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Sept. 15, 2021
September 15th, 2021

Question: What style of music used to be called “Longhair Music”..?

Yesterday’s Question: Today is Dr Ivan Pavlov’s birthday. What does it mean when you say something is Pavlovian?
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History for 9/15/2021
Birthdays: James Fennimore Cooper, William Howard Taft, Porfirio Diaz- Mexican President 1884-1911, Agatha Christie, Cannonball Adderly, Bruno Walter, Yuri Noorstein, Merlin Olsen, Oliver Stone, Jean Renoir (film director and son of painter August Renoir), Alexander Korda, Jesse Norman, Robert Benchley, Ron Shelton, Fay Wray, Tommy Lee Jones is 75, Britain’s Prince Harry is 37

In Japan, this is Respect For the Aged Day.

7 BC- THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM…? According to astronomical records kept by the Persian Magi, starting this day an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars caused a rare bright star that glowed both day and night. Another explanation of the star may have come from Chinese astronomers who recorded a comet during the year 5 BC. Remember according to the modern calculations Jesus may have been born in 6 BC.

533 A.D. BATTLE OF THE TENTH MILESTONE (Decimum)- Byzantine general Belisarius was sent by his emperor Justinian to recover the Western half of the Roman Empire. This day Belisarius defeated the Vandals of Africa, a tribe of German Barbarians who migrated from the Rhine down to the region that one day would be Libya. While in Spain, The Vandals didn't leave much, except giving their name to the Southern Spanish coast- Andalusia (Vandalusium) and the custom of defacing walls.

After conquering North Africa and half of Italy and Spain, Justinian rewarded Belisarius by taking away his army, having him blinded with boiling vinegar and given a begging bowl. Justinian thought he was getting TOO successful, that he might grab for his throne. The Byzantines couldn't hold on to the African and Italian provinces, so The Rome Empire stayed fallen.

1776- The BATTLE OF NEW YORK- Lord Howe's British Army crossed the East River from Brooklyn and attacked Manhattan at Turtle Bay, approximately between E 30th and 31st Streets. Colonial troops panicked and fled uptown while George Washington futilely tried to rally them approximately where the 42nd St. Public Library now is. As the last panic stricken farmer scampered off, tossing his weapons away, George Washington threw down his hat and shouted: "Lord, have I such soldiers as these?"

Legend has it the only reason the British let the Yankees escape was the commanders paused to have tea with a Quaker lady acquaintance. New York was an occupied city for the rest of the Revolutionary War. Hundreds of colonial prisoners were kept in rotting prison ships moored in the harbor, where many died of disease and neglect.


1858- The Butterfield Overland Mail service started up, driving stagecoaches throughout the Old West.

1894- Japanese defeat the Chinese at Ping Yang. They take Korea and Taiwan.

1901- After the funeral of assassinated President McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt strode into the White House for his first day as President. Bully!

1925- The Grand Order of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan take out a copyright on their logo – the white cross on the red circle with the black square in the center. After all, some other racist hate group might try to copy their cool duds!

1928- Walt Disney staged the first recording session for the music for Steamboat Willie. He was unhappy with the results, so he pawned his car to raise the cash to make a second recording session happen.

1930- The first Blondie comic strip.

1930- Hoagy Carmichael first recorded “Georgia on My Mind”.

1935- “The Law Protecting German Blood and German Honor” aka the Nuremberg Edicts passed in Nazi Germany. They make Anti-Semitism official state policy. It took civil rights away from Jews and set up levels of Jewishness to determine pure Aryan bloodlines.” Jews are forbidden to marry other Germans or hold public office, including college professorships.

1936- MGM producer Irving Thallberg, the "Boy Genius" of Hollywood, died of a pneumonia at age 37. He was the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Last Tycoon". His boss Louis B. Mayer was beginning to resent his popularity. When actress Gloria Swanson asked Mayer how he felt about Thallberg's death, Mayer replied:" God has been very kind to me."

1940- Climax of the BATTLE OF BRITAIN-Herman Goring tries some final huge bomber raids to flatten London and wipe out the R.A.F., in preparation for Operation Sea Lion on Sept 21, the German invasion of Great Britain. Germans thought this was the day the attack across the Channel would happen at last. Hundreds of planes dogfight in the skies over London and Saint Paul’s Cathedral is wreathed in flame and smoke. 65 German planes were shot down in one day. American CBS news correspondent Edgar R. Murrow gained national fame in the U.S. by fearlessly standing on a rooftop at the height of the battle and reporting a live radio broadcast. “ This is London.”

1945-In occupied Berlin, composer Anton Webern was shot and killed by an American sentry when he went outside for a smoke in violation citywide night curfew orders.

1950- The INCHON LANDINGS. Gen Douglas MacArthur's masterstroke to amphibiously land an army behind the North Korean invaders and drive them from South Korea. It was an unlikely landing beach- short pebbly beach with a high craggy cliffs and the high tides in the world – 37 feet, from low to high tide, make the area inaccessible for most of the day. But MacArthur had remembered the Japanese had used this spot as a landing site in 1894 and it worked decisively. Mao Zedong had guessed that MacArthur might try a landing at Inchon and warned North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. But Sung ignored the warnings and was taken completely by surprise. Within a week Seoul was recaptured and the North Korean Army was in full retreat.

1954- The day of shooting on the film The Seven Year Itch, when Marilyn Monroe stood over the subway grate and let the breeze blow her dress up, much to the annoyance of her husband, baseball star Joe Dimaggio. They did it live in NYC, but director Billy Wilder was unhappy with the results, so he had it reshot back in Hollywood on set Her little white halter dress was thereafter known as a Marilyn Dress.

1956- Surgeons Walter Freeman and Egas Moniz perform America's first prefrontal lobotomy on a depressed, 63-year-old Kansas woman in Washington, D.C.

1957-The TV series Bachelor Father starring John Forsythe premiered.

1959- Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev arrived in the U.S. for a good will tour that included farms and factories. Americans found the bald peasant with the broad smile charming, and not at all the bogeyman everyone feared. At one point Khrushchev requested to visit Disneyland, the “workers playground”, but Walt Disney refused:” In 1942 we lent those Commie bastards a print of Snow White and they released in their theaters with their own credits on it!” Khrushchev also praised American white bread. “Russian Bread is made one day and goes stale. American bread can stay on shelf for weeks and still be soft!”

1963- In Birmingham Alabama, white racists set off a bomb in the First Baptist Church that killed four little girls. The Church was seen as the headquarters of the Black Civil Rights activists and Freedom Riders, but these girls had only arrived early for choir practice. The man who planted the bomb was not convicted until 2001. One of the slain little girls schoolmates would one day grow up to become a Secretary of State- Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

1965- "Green Acres" TV show debuted. Arnold Ziffel the pig gains national prominence.

1971 –The environmental political movement Greenpeace founded in Vancouver by twelve members of the Don’t Make a Wave Committee.

1973- Star Trek animated series by Filmation premiered. This was the first time Kirk, Spock, Sulu and Uhura were untied again with a Roddenberry script since the original series was cancelled in 1969.

1982- During the Lebanese Civil War the Christian Maronite President of Lebanon Bashir Gemayel had made a deal with the Israelis to rid his country of the PLO, who were using South Lebanon as a base since being thrown out of Jordan in the Black September of 1971. Israel invaded Lebanon but Gemayel refused to sign an alliance, just a non-aggression pact. This day Gemayel was assassinated by Muslim fighters. His murder provoked the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres.

1998- Rap star Coolio is busted in Lawndale Cal for driving on the wrong side of the road, using an expired license and having a 9mm pistol and bag of marijuana in his car.

2004- A mob of demonstrators protesting fox hunting season break into the English House of Commons. The last time Parliament was attacked like this was the Gordon Riots in 1744. There was a swipe card security gate, but it was broken that day, and no one had bothered to fix it.

2008- THE GREAT RECESSION- George W. Bush touted himself as the CEO President, proud of his cabinet’s business experience. Today the US Stock Market went into a panic nosedive after two of the nation’s oldest investment banks- Merrill Lynch and Lehman Bros collapsed. Lehmans Bros. was $613 billion in debt. This shock added to the news of the government taking over the insolvent mortgage insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Housing Bubble), and doubling gas prices suppressed car sales. The American financial crisis panicked stock markets around the world. It was the biggest financial collapse since the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
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Yesterday’s Question: Today is Dr Ivan Pavlov’s birthday. What does it mean when you say something is Pavlovian?

Answer: Pavlov first noted it as an auto-neuro response to outside stimuli. Like dogs who salivate at the ringing of their dinner bell. So when a race-baiting politician says something racist, the response of his racist audience is called “pavlovian”.


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