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March 18th, 2008 tuesday
March 18th, 2008

Quiz: Who are the Black Irish?

Yesterdays’ question answered below- Why is a zero score in Tennis called Love?
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History for 3/18/2008
Birthdays: Amerigo Vespucci, John Calhoun, Nicholai Rimsky-Korsakov, Neville Chamberlain, Wilson Picket, Edgar Cayce, John Updike, Grover Cleveland, Edward Everet Horton, Vanessa Williams, F. W. DeKlerk, George Plympton, Peter Graves, Irene Cara, Luc Besson, Queen Latifah is 38

1286- King Alexander III of Scotland accidentally rides his horse off a cliff. Hoot- Maaaann!

1834- The Tolpuddle Martyrs. Six Dorchester farm laborers are arrested and banished to the Australian penal colony for trying to organize a labor union. It is considered the beginning of British trade unionism. Public agitation forced the government to pardon them and invite them home. Only one went back to Dorchester, the rest moved to Canada.

1852- New York City steamboat skipper Henry Wells and mailman William Fargo form the Wells Fargo Company. In 1873 they went into a joint venture with several other freight shipping companies called American Express.

1871- Citizens of Paris, disgusted with the inept handling of the Franco Prussian war and horrible siege they had to endure, declare a workers revolutionary state, The COMMUNE OF PARIS. Artist Honore' Daumier was named to it's governing board. Karl Marx, living in London, said it was still the wrong type of revolution. The Communards were enthusiastic but inefficient revolutionaries, they tried to burn down Notre Dame but it was so old and damp it wouldn't burn. Then they tried to execute the aged archbishop of Paris by firing squad. They all missed on the first try. They were eventually crushed by the regular French Army after bitter street fighting that destroyed a lot of Paris including the Tuileries Palace, the Hotel deVille and the Palace of St. Cloud. In Pere' Lachaise cemetery you can still see the 'Wall of the Comunards', where 150 were lined up and shot. They took as their banner the red flag of revolution. Young Nikolai Lenin, studying the Commune, adopted their red flag for his and it later became the symbol of world communism. When Yuri Gargarin went into orbit in 1959 he had a relic of the Commune's flag with him.

1902- BIRTHDAY OF THE RECORDING INDUSTRY. The RCA Victrola company sends it's engineers to Milan to record ten discs of the young tenor Enrico Caruso. He becomes a world celebrity and the phonograph moves from being a scientific curiosity to something every home had to have.

1910- Rosie O’Neill invented the Kewpie Doll.

1924-The film “Thief of Baghdad” starring Douglas Fairbanks and designs by William Cameron Menzies premiered. It is considered the first great special effects blockbuster.

1925- THE GREAT MIDWEST TORNADO- One of the largest tornadoes ever recorded. A Force 5 monster that traveled 300 miles from Mississippi to Illinois traveling at 73 miles an hour. It wiped out two large towns and killed 689 people.

1928- William T. Hones was planting horseradish in Petersburg Virginia when he dug up a 32 carat diamond. He took it home as a curiosity and only figured out it’s value 15 years later. It was the largest diamond found in North America.

1931- Schick, Inc. introduced the electric razor.

1942- Paramounts “The Lost Dream” the first Little Audrey cartoon.

1947- William Durant, the brilliant executive who created General Motors and built it into an industrial giant., died the manager of a bowling alley in suburban Chicago. He had been ruined in the Great Depression.

1965- Cosmonaut Sergei Leonov is the first human to walk in space.

1965-The Rolling Stones are fined 5 English pence for urinating on a wall in Stratford at ABC recording studio Romford.

1967- The Pirates of the Caribbean ride opened at Disneyland, designed by master animator Marc Davis. In recent years rampant political correctness has disturbed the pirates fun. One diorama that portrayed a lusty buccaneer chasing a wench around a table while she giggles. It was changed to show he was really only interested in her sandwich tray. Yeah,……right.

1968- Mel Brooks first comedy film “The Producers” premiered with Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Dick Shawn. His screenplay beat out Kubricks 2001 for a Best Screenplay Oscar. “Springtime for Hitler and Germaneee.” In the late 1990s Brooks reworked the screenplay into a hit Broadway musical.

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Yesterdays’ question: Why is a zero score in Tennis called Love?

Answer: In many sports people refer to a zero score as a Goose Egg, or egg. Tennis came to England from France, where an egg is called l’oeuf. Englishmen trying to say L’oeuf, would say Love.


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