Pat's cousin in Georgia has just sent us a gift Santa Claus head toilet seat cover! Amazing. This merits a full retaliatory strike.
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Question: What are the Halcyon Days?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: An Australian astronomer has estimated that Jesus may have been born in June. So, was Jesus really born on Christmas..?
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History for 12/13/2008
Birthdays: Heinrich Heine, Mary Todd Lincoln, Dick Van Dyke is 83, Mike Mosley, Darryl Zanuck Jr., George Schulz, Tim Conway, Ted Nugent, Christopher Plummer is 79, Steve Buscemi is 51, Jamie Fox is 41, Lynn Holly Johnson, Wendy Malick

Today is the Feast of Saint Lucy, who was ordered by the Romans to be violated in a brothel, set on fire, stabbed to death, and to stop men saying how beautiful her eyes were she ripped them out and handed them over on a plate. But they miraculously grew back. So Lucy is the patron saint of opticians.



863- Duke Baldwin Iron Arm married Lady Judith du Kales.

1264- THE CREATION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS- Victorious rebel English Earl Simon de Monfort calls for a meeting in Westminster of a Parliament of all nobles, clergy and - common folk of the realm. It's probably the first time since the ancient Roman republic anybody had asked the people their opinion about anything. King Henry III and Prince Edward Longshanks couldn't argue because Simon had them locked up in the Tower. To make final sure Earl Simon ordered bishops to pronounce the most fearful oaths of excommunication and anathema on the head of anyone who dared to undo his creation. So even after Longshanks escaped and had Earl Simon chopped into mincemeat, the House of Commons remained.

1642- Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in the Pacific discovered a big island near Australia and named it for the Dutch province of Zeeland, so New Zealand. He also found another island and called it Van Deimans Land, but it was later named in his honor as Tasmania.

1862-BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG- Union General Ambrose Burnside (who created the men’s fashion-"sideburns") made his men frontal attack uphill an impregnable Confederate position of concentrated fire that :" a chicken couldn't live through."
The massed regiments of bluecoats were mowed down wave after wave in one of the worst disasters in U.S. Army history. The New York Fighting 69th, the all Irish brigade, fell dead in even rows shielding their eyes from the bullets as though they were rain. They shouted “Faugh au Ballagh !” Gaelic for “Clear the Way!” They left 53% of their men dead on the field. In all 13,000 Yankees died to a mere handful of rebels. One rebel general, sickened by the stupidity of it all, said: "This ain't war, it's just plain murder." After the defeat, Burnside rode past some of his men, a kissass major tried shouting :"Three cheers for the General!" and was met with stony silence. When the Yankees defeated the rebels at Gettysburg a year later they shouted "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!' in revenge at the retreating greybacks.

1872- Wild Bill Hickok was fired as sheriff of Abilene Kansas because he was more violent and out of control than most of the men he arrested.

1895- Gustav Mahlers 2nd Symphony “Resurrection” premiered.

1928- Leopold Damrosch conducted the premiere of George Gershwin's -"An American in Paris."

1936- At the urging of New Yorker editor Harold Ross to find a better line of work, actor Dave Chasen opened Chasen's restaurant in Beverly Hills, which catered to Hollywood stars for 60 years. It is the restaurant where Leopold Stokowski was introduced to Walt Disney and as a result they conceived "Fantasia". Humphrey Bogart, John Huston and Lauren Bacall met upstairs to discuss the Blacklist of 1947. Elizabeth Taylor ordered Chasen’s chili flown out to Rome so she could eat it on the set of Cleopatra. The restaurant closed in 1995 because the Chasen family wanted to cash in on the real estate. Today it’s a supermarket.

1939- Battle of the River Platte- The German pocket battleship Graff Spee battled with several British cruisers near the Argentine coastline. The German then put into the neutral port of Montevideo for repairs. One interesting detail about ships firing heavy guns at each other is firing officers don't aim at each other's ships but they aim at where the ship will be one minute from now, because that's the time the shell takes to travel 13 plus miles to hit it. If you ever want to avoid battleship fire one trick is to steer into the splashes of the misses, because while the enemy is adjusting it's aim you're moving into the old coordinates. Don’t say I never give you advice.

1940- Fleischer Popeye cartoon "Eugene the Jeep" .The Thimble Theater character would give its name to the new army General Purpose vehicle- G.P. or "Jeep".



1951- One of the legendary Hollywood producers was Walter Wanger- starting in 1921 his films included The Sheik, Stagecoach, Queen Christina, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Silk Stockings and Cleopatra. His wife was beautiful starlet Joan Bennett, but at this time she had taken a lover. On this day Wanger surprised Hollywood by pulling out a gun and shooting his wife's lover in the nuts right in the MCA studio parking lot. In true Hollywood fashion Wanger got off, sentenced to just a few months in an honor ranchero compound and was soon back to work. Contributors to pay his legal fees included the Jack Warner, Walt Disney and Sam Goldwyn. The boyfriend, Jennings Lang, recovered and later became an executive producer of comedies like House Calls. After all, who needs balls to be a producer?

1961- Jimmy Dean’s folk ballad Big Bad John went to #1 of the country charts. Later Dean had his own TV variety show starring early Muppet star Rolf the Dog, and started Jimmy Dean’s Pure Pork Sausage Company.

1969- Arlo Guthrie’s hit song Alice’s Restaurant released.

1996- In Terry Gilliams’ sci-fi apocalypse epic the Plague of the 12 Monkeys was unleashed today, a virus that killed 4/5ths of the world’s population and drove the remainder underground.

2002-Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace. The Primate of Boston, the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States. Cardinal Law had spent years covering for priests who molested children given them by trusting parents. He even protected a priest who’s name was openly registered in the Man-Boy Love Society. Law was the highest ranking Catholic to step down from popular pressure. Modern republics regard power as coming from the people. Historically the Catholic Church regards itself above the complaints of the flock, that they are answerable to God alone. So this was pretty unusual. In the past, the usual way to get rid of Cardinals was to drag them out of their castles and chop their heads off like Archbishop Laud of England in 1641.

2003-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was pulled out of a hiding hole and captured by U.S. forces near his hometown of Tikrit.
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Yesterday’s question: An Australian astronomer has estimated that Jesus may have been born in June. So, was Jesus really born on Christmas..?

Answer: No scholar is sure when Jesus was really born. He was born in obscurity, and his public life mission didn’t really begin until he was age 30. The there are not enough surviving records from the Roman Empire about the census ordered by Augustus and administered by the Provincial Governor Quirinus. But scholars doubt they would have held it in the winter months. The census story is only mentioned in one of the four Gospels.
The Australian astronomer claimed his calculations on tracing a potential candidate for the Star of Bethlehem, said an alignment of Jupiter and Venus made a daytime star in 2BC. But that means Jesus was born in June. Chinese astronomers in 6BC recorded a supernova that occurred in July. So everyone is guessing.
The December solstice was the biggest festival in the Roman calendar, the feast of Saturnalia, when people gave each other gift-wrapped presents and decorated their houses with lights ( oil lamps). Dec 24th was the Feast of Mithras, the other big religion in the Empire. Christians began celebrating Jesus birth in place of the Saturnalia since AD300. the Vatican named Dec 25th the Birth Festival of Jesus or Christ-Mass in 885 AD.