Question: What is the origin of the term- to be well-heeled?

Yesterdays Question Answered Below: What does it mean to be “long in tooth”?
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History for 12/5/2008
Birthdays: Pope Julius II, Martin Van Buren, Walt Disney , Fritz Lang, Eugene Debs, George Armstrong Custer, Little Richard Penniman, Strom Thurmond, Otto Preminger, Lin Piao, Calvin Trillin, Joan Didion, Jim Plunkett, Jose Carrerras, Margaret Cho is 41, Frankie Muniz is 23

1212-THE WONDER OF THE WORLD.- Fredrick II Hohenstaufen became Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation at 18. The son of Henry VI the Lion, Freddy was called "stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis” The Marvelous Transformer and Wonder of the World.

1484- Pope Innocent VIII raises the practice of Witchcraft from a minor sin to a major heresy. Included in the definition of witchcraft is any remaining vestiges of local animist customs, herbalism or treating illnesses with home grown medicines. He ordered the Holy Office of the Inquisition to look into all cases. From 1484 to 1750 maybe 200,000 people died in Europe and America. As late as 1784 a woman in Belgium was executed for bewitching a child.

1704-In Hamburg towards the end of the opera Cleopatre composer Georg Frederich Handel and soloist Johann Mattheson start bickering over who should bow and receive the audiences applause. As the curtain came down and the cheers rang out Handel and Mattheson started furiously wrestling over the harpsichord. They then rushed out into a snowy public square and fought with swords. The audience followed them and cheered on this unique encore. Neither was hurt in the end and they even made up over their next opera.

1766- London auction house Christies held it’s first auction.

1791-MOZART DIED- The 35 year old composer was slaving away on a commission for a Requiem Mass when he died of scarlet fever and kidney failure complicated by exhaustion and alcoholism ( and he didn't work in animation ) Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave and when his wife came to mourn him a few days later nobody could recall where he was buried. But the financial woes of his wife Constanze are exaggerated. Within a few years she was loaning money to relations. Constanze, the aunt of composer Carl Maria Von Weber and Mozart’s pupil Sussmeyer finished the Requiem.


The theories about Antonio Salieri poisoning him out of jealousy or the FreeMasons doing him in began only a few years later. Schiller wrote a play in 1817 called Mozart & Salieri where he has Salieri doing the dastardly deed. In 1827 one of Beethoven's pupils wrote the Maestro about going up to the sanitarium to visit the ancient composer: "Salieri is in one of his fits again, shouting “I killed Mozart! Mozart forgive me!”"

1791- First Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton presented his Report on Manufactures to Congress. This was considered a revolutionary document because here was this illegitimate snob from Martinique telling his half wild nation of farmers and trappers with dead raccoons on their heads that their future lay in developing heavy industry closely regulated by a strong centralized government. Thomas Jefferson among many others thought it was a big mistake, but modern scholars declare The Report on Manufactures as the true beginning of the US economy.

As for it's end...hmmmm.. what's in the News, today..?

1854- Aaron Allen of Boston patented the theater chair that folded up so you could exit.

1912- New York Hat directed by D.W. Griffith premiered. The first movie script written by Anita Loos, then 19. She became one of the finest Hollywood screenwriters ,who penned films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

1933- Prohibition is repealed in the U.S. Interestingly enough the final state to ratify the repeal amendment was Utah. My grandmother recalled a parade of beer trucks going down Broadway being cheered like Lindbergh's return. She jumped on the running board of one to hoist a stein with young congressman Fiorello Laguardia and Al Smith.

1941- Marshal Zhukov commenced the first Soviet counterattack since the Nazis invasion began in June. As the Red Army pushed them back from the outskirts of Moscow the Germans first came up against the new Soviet T-34 Stalin Tank, one of the most successful tanks of World War Two. German tankman Heinz Guderian said to a colleague” I have just seen a most amazing tank, and if the Russians are mass producing them we may lose the war!”

1941- Admiral Halsey moved his carrier fleet- USS Lexington & Enterprise out of Pearl Harbor to go on maneuvers. They would not be there for the Japanese attack on Pearl. This is why Admiral Yamamoto was disappointed with the battle’s final results.

1945- Flight 19, a routine training patrol of 5 Navy Avenger torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale at 2:00PM and flew into the Bermuda Triangle. Two hours later the commander radioed that his compass and backup compass had failed and his position was unknown. The 14 men and their planes were never seen again. In the next few months hundreds of planes and ships searched the waters for some signs of wreckage but nothing was ever found.

1951- Shoeless Joe Jackson died. The most powerful baseball batter of his age, he taught Babe Ruth how to hit. But he was implicated in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 and permanently banned from baseball. He worked in a hardware store near his rural Georgia home.

1952- The Abbott and Costello Television Show premiered. Where’s Hilary, Mr Fields and Stinky? “ Niagara Falls! Slooowwlly I turn! Step by Step! Step by Step!”

1953- Josef Stalin died. He was in a coma after a stroke but his doctors were too terrified to treat him. Before he died he was preparing a new purge aimed at doctors. Nikita Khruschev recalled those last days:” The secret police would knock on your door and drag you off in the dead of night. When you said goodbye to your family you didn’t know if it was to go to be shot or that Comrade Stalin just wanted someone to watch an old movie with him. You know, one does not do one’s best work under such conditions..”

1974- The Seattle Seahawks football team formed.

1974- The BBC aired the last Monty Python show.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to be “long in tooth”?

Answer: From my buddy Bob F: Horses' teeth grow constantly, to be worn down by chewing their feed. As the horse gets older and eats less, the wear diminishes and the teeth get longer. A horse's age can be determined by the length of its teeth. An old horse is often referred to as "long in the tooth." This was also a way of describing someone who was past their prime.


Horse traders were known to file down the teeth of older horses to get a better price. Much like setting back the odometer on a used car.