, Turkey and Royalist France spent the better part of a year redistributing the lands disturbed by Napoleon’s conquests. They mostly reaffirmed hereditary rights of the old monarchs, but published a joint ban on the African slave trade, and chose not to dispute America’s purchase of Louisiana. This conference set the stage for European politics for the rest of the XIX century.

1846-THE EARLIEST RECORDED BASEBALL GAME- The famous legend is that Abner Doubleday invented the game but that's been mostly disproved. The sport evolved out of an Old English game called Rounders. No one is sure of the exact date the game was invented, but, on this day, a New York newspaper ran a notice of a "base-ball" game played by the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club and the New York Nines Cricket Club at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. The cricketeers won 23-1. This was the first game played under Cartwright’s Rules.
Alexander Cartwright created a finite system of three outs and nine innings.
Baseball spread nationwide because of the Civil War. When men of all the states would spend time in army camps, they learned to play “The Boston-New York Game”. After the conflict, they went to their homes in the various states and took the game with them.

1863- In one of the most famous ship-to-ship duels of the American Civil War, the USS Kearsarge fought and sunk the Confederate raider CSS Alabama in the harbor of Cherbourg, France. Young Impressionist painter Claude Monet was watching from the shore and later made a painting of the event.
Confederate raiders hunted US shipping around the sea-lanes of the world, which is why today you can find Confederate grave markers from Capetown, South Africa to the Bering Sea in Alaska.

1865- HAPPY JUNETEETH- Although Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had declared all slaves free in 1863, and the Confederacy surrendered that April, it took this long for the entire country to admit it. Texas simply preferred not to tell any of their slaves about it. After the surrender, the Southern States were occupied and put under military rule. 12 weeks after Lee surrendered to Grant, Yankee Gen. Gordon Granger assumed command of the Dept. of Texas, and this day published GENERAL ORDER #3, that all slaves were finally, unconditionally, free. Black Texans celebrated this day every year as Juneteenth-Jubilee Day. White Texans refused to acknowledge the holiday until 1979. Juneteeth became a National Holiday just two days ago, 14 Conservative congressmen still voting against it.

1867-The Emperor of Mexico, Maximillian Hapsburg, was shot by firing squad. Maximillian distributed bribes to the riflemen asking them not to aim for his head, but one hit him there anyway. Mexican President Benito Juarez felt this drastic gesture had to be taken to discourage any future European adventurers. And Maximillian routinely ordered the execution of any Juaristas who fell into his hands.

1867- The first Belmont Stakes horse race. The winner was Ruthless.

1889- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes adventure, the Man with the Twisted Lip.

1893 - Lizzie Borden acquitted of the axe murders of her abusive parents. The murderers were never found. She lived alone peaceably and when she died she left all her money to the ASPCA.

1910 - Father's Day celebrated for 1st time. It was organized by the Spokane, Washington members of the local YMCA and Spokane Ministerial Assoc.

1917- During World War I, King George V ordered members of the British royal family to dispense with German titles & surnames. Before that the official name of Queen Victoria’s family was the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. It now became the House of Windsor. Prince Louis Von Battenberg became Lord Louis Mountbatten.
In Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm, who spoke English fluently, joked, “Maybe now Herr Shakespeare will rename his play The Merry Wives of Von Saxe-Coburg Gotha…”

1921- Distributer Amadee van Beuren announced production of a new series of "Aesop’s Fables" cartoons to be done by former Bray director Paul Terry. Terrytoons studio is born.

1923 - "Moon Mullins," a Comic Strip, debuts.

1934-The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, created.

1941 - Cheerios Cereal invented. Originally called Cheery-Oats, it was changed to Cheerios in 1945.

1944-" The Marianas Turkey Shoot"- the Japanese tried to defeat a landing on the strategic island of Saipan by sending a task force of 9 carriers and 400 aircraft, many new generation Zeroes nicknamed Judys. But most of Japan’s veteran combat pilots were gone and the planes were manned by inexperienced novices rushed through training. In this last big carrier to carrier battle US forces shot down 346 Japanese planes and sank three carriers to a loss of only 30 American aircraft.

1951- Devil May Hare, short by Bob McKimson, introduced the Tasmanian Devil.

1953- THE ROSENBERGS GO TO THE CHAIR- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, "The Atomic Spies", were electrocuted at Sing Sing for spying for the Soviet Union. When the Russians detonated their first nuclear weapon no one in America thought they could do it without spies giving them our secrets.
We now know, in 1945, Manhattan project physicists Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall had given Moscow the plans to the Nagasaki bomb. According to KGB archives from 1989, Julius Rosenberg was on their payroll, but just what and how much he did is controversial. Its assumed he was a low level go-between. Dr. Fuchs gave away much more vital information, yet he only got a moderate prison term. Ted Hall was never discovered until he wrote a book in 1997.

Only hours before the execution, a young lawyer had found a clause in the law statutes that execution of spies could not take place except in time of war, but the judge who could have stopped it refused because he was Jewish and he feared an even greater anti-Semitic backlash if he saved them. The executions were moved up a day so they would not be killed on a Friday, the Jewish Sabbath.

Housewife Ethel Rosenberg probably didn’t do anything and died horribly, screaming when the current was turned on. It took three jolts for two full minutes to kill her. To conservatives the Rosenbergs were dangerous traitors; to progressives they were innocent martyrs of the red hysteria of the times and of anti-Semitism, even though their prosecutor Roy Cohn was also Jewish. Roy Cohn became one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS, and was a mentor to Donald Trump.

1952 - "I've Got A Secret" debuts on CBS-TV with Garry Moore as host.

1956- The comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis announce their breakup.

1960- Freedomland amusement park opened in the north Bronx, New York.

1963- The Ray Harryhausen fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts premiered.

1963- The Canadian Football Hall of Fame formed.

1964- THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT. African Americans finally get the basic rights promised them by Abe Lincoln 100 years earlier. In the South, blacks were routinely disqualified from voting and forced to take humiliating tests, like guessing how many bubbles were on a bar of wet soap. Several Civil Rights bills had been proposed since but they were all blocked by the Southern Caucus in Congress.
Those who remember Lyndon Johnson only as the warmonger of Vietnam should also recall that his arm twisting was the main reason this act made it through Congress. Chief Justice William Reinquist, Senator Strom Thurmond, Rev Billy Graham and Claire Booth Luce of Time Magazine urged LBJ not to sign it. The Civil Rights Act started the shift of Southern white conservatives from the Democratic Party to the Republicans.

1964- While flying home to Massachusetts, Senator Ted Kennedy was almost killed in a small plane crash. He broke several verterbrae but survived. Years later whenever his nephew John Kennedy Jr would offer to take Ted on his small plane, Ted always refused.

1964- The Condor Club of San Francisco became the first modern club to offer topless dancers. Carol Doda became the first topless waitress, and a mainstay of San Francisco’s nightclub scene. She augmented her already ample bosom to 44 inches with silicon implants. She joked: "I dunno, I guess I just expanded in the heat!"

1973- The Rocky Horror Show stage show opened in London. The film version became a midnight cult classic. Writer Richard O’Brien himself played the bald doorman Riff-Raff. Let’s do the Time Warp Again.

1975- Mobster Sam "Momo" Giancana was murdered while frying sausages. He was scheduled to testify the next day about what he knew of Pres. John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the Frank Church Committee’s Senatorial Inquiry on Assassinations. The following year Jimmy Roselli, a Giancana hit man who always claimed he was the second gunman in Dallas, was found dismembered in an oil drum floating in Florida’s Biscayne Bay.

1978 – Garfield the Cat, created by Jim Davis, 1st appeared as a comic strip.

1983- Don Bluth’s video arcade game Dragons Lair debuted.

1987 - Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream & Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia announce a new Ice Cream flavor, Cherry Garcia. Jerry is gone, but Cherry Garcia rocks on.

1987 –David Geffen Records signed their 1st artist -Donna Summer.

1998- Disney’s Mulan premiered.

2012- Wikileaks leader Julien Assange fled into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to seek asylum for outstanding arrest warrants. He stayed there until 2019. Originally considered a champion of press freedom, he lost much sympathy after it was revealed he was a willing enabler for Russian intelligence to infiltrate American media on behalf of the Republican Party.
====================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz:What was the difference between the god Vulcan and Hephaestos?

Answer: There is no difference. Vulcan was the Roman name for the Greek god fire Hephaestos.


RSS