Best of Luck to all the Oscar nominees today! Pat and I are sitting this one out at home, with our feet up.
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Question: While not presuming to predict anything at the Oscars, What does the title of the film Persepolis mean? I mean, Ratatouille explained itself in the film.

Yesterdays Quiz answered below: Who are these men? Schuyler Colfax, Hamilton Fish, Cactus Jack Garner, Charles GoodTime Charlie Curtis and Alban Barkeley?
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History for 2/24/2008
B-Dazes: Roman Emperor Hadrian, Winslow Homer, Arrigo Boito, Wilhelm Grimm (a brother of the brothers Grimm), Honus Wagner- early 1900’s baseball player called the Flying Dutchman, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Edward James Olmos, Barry Bostwick, Michel Legrand, James Farentino, illustrator Zdzislaw Beskinski, Michael Radford, John Vernon, Billy Zane, Dominic Chiasense- Uncle Junior Soprano is 77 and Abe Vigoda, who everyone thinks is dead but lives on, is 87.

495 B.C. Roman Festival REGIFUGIUM in honor of the overthrow of the Tarquins and foundation of the ROMAN REPUBLIC. The king of Rome, Tarquinus Superbus -Tarquin the Proud, Rash, Pain-in-da-Butt, whatever, capping off a history of arrogant rule, raped Lucretia, the daughter of a nobleman named Horatius. She told her dad, so he stabbed her to death to save her further shame. I guess that's 'tough love 'or something. The Roman people led by the Horatius’ and his brother Marcus Brutus drive out the king and establish a republic. For the next 450 years Rome is a democracy led by a Senate-from" senates" or elders, electing two Consuls (presidents) a year with the common peoples spokesmen called Tribunes of the Plebs who could veto. The motto the Romans would carry to the ends of the earth is S.P.Q.R.-Senatus Populusque Romanum -The Senate and the People of Rome.
The proudest status foreigners like Herod or Saint Paul could aspire to was to be made a Citizen of Rome. They could get out of any jam by announcing “Civitis Romanum Sum!” I am a Roman Citizen. This meant you could not be imprisoned or otherwise punished by local authorities. Or if Saint Paul read MAD Magazine he would say " quid, me anxius sum?" what, me worry ? The Republic would last 450 years until Augustus established the Roman Empire in 31 A.D. -based on the word Imperator-leader. In 180 A.D. Marcus Aurelius gave Roman citizenship status to all peoples of the Empire.
The memory of Tarquin gave the Romans a hatred of kings and crowns. Even the thought that Julius Caesar might want to be a king was enough get him multiple stab wounds by a descendant of Brutus. It took till 285 A.D. for an Emperor to publicly wear a diadem.

1784- Alexander Hamilton established the Bank of New York, the second oldest private bank in North America. At first the Mayor Clinton refused to grant the bank a charter. He said “corporations are sinister plots aimed at the average citizen…”

1848- THE FRENCH SECOND REPUBLIC IS DECLARED. King Louis Phillipe whom Daumier caricatured as a fat pear in a frock coat and top hat, was overthrown. Austrian diplomat Baron Metternich predicted: When Paris catches cold, Europe sneezes. “ Sure enough, inspired by the French example, urban working class revolts break out all over Europe. Berliners,Viennese, Romans,Venetians, Hungarians, Saxons and Poles fight in the streets with the forces of their autocratic rulers. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels had trouble publishing their Communist Manifesto because of all the darn revolutions sprouting up! New York antiques importer Charles Tiffany was vacationing in Paris, when French aristocrats fleeing the revolution sold him their family jewels at cut-rate prices to raise ready cash. This unexpected opportunity became the Tiffany jewelry trade.

1928- Frenchman Nicholas Landru, called BLUEBEARD was executed by guillotine. Landru married ten times, bringing the ladies up to his home, murdering them, and burning them in his furnace. He'd then live off their estates and sell their furniture. When the prosecutor said: "So, you made a career out of the suffering and swindling of others !" Landru replied:" No monsieur, I am not a lawyer."

1942- The radio service the Voice of America first went on the air.

1944- Merrill’s Marauders, a special ops trained group of Army Rangers, entered the jungles of Burma to do battle against the Japanese.

1961- Dr. Richard Leakey in Tanzania discovered the oldest known human skull.

1968- THE TET OFFENSIVE ENDS- With the U.S recapture of the old Imperial city of Hue, the Vietnamese Tet Lunar offensive is declared over. North Vietnamese General Vo Giap, the mastermind of Dien Bien Phu, had planned this assault as his masterstoke to win the war. It's failure cost him his job and destroyed the Viet Cong as an effective force. And their mass executions of South Vietnamese civilian officials cost them much civilian support and lengthened the war. Yet even though the Vietnamese communists were strategically defeated, the battle showed the world that after years of maximum effort by the most powerful military on Earth, the little Vietnamese Army was as formidable as ever. While the generals there requested more troops, they already had 450,000, White House strategists from this moment on begin to explore ways to withdraw.

1987- US Robotics sold the first 56k modems.

1988- The US Supreme Court defended the right of public figures to be satirized by throwing out a lawsuit Rev Jerry Fallwell brought against Hustler Magazine owner Larry Flynt. Flynt published a drawing describing Rev Fallwells first romantic experience in an outhouse. The Court ruled a public figure can be lampooned so long as it is not portrayed as factual.

1989- According to the David Lynch television series Twin Peaks this is the day Laura Palmer’s body was found and F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper came to town to investigate.

1996- Los Angeles Angel Flight reopened.

1997- The announcement of the first successful cloning of a mammal embryo, a sheep named Dolly in Scotland. To prove even though they're research scientists 'boys will be boys', They used cells from a mammary gland to do the cloning, so they named their creation after busty singer Dolly Parton. After a series of illnesses, the animal was put down in 2003, living half the life span of a normal sheep, but she mated and had babies normally. The drive to develop cloning continues. In 2002 the a successful cloning of a cat was claimed by a California company called Commercial Savings & Clone.

2003- State Farm Insurance Company announced that they would add a clause into future car insurance policies that Nuclear Explosions and Terrorist Biological Agents would not be classified as Road Hazards and so not covered. Yep, if a Hydrogen Bomb goes off in my neighborhood, my first concern will be about my insurance premiums.

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Yesterdays’ Question: Who are these men? Schuyler Colfax, Hamilton Fish, Cactus Jack Garner, Charles GoodTime Charlie Curtis and Alban Barkeley?

Answer: They were all U.S.Vice Presidents. All except Hamilton Fish, who was a leading NY politician in the 1870s. Cactus Jack Garner advised Lyndon Johnson “ Lyndon, the Vice Presidency ain’t worth a bucket full of warm piss!”