Question: In the Buster Crabbe adventure serial Flash Gordon (1936), the music played over and over as background was a piece of classical music. What was it?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Did Franklin Roosevelt know in advance about the Pearl Harbor Attack and let it happen?
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History for 12/7/2008
Birthdays: Willa Cather, Larry Bird, Piero Mascagni, Madame Tussaud-1761, Tom Waits, Johnny Bench, Louis Prima, Ted Knight –real name Wladsyslaw Konopka, Victor Kiam II, Noam Chomsky, Ellen Burstyn-real name Edna Mae Gilhooley, Eli Wallach is 93, Harry Chapin, Clarence Nash the voice of Donald Duck, Jeffrey Wright is 43

43 B.C.- Marcus Tullius Cicero executed. The great orator/writer was a declared enemy of Julius Caesar, yet Caesar preferred to ignore him. After Caesar’ murder at the Ides of March, Marc Anthony & Augustus were not so forgiving, They drew up lists of all those to be aced, and the old philosopher's name was at the top. Cicero tried to flee by sea but got so seasick, he went back to his estate. The death squad caught him trying to flee again, but when he saw it was no use, he calmly bared his neck to the soldiers. Gaius Pompilius Linus, the centurion who slew him, had once been successfully defended by Cicero in the law courts. Linus brought Cicero’s head and hands to Mark Anthony who happily nailed them to the speakers rostrum in the Forum. Many years later When Augustus was an old man he caught his grandson reading Cicero’s writings. Augustus paused to read some verses. He sighed:” A learned man, and a patriot.”

185AD- Emperor LoYang wrote of seeing a bright star that was probably a supernova.

1671- In London two scientists- Nehemiah Grew and Italian Marcello Malpighi presented their findings on plants that established the Science of Botany. That plants derive nutrients from the soil and grow from increased exposure to light and water and not because they are urged to grow by a “Vegetable Soul”. That they cannot grow in a vacuum. That stamens, pistils and pollen are sexual organs and the veins of a leaf function much like the veins and arteries of humans. Malpighi later went on to human anatomy and discovered the capillaries and the human taste buds.

1775- A lieutenants’ commission in the new U.S. Navy was granted to a young Scotsman named Paul Jones, who sometimes called himself John Paul and we know as John Paul Jones. When Abigail Adams met him she was surprised at his small stature :” I could wrap him in wool and carry him in my pocket.” She said. He had been a prospering merchant captain until he stabbed a rowdy shipmate in Tobago and fled his ship. He wandered about looking for employment for 20 months until the American Revolution gave him a new identity. No one is sure why he adopted the surname Jones. Despite John Paul Jones’ successes against the British Navy, the closed clique of New England Yankee privateers never quite trusted little Scotsman with the high voice, bad temper and big ego.

1787- Delaware became the first state to ratify the constitution, which is why it calls itself “the First State of the Union” on its license plates.

1815- MARSHAL NEY SHOT. Michel Ney was Napoleon's right hand at Waterloo. Called Le Rougeaud -the Redhead, because his hair color was inherited from his father, a Scot’s follower of Bonny Prince Charlie. After the final defeat the restored French royalty needed a scapegoat to blame for the embarrassing ease with which the Corsican upstart took back France. So Michel Ney was court- martialed by his peers and put up against the wall in the Luxembourg Gardens. The fiery warrior offered no repentance and even gave the "Ready, Aim, -Fire!" order himself.

Recently some theorists claim the execution was a sham arranged by Wellington and that Ney lived on. Their reasons were first the public was kept away from the execution site and the soldiers of the firing squad were handpicked from Ney's old veterans. When shot he fell forward instead of backwards after being hit by 12 -68 caliber musket balls, and no coup d' grace pistol shot to the brain was administered, instead the body was immediately bundled up into a carriage and driven away. That night the officer in charge of the firing squad was arrested by the Royalist government.
Twenty-two years later, in 1837, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, a French immigrant schoolteacher named Michael Stewart died of old age in South Carolina. On his deathbed he told his confessor " I swear before God that I am Michel Ney, Marshal of France." When embalming the body his family saw he was covered with scars from old musket and saber wounds.

1842- The New York Philharmonic, the oldest symphony orchestra in the U.S., gave its first concert, performing works of Beethoven under the baton of Ureli Corelli Hill.

1862- Battle of Prairie Grove- Brutal Civil War battle in Missouri where the chief recollection was how wounded soldiers stuck between the armies crawled into haystacks for shelter. Cannon shots ignited the hay and the 200 men roasted to death. Then the smell of barbecued flesh brought out local hogs who feasted on the human legs and entrails while the combatants watched in horror. It was one of the few battles that future outlaws Frank James and Cole Younger were present for. Frank later wrote:” All those men standing around for hours trying to kill each other. I wouldn’t have wasted so much time…”

1869- The Davis County Savings Bank in Gallatin, Missouri was robbed by some Clay County boys who began to get a reputation – Jesse James and Frank James. The bank manager Capt. Sheely was shot dead by another gang member Ed Anderson. Anderson had mistook him for a union officer who had killed his brother Bloody Bill Anderson during the Civil War. While attempting to escape Anderson,s horse bucked and dragged him 40 feet by a stirrup until he got loose.

1872- The Los Angeles Library Association formed.

1916- David Lloyd George became Prime Minister of Great Britain. The little Welshman with Ferret-black eyes was considered one of England’s great statesmen despite helping to create some of the biggest problems of our time- The 1923 Anglo-Irish treaty that created Northern Ireland, The Versailles Treaty that spawned World War Two and the Balfour Declaration that helped create Israel with no fit solution for the dispossessed Arabs. In is old age Lloyd George visited Hitler in Bertchesgarden and found him “A most fine fellow.”

1919- “Blind Husbands” premiered, the first film by Erich Von Stroheim. Originally a Viennese hat salesman, Stroheim cultivated his Germanic aristocratic image on the silver screen. The premiere issue of the New Yorker in 1923 glibly noted how “Mr Stroheim has grown a very stylish “Von” in the Southern California Sun”.

1925- Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller set a world record in the 150 meter freestyle, one minute 25 and 2/5th seconds. He later went to Hollywood and was the star of the Tarzan movies.

1934- Aviator Wiley Post discovered the upper atmosphere air current called the Jet Stream.

1941-THE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR- At dawn on a quiet Sunday morning, 360 Japanese planes surprise attack and sink most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, causing 4,000 casualties. Simultaneous attacks are made on British and Dutch military posts in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. The White House butler recalled a general telling President Franklin Roosevelt-“ It’s Pearl! They got the whole g*ddamn navy!”
Japan had begun her previous foreign wars with surprise attacks: against China in 1891 and Russia in 1905. It had its philosophical roots in the Emai school of Samurai, that of dealing a death stroke with one decisive blow. Americans were enraged by the "Day of Infamy" sneak attack, the US government was bracing for some kind of attack since July when FDR embargoed Japan’s steel and oil imports, but they couldn’t be sure where. Most experts expected a strike at Manila. Lt. William Higgins was awakened by the radar post on Diamond Head reporting hundreds of unknown planes headed towards them. His famous reply:" Well...don't worry about it..."
The plan was masterminded by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Harvard class of 1926. He was anti-war and knew a war with America was a long shot. When he heard that the surprise was complete but delivered before the war declaration in Washington he said:" All I fear we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with terrible resolve." The fact that Japan had sent a special envoy to Washington named Kurusu to negotiate the crisis even while preparing this attack was even more maddening to Americans. Young Daniel Inouye was playing ball in his Honolulu yard when he saw the Rising Sun insignia on the Zeros flying overhead."You Dirty Japs!" he cried, realizing a moment later the silliness of his remark, being Nisei Japanese himself. He went on to become a US Senator.

1942- An RAF bomber pilot named Lumsden filed a report about seeing a UFO following his plane in the night skies over the English Channel. British pilots nicknamed the unexplained lights Foo Fighters, after a phrase in the Smokey Stover comic strip.

1945- The microwave oven patented.

1964- Height of student uprising at Berkeley College in California. Students won more liberalized curriculum and open teaching and created the first major student protest of the tumultuous 1960's and earned Berkeley the national reputation of the the nation's most radicalized school. The Oakland police were later nicknamed the Blue Meanies after the villains in the Beatles cartoon Yellow Submarine.

1974- The disco song “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas hit #1 in the pop charts.

1983- The first execution by lethal injection. The man’s name was Charles Brooks, a murderer in Texas. Interestingly enough, the barbiturate used was Sodium Pentothal, the “truth serum” when administered in small dosage. Comedian George Carlin asked;” When they give you a lethal injection, why do they swab your arm with alcohol first?”

1988- A huge earthquake in Armenia killed 100,000 and left 5 million homeless.

1995- The Galileo space probe reached an orbit around Jupiter.
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Yesterday’s Question: Did Franklin Roosevelt know in advance about the Pearl Harbor Attack and let it happen?

Answer: Revisionist historians, conspiracy buffs and NeoConservatives still mad about the social reforms of the New Deal, try to prove that FDR had knowledge of the assault and allowed it to happen, so there would be no argument from the isolationist elements about going to war to help Churchill.

FDR's cabinet had been expecting some kind of a Japanese attack since they imposed the oil and steel embargo last July. When the Japanese sank a US gunboat Panay in the Yangtze or the German U-Boat that sank the destroyer Ruben James, war came close. But I think they all expected the strike to be on US Asian facilities in Manila, Guam or Hong Kong, but they never expected such a huge strike all the way across the Pacific in Hawaii. And that it was done while Japan’s two top diplomats, Nomura and Kurusu, were in Washington to negotiate directly to lessen tensions.

CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow noted he had dinner at the White House the night of the attack “...if any of the cabinet members had foreknowledge of the attack, then that group of elderly men were giving a performance that would excite the admiration of the most skilled actor." He also describes Franklin Roosevelt's conversation with him: the President kept striking his fist on the table and raging about how American planes were destroyed "ON THE GROUND!" ( from my friend Nancy)

Finally, the next day FDR declared war on Japan, not Nazi Germany. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. several days later.