Pat and I went to a number of Holiday Parties over the weekend. I noticed I am still asked if I am a member of the coop known as Gang of Seven Animation, or whether my CarTalk Show is being done by Gang of Seven Animation. It is not and I am no longer a partner there. I have not been associated with them since 2006.
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Quiz: Hitler’s Germany called itself the Third Reich. What were the first two?

answer to yesterdays’question below: For all of you who were In Country, during Vietnam. What does boocoo mean? As in boocoo bucks?

History for 12/10/200 7
Birthdays: English King Edward VII “Bertie”, Emile Dickinson, Chet Huntley, Morton Gould, Victor McLaghlin, Dan Blocker, Tommy Kirk, Fionnula Flanagan, Kenneth Branaugh is 47, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey, Michael Clarke Duncan

Happy World Freedom Day. I wish it was.

1041- Byzantine Michael IV the Paphlagonian died. Before his death he had his sickbed moved to the Monastery of Saint Demetrios and changed his golden robes for monks rags and had a tonsure shaved on his head.


1513- Former Florentine politician Niccolo Macciavelli was living in a small town after being thrown out of power and even twisted on a torture rack. Still missing his life in power he declared today to a friend he was writing a book on political theory to present to the Medici duke of Florence. He hoped by doing so he’d be called back to office. It didn’t work but his book THE PRINCE became one of the great works of political philosophy, the handbook of unscrupulous politicians everywhere. Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo British troops found in his tent his personal copy of Macciavelli’s the Prince, folded back and covered with footnotes in pencil.

1607- In Virginia Captain John Smith left the Jamestown camp with two men to find food. They were captured by the Indians who killed the other men and dragged Smith before chief Powhatan. He ordered Smith’s head to be placed on a flat stone and bashed in with a war club. But Powhatan’s favorite daughter Pocahontas threw herself over Smith and protected him. Smith could speak no Algonquin and the Indians no English and neither could sing any Broadway tunes. Was this an execution prevented or a ritual of admission into the tribe? Powhatan was known to extend his rule through dynastic alliances with other tribal leaders, and he was well aware of the white strangers, wiping out a Spanish attempt to land on his beach in 1600. Maybe this was his way of wanting to bring the white mans powers to his side. No one knows for sure. Smith didn’t write of this incident until back in England 14 years later.


1864- Sherman’s army reaches the sea at the Georgia coast near Savannah.

1898- Spain and the U.S. make peace ending the Spanish American War. Secretary of State John Hay who was once Abe Lincoln’s secretary called it “A Splendid Little War.” Critics Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce called it the Yanko-Spanko War. The United States becomes a global power with colonies in Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, and the Philippines. The Philippinos, who were fighting for independence under their leaders like Aquinaldo, suddenly discover they were now American property. The U.S. declared they fought for their freedom from Spain yet never officially recognized their national independence movements. The Philippines gained its full independence in 1946 and the last American base Subic Bay wasn’t removed until the 1990s.

1899- Battle of Magersfontein (more Boer-Woer). Our post-Apartheid opinion of white South Africans was not very high, but in 1899 most of Europe and America sympathized with their isolated stand against the awesome might of the British Empire. The Queen of Holland begged the German Kaiser to help them (the Boers were ethnically Dutch-German). Crowds in Paris and Brussels would jeer the visiting Prince of Wales with the cry "Vive les Boers!" When a delegation of German-Americans ask Vice President Teddy Roosevelt to intervene, Roosevelt replied:" It is right and natural for stronger nations to dominate weaker ones." Britons were hurt and confused by all the anger. They felt it was just because they were top nation, very similar to the way Americans in Red States today are confused by all the hate in the world directed against the US.

1901- The First Nobel Prize is given. Alfred Nobel made millions by inventing dynamite and nitro-glycerine. But as much as his discoveries were used for constructive purposes they also made it possible for armies to blow each other up much more efficiently. He felt guilty and after an accident with the stuff killed his own brother he resolved to create something positive from his fortune. Hence the Nobel Prize. Nobel died on Dec 10th 1896 and the awards are given each year on the anniversary. President Teddy Roosevelt won the first Peace Prize in 1910 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. In 1950 Dr. Ralph Bunche was the first African-American to receive a Nobel.

1905- O. Henry’s short story “ A gift from the Magi” first published.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt in a ceremony in the White House.

1938- To make the film "Gone With the Wind" Producer David Selznick and director Victor Fleming shot the massive "Burning of Atlanta" in Culver City, California. The sequence was storyboarded and designed by William Cameron-Menzies, who designed the sets for Intolerance for D.W. Griffith. Selznick used the opportunity to clean the studios backlot storage, destroying sets from King Kong, Little Lord Fauntelroy and Last of the Mohicans in the inferno. They shot the scenes with three Rhett Butler stand ins.

1941-The Hollywood Victory Committee formed. Top Hollywood agents like Abe Lastfogel, Lou Wasserman and Myron Selznick (David's brother) start signing up movie stars for bond drives and touring shows for the troops.
The committee later created the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen on Ivar near Sunset. A soldier or sailor could come in for a free meal served by Tyrone Power or Red Skelton and have a dance with celebrities like Rita Hayworth or Dina Shore.
One animation painter who worked in the kitchen told me the only celebrity who would stay until closing, even mopping and washing coffee cups was Marlene Deitrich.

1941- The New York Metropolitan Opera announced that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack they were suspending any further performances of Madame Butterfly. Other opera companies also stopped doing Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

1948- The United Nations adopts Article XIX, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The committee spending months drafting the resolution was chaired by the American delegate Eleanor Roosevelt . By this act she debuted not just as a former first lady and widow of FDR but as a stateswoman and diplomat in her own right.

1966- The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” hit #1 in pop charts.

1967- R&B star Otis Redding and four of his band the Bar Kays were killed in a small plane crash near Madison Wisconsin. Redding had recorded his hit “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” just three days earlier.

1974- Powerful Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Congressman Wilbur Mills resigned in disgrace after revelations emerged about his being busted by the DC police for getting drunk with a stripper named Fanne Fox and taking her for a 2:00 AM skinny dip in the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial. Fanne was later christened the “Tidal Basin Bombshell.”

1995- Worst recorded snowstorm in Buffalo, NY history. 37.9 inches in just 24 hours!
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answer to yesterdays’question below: For all of you who were In Country, during Vietnam. What does boocoo mean? As in boocoo bucks?

Answer: From the Colonial French- beaucoup- very much. Boocoo bucks, a lot of money,