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Oct. 7, 2022
October 7th, 2022

Question: Are the people of Lithuania ethnically Slavs, or Germanic people?

Quiz: Russian Cossacks. They’re not really Russian. Some cossacks come from the Ukraine and some from the Zaporozshe regions. Where did Cossacks originally come from?
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History for 10/7/2022
Birthdays: Hans Holbein, Heinrich Himmler, Caesar Rodney, Joe Hill, Andy Devine, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Henry Wallace, June Allyson, Al Martino, Neils Bohr, Ameil Buraka, Johnny Cougar Mellencamp, Toni Braxton, Yo Yo Ma, Vladimir Putin is 69.

312 BC- THE SUCCESSORS- Seleucus Nicator – (pronounced Se-le-u-kos)- conquered Babylon and set up his Syrian-Greek kingdom. One of the generals of the recently dead Alexander the Great, he divided up Alexander's Empire along with fellow generals like Ptolomey, who became Pharoah of Egypt, Perdiccas, Antigonus One-Eye, who controlled mainland Greece, and Demetrius Destroyer of Cities (Poliocretes.
Called Diodochi or The Successors, they descendants warred and conspired with each other until the rising Roman Empire knocked them all off. Seleucus and his heirs figure prominently in the last parts of the Old Testament. The Israelites did well under the Persians and Alexander, but the later Greeks attempted to force pagan worship on them. King Antiochus Theos Epiphanes –Antiochus” God Made Manifest”, plundered Solomon’s Temple and ordered Jews to eat pork and worship Zeus on pain of death. Many Jews were martyred until an uprising led by Judas Maccabeus restored the Hebrew Kingdom.

1337- King Edward III of England decides he's not only King of England but King of France as well- the HUNDRED YEARS WAR begins. It was actually 111 years, until 1446. Ironically it was around this time that the English language began to emerge as the common mother tongue of Britons, blending the Norman French of the nobility with the Anglo Saxon of the common folks.

1571- BATTLE OF LEPANTO- Great naval engagement in which the ships of Venice, Spain, Genoa and the Papacy defeat the Grand Turks navy led by Ali Pasha. The last great battle fought with war galleys rowed by teams of rowers. The admiral in charge was the bastard brother of Phillip II, Don John of Austria, a military hero who was supposed to have led the Spanish Armada against England, had he not succumbed to an early fever.
The battle raged from ship to ship until Don Johns ship overran Ali Pasha’s flagship and hoisted his severed head to the top of their mainmast. Among the common sailors in the battle were future writers like Lope De Vega and Miguel de Cervantes, who lost his right hand:" For the greater glory of my left" he joked.

1763- THE ROYAL PROCLAMATION TO NORTH AMERICA- The British Colonial Ministry, trying to reward its Indian allies in the French and Indian War and kill two birds with one stone, told the Americans that any further western colonization to the Mississippi was forbidden, but they were invited to go north and settle in Quebec. This would hopefully mean the outnumbering and eventual assimilation of the French Canadians.
Neither happened, and it only angered the Americans who were never consulted about this idea. The British even toyed with making the Illinois and Michigan territories part of Canada.

1777- SECOND BATTLE OF BEMIS HEIGHTS-British General Johnny Burgoyne trying to break out of a trap, smashed his army against the American defenses in a heavy rain. The defense works were built by Polish patriot Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Washington spelled his name 11 different ways in dispatches, the men just called him " Colonel Koz".
Burgoyne had snubbed his superior officers since his arrival in America, saying he only answered to the War office in London. Now, surrounded in the forest by overwhelming odds he snuck out a message to General Guy Carleton in Canada "I await your Lordship's orders." Carelton recognized this weenie attempt to shift blame and ignored him.

The hero of this battle was Benedict Arnold. Arnold was everywhere, rallying minutemen brigades and crashing them into the enemy without waiting for his commander’s orders. The U.S. commander Horatio Gates spent most of the battle in the rear entertaining captured British officers and discussing the futility of the American cause. The battle only ended when someone shot Arnold in the leg. After Arnold’s treason, Washington decreed that no monument to Arnold ever be allowed. So the grateful locals raised a statue….to his leg.

1780- BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN- In the later stages of the American Revolution the British Army command shifted from a strategy of using overwhelming conventional force in New England to going South and encouraging American Loyalists to fight a civil war. At Kings Mountain in North Carolina The “Over the Mountain Men”, an army of Scots-Irish frontiersmen under Issac Shelby defeated a Loyalist militia under the command of Col. Patrick Ferguson. Ferguson, who was killed in the fight, was an unconventional Scots Highlander who taught his men to fight American Indian style.

1783- The Virginia House of Burgesses votes to grant freedom to all slaves who fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

1799- Napoleon returns from his Egyptian Campaign without his army but with a new appreciation for antiquities.

1849- Writer Edgar Allen Poe was found sprawled over a barrel in a Baltimore street, dressed in someone else's clothing. He was taken to a hospital where he died raving at the walls. He was 40. It was thought he died from heavy alcohol abuse. Recently scholars theorize he may have died from a brain tumor or diabetes impacted by alcohol sensitivity, which would explain the violent mood swings, and that he drank heavily to deaden the pain. Another scholar also theorized that the symptoms strongly point to rabies. Poe loved cats and there were no rabies shot or test at the time.
Still another theory on Edgar Allan Poe's death has to do with voter fraud. People voted in taverns in those days. Poe was completely sober (he had given up alcohol years before) when he left two friends after a good dinner. He was scheduled to go to Philadelphia to meet the Mother-in-law of his late wife (also his aunt.) He bought the ticket; it was found on his person. Cooping was a type of voter fraud wherein people who could read were kidnapped and held in pens. They were forced an overabundance of alcohol to knock them out of their senses, then forced to vote under alias names they were given. All night they were pushed to vote again and again. They were made to change clothes (so they wouldn't be recognized) and out to vote again. So Poe may have died of died of alcohol poisoning. He was buried in a pauper's grave.

1851- THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.- Several top bishops of the Church of England stunned Victorian High Society by announcing their conversion to Roman Catholicism. Bishop John Newman was the first, followed today by the Archbishop Manning of Chichester. Manning eventually became the Catholic cardinal primate of England and was listed in Lytton Straychey’s book the Eminent Victorians. Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 made Newman a saint.

1855- THE BORDER WAR- John Brown arrived in Kansas help organize anti-slave men to fight pro-slavers, called the Border-Ruffians. For several years before the Civil War broke out Missouri and Kansas were torn by private gangs of militias murdering each other. The Southern extremists were called Bushwhackers, the pro-Unionists called Jayhawkers or Redlegs.

1861- In the Indian Territory –near what will one day be Tulsa Oklahoma, the councils of the Chickasaw, Cherokee and Choctaw Indian Nations signed an alliance with the Confederate States, smoke the war pipe and renounce any ties to the United States. The Comanche people announced they would stop raids on Texas. Pro-Northern Indians then broke with their tribal brothers and there were mini-Civil Wars among the tribes. The pro-Northern Indians were forced to march with their families in winter snows to the protection of Pro-Northern Kansas. In 1865 the last Confederate General to lay down his arms was Cherokee Chief Stand Watie.

1864- General Grant received a secret letter from Sherman in Atlanta. In it Sherman told Grant that he intended not to worry about his supply lines but cut his lines of communication and march through Georgia, totally living off the land, until he reached Savannah on the ocean where he could be resupplied by sea.

1868- After a season of raids by hostile Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors on Kansas settlers, Generals Sherman and Sheridan met with President Grant to draft a 'final solution' to the American Indian. They would no longer chase scattered bands of braves, but introduce their brand of ruthless "Total War". These tactics burned Atlanta and the Shenandoah Valley to end the Civil War. They ordered the US Army to attack villages, kill women & children, burn crops and shoot ponies. Sherman openly described it as a 'Race War". He said." a few savages must no longer be allowed to impede the March of Anglo Saxon Civilization!" They made a policy of attacking villages in winter, just before dawn, because then Indian war parties stayed close to home and were less mobile.

1897-A group of Russian Jews, disgusted by the state sanctioned anti-Semitism of the Czars, formed the Jewish Socialist Bund. They broke with Theodore Herzl and the Zionists who wanted Jews to move to Palestine. The Socialist Bund advocated political reform within Russia. Leon Trotsky, himself Jewish, made fun of the Bund, calling them “Zionists afraid of getting sea-sick”.

1916- The German submarine U-53 boldly sailed into Newport Bay Rhode Island and docked alongside American warships. America was still technically neutral in WWI. Kapitan Hans Rose let civilian women and children tour the sub all day. Irish-Americans, angry at the English crushing the Easter Sunday Rebellion the previous Spring, presented Captain Rose with an Irish Republican flag. But the good will didn’t last long. That evening, U-53 submerged off the coast of Nantucket and sank six ships including a British liner with Americans on board.

1918- The Polish army contingents of the crumbling Russian, Austrian and German empires band together in Warsaw to set up a native government, declaring themselves the Republic of Poland. The Polish State that had disappeared in 1799 was now reborn. World famous concert pianist Jan Paderewski was named president.

1923- Baseball pitching legend Christy Matthewson died of complications from inhaling poison gas in World War I.

1927- Sam Warner, the Warner Brother most responsible for committing the studio to gambling on a talking picture process, died just as the 'Jazz Singer 'opened and made Warner-Vitaphone a major Hollywood power. Jack Warner had earlier said "Who the heck wants to hear actors talk?"

1939- Benito Mussolini's Fascist government adopts anti-Semitic laws in line with the Nazis. All Jews were excluded from public office, banking, teaching and the military.

1941- Two months before Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt announced that in view of stepped up activity by Nazi U-boats, the United States Navy and Coast Guard had been issued a shoot-on-sight order against any hostile craft.

1947- The Actor's Studio opened, teaching the Stanislavski Method, sometimes called Method Acting. The movement later suffered a feud between it’s two top teachers-Lee Strassberg and Stella Adler and Sandy Meisner. Ask any actor if they were with Lee or Sandy, odds were they sided with one and hated the other.

1955- THE BEATS- Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The reading was intended to promote the new gallery. The poet Kenneth Rexroth organized the reading, and in preparation, he introduced Gary Snyder to Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg introduced everyone to Jack Kerouac, and they became the core of the group of writers known as the Beats. Ginsberg was the second to the last to read, and he started at about 11 p.m. He was 29 years old, and he had never participated in a poetry reading before. He started off in a quiet voice. But as he read, he found his rhythm, and he took a deep breath before each of the long lines in "Howl" and then said each line in one breath. Jack Kerouac chanted "Go, go, go" in rhythm while Ginsberg read, and the audience went wild. When the Russian satellite Sputnik was in the news, people who adopted the Beat lifestyle were dubbed by the press Beatniks. Like cool, daddy-o.

1957-Dick Clark’s T.V. show American Bandstand debuts.

1959- MARIO LANZA . Philadelphia born Italian–American Lanza was a pop icon opera singer long before there were three tenors in concert. With moviestar good looks and a velvety voice, his records and movies sold millions. But he was temperamental and had angered most of the powers that be in Hollywood, climaxing with skipping a $250,000 promise to perform in Las Vegas. This day in Italy he was found dead at age 38.
For years there were rumors that he was actually done in by the Mafia for offending Lucky Lucciano, but in the 1990s a forensic investigation by his son proved his brutal regimen of binge eating and furious dieting wore out his heart. He would attempt to drop 50 pounds in three weeks, then put it back just as quickly until it gave him a heart attack. He literally dieted himself to death.

1959- Young assassins sent by the dissident Ba’ath Party made an attempt on the life of the Prime Minister of Iraq Sherif Al Kassim. The plotters failed but they sneaked back into the country later. One of them would be one day the ruler of Iraq- Saddam Hussein.

1960- The movie Spartacus opened. Producer/star Kirk Douglas had been using blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo for the script, smuggling him in and out of the lot for story meetings. Finally Douglas got fed up and ordered Trumbo to be brought out in the open as the movie's true author. This was considered the official end of the Hollywood Blacklist era, which had been going on since 1947. After director Anthony Mann left the project, Douglas hired Stanley Kubrick, who had such a hard time he left Hollywood afterward, never to return.

1964- ITS FUN TO PLAY AT THE Y-M-C-A! The only big sex scandal of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Walter Jenkins was a top LBJ aide and confidant. Johnson called Jenkins “My vice president of almost everything.” This day Walter Jenkins was busted for lewd behavior with a Turkish diplomat in a pay toilet at the YMCA just two blocks from the White House. Jenkins claimed he was just dehydrated.

1965- The film, The Agony and the Ecstasy opened in theaters. Sir Carol Reed adapted Irving Stone’s historical novel about the painting of the Sistine Chapel, with Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II, and Charlton Heston as Michelangelo. For the first time movie makers were allowed to film in the Vatican and Sistine.

1971- Walt Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks premiered in London.

1974- THE TIDAL BASIN BOMBSHELL- At 2:00 AM Washington DC police stopped a car driving near the White House with its lights off. Inside police discovered powerful Congressman Wilbur Mills, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, drunk as a skunk with an Argentine stripper named Fannie Fox. Mills broke away from the cops and he and Fannie began to cavort in the Tidal Basin pool near the Jefferson Memorial. They were fished out by police. Mills’ sexual escapades had been hushed up by politicos before, but this was just too much. The subsequent publicity brought about hearings and Mills resignation.

1982- London musical 'Cats' opened on Broadway.

1985- Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian Mediterranean cruise ship Achille Lauro. They murdered an elderly Jewish American tourist named Leon Klinghoffer and dumped his wheelchair and body into the sea. Composer John Adams wrote an opera about the incident, called The Death of Klinghoffer.

1993- Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" earned $ 712 million dollars just in North American box office.

1996- Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel began.

2001- U.S, British, Australian, Turkish and NATO forces attacked Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9-11 terror attacks. The war led to the temporary overthrow of the Taliban Regime ruling in Kabul and the suppressing of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. But the subsequent occupation was bungled to the point where the Taliban rallied. The US couldn’t establish a stable pro-Western government, so the Taliban got back into power twenty years later.

2003- The state of California had an unpopular Democratic Governor named Grey Davis. A Republican congressman named Daryl Issa who made a fortune making annoying car alarms “step away from the car..” found an obscure codicil in the State constitution calling for a recall election. The recall election soon had 154 candidates including a porn star, old child star Gary Coleman, Porn publisher Larry Flynt, a woman who financed her campaign by selling autographed thongs, and Grey Davis’ own lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante, who couldn’t stand him either. This night, after a farcical election, the people elected Austrian-born body builder-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

2016- One month before the U.S. presidential election, TV show Access-Hollywood played on air a tape recording of candidate Donald Trump bragging how he assaulted women: "You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them," Trump said, speaking on a hot microphone with TV personality Billy Bush for an "Access Hollywood" taping. "It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy."
Normally, a statement like that would destroy a candidate’s chances. All major GOP leaders immediately called for Trump to drop out. But Trump was elected anyway, with overwhelming support from Evangelical Christians.
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Yesterday’s Question: Russian Cossacks. They’re not really Russian. Some cossacks come from the Ukraine and some from the Zaporozshe regions. Where did Cossacks originally come from?

Answer: Originally Cossacks were not one ethnic group, but outcasts and exiles who settled in the wild steppeland between the Turkish, Russian, and Polish kingdoms. They embraced frontier life and adopted the dress and horsemanship of the Mongols and Tartars. They eventually adopted their own tribal allegiances, Ukrainian Cossacks, Don River Cossacks, Zaparoszhe (Beyond the rapids) Cossacks, Yaik Cossacks, etc.


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