Quiz: What is the controversy about the Oxford comma?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who were these people? David Oistrach, Yehudi Mehunin, Anna Sophie-Mutter, Yascha Heifitz, Ytshak Perleman?
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History for 5/17/2023
Birthdays: Sandro Botticelli, Eric Satie, Ayatollah Khomeni, Edmond Jenner, Archibald Cox, Sugar Ray Leonard, Maureen O'Sullivan, Howard Ashman, Craig Ferguson, Bill Paxton, Ralph Wright- the original voice of Eeyore, Alan Kay-inventor of the laptop computer, Dennis Hopper, Enya is 61- born Eithne Patricia Ni’ Bhraonain

1204- The Fourth Crusade captured the city of Constantinople (Istanbul). The Western Crusaders decided to blame the Byzantine Greeks for their failure to keep Jerusalem, so they sent a crusade just to get them. This Crusade was backed by the growing merchant naval powers like Venice, Genoa and Pisa who saw the Byzantines as a commercial competitor.
They stormed the unconquerable city and killed the Emperor Constantine VIII Paleologus called Mourzufle "Fuzzy", by hurling him off a high column.
The Republic of Venice plundered many treasures to adorn their Cathedral of San Marco back home, including the four bronze horses that had adorned the Hippodrome. In the weeks of destruction and pillage that followed many priceless works of art were lost, including only remaining copies of a dozen plays of Sophocles, leaving only the four we have now.
The Doge of Venice Enrico Dandolo had a horror of dying in bed. So, he was in the first wave to attack the city's walls even though he was 81 and blind. He survived the arrows, spears; catapult stones and boiling oil, and died in bed anyway.

1488- Vasco DeGama reached India from sailing around the horn of Africa.
This fulfilled the master plan of Prince Henry the Navigator to outflank the Muslim world, providing an alternative to the ancient Silk Road land route that connected the world’s trade. Ironically, legend has it that DeGama’s navigator was an Arab.
It was the beginning of the Age of Exploration and the rise of Western Europe. Both Columbus and Magellan learned their stuff studying in Prince Henry’s Portugal. A previous Portuguese navigator named Diaz had actually rounded the African continent before DeGama but his men were so freaked out that they mutinied and forced him to turn around go home, so he got no credit.

1673- French Explorers Father Marquette and Joliet set out from Green Bay, Wisconsin to explore the Mississippi. The missionary made only one baptism but he said that alone made the trip worthwhile.

1763- The Marquis de Sade was arrested on the first of many charges over his unusual recreational tastes. This time he was charged with “…outrage to public morals, blasphemy and profanation of the image of Christ.” The Marquis de Sade would be in and out of prisons and insane asylums for most of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. He died in 1814.


1792- In New York, twenty-four investors met under a buttonwood tree on the street where the old city wall once stood and formed The New York Stock Exchange. Then they all went to the Merchant’s Coffee House for lunch.

1802- Meriwether Lewis went to Philadelphia to meet Dr. Benjamin Rush to get advice for his Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific. Rush was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the most famous doctor in America. Dr. Rush gave Lewis a list of questions he had about the West, such as asking the Plains Indians if they practiced the religion of the Hebrews? Were the Sioux or Cheyenne the Lost Tribes of Israel? If you think that’s silly Thomas Jefferson told Lewis to look for living Mastodons.
When Lewis asked what medical supplies were needed, Rush said unhesitatingly that he should lay in a good supply of Rush’s Purgative Pills, nicknamed ‘thunderclappers’ for the effect they had on your system.

1826- Artist-Naturalist John James Audubon departed for England” in deep sorrow” because he could find no publisher in America for his masterpiece the “Birds of North America”.

1845 - Rubber bands were patented by Stephen Perry of Mssrs Perry & Co, vulcanized rubber manufacturers of London.

1847- The American Medical Association- the AMA formed.

1860- At the second presidential convention of the Republican Party former Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln is nominated on the second ballot, beating out William Seward and John Freemont, aka the Pathfinder.

1861- The California State Legislature passed a resolution declaring the states loyalty to the Union and against slavery and secession.

1875 –The First Kentucky Derby. Winning horse was Aristides.

1881- Engineer John Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge. The largest and tallest suspension bridge in the world. After his death his son engineer Washington Roebling oversaw most of its construction. But it was his wife, engineer Emily Warren Roebling, who finished the job. Emily oversaw the completion of the bridge after Washington became too ill from caisson-sickness to continue. This day Emily became the first person to cross the bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn. She crossed the bridge in a carriage with a rooster on her lap for good luck. The Brooklyn Bridge was opened to the public the following week.

1885- Geronimo went on the warpath for the second time. His Chiricahua Apache were the last independent Indian tribe still fighting the U.S. and Mexico.

1890 - Comic Cuts, 1st weekly comic newspaper, published in London.

1905 - After having been given to Sweden by Denmark back in 1814, Norway finally regained its independence.

1924- Marcus Loew of the Loew's theater chain bought Metro Pictures and combined them with Sam Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer’s studios to form Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Two years ago Amazon bought MGM for $8 billion.

1931- Broadway dancer James Cagney became a tough guy movie star when the Howard Hawk’s film The Public Enemy opened in general release. “There you go with that wishing stuff! I wish you wuz a wishing well… so I could tie a bucket to ya and sink ya!”

1938 - Radio quiz show "Information Please!" debuts on NBC Blue Network.

1940- In World War I the German army tried for four years to reach Brussels. This day in World War 2 they captured the Belgian capitol in just 6 days.

1941- The Looney Toon Lockout. Producer Leon Schlesinger tried to forestall the unionization of his Bugs Bunny cartoonists by locking them out. After a week he relented and signed a contract with the cartoonist guild. Chuck Jones called it “our own little six-day war.”

1943- The B-17 bomber Memphis Belle flew it’s last of 25 successful missions over Germany. Today the Belle is in a museum, in Memphis, appropriately enough.

1954-" Brown vs. Board of Ed" Supreme Court ruled segregation illegal. Future justice Thurgood Marshal was the successful attorney.

1965- At a hotel in lower Manhattan, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke shook hands and agreed to write a sci-fi movie, with an accompanying novel.
First called How the Solar System was Won, because How the West Was Won was a popular film then. Then Journey Beyond the Stars, the title finally became- 2001: A Space Odyssey.

1967 – Bob Dylan's 1965 UK Tour is released as film "Don't Look Back"

1970 - Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic on reed boat Ra, proving the ancient Egyptians could have reached South America.

1971 - Stephen Schwartz' musical Godspell premiered off-Broadway.

1973 - Stevie Wonder released "You are the Sunshine of my Love"

1973- the Senate Watergate Committee convenes.

1974- The LAPD attacked the LA stronghold of the Symbionnese Liberation Army extremists, then holding heiress Patty Hearst. In a furious shootout most SLA members including their leader Donald DeFreeze were killed, but Miss Hearst remained missing for a few more weeks.

1977- In Israeli general elections, the right-wing Likud party under Menachem Begin won a majority. Labor lost power for the first time since independence in 1948. It also marked the religious conservative groups having a bigger say in Israeli politics over the earlier socialist-humanist reformists that built Israel. One-eyed Moshe Dayan startled his friends by changing parties and becoming foreign minister in the new government.

2004- Massachusetts became the first US State to legalize gay marriage.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who were these people? David Oistrach, Yehudi Mehunin, Anna Sophie-Mutter, Yascha Heifitz, Ytshak Perleman?

Answer: They are all internationally famous classical violin virtuosos.