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May 22nd, 2008 thur
May 22nd, 2008

Pat's upcoming movie Kung Fu Panda has posted a hefty slice on U-Tube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MTxmJyvf1k&feature

It looks pretty good.

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Quiz: If God rested on the seventh day, which is Saturday, why is the Christian Sabbath day on Sunday?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Name the Three Musketeers.
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History for 5/22/2008
Birthdays: Sir Lawrence Olivier, Mary Cassatt, Richard Wagner, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, T. Bone Pickens, Judith Christ, Irene Pappas, Paul Winfield, Richard Benjamin, Susan Strassberg, Paul Winchell, Tommy John, Naomi Cambell

1455- Battle of St.Albans- First battle of the WAR OF THE ROSES. The conflict wasn't about differing views on horticulture but a dynastic struggle between two powerful branches of the royal family of England. It seems a hundred years earlier King Edward III had a lot of lusty sons. His two eldest and lustiest were Edward the Black Prince and John of Gaunt. Edward lusted after Joan the fair Maid of Kent and John lusted after the throne. The Black Prince should have become The Black king but he died young. Even then John couldn't be king because the rules said the throne went to the eldest Black Princeling, Richard II. So John of Gaunt had some lusty sons himself and they became the Lancaster branch of the family -after John's title as Earl of Lancaster- represented by the Red Rose; and The Black Prince's progeny were the York family represented by the White Rose. So they warred and conspired and murdered and had a lusty old time until they wiped each other out and were replaced by a third family, the Tudors.

1782- In a letter to one of his officers George Washington rejected the calls to declare him King of the United States. " It pains me to hear such ideas are circulating within the army. I regard such ideas with horror and condemn it severely. It seems pregnant with the greatest misfortunes that could ever befall our country."

1800- The US Congress disbanded the US Army as being unnecessary and expensive.

1843- Wagons Ho! The Great Emigration- One of the largest wagon trains ever formed set out from Independence Missouri to the new Oregon Territory. Thousands of settlers driving a thousand head of cattle set off along the Oregon Trail.

1854- The NEBRASKA COMPROMISE-One of many stop-gap legislative measures to try to stall the Civil War a few more years. In an attempt to keep the balance between slave states and free states entering the Union Whig Congressmen strike a deal where Kansas and Nebraska could decide for themselves whether they wanted to enter the union as free or slave states. Nobody was pleased with this deal. Guerrilla war broke out in Kansas and the Whig party disintegrated from dissent. The dissident Whig politicians like Freemont and Lincoln soon formed a new political party. At first called the Anti-Nebraska Men, they later became the Black-Republicans or simply Republicans.

1856- San Francisco City supervisor James Casey was hanged by San Francisco City Vigilance Committee for murder. Casey had sought out the editor of the Evening Bulletin James King and shot him down on the street for insulting him in print. The vigilantes of the Barbary Coast then formed and went into action.

1868- The Reno Gang rob an Indiana express train and get $96,000.

1915-The San Fernando Valley voted to become part of Los Angeles.

1920- THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT- Henry Ford was a brilliant inventor with strange opinions. He overpaid assembly line workers, gave equal raises and promotions to black and Latino workers, but he hated Jews. He had purchased the newspaper the Dearborn Independent in 1918 and ran editorials in it with no advertising, totally his own opinions. This day the Independents Anti-Semitic campaign began with the headline -"The International Jew: The World’s Problem." 119 leading prominent Christian leaders including President Woodrow Wilson signed a petition demanding the slanderous publications be stopped, but Ford just ignored them. In 1934 when American journalist for CBS, William Shirer, interviewed Chancellor Adolf Hitler in Berlin, he noticed Hitler kept translations of the Dearborn Independent on his desk.

1922-The U.S. Supreme Court rules Baseball is not a monopoly but a sport. This is the Achilles heel issue everyone jumps on when arguments about baseball owners use of salary fixes and other group actions reach crescendo.

1925- First day of shooting on Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis.

1954- Bob Dylan’s Bar Mitzvah. Maseltov!

1955-The Golden Age of Radio ends when after 22 years the Jack Benny show came to an end. Once the top broadcast show in the nation, Benny went on to television.

1957- A U.S. B-36 bomber accidentally drops a Hydrogen Bomb on Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bombardier, Lt. Robert Carp lost his balance in the bomb bay area and grabbed for a handle that released the Nuke. He ran back to the cockpit yelling: "I didn't touch anything! I didn't touch anything!" The bomb blew up a mesa and killed a cow but miraculously the thermonuclear triggering mechanism didn't kick in. This was a classified secret until the late 1980's.

1964- In a speech at Ann Arbor President Lyndon Johnson called for the Great Society. Johnson is remembered as the Vietnam War president but many of his Great Society social programs like Medicare and Medicaid are still in effect today.

1966- Bill Cosby became the first African-American to win an Emmy Award for starring in a television series- I-Spy.The show was produced by Sheldon Leonard, who used to write for Rocky & Bullwinkle.

1967- T.V. children's show Mr. Roger's Neighborhood debuted.

1969- PEOPLE’S PARK- The escalating tension between anti-war counter-culture and "the Establishment" picked an unusual item to fight over. A group of activists in Berkeley took over a 2 acre plot of land scheduled for development by the college. They planted grass and flowers and called it a "people’s park". Conservative Governor Ronald Reagan wasn’t going to tolerate any more tomfoolery and after officers and a chain link fence failed to keep out the squatters he sent in the National Guard. This day the confrontation between the bayonet wielding troops and hippies broke out into violence. One man was killed and another was blinded by riot gas. The college decided to yield the land for the park, and it stays so today.

1985- Top Disney animation director Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman who directed the Jungle Book among other films, died in a car crash following lunch at the Smoke House in Burbank.

2001- Movie Mogul Ted Turners divorce from actress Jane Fonda became official.

2002-Ayatollahs outlaw Barbie dolls from Iran. They denounce Barbie as "agents of subversive Zionist Western propaganda."

2004- The heir to the Spanish throne Prince Felipe of Asturias married a TV news anchorwoman. The first commoner in the Royal family.

2004- Manmohar Singh was sworn in as Prime Minister of India. The first Sikh ever to hold this office. His Congress party had been led Sonya Ghandi, but she declined the job. Let me see, if my husband P.M Rajiv Ghandi was blown up by a suicide bomber, and my mother-in-law Indira was machined gunned by her own body guards, maybe this job isn't a good career move for me?
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YESTERDAY’s QUESTION: Name the Three Musketeers.

Answer: The Three Musketeers

Athos- The brainy, aristocratic one
Porthos- The physical (and womanizer) one;
Aramis- The religious (and later, bishop) one;
And the fourth, the hero and the common friend to each of them : D'Artagnan.

( thanks to me old pal Hani for the answer!)


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