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August 15, 2008 friday.
August 15th, 2008

Quiz: What is mean when you speak in a pejorative sense?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Which is the current president of Georgia? Josef Djugashvili, Mikeil Shakaashvili. John Shalikashvili.
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History for 8/15/2008
Birthdays: Napoleon Bonaparte, Leon Theremin- inventor of that weird electronic musical instrument that is featured in all those 50s flying saucer movies, Samuel Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, King Frederick Wilhelm Ist of Prussia 1685, Lawrence of Arabia, Ethel Barrymore, Huntz Hall, Bill Baird, Julia Child, Edna Ferber, Sir Robert Bolt, Rose-Marie, Linda Ellerbee, Gene Upshaw, Oscar Peterson, Shimon Peres, Mike “Mannix” Connors is 83, Congressperson Maxine Waters, Anthony Andrews, Nicholas Roeg, Ben Afleck is 36, Debra Messing is 40

1057-Scottish king Macbeth is defeated and killed by Malcolm III Canmore at the battle of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. But did Burnham Wood move to Dunsinane?

1097- DEUS VOLT ! GOD WILLS IT! The First Crusade was announced at Clermont by Pope Urban VII. Christian Europe decided that the Holy places in Jerusalem should not be in Moslem hands. In his sermon the Pope addressed the assembled knights in their native French: "Christian warriors who continually seek pretexts for war and rape Rejoice! If you must have Blood, then bathe in the Blood of the Infidels, and Christ will count you among his Warriors! Soldiers of Hell, become Soldiers of the Living God!” They sewed small strips of red cloth in a cross on their left shoulders and began with a massacre of any Jews they could find. History is at a loss to find any comparable social phenomenon. It took Islam a generation to understand that this was a Christian Jihad (Holy war) declared on them. The Moslem Emirs were just as feudally divided as the European warlords until they united under the brilliant Kurd Sultan Sa’Allah-al-Dhin or Salladin.

1100s-1400s- PAX DEI- The Medieval Church tried to limit the carnage of knights fighting and feuding by declaring a Truce of God during Lent and this, the beginning of the harvest season. It sometimes worked, but slaying infidels was still okay year round. See above.

1620 - Mayflower sets sail from Southampton with 102 Pilgrims.

1794- The first U.S. coin minted in the United States, a silver dollar. Minting of colonial and state currencies had been going on in America for years, Continental Eagles and such. The word Dollar is derived from Thaler from JacobsThaler meaning from the Gift of St. Jacob , a Czech mountain valley where their were rich silver deposits.

1885- Sir Richard Burton completed his translation from medieval Persian of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. There had been earlier attempts like a French edition in 1809, but Burton’s edition introduced the west to Aladdin and his magic lamp, Sinbad the sailor and Sherherazahde.

1911- Proctor & Gamble introduced Crisco shortening.

1935- Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Pictures merge to become Twentieth Century Fox.

1935- Humorist writer Will Rogers and his pilot Wiley Post are killed when their small plane crashed in Barrow, Alaska.

1939 - In 1st night game at Comiskey Park, Sox beat Browns 5-2.

1947-"The Stroke of Midnight" India and Pakistan, the Jewel in the Crown, get their freedom from Britain after 300 years. The end of the Raj.

1948- Syngmun Rhee elected first president of the Republic of South Korea. The Russians saw this as a direct challenge to their hold over the North and quickly choose communist Kim Dae Jung as the leader of North Korea. What began as a postwar temporary partition of the Korean peninsula was made complete.

1958 - Buddy Holly wed Maria Santiago.

1960- The Congo ( Brazzaville) declared independence from France. It had been renamed Zaire for awhile but is back to the Republic of the Congo today.

1965- The Beatles play their largest U.S. concert yet, at New York's Shea Stadium.

1969-WOODSTOCK-Three Days of Peace and Music- The rock concert of the Century opened. The promoters, one of whom was heir to the Polident Denture Cream fortune, were hoping to host 50,000 people and launch a recording studio in the quiet New York farming town. What they got was 500,000 hippies and the social phenomenon that defined the Age. At one point the more conservative elements of the community got a court order to block the land to be used, but farmer Max Yasgur offered his cow farm for the site.
Up till then in the tumultuous 1960’s any gathering of young people that big meant violence and riot, and at one point New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller threatened to send in the National Guard. But the magic prevailed and there was no violence outside of 200 bad acid trips and one heroin overdose.
Richie Havens was the first act to play, he did six sets and kept stalling because the crowd was so immense they had to bring in the other bands by helicopter. When he ran out of songs to sing Havens started riffing any thing he could think of the top of his head. This way Havens created his most famous tune “Freedom” with added in spirituals like “Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child”. Drugs, sex and rock & roll flowed freely. At one point someone put LSD into the drinking water of the rescue helicopter pilot. He spent two hours flying in circles over the festival, thinking he was traveling over one huge expanse of people. One hippy had spent the entire night high on LSD. As he started to come down, the first thing he recognized in the dawns early light was Sha-Na-Na on stage doing 50’s Doo-Wop. He thought he had been sent to Rock Hell.

1971- President Nixon announced a sweeping economic package including taking the U.S. dollar off the Gold Standard. The world's most stable currency being so transformed created the wildly free-flowing currency market we have today. When warned of this consequence President Nixon is supposed to have replied: "I don't give a sh*t about the Lire." Today the dollar is a step up from cow chips against most world currencies.

1971- Bahrain declared independence from Britain.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which is the current president of Georgia? Josef Djugashvili, Mikeil Shakaashvili. John Shalikashvili.

Answer: Now come on, not everyone at once- it’s Mikeil Shakaashvili, of course! General John Shalikashvili was US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 1993-1997. Josef Djugashvili is better known by his alias- Josef Stalin.


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