Quiz: Hey Man! How old is the use of the term Man as a slang interjection?

Yesterday’s question answered below: When talking of George Washington and the Founding Fathers, you¹ll hear mention of a Cincinattus. What does that mean? Someone from Cincinatti?
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History for 4/18/2008
Birthdays: Lucretzia Borgia, Franz Von Suppe’, Haley Mills, Leopold Stokowski, Miklos Rosza, Herb Sorell, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Conan O’Brien, James Woods is 63, Eric Roberts, Rick Moranis is 56

185AD- Today is the Feast Day of the Roman martyr Saint Apollonnius.

1506- Pope Julius II lays the cornerstone for St. Peter's Basilica. He had pulled down the old St. Peters, which had stood for 1200 years. The new structure designed by Bramante with the Dome by Michelangelo and the interiors by Sangallo and later Bernini.
With true Renaissance modesty Julius originally wanted his tomb in the center under the altar, borne aloft by giants carved by Michelangelo. I guess nobody mentioned the grave of St. Peter, overtop which this Basilica was being built. Eventually Julius scaled down his plans and when he died die his enemies put him in another church altogether.(San Pietro Vincoli). Saint Peters was completed a little over schedule, in 1626.

1775- PAUL REVERE'S RIDE- "One if by land and two if by sea, etc." Informers in Gen. Gage's office learn the British planned to send troops to seize an illegal arms cache in Lexington and arrest two radical leaders named John Hancock and Sam Adams. So silversmith Paul Revere, Thomas Dawes and a country doctor out on a date named Dr.Prescott were sent to warn them and raise the minutemen on the way, after getting the two lantern signal in the old North Church. Dr. Prescott actually completed the mission. Revere was arrested by a British patrol soon after warning Adams & Hancock and sent home without his horse. At one point they threatened Revere with their pistols if he didn’t give them directions. Any of you who’ve ever gotten lost in the suburbs of Boston can well understand their frustration. At daybreak Paul Revere walked over to Lexington green in time to watch the Revolutionary War begin. Longfellow's poem never mentioned Prescott or Dawes. Paul Revere never said "The British are Coming!" because he considered himself British like everyone else in America at the time. He would have said: "The Regulars are Coming! "meaning the regular army.

1778- THE WHITEHAVEN RAID- Former Scotsman John Paul Jones wanted to show the British public that the American Revolution wasn't just a distant war across the sea.
So he decided to raid the British Isles. An ulterior motive Jones had in attacking a town called Whitehaven was that Jones always suspected he was the illegitimate son of a Lord Selkirk, who resided there. It was his boyhood home and he knew it’s lanes and alleyways well. So through the dead of night, while the sailors of the U.S.S. Ranger were burning and plundering the harbor, John Paul Jones was out looking to kidnap his own father. By dawn they were gone. The British Navy regarded Jones as an irritant at best but the raid was a great morale booster in the States. Jones couldn't locate his deadbeat dad, so he had to content himself with stealing the family silverware.

1857-MR PRESIDENT, ARE YOU GAY? Former Vice President Rufus King died of tuberculosis. President James Buchanan was totally distraught. There has been speculation that James Buchanan might have been our first Gay President. He was a lifelong bachelor, his niece Harriet Lane filled in for the social duties of First Lady. Only once in his life did Buchanan have an affair with a lady, which he broke off abruptly without explanation. The young girl was so upset she committed suicide and her parents blamed him thereafter. When James Buchanan and William Rufus King were colleagues in the Senate they roomed together and were inseparable. Old Hickory Andy Jackson liked to refer to Senators Rufus King and Buchanan " Little Miss Nancy and Mrs Buchanan".

1861-Mr. LINCOLN'S LOUSY DAY PART I- America’s top soldier Robert E. Lee declined Lincoln's offer to command the U.S. Army and instead sided with the Confederacy. In his letter doing so he confesses: "I forsee the Country will go through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation for our national sins."

1861-Mr. LINCOLN'S LOUSY DAY PART II- As if that news wasn't bad enough, on the same day Lincoln got a telegram from the pro-Southern Governor of Maryland saying not only would he refuse to cooperate in fighting the rebels, but he was cutting the telegraph wires and railroads into and out of Washington D.C.! Until the main union armies reached the capitol on the 24th, Washington was deserted, surrounded by a hostile slave state, with only a few Massachusetts volunteers to defend them. Maryland was only prevented from joining the Confederacy by Col. Ben Butler's initiative of sending troops into the state legislature to point their guns at the members as they voted. They voted to stay loyal.

1906- THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE . 3,500 deaths and the city destroyed in the most frightening earthquake in U.S. History. Enrico Caruso was in town with the Metropolitan Opera on tour. When he went up to a policeman on the street corner asking for help the cop didn't believe who he was until he sang some Pagiacci. He later sat on his suitcase in front of the ruined Palace Hotel and said- "Helluva Place! Ah’ma ’never coming back!"
Drew Barrymores grandfather the great actor John Barrymore was in a San Francisco hotel room when the quake struck. He ran into the bathroom and sat shivering in the bath until it was over. Afterward the National Guard put him to work clearing rubble looking for bodies. When they read his telegram, the other Barrymores refused to believe the story. Old John Drew, a patriarch of the acting family, felt otherwise. "It took an Act of God to get John out of bed and into a bathtub, and the National Guard to get him to go to work. I believe every word." Amadeo Gianini, founder of the Bank of America, then called the Bank of Italy, gathered up his bank's papers and stocks and buried them in his garden under the begonias until his new office could be set up. He soon set up for business again on a pier. City government was set up in the undamaged St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street and a large mahogany bar was moved out to the gutter to serve free drinks to calm nerves. San Franciscans dusted themselves off and rebuilt. By 1913 they were well enough to host the World’s Fair. A little ditty of the time said:
"They say God spanked the town, for being rather frisky.
Then why'd He knocked the churches down yet leave up
Hotaling's Whiskey ?"

1914-. The full feature length movie premiered in Turin, Italy. "Cabiria" directed by Giovane Patrone. It was believed to be the first full length movie ever until the discovery of a 1912 version of Quo Vadis. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 classic the Birth of a Nation popularized the120 minute format for feature films.

1934- The first automatic Laundromat opened in Ft. Worth Texas.

1942- The DOOLITTLE RAID. Gen. Jimmie Doolittle led 16 B-25s to fly long distance and drop bombs on Tokyo. It was a desperate mission. They did it knowing they didn't have enough fuel to return to the carrier USS Hornet, so they continued on to China and took their chances where they landed. Some of the men shot down and captured were hanged or beheaded by irate Japanese. The raid was had no strategic value and did little damage, but after weeks of unbroken Japanese success the American public needed a morale booster. General Doolittle survived the war and lived to be 97, dying in 1993.

1955- Scientist Albert Einstein died in New Jersey at 75. As he fell in and out of a coma his last words were in German. Since no one around his bed could understand German we don't know what his last words were.

1958- At the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of a crowd of 78,672, the Dodgers play their first game in the City of Angels defeating the new San Francisco Giants, 6-5.

1980- The white minority dominated African nation of Rhodesia transitioned into the black majority nation named Zimbabwe and elected rebel leader Robert Mugabe as it’s first and so far only president.

2000- Earlier that spring some of the worlds biggest internet companies –e-Bay, Amazon and CNN were paralyzed by a virus spreading hacker. Today the FBI made an arrest. The culprit was a Canadian High School student who went by the domain name of Mafia Boy. He received probation and a promise to only use his computer for school work for two years.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: When talking of George Washington and the Founding Fathers, you¹ll hear mention of a Cinncinatus. What does that mean? Someone from Cincinatti?

Answer: In Livy’s History of Rome, Cinncinatus was a Roman General who was called out his retirement to save the Roman state from calamity. He assumed Dictatorial Powers, defeated all their enemies, settled all their problems. Then he walked way from power and went back to his farm with no regrets. The image of Cinncinatus at the Plough became the symbol of disinterested service to country. When George Washington left office after two terms as President, the European monarchs like George III and Catherine the Great were amazed. They said the Great Generalissimo of the Americas had given up power like some legendary Roman. Cinncinatus, to be exact.