BACK to Blog Posts

Sept. 16, 2021
September 16th, 2021

Question: In Renaissance Europe, besides Emperors, Popes and Kings, some rulers were called Electors, like the Elector of Brandenburg. Why? What was an Elector?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What type of music used to be called “Longhair Music”..?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 9/16/2021
Birthdays: J.C. Penney (James Cash Penney), B.B. King, Anne Francis, Linda Darnel, Nadia Boulanger, Alan Funt, George Chakiris, Peter Falk, Ed Begley Jr, Jennifer Tilly, Molly Shannon, Marvin P. Middlemark 1919-the inventor of the rabbit ears TV antenna, Mickey Rourke is 66, Lauren Bacall

218BC -Estimated date that Hannibal and his Carthaginian army completed their crossing of the Alps and descended into the Po River Valley of Italy. Of 32 elephants, only 2 actually survived the long journey from Africa.

1498-The Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada died peacefully. He presided over the torture and execution of up to 17,000 people during the Spanish Inquisition. He also oversaw the expulsion of Jews and Christian Arabs from Spain. Even the Borgias asked him to cool it. Today a Torquemada has become a synonym for judicial cruelty.

1776- BATTLE OF HARLEM HEIGHTS- From Washington's defeat by the British at New York City until Christmas he fought several rearguard actions as the British chased him and his raggedy ass rebels up to White Plains, across the Hudson, and down across New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Historians graciously call these desperate hit and run actions battles, Harlem Heights, Throggs Neck, White Plains, Ft. Washington.
The British were now so cocky about knocking the rebels about, that when the advance scouts spotted the American positions, they didn't use the usual trumpet signals but sounded fox-hunting calls. The British referred to the Americans as Mr. Washington’s Army, because they refused to honor him with the title of General.

1810 -El GRITO aka MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE- As the bells ring, peasant priest Father Miquel Hidalgo waved the banner of the Virgin of Tonantzin-Guadalupe and published a revolutionary tract-The Cry of Dolores. New Spain declared their Independence as Mexica, the name of the ancient Aztec nation. Hidalgo was later captured and shot but not before setting the people aflame:" Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from our forefathers by the hated Spaniards? Long Live Our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to the gachupines!” -Aztec for Euro-Honkies. The war continued for a decade until Spain acknowledged Mexican independence in 1821.

1830- The Liverpool-Manchester railroad inaugurated. The first trip was an all VIP affair, with the Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington and most of the government along for the ride. At one point during a stop the elderly Duke watched a member of the House of Lord, Sir William Huckison, step out on to the track and get his leg severed by another train. The first known fatality by train.

1859- In Old San Francisco, California State Senator David Broderick called California Supreme Court Justice David Terry a “pro-slavery crook, knave and poltroon”. The chief justice in a rage challenged Broderick to a duel. They had to reschedule their meeting several times to elude the police. They finally met on the 13th, on a site near present day Daly City. Broderick's gun discharged prematurely near Terry's feet. Terry, instead of being satisfied and firing wide, took aim and drilled Broderick through the chest. He died this date, three days later. Terry was acquitted of manslaughter but 30 year later, Terry was shot and killed by another in Stockton, California.

1864- THE NILE DEBATE- On this day a debate was scheduled in the British city of Bath between famous African explorers Richard Burton and John Speeckes as to whether Speeckes had discovered the source of the Nile River at Lake Victoria Nyanza. They had started the expedition together as friends but came to hate one another. The debate would be moderated by another famed explorer Dr. David Livingstone. However fate, or Speeckes, ensured the debate would never take place. The day before, the high strung Speeckes had gone hunting to break the tension and had accidentally shot himself in the chest. Whether he had intentionally or unintentionally committed suicide remains a mystery. A different explorer, Henry Stanley, proved Speeckes was correct in 1873.

1893- THE LAST GREAT OKLAHOMA LAND RUSH-After appropriating some of their land in 1889, in 1893 the U.S. Gov't takes over the last huge stretch of land owned by the Cherokee Nation, who once owned all of Georgia and the Carolinas and Tennessee. They rename the Cherokee Strip Oklahoma and at the sound of a signal gun at noon one hundred thousand white settlers swarmed over it like a mad gold rush, on horseback, bicycle and carriages. By days end 40,000 claims averaging 160 acres a claim were made. Senator Henry Dawes of Mass. who sponsored the land grab, said of the Cherokee: " The defect in their system is obvious. Because they hold their land in common, there is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of all Civilization."

1898- Indianapolis attorney Albert Beveridge advocated the conquest of the Philippines in a speech entitled “The March of the Flag,” the classic statement of U.S. Imperialism.

1901- A British Imperial Academy of Sciences team began to excavate a Wooly Mammoth frozen in Siberia. Most of the head had been eaten by wolves and the ears and trunk were gone, but the hair, skin and contents of its’ stomach were still there.

1908- General Motors Car Company formed. Calvin Coolidge had once said:" What's good for General Motors is good for the Nation."

1917- TANKS made their first appearance on the Somme battlefield. The inventors wanted them to be called “Land-Battleships” but the British had shipped their secret weapon across the Channel in crates marked "water-tanks" to fool spies, so the name Tank stuck.

1919- An unemployed ex-corporal named Adolf Hitler drifted through Munich, today joined a new right-wing political party called the German Socialist Workers Party, later the National Socialists or Nazi Party. He also began attending meetings of the ultra-nationalist Thule Society. It was a group that espoused Aryan racial superiority and Anti-Semitism.

1920- TERRORISM- On this day anarchists planted a time bomb in a wagonload of scrap iron and parked it in the middle of Wall Street during a busy business lunch hour. The blast killed 38 and injured hundreds, blowing out the ground floor of J.P. Morgan's bank on the corner of Wall and Broad St. Bankers described nightmarish scenes like a woman's decapitated head with her stylish bonnet still on, imbedded like a cannonball in a marble inlaid wall by the force of the blast. One of the victims was a sailor named Watson who had survived the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine. He survived this one as well but had to get a steel plate in his head. He eventually went mad. Another man knocked senseless and almost killed was young bank executive Joseph Kennedy Sr., father of the Kennedy Dynasty. The perpetrators were never caught. In 2001 the headquarters of Morgan/Stanley were in the World Trade Center.

1920- Enrico Caruso made his last recordings for the Victor Recording Company.

1938- Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw recalled for corruption. The city father's frustration with the mob corruption of politicians and police back east moved them to create the unique city charter that made the Los Angeles City Council more powerful than the Mayor, and made the LAPD an independent entity. So after the LA riots, Mayor Tom Bradley could not fire LAPD chief Darryl Gates, when he thought him incompetent.

1940- Congress passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act, creating the first peacetime draft in US History. The Selective Service Agency is born.

1940- Texan Sam Rayburn became Speaker of the House of Representatives. Rayburn was a mentor of young Lyndon Johnson. In 1945, VP Harry Truman was having a bourbon and poker party with Rayburn in his office when he was given the news of Franklin Roosevelt’s death, and he was now president.

1941- CBS radio premiered the Arkansas Traveler Show. In it, bandleader Bob Burns played a strange instrument made out of a stovepipe he called a Bazooka. Later, when the US Army issued the first hand-held rocket launchers to their infantry, the GI’s called the things bazookas because it resembled Burn’s instrument.

1949- Chuck Jones "Fast and Furrious" the First Road Runner-Coyote cartoon.

1953- The St. Louis Browns Baseball team moved to Baltimore and became the Baltimore Orioles.

1963- The Beatles record “She Loves You-Yeah,Yeah,Yeah.” on the Swan Records label.

1963- The sci-fi thriller series The Outer Limits premiered- Do not attempt to adjust your television- We control the horizontal, We control the vertical, etc.

1964- The Peter Potamus Show debuted. Time for my hippo-hurricane-holler.

1965- The Dean Martin Show premiered on NBC. “Well, Ah think I’m gonna go to da couch now..”

1966- the last LOOK magazine published.

1966- The new Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center had its opening night. A performance of Samuel Barbers Anthony & Cleopatra sung by Leontyne Price and Justino Diaz. It was a near disastrous night because Ms Price got locked in a pyramid for awhile, and couldn’t get out.

1968- President Nixon appears on the TV comedy "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" and says:" Sock it to Me?"

1973- American Indian Activists Russell Means and Dennis Banks were acquitted of all charges in the Wounded Knee shootout and siege. That Banks and Means were shooting it out with the FBI was beyond question. The reason was the judge objected to the governments illegal bungling of evidence and witnesses.

1976- The U.S. Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women as priests and bishops.

1983- Arnold Schwarzenegger became a US citizen.

1984- “Miami Vice” TV show debuted.

1985- The Congressional Budget Office announced that the United States had gone from a Creditor Nation that had bankrolled most of the world in the Twentieth Century, to a Debtor Nation.

1985- Steve Jobs was kicked out of the chairmanship of Apple. CEO John Scully denies he actually fired Jobs. He just stripped him of all his authority and this day Jobs quit. Steve Jobs always claimed he had been fired. Jobs went on to run his new company Next and Pixar. In Dec 1996, after failing revenue, Steve Jobs was invited back to take over Apple. At the time of his death in 2007, Apple was the richest company on earth.

2001- U. S. Vice President Dick Cheney told the public that in order to fight terrorists, America needed to “ go to the Dark Side….”

2003- Sheb Wooley, the composer of the 1951 hit “One Eyed, One Horned, Flying Purple People Eater” and the theme song of the TV show Hee Haw, died in Henderson Tennessee at age 82.
========================================================
Yesterday’s Question: What type of music used to be called “Longhair Music”..?

Answer: Classical Music. The XIX Century was an age of short haircuts for men. But world famous pianist Ignacz Paderewski set a style by growing his hair very long, maybe in imitation of his idol Franz Liszt. His example was emulated by Leopold Stokowski among others, and so it became a cliché’ about male classical performers.


RSS