Quiz: Everything sounds nicer in French. What do these words mean- Pamplemousse, framboise, Chevaux du Frise.?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is the Utah Teapot?
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History for 4/5/2008
Birthdays: Plato, Swineburne, Booker T. Washington, Josef Lister, Nadar, Jean Fragonard, Hicks Lokey, Nguyen Van Thieu, historian Robert Bloch, Gale Storm, Washington Atlee-Burpee the mail order seed king, Spencer Tracy, Frank Gorshin, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Nigel Hawthorne, Peter Greenaway, Gregory Peck, Roger Corman. Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA is 58, Colin Powell is 71, Betty Davis would have been 100 today. Betty quote:" Whenever they want a broad with balls, they call me!"

To the ancient Romans this was the Feast Day of the Goddess Fortuna Virilis, or Good Fortune.

1614- English King James I’s second parliament met. It was famous for enacting no laws, basically doing absolutely nothing. Briton’s rejoiced.

1860- GARABALDI AND “THE THOUSAND RED SHIRTS” LAUNCH THEIR INVASION OF SICILY. Of the several Italian leaders struggling to unify Italy Guisseppi Garabaldi was the least patient. While the King of Sardinia Vittorio Emanuel and his minister Cavour tried quiet gentle diplomacy, Garabaldi and his "red shirts" launched a unprovoked assault on the Bourbon Kingdom of Two Sicilies and told Vittorio-"You come from the North, I from the South." They met at the middle at Magenta and unified the Italian peninsula for the first time since the Roman Empire fell. While in the south Garabaldi's Northern Italian men wrote home of a new dish they tried- pasta with tomato sauce!

1869- Daniel Bakeman, recorded as the last surviving minuteman of George Washington’s Revolutionary army, died at age 109. A man who looked George Washington in the face lived long enough to be photographed by Matthew Brady.

1874- Johann Strauss Jr.’s operetta Die Fledermaus premiered in Vienna.

1887- Lord Acton wrote: “ Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

1892- THE JOHNSON COUNTY WAR- By the 1890's many great Wyoming cattle ranches were owned by Eastern or European companies. When cattle herds were decimated by the great frost of 1888 a labor dispute arose between the distant employers and the laid off cowboys, many of whom resorted to rustling to make a living. By 1892 the friction became so bad the Wyoming Cattlemen's Association hired a private train and filled it with hired Texas gunfighters and enough ammunition to kill everyone in three states and sent it to Johnson county. This day they pulled out of Cheyenne with orders to shoot or string up any and all rustlers, revolutionists and troublemakers. After killing two men on their list the word got out to the citizens of Casper Wyoming. They gathered en masse and surrounded the Texans in a ranch house laying siege to it, throwing lit dynamite sticks from an armored wagon and shooting at any cowpoke who dared show his face in a window.
The hapless hit men were finally rescued by the U.S. Army, who granted all a general amnesty. The incident was the basis for the movie "Heaven's Gate".

1913- Ebbets Field opened in Flatbush. The Brooklyn Dodgers defeat the New York Highlanders (Yankees) 3-2

1923- Lois Armstrong, King Oliver and the Creole Jazz Band took a train from Chicago to Richmond Indiana to record Chimes Blues. Satchmo’s first record.

1930 -James Dewar invented the Twinkie. Dewar ate two every day of his life and called them “The best darn-tootin idea I ever had!” As an experiment in 1996 five top French master chefs were given the assignment of trying to recreate a Twinkie using natural ingredients. They all failed.



1931- Fox Film Company dropped their option on young star John Wayne as a dud not going anywhere. Wayne eked out an existence doing cheap westerns for Republic and Monogram until John Ford made him a star in 1939’s Stagecoach.

1945- The first Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon.

1951- Republican Senator Robert Short read General Douglas MacArthur’s proclamation to the Communist Chinese on the floor of Congress. It read that if they didn’t withdraw from Korea, MacArthur would restart the Chinese Civil War and “Rain Nuclear Fire down upon their cities”. Gen. MacArthur had no permission from the State Department to make such a wild threats and it ruined all the behind the scenes maneuvers to get the Chinese to negotiate an end to the Korean War early. MacArthur had received a direct order from the President not to make any public statements about Korean policy, but the General ignored him. President Harry Trumans reacted-“I’m gonna fire that pompous Sunofabitch!”

1965- Julie Andrews had created the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway. But when filming the motion picture the studio decided she was not a big enough star so they used Audrey Hepburn with a dubbed singing voice. But Ms Andrews had her revenge .At the Academy Awards My Fair Lady won Best Picture and Rex Harrison best actor but Julie Andrews won the best actress Oscar for Mary Poppins.

1963- The Lava Lamp invented by Dr Edward Craven Walker.

1969- Pope Paul VI abolished the big wide brimmed red hats (galeros) the cardinals wore.

1976- Eccentric Billionaire Howard Hughes died at age 76. Hughes had inherited his fathers tool company at 17 and built the mighty Hughes aircraft empire and RKO pictures. But after surviving several test plane crashes, he became addicted to pain killers and became increasing withdrawn from the world. He died a strange shut in, long haired and living on a diet of drugs and saving his urine in mason jars.

1985- Singer David Lee Roth quit the rock band Van Halen to pursue a solo career.

1994- Grunge rock star Kurt Kobain shot himself.

2003- Invading American forces began the Battle for Baghdad.

2030- FIRST CONTACT- According to Star Trek this is the day Professor Zephram Cochran adapted an old World War Three ICBM and invented the Warp Drive, enabling the Earth to begin deep space exploration, and during whose maiden flight he made the first contact with an alien race- from the planet Vulcan.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the Utah Teapot? Also called the Newell Teapot?

Answer: For many years computer graphics were simple wireframe vector graphics with no internal mass. One scientist said they looked like “ glowing erector sets” on a green TV screen.
In 1975 Martin Newell, a researcher at the University of Utah, recreated the digital coordinates of his wife’s Melita teapot with the aid of student Jim Blinn. They made the first complex solid digital image. The Utah teapot became a symbol or mascot of the computer graphics industry for years afterwards.