Question: What was the first nation to adopt the metric system?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the difference between a recession and a depression?
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History for 12/10/2008
Birthdays: English King Edward VII “Bertie”, Emile Dickinson, Chet Huntley, Morton Gould, Victor McLaughlin, Dan Blocker,Mako, Tommy Kirk, Fionnula Flanagan, Kenneth Branaugh is 48, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey, Michael Clarke Duncan is 51, Gov Rod Blogo- Blogojavich

1513- Former Florentine politician Niccolo Machiavelli was living in a small town after being thrown out of power and even twisted on a torture rack. Still missing his life in power he declared today to a friend he was writing a book on political theory to present to the Medici duke of Florence. He hoped by doing so he’d be called back to office. It didn’t work but his book THE PRINCE became one of the great works of political philosophy, the handbook of unscrupulous politicians everywhere.

1520- Protestant reformer Martin Luther shows the Pope what he thinks of his Bull of Excommunication on him by burning it in public. Pope Leo’s command Exsurge Domine went up in smoke along with the Canons of Roman Church Law to the cheers of students.

1577- The Union of Brussels- The 17 provinces of the Netherlands and Belgium formalize their union. This is why Holland is also known as the United Provinces.

1607- In Virginia Captain John Smith left the Jamestown camp with two men to find food. They were captured by the Indians who killed the other men and dragged Smith before chief Powhatan. He ordered Smith’s head to be placed on a flat stone and bashed in with a war club. But Powhatan’s favorite daughter Pocahontas threw herself over Smith and protected him. Smith could speak no Algonquin and the Indians no English and neither could sing any Broadway tunes. Was this an execution prevented or a ritual of admission into the tribe? Powhatan was known to extend his rule through dynastic alliances with other tribal leaders, and he was well aware of the white strangers, wiping out a Spanish attempt to land on his beach in 1600. Maybe this was his way of wanting to bring the white mans powers to his side. No one knows for sure. Smith didn’t write of this incident until back in England 14 years later.



1864- Sherman’s army reaches the sea at the Georgia coast near Savannah.

1869- Wyoming Territory grants women the vote, the nation follows 58 years later (California in 1911).

1898- Spain and the U.S. make peace ending the Spanish American War. Secretary of State John Hay who was once Abe Lincoln’s secretary called it “A Splendid Little War.” Critics Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce called it the Yanko-Spanko War. The United States becomes a global power with colonies in Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, and the Philippines. The Philippinos, who were fighting for independence under their leaders like Aquinaldo, suddenly discover they were now American property. The U.S. declared they fought for their freedom from Spain yet never officially recognized their national independence movements. The Philippines gained its full independence in 1946 and the last American base Subic Bay wasn’t removed until the 1990s.

1901- The First Nobel Prize is given. Alfred Nobel made millions by inventing dynamite and nitro-glycerine. But as much as his discoveries were used for constructive purposes they also made it possible for armies to blow each other up much more efficiently. He felt guilty and after an accident with the stuff killed his own brother he resolved to create something positive from his fortune. Hence the Nobel Prize. Nobel died on Dec 10th 1896 and the awards are given each year on the anniversary. President Teddy Roosevelt won the first Peace Prize in 1910 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. In 1950 Dr. Ralph Bunche was the first African-American to receive a Nobel.

1905- O. Henry’s short story “ A gift from the Magi” first published.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt in a ceremony in the White House.

1938- To make the film "Gone With the Wind" Producer David Selznick and director Victor Fleming shot the massive "Burning of Atlanta" in Culver City, California. The sequence was storyboarded and designed by William Cameron-Menzies, who designed the sets for Intolerance for D.W. Griffith. Selznick used the opportunity to clean the studios backlot storage, destroying sets from King Kong, Little Lord Fauntelroy and Last of the Mohicans in the inferno. They shot the scenes with three Rhett Butler stand ins.

1941- The New York Metropolitan Opera announced that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack they were suspending any further performances of Madame Butterfly. Other opera companies also stopped doing Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

1948- The United Nations adopts Article XIX, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The committee spending months drafting the resolution was chaired by the American delegate Eleanor Roosevelt . By this act she debuted not just as a former first lady and widow of FDR but as a stateswoman and diplomat in her own right.

1966- The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” hit #1 in pop charts.

1967- R&B star Otis Redding and four of his band the Bar Kays were killed in a small plane crash near Madison Wisconsin. Redding had recorded his hit “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” just three days earlier.

1974- Powerful Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Congressman Wilbur Mills resigned in disgrace after revelations emerged about his being busted by the DC police for getting drunk with a stripper named Fanne Fox and taking her for a 2:00 AM nude dip in the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial. Fanne was christened the “Tidal Basin Bombshell.”

1994- The Unabomber sent an explosive device that killed Thomas J. Mosser, an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam who handled the public relations for Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

1995- Worst recorded snowstorm in Buffalo, NY history. 37.9 inches in just 24 hours!
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Yesterday’s Question: The global economic turmoil has been called a Recession. Sunday a former Sect’y of the Treasury first used the word Depression. What is the difference between a recession and a depression?

Answer: Economists still argue over the exact difference between the two. I recall a Nobel winning economist during the 1980s recession saying there was no difference. Many now say a Recession is after two quarters of stagnant growth, a Depression is a complete collapse of the economy. But it is too early to say. This current economic crisis only began on Sept 15th, the Great Depression began in 1929 ( 1926 in UK) and hit rock bottom in 1932 and lasted a decade. US unemployment now is at 6%, the Depression 25%, 50% in many major cities. Prices dropped 60% in the 1930s, some Deflation is beginning already. So stay tuned.