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Jan. 7, 2022
January 7th, 2022

Quiz: What was a busker?

Answer: Who was Ferd Grofe’?
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History for 1/7/2022
Birthdays: Jacques Montgolfier, Joseph Bonaparte- Napoleons older brother, St. Bernadette of Lourdes, Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam, Francois Poulenc, Charles Addams, Butterfly McQueen, Adolph Zukor, Charles Adams, E.L. Doctorow, Jean Pierre Rampal, Millard Filmore*, Katie Couric, William Peter Blatty the author of Jaws, David Caruso, Nicholas Cage- originally Nicolo Coppola, is 58

• HAPPY MILLARD FILLMORE DAY!! Millard Fillmore is famous, if you could call it that, as Americas most obscure and irrelevant president. This day the Millard Filmore Society has a banquet in his birthplace of Buffalo, N.Y. To celebrate, after a meal today, say his famous last words," this nourishment is palatable."

1174- Today is the Feast day of Saint Raymond of Pentafort, who sailed to Barcelona on his own coat.

1610- Galileo pointed his telescope into the heavens and first noted the moons around Jupiter- Ganymede, Io and Europa. The first time anyone noticed objects in the heavens other than earth had moons around them too.

1785- Aeronauts Jean Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries crossed the English Channel in a gas balloon. To keep from crashing before attaining the French coastline they had to jettison most of their equipment, including silk covered oars intended to use to row through the air. Blanchard even threw his trousers overboard to lighten the load.

1789- THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION -Meaning when the electors nominated by the various state legislatures voted. The Electoral College is a remnant of this. Popular elections really didn't catch on until the 1820's. At this time only white, male, landowning, literate, freeborn men could vote, so 160,000 voted, out of a population of 4 million. In England at this time, only 10% of the male population could vote. George Washington won overwhelmingly over John Adams and John Hancock.

1839- Frenchman Louis Daguerre announced the invention of Photography (Just three weeks later on the 31st Englishman William Fox Talbot will say he invented photography first). Today was his public announcement. Daguerre’s experiments had been going on since 1835, which is when Talbot said he was doing his. There was also Thomas Wedgewood and Nicephore Niepce’s claims to be first. Despite the dispute, the Daguerreotype photographic process became the popular system worldwide in the nineteenth century. The image of Lincoln on the five-dollar bill is from a daguerreotype.

1894-" The Sneeze" The first motion picture film to be copyrighted by Thomas Edison and his engineer W.K.L. Dickson

1896- The first Fanny Farmer Cookbook published.

1914- the Merrill-Lynch Stock brokerage founded.

1914- The NY Times reported that Mexican general Pancho Villa had signed an exclusive deal with Mutual Motion Pictures for coverage of his revolution. Villa would even confer with young movie director Raoul Walsh for when to schedule an attack, to get the best camera angles.

1922- THE IRISH CIVIL WAR. After a furious debate, the Irish Dail’ ( parliament ) voted by just seven votes to approve the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiated by IRA chief Michael Collins and Sinn Fein founder John Griffiths. This was the take-it-or-war deal offered by David Lloyd George that allowed for an Irish Free State but not a republic and with six counties of Northern Island sliced off to remain part of Britain. Irish President Eamon De Valera angrily took his partisans out of the Dail and the street fighting broke out shortly afterwards. Griffiths died of a heart attack and Collins was assassinated. The Irish Republic declared in 1932 but Northern Ireland’s status is still a problem.

1924- George Gershwin completed his Rhapsody for Piano and Jazz Orchestra, popularly called the Rhapsody in Blue. Ira Gershwin came up with the name after seeing a museum show of Whistler paintings with names like "Composition in Grey, Nocturne in Green," etc.

1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1927- The first private telephone call from America to England.

1929- With the approval of Edgar Rice Burroughs, artist Hal Foster first began drawing the Tarzan comic strip.

1934 –The First Buck Rogers adventures.

1935- Roger Sherwood’s play the Petrified Forrest opened to smash revues at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway. Lead Leslie Howard got great notices, but the real find was an obscure hard drinking actor with sad eyes playing the gangster Duke Mantee – Humphrey Bogart. In the audience was Jack Warner of Warner Bros, who decided Mr. Bogart might just make it in motion pictures.

1942- BATAAN-Gen. Homma's Japanese army attacked Gen. Douglas MacArthur's American and Philippine last stand defense line on the Bataan Peninsula. From today until late April, the Filipino-Americans waged a desperate fighting retreat against overwhelming Japanese forces down the Florida-shaped peninsula of Luzon, hoping for reinforcements from America that would never come. They sang:
"We're the battling bastards of Bataan,
No moma, no papa, no Uncle Sam.
No aunts, no uncles, sisters or nieces;
no pills, no planes, no artillery pieces.
We're the battling bastards of Bataan,
And nobody gives a damn.."

1943- Nicholas Tesla died in poverty. The inventor of AC current, rotary field motors and the Tesla coil. In his last years he had been experimenting with telegraphy, and trying to develop a death ray for the US Army.

1943- Walt Disney released the propaganda short The Spirit of ’43, commissioned by the Treasury Dept. Donald Duck explained that the best way to win the war, was to pay your taxes!

1949- Ever since Israel declared itself a state the previous May, it had been fighting off the armies of 5 surrounding Arab countries. After several attempts at a cease fire, this day a permanent U.N. Cease fire ended the Israeli War of Independence.

1961- In Providence Rhode Island a bunch of kids were stopped by police for driving a round a neighborhood store suspiciously carrying guns and masks. One 21 year old who did three days in jail for carrying a concealed weapon later became a pretty good actor- Al Pacino.

1966- A hippie rock band from what would become Silicon Valley, called the Grateful Dead, got their first gig playing in a nightclub called the Matrix. They would be one of the most successful rock bands in history, only breaking up after the death of their leader, Jerry Garcia in 1995.

1972- Pulitzer prize winning poet John Berryman went to a Minneapolis bridge over the Mississippi River, took off his glasses, waved at a few people then jumped to his death. He missed the river and hit the bank 110 feet below, but he achieved his initial purpose of killing himself.

1979-The invading Vietnamese Army took Phnom Penh and ended the regime of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. During his regime known as the Killing Fields, he may have murdered up to a quarter of his country’s population, over two million people.

2009- Before his inauguration, President George W. Bush set up a working lunch at the White House for President-Elect Obama with all the living ex-Presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Dubya Bush told Obama,” We want you to succeed. Whether we’re Democrat or Republican, we care deeply about this country. And to the extent we can look forward to sharing our experiences with you. All of us who have served in this office understands that the office transcends the individual.”

2015- CHARLIE HEBDO- In Paris, Muslim extremists shot up the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for making cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. 12 people were murdered, including the editor, and four of France’s most beloved cartoonists. Their editor in chief Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier, when he saw the gun pointed at him, stood and defiantly gave his killer the middle finger before he was killed.

2018- U.S. President Donald Trump declared “I am a very stable genius.”

2020- Brother of the future King of England, Prince Harry, announced that he and his American wife Meaghan Markle, were quitting the Royal Family and moving to America to become average people.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was Ferd Grofe’?

Answer: Ferd Grofe was a XX Century composer who wrote the Grand Canyon Suite, with its famous melody the Donkey Serenade. He also orchestrated George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. He brought in the Jazz clarinetist who improvised the famous opening note. “Smearing the riff”. Gershwin liked it so much, he said it must always be played that way.


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