Quiz: What do Jimmy Stewart, Orson Welles and Zero Mostel have in common? Besides being actors.

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In the new Chip & Dale movie, they make a joke about going to The Uncanny Valley. What does that mean?
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History for 5/23/2022
Birthdays: Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Scatman Crothers, Rosemary Clooney, Artie Shaw, Alicia de Larrocha, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Melissa McBride, Frank McHugh, Drew Carey is 64, Joan Collins is 89

Today in ancient Rome was the feast of Vulcan.

37BC- Herod the Great captured Jerusalem back from a Greek pretender named Antigonus with the help of a Roman legion loaned by his friend Marc Anthony. He reigned 37 years under Roman dominance and rebuilt the great temple of Solomon.

1498- In Rome, mystic monk Savonarola was hanged and his body burned for defying the Borgia Pope Alexander VI. Savonarola dominated Florence for a time like a Christian Ayatollah. Artists Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Sandro Botticelli and Luigi Della Robbia were admirers of his. Among his reforms were to hold a large Bonfire of the Vanities.

1533- King Henry VIII of England has his first wife Catharine of Aragon's marriage to him annulled. Henry's interest in multiple marriages wasn't merely a case of a roving eye, his father had won his throne in a bloody 30 year civil war (The War of the Roses) and it could all happen again if he didn't produce a male child fast. Despite his efforts, his Tudor dynasty was remembered for his female offspring, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

1618- THE DEFENESTRATION OF PRAGUE- The Protestant officials of Bohemia let the Catholic German Emperor know what they thought of his ultimatums by throwing his emissaries out of a window. "De-fenestrate" or to toss out a window. It was a low second floor window and a dung pile broke their fall, so only pride was injured. Catholic writers said they were caught by angels.
This event started the THIRTY YEARS WAR, a European Civil War, when Catholic and Protestant nations whose pent up anger had been boiling for decades broke forth. They battled for years, until nobody could remember who started the whole thing to begin with. Germany lost one quarter of her population and would not see this kind of devastation again until World War 2.

1633- An edict of the King of France declared that only good Catholics would be allowed to settle in their colony of New France, already being called Canada. French Huguenots headed for the Anglo Dutch territories in Maryland, and New Amsterdam.

1701- Captain Kidd was hanged in London for piracy, robbery and killing a sailor with a bucket. His last letter was written to try to bribe the judge with his buried treasure. His body was coated with tar and left hanging in a cage suspended over Execution Wharf on the Thames for years afterward, as a warning to other would-be pirates.

1706- BATTLE OF RAMILIES- the Duke of Marlborough destroyed the main French army of Louis XIV under Marshal Villeroi. Carried away by the excitement, Marlborough personally led a cavalry charge sword in hand against the Maison Du Roi – the French elite Guards Cavalry. In the melee' he was knocked off his horse, trampled, and had to run for his life. As he was climbing up on another horse, the aide holding the reins had his head struck off by a cannon ball. His enthusiasm for hand-to-hand combat cooled, Marlborough spent the rest of the day in the rear directing the battle like a good general should.

1785- Ben Franklin invented bifocal glasses.

1861- Virginia, the most populous state and home of many presidents announced it was leaving the United States and joining the new Confederate States.

1865- Over a month after Richmond’s fall and Lee’s surrender the last bloodshed of the Civil War occurred. In Texas, Confederate General Magruder defeated a small Yankee force near Galveston Bay.

1865- UNION VICTORY DAY-To celebrate the end of the American Civil War today was the Union Victory Parade in Washington D.C.- The massed Grand Armies of the Republic marched down Pennsylvania Ave. to celebrate their victory over the Confederacy. They passed President Andrew Johnson and Generals Grant and Sherman. Sherman refused to shake hands with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton because of Stanton's criticism of Sherman's surrender terms to the Confederate western armies.
27 year old Gen. Custer, showing off for the crowd, with his golden locks flowing, managed to pass the reviewing stand twice. He claimed his horse was skittish.
Despite the fact that 180.000 African American men fought in the war, no black regiments were allowed in the parade. Even the 54th Mass who did the heroic attack on Fort Wagner was refused permission to march. The flags in the nation’s capital were returned to full mast for the first time since Lincoln's assassination. Union veterans later formed the first professional veterans aid association the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a forerunner of the VFW and the American Legion.

1873- The first Preakness horse race. The winner's name was Survivor.

1903- MOTHER JONES CHILDRENS CRUSADE- Seventy-three-year-old activist and union organizer Mary "Mother Jones" Harris led a strike of 16,000 Philadelphia mill workers, all children under 12 years old, to demand a 55 hour workweek down from 60 hours a week. That July she led a march of thousands of working children from Philadelphia to President Teddy Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay New York to demand an end of child labor.

1911- President Taft dedicated the central branch of the New York Public Library.

1931- In Max Fleischer's Silly Scandals, the girl character first seen in Dizzy Dishes is first called Betty Boop.

1934- BONNIE & CLYDE were blown away in a hail of machine gunfire as they drove down a road near Gisland, Louisiana. She was 24, he was 25. The ambush was set up by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. An estimated 107 shots were fired in less than two minutes. Each body had about 28 bullets in them. Hamer smiled:" It’s a shame I had to bust the cap on a lady." Their bullet ridden car still pops up at auto shows from time to time.

1941-Hollywood union boss George Brown and assistant Willard Bioff (also a Frank Nitti bagman) were indicted on federal racketeering charges. Brown had been a Chicago operative and it was said 'he could drink 100 bottles of beer in one day". Their main contact among the Hollywood studio heads was Nicholas Schenck, the chairman of Loews Theaters and on the board of MGM. Willie Bioff had tried to help Louis B. Mayer defeat the screen actors guild and hijack the Disney animator's union. After their jail time Bioff blew up in his car after turning government witness, and Brown 'disappeared...' Nicholas Schenck meanwhile was pardoned by President Truman himself.

1945- Reinhard Gehlen was the head of Nazi intelligence and kept numerous agents in Washington, London and Moscow. After hiding for a month after the fall of Berlin, on this day he surrendered himself to the Americans. Initially, they wanted to put him on trial for war crimes, until he revealed his agents in Moscow were still on his payroll. This greatly interested General Wild Bill Donovan, who was reforming the O.S.S. for its new cold war responsibilities. So Generalobherst Reinhard Gehlen came to the U.S. and began his second career as a founder of the CIA.

1945- SS leader Heinrich Himmler committed suicide by biting a cyanide capsule shortly after being captured by the British authorities. When he heard the news, a British army guard growled "The bastards’ beat us!".

1951- China formally annexed Tibet, a nation they invaded the year before.

1960- Nazi Adolph Eichmann was one of the architects of the Final Solution. He had been hiding in Argentina since the war ended. In 1957 a German prosecutor tipped off Israeli intelligence of Eichman’s whereabouts. This day Mossad agents kidnapped him in Buenos Aires and brought him to Israel for a public trial.

1969- The Who released their rock opera Tommy.

1980- Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, opened. Here’s Johnny!

2003- In US occupied Iraq, American occupational viceroy L. Paul Bremmer overruled CIA and Pentagon advice and disbanded the Iraqi Army, internal security, Presidential Guards and police forces, about 500,000. With this one decree, thousands of angry, humiliated career officers were unemployed, robbed of their pensions and benefits, but allowed to keep their side arms. The Anti-American guerrilla insurgency exploded soon after. Many of the military leadership of ISIS were former Iraqi commanders. Paul Bremmers’ excuse was he was only following orders, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney claim they were surprised by the move.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: In the new Chip & Dale movie, they make a joke about going to The Uncanny Valley. What does that mean?

Answer: In 1978 Japanese scientist Masuhiro Mori coined the term. That we find robots like Robbie the Robot and R2D2 fun, but as they grow to look more like us, we react with dread.