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April 11, 2023
April 11th, 2023

Quiz: Who were The Plantagenets?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What conflict was known as The War to End All Wars?
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History for 4/11/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, Frederick the Warlike of Saxony-1370, Ethel Kennedy, Joel Grey is 91, Louise Lasser, Mason Reese, Oleg Cassini, Cameron Mitchell. Norman McClaren, Bill Irwin, John Milius, Jennifer Esposito

1034- The Byzantine Emperor Romanus III Argyrus was poisoned by his wife.

1241- Battle of Sajoria- Two days after the Mongols destroy Polish-German knights at Leignitz and burned Cracow, another Mongol horde destroyed the Hungarian army of King Bela and burn Buda. Pest was across the river.

1506- Pope Julius II laid the corner stone for the new Saint Peter’s Basilica. It was completed in 1626.

1512- BATTLE OF RAVENNA -The first battle ever decided by artillery. The armies of Pope Julius II and his Spanish allies were defeated by Duke Alfonso D'Este of Ferrara and his French allies. The D'Este' family were patrons of Leonardo da Vinci, but this Duke was an artillery buff. For his birthday, friends gave him cannon.
At one point during the battle the Duke pulled his cannon to the side of the battlefield where he could fire on both sides at once. When someone explained he would be firing on his allies as well, the Duke snapped:" Well, they'll probably be enemies tomorrow!" Despite this curious strategy, he won the battle anyway.

1713 - FIRST TREATY OF UTRECHT- Ending the War of Spanish Succession. George Frederich Handel premiered the Royal Fireworks Music in celebration. France yields to England the eastern coastal provinces of Canada. When the French speaking inhabitants of Arcadia refuse to swear allegiance to the English King, they were driven out of their homes at bayonet point. Scottish colonists are brought in who renamed their island Nova Scotia -New Scotland. The French exiles migrate down to Louisiana and settled in the swampy bayous. They called themselves Arcadians, which slurred to A'cajun or Cajuns.

1854- Depressed by his go-no-where career and drinking heavily, Captain Ulysses Grant resigned from the US Army.

1861- In the dark night outside Fort Sumter in rebel held Charleston Bay, Confederate commissioners call on Major Robert Anderson to lower Old Glory and surrender the fort. The Kentucky born major said he would surrender if after three days he received no food resupply. (a stalling tactic) The Confederates had sighted an approaching Union rescue fleet and knew this answer meant they would have to fire on the fort. Anderson knew it too, for as he said goodbye to the commissioners he added: " And if we don't meet again in this life, I'm sure we'll meet again in the next."...

1865-Abe Lincoln sends his aide Ward Hill Lamon on an errand to occupied Richmond. This meant Lincoln's only bodyguard could not be at his side at Ford's Theater on the 14th. Lamon had long flowing hair and maintained a belt full of guns, Bowie knives and brass knuckles to guard the president. He also occasionally produced his banjo and played for the President his favorite song, “Jimmy Crack Corn”.

1865- That night a crowd of well-wishers stood under Lincoln’s window at the White House to celebrate the end of Civil War. In the crowd was actor John Wilkes Booth and 23-year-old Charles Leale, an army doctor seeing Lincoln for the first time. Lincoln made a short speech calling for the first time for African Americans to be given the right to vote. Booth came away from the crowd in a fury and said to a friend:” That means n- citizenship. By God, that’s the last speech he will ever give!” Dr Leale would want to see Lincoln again. He bought a ticket to Ford’s Theater the night Lincoln was shot. Leale was the first doctor to reach the stricken president and administer CPR.

1873- General Canby and several army commissioners were slain by Modoc Indian chief Cap'n Jack while in a tent talking peace. Canby becomes the only U.S. general killed in the Indian Wars. Remember Custer was a brevet major general (i.e. honorary general) in the downsized post-Civil War army, but he was doing the job of a colonel. Cap'n Jack got a really cool general's jacket to wear until he was captured and hanged. The Modoc Indian Wars were in the Northern California lava beds.
The Modocs themselves were peaceful until a mining company wanted their land. So they threw them a picnic and laced the food with rat poison. Cannons were hidden in the bushes to finish off the survivors. The remainder of the tribe went on the warpath and the U.S. Army came in to conquer them. A war correspondent photographer travelling with the army was future cinema pioneer Eadweard Muybridge.

1876- Benevolent Order of Elks Lodge founded.

1890- In England John Merrick, who was known as the Elephant Man, died.

1906- Albert Einstein published his Theory of Relativity.

1907- Baseball N.Y. Giant's Roger Bresnahan becomes the first catcher to wear a mask and shin guards. He had the mask built based on a sword fencing mask.

1914- George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion premiered at the Haymarket in London.

1926- Horticulturist Luther Burbank died. His last words:" I don't feel good."

1931- Dorothy Parker resigned her job as drama critic for the New Yorker Magazine. She married an actor named Alan Cambell and moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. While on her honeymoon the editor Harold Ross bugged her for some final fixes on an article. She sent a telegram from Paris: ”Don’t bother me. Stop. F*cking busy. Stop. And vice-versa. Stop“

1933- the Bauhaus directed by Mies Van Der Rohe was closed down by the Nazis.

1941- Henry Ford had vowed he would never sign a union contract. His dreaded security goons, called the Service Department, prowled the plants firing union men and even patrolled the toilets listening for loose talk. Ford kept machine guns on his homes roof and encouraged his executives to wear sidearms. But after a wildcat strike at River Rouge Ford reluctantly signed the first union contract in its history.

1945- Concentration camp at Buchenwald liberated by Patton’s Third Army. The Nazi guards had already fled, and an inmate answered the phone when the Gestapo called. They ordered the camp blown up and all the remaining inmates killed. The inmate answered not to worry, that they were already doing that. Then he went out to welcome the American tanks. Among the survivors was Nobel Laureate Ei Weisel, Simon Weisenthal and future leader of Communist East Germany, Eric Hoehnegger.

1950- First day filming on the movie All About Eve. As Bette Davis said “Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy night.”

1951- When President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur from his command in Korea a firestorm of protest erupted in Congress. Several leading senators called for the Presidents Impeachment! One California senator stood up and said he was for censure but was against impeachment. His name was Senator Richard M. Nixon.

1955- WABD in New York and KTLA in Los Angeles began running pre-1948 Warner Bros cartoon shorts in a half hour format, soon to be followed by other cities. This helped introduce the baby boomers to the world of Bugs, Daffy and Porky.

1957- Poet Pablo Neruda was arrested by authorities in Buenos Aires.

1961- As part of the Bay of Pigs Invasion the US Air Force bombed and destroyed most of Fidel Castro’s Cuban air force on the ground.

1968- After the Vietnamese Tet Offensive and President Lyndon Johnson’s announcement that he would not run for another term, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford announced the US would send no additional ground troops to Vietnam. Even with 450,000 there already the generals were asking for an additional 200,000. Congress threatened to cut off funding. The US government began to talk of de-escalation and disengagement, but it took another 5 years to do it.

1970- Apollo 13 blasts off for the moon. Halfway there an explosion would force it to return.

1974- Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and defense minister Moshe Dayan resigned under heavy criticism for their handling of the Yom Kippur War. Ytschak Rabin became PM, the first Sabrah, or native-born Israeli to lead his country.

1979- Ugandan dictator Idi Amin-Dada driven out of power by a Tanzanian invasion. During his reign the mad dictator titled himself "Conqueror of the British Empire" and passed the time trying to wrestle crocodiles, rehearse mock invasions of Israel (a geographic impossibility) and played drums in his own rock band.

1981- Valerie Bertinelli married rocker Eddie Van Halen.

1983- At that year’s Academy Awards the winner for Best Animated Short was Polish artist Zybigniew Rybcyznski for his film Tango. During the ceremony he stepped outside for a smoke. When Security guards refused to let him re-enter, he became combative, shouting the only English he knew: ”I Have Oscar!” He wound up in an LA jail for assault, and his Oscar wound up in the bushes.

2006- Italian police captured the capo-de-capo of the Sicilian Mafia, Salvatore Provenzano, near the town of Corleone, the birthplace of Mario Puzo’s fictional Godfather. Don Provenzano had been hiding out for 43 years.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What conflict was known as The War to End All Wars?

Answer. World War I. And of course, it was only wishful thinking.


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