TomSito.com - TOM SITO'S BLOG

May 14th, 2008 weds

Wed, 14 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: What is a raccoon called in Algonquin?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is a sofa called in Spanish?
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History for 5/14/2008
Birthdays: Thomas Gainsborough, George Lucas , Thomas Wedgewood, Francesca Annis, David Byrne, Jack Bruce, Bobby Darin, Tim Roth, Robert Zemeckis, Kate Blanchett

1667- At this time, the sailors of the English Navy were only paid once a month. During the Dutch Wars, an incident happened when the loyal sailors were told after several months of hard fighting, that their fun loving King Charles II didn't have any money left in his treasury to pay them. The tars were so angry, scores of them deserted to the enemy. They guided Dutch Admiral De Ruyter's fleet right up the Thames where they could burn the docks of Greenwich, within sight of King Charles' palace.

1787- Shortly before returning to America the Marquis de Lafayette wrote his friend George Washington about his backing the famous quack doctor Anton Mesmer, for whom Mesmerism is known. "Before leaving I shall obtain permission to tell Dr Mesmer’s great secrets on Animal Magnetism to you, for it is a great philosophical discovery."

1787- George Washington arrives in Philadelphia to chair the great Convention to write the U.S. Constitution. Once there, he discovered that so only three states had even bothered to show up, and that included host Pennsylvania. There was a fear that if enough states could not be made to cooperate, a federal constitution imposed by a minority would break up the United States. To Washington’s relief by months end all the states except Rhode Island sent a delegation.

1796- English scientist Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccination. This disease, which ravaged Europe for decades, was cured by the Chinese in the 600's B.C. Chinese doctors would ground up particles from a smallpox scab and blow it up your nose through a glass tube. After the pox decimated Native American tribes in the 1500's, by the 1770’s they did the same vaccination using a porcupine quill under the fingernail.
Small pox was the great killer of the age, Queen Elizabeth, George Washington and Robespierre almost died of the pox. The fashion of wigs and makeup became popular because it covered the facial scars and hair loss from the disease. Robespierre’s eyes were permanently weakened by the pox and he had to wear black painted spectacles (the first Ray-Bans).

1800- The Sixth US Congress voted to adjourn for the last time in Philadelphia and meet again in November in the new capitol city, already being called Washington City.

1800- Napoleon’s army began crossing the Alps into Italy via the Great Saint Bernard Pass.

1804- Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis to find the Pacific. President Jefferson had told his aide Meriwether Lewis that there was a large river headed west from the Mississippi called the Missouri. Perhaps the large river that emptied in to the Pacific in Oregon called the Columbia was the same river? So you could go by water from New Orleans to Seattle? And if there was a little neck of land between the two rivers they were to measure the distance. Later 1200 miles into the high Rockies eating candles to stay alive they determined that the distance was greater than previously thought. Pres. Jefferson had a fossil bone from a prehistoric sloth in his office. He told Lewis if he found a live one out there to send it back. *Known as Paramylodon jeffersoni, remains of this animals have been found while digging the world's largest reservoir near Hemet, CA, and one specimen is known from the La Brea Tar Pits on Wilshire Blvd in downtown L.A.

1842 - 1st edition of London Illustrated News.

1878- Vaseline petroleum jelly patented.

1942- Disney composer Frank Churchill, who had written "Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" and "Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho" shot himself at the piano. Another story had him shooting himself in an onion field in Valencia that would one day be the site of Cal Arts.

1944- In the comic strip Dick Tracy, the longtime Tracy nemesis the gangster Flattop was killed.

1948- THE STATE OF ISRAEL DECLARED- Since the Jewish Diaspora begun by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 162 AD Jews have wished for their own country. In1897 European Jews called Zionists began building a homeland by encouraging mass immigration to the loosely governed Turkish province called Palestine. By World War Two there were two populations, Arab and Jewish Immigrants, both claiming the same territory. After years of sectarian fighting the British protectorate announced they would evacuate Palestine May 15th. The 5 surrounding Arab states announced they would invade if a Jewish State was declared- 45 million against barely one million. US ally King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia declared:" Even if we lose ten million to destroy the Jews, it will be a small sacrifice." The UN was considering a further three month delay to debate the problem when at 4:00PM Jewish Agency Premier David Ben Gurion walked into the crowd at the Tel Aviv Museum and declared the State of Israel. He did it at 4:00PM and the day before the mandate ran out, because it was Friday night, which is the Jewish Sabbath. During the Sabbath no Jews can sign anything or do any business, so he had to move it up.

1951 - Ernie Kovacs Show, TV Variety debut on NBC. Kovacs was a great pioneer in the video medium who loved creating surreal images and pantomime blackout skits.

1973- Skylab, Americas first attempt at a space station, blasted off into orbit. In 1979 the remains of the 77 ton satellite fell to earth.

1974- Tha Maalot Massacre-On the anniversary of Israeli Independence Palestinian terrorists of the Al Fatah faction entered Israel at night and shot up a school, killing 22 children. Whenever Yassir Arafat tried to be taken seriously as a partner for peace, Israel would bring up this incident.

1976- Keith Reilf of the rock group the Yardbirds, was electrocuted while playing his guitar in his bathtub.

1968 - Beatles announce formation of Apple Records.

1998 - Last episode of sitcom Seinfeld on NBC (commercial fees were $2M for 30 seconds) Elderly singer Frank Sinatra died shortly after watching it.
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Yersterday’s Quiz: What is a sofa called in Spanish?

Answer: - sofa.

Posted by:Tom

May 13th, 2008 tues

Tue, 13 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: What is a sofa called in Spanish?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Why are Marines called Leathernecks?
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History for 5/13/2008
Birthdays: Sir Arthur Sullivan, Cyrus McCormick, Stevie Wonder, George Braque, Daphne DuMaurier, Joe Louis, Richie Valens, Gil Evans, Beatrice Arthur, Peter Gabriel, Harvey Keitel, Dennis Rodman

In ancient Rome this was the Liberalia, Festival of the gods of the Grape- Liber and Liberia. As part of the fertility theme people waved little carved phalluses or wore them around their necks to parties. Putting a big carved phallus in your garden was a sure way to make your flowers bloom. Is Martha Stewart reading this? I gotta admit, it would have been difficult to watch epic movies like Quo Vadis, if Robert Taylor and Jean Simmons were trying to act with a large stone wiener standing over them.

1637-French Cardinal Richelieu threw a dinner where he introduced a novel invention. He had each place at the table set with a fork, a spoon and a table knife. Guests didn't have to whip out their own blade to cut their food.

1846-THE U.S. DECLARES WAR ON MEXICO- The U.S had claimed the border of it’s new state of Texas was the Rio Grande, Mexico said it was the Rio Nueces. When American General Zachary Taylor was ordered to march his army into the disputed area and was attacked, the United States declared War. America won the Rio Grande line as well as the new states of California, New Mexico and Arizona, basically half the landmass of Mexico. Just in case you thought political dissent began with Vietnam; Daniel Webster said this war was unworthy of America for it could not be disguised as other than a old world-style imperial land grab for the Pacific coast. Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln were anti-war congressman. Ulysses Grant said in his memoirs that the Civil War was God's punishment on the U.S. for attacking Mexico. Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his taxes and was fined, later writing his famous work On Civil Disobedience.

1910- James "Sugar Jim” Smith, the boss of the Essex County Democratic machine announced his candidate for the New Jersey governor’s race would be a tall, sour-puss Presbyterian professor named Woodrow Wilson, then President of Princeton University. Wilson had never run or held elective office and everyone thought they were out of their minds, until they heard him speak. Woodrow Wilson not only won the governorship but two years later became U.S. president.

1913- In Saint Petersburg Igor Sikorsky invented the first airplane toilet. Later he would move to the US and invent the helicopter. Without a toilet though..

1917- Three small children see the Virgin Mary in the town of Fatima in Portugal. All Catholics know about the story that the Madonna gave a letter to the Pope which was to be opened 50 years later which revealed secrets about the fate of mankind too horrible to say.

1950 - Diner's Club issued it’s first credit cards.

1956- Actor Montgomery Clift was disfigured in a car crash. He had to have his jaw wired until it could heal.

1957- THE MAIN BOUT- The McClellan Senate Committee was investigating organized crime inroads into the labor unions, but the "main bout" as it was then called was young prosecutor Robert Kennedy’s attempts to nail Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. This day RFK tried a sting on Hoffa, arresting him at the Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington with $21,000 in kickback money handed him by an FBI plant. Hoffa’s attorney portrayed the money as a misunderstood legal fee and when he noticed half the jury was black Jimmy Hoffa had boxing champ Joe Louis flown in so they could see them embracing. Hoffa was acquitted in this trial but eventually convicted ten years later. When Bobby Kennedy was assassinated Hoffa ordered the flag over his office run back up to full staff and spent the day celebrating. His son James Hoffa Jr is current teamster president.

1965 - Rolling Stones record "Satisfaction".

1966 - Rolling Stones release "Paint it Black".

1982- President Reagan says he's certain that our nuclear missiles could be recalled in case of an accidental firing .He didn't say how we'd catch them when they came back.

1981-Pope John Paul II shot and almost killed by Turkish-Terrorist Mehmed Ali Agca.
It’s never been proven conclusively whether the hit on the Polish Pope was organized by the Soviet KGB through the Bulgarian secret service, or that Agca was a lone nut. Another source said the in 2001 the Vatican revealed that a prediction of the assassination attempt on the Pope was part of the secret message given by the Virgin Mary to three small Portuguese children at Fatima in 1917.

1992- Police arrest the manager of Comic Book Heaven in Sarasota Florida on seven counts of "displaying material harmful to minors", i.e. comic books.
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Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Why are Marines called Leathernecks?

Answer: When the US Marine uniform was reformed from the old Revolutionary Army, they were given a stiff leather collar “ to keep the head erect in a proper military bearing.” Hence the sobriquet Leathernecks.

Posted by:Tom

May 12th, 2008 mon

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: Why are Marines called Leathernecks?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What is a Lonesome Jennie?
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History for 5/12/2008
Birthdays: Dolly Madison, Daniel Rossetti, Frank Stella, Florence Nightingale, Tom Snyder, George Carlin is 71, Wilfred Hyde-White, Emilio Estevez, Howard K. Smith, Ron Zeigler, Farley Mowatt, Ving Rhames, Bruce Boxleitner, Katherine Hepburn, Gabriel Byrne, Yogi Berra is 80

1775- During the American Revolution a New York mob carrying clubs and torches broke onto the campus of King’s College determined to lynch it’s president Miles Cooper, who was an outspoken loyalist. The mob was stopped on the steps of Cooper’s home by student Alexander Hamilton. While Cooper watched from the second story window, Hamilton begged the mob not to kill his teacher. Cooper was hard of hearing and he thought the troublemaker Hamilton was the instigator. Miles Cooper yelled down:” DON’T LISTEN TO HIM! HE’S A BLOCKHEAD!” Despite this, Miles Cooper got away unharmed. Kings College name was changed to Columbia University.

1789- TAMANY HALL BORN- The first and oldest of U.S. political machines (clubs , pacts, lobbies, whatever ) Founded in Philadelphia and moved to New York it was named for a Chief Tamamend, the Delaware chief who welcomed William Penn. The Hall on 14 th street was nicknamed the Wigwam and the leaders called Sachems, the Algonquin word for chief. Throughout the 1800's it was famous for buying and selling political offices, bribery and corruption. Boss Tweed and Slippery Dick Connolly, the first American to embezzle one million dollars, were Tamany Sachems. Tamany were the first to realize there was political power in mobilizing the mass of working class immigrants against the snooty New York power elite. Tamany Hall men would stand on docks welcoming immigrants with a voting card and a silver dollar to vote for their candidates. Another trick was for Tamany men to grow a full beard and vote, then go home, shave to a goatee, vote again, shave to a mustache, vote again, then clean shave and vote once more.
Tamany Hall was still influential into modern times. Bill O'Dwyer, a Tamany sachem was mayor of New York in the late 1940’s and in 1963 future Mayor Ed Koch became a congressman by unseating the last Tammany sachem Carmen DeSapio..

1796- Napoleon's French Republican Army occupied the city of Venice and destroyed the last traces of the independent Venetian Republic 'La Serenissima" The Most Surene Republic. The Last Doge Daniele Manin was forced to abdicate and his Byzantine crown and trappings of office were burned, along with his famous gilded barge, the 'Boucintoro'. Venice, an independent city-state since 976AD, was going to be part of Italy whether she liked it or not!

1846- The Donner Party wagon train left Independence Missouri to start it’s trek out west to California. They tried a new short cut proposed by a charlatan named Lansford Hastings to get to California. They crossing the burning alkaline deserts of Utah and were attacked by Paiute Indians. By Halloween heavy snow storms stranded the Donners in the High Sierra Mountains where the starving survivors resorted to cannibalism.

1864-BATTLE OF SPOTSYLVANIA- After Lee whips Grant in the Wilderness, instead of retreating Grant wheels around and attacks again. This time winning a draw. The fighting was dreadful, reports of trees so thick you couldn't put your arms around cut down by bullets, and men hit with so many 68 cal.musket balls at one time that their bodies literally would fall apart. At the fight in the center of the line called The Angle Yankees and Confederates crowded in so tightly they pressed against one another like a massive rugby game. Soldiers fought hand to hand with pistol butts, flag staffs, clubs, fists, some even took their empty bayonet muskets and hurled them into the crowd like a spear. Nothing failed to cause injury. One casualty was union general "Uncle John" Sedgewick, shot by rebel snipers. His last words were:" Aw go on men! Them rebs couldn't hit an elephant at this dis......." His great, great granddaughter Edie Sedgwick hung out with Andy Warhol.

1915- THE BRYCE COMISSION- An English commission to study reports of German atrocities that was really a propaganda machine aimed at getting the United States into the Great War. America had the problem that if she chose the allied side in World War One, several million immigrant citizens of German, Hungarian and Austrian descent were sympathetic to the Kaiser. Add to them millions of English-hating Irish, Jewish Americans who wanted the openly Anti-Semitic Russian Empire beaten and many average Americans who felt the main reason their forefathers crossed the ocean was to get away from the kind of trouble that occurred back in Europe. So you can see it was hard to get everyone up for intervention. The American yellow press printed all the British accounts without ever questioning their accuracy- they horrified the average reader with hair-raising stories of German troops raping and killing Belgian women, chopping the hands off of children and crucifying Canadian prisoners with bayonets through their hands and feet. Even though some atrocities stories were verified, like the needless burning of the medieval Library of Louvain -The German term was Shreiklichkeit- Rule by Fear- today it is acknowledged that most of these accounts were dressed up to get us to Hate the Hun! Later the U.S. Office of War Information took over feeding these stories to the press. It was headed by a psychiatrist Edmund Bernays, a psychoanalyst nephew of Sigmund Freud who after the war went into advertising.

1936- John Maynard Keynes most famous work "the General Theory of Money, Interest and Work" was published. Today if a politician advocates government intervention in the business market he is called a "Keynesian".Keynes once said: ' My only regret in life is that I did not drink more champagne."

1938- “The Adventures of Robin Hood” starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia DeHaviland, Claude Rains and Eugene Paulette premiered. The swashbuckling film then cost a whopping $2 million dollars to make! The light brown horse Maid Marion rode in the movie was later bought by singing cowboy Roy Rogers and renamed Trigger.

1948- In Palestine the secret key cabinet meeting of Jewish leaders over whether to declare independence before the British evacuated on May 15th. The UN and even the US was asking for a UN sponsored three month cooling off period but Jewish leaders like David Ben Gurion felt any more delay would be fatal. The decided that even though they would be attacked by five Arab nations simultaneously they would declare independence on May 14th. The last problem was what to call the new country? After Zion, Zionia and Herzelania was suggested, they decided to go with the name of a Kibbutz using an ancient Biblical name- Eretz-Israel or simply Israel.

1950- The comic strip 'Marvin' debuted.

1962- First day shooting on Frederigo Fellini’s film 8 1/2. When screened for American Producer Joe Levine, Levine took the cigar from his mouth and growled-” Frederigo, what da hell did that movie mean? ” Fellini shrugged –“I dunno”.

1971 - Rolling Stone Mick Jagger weds Bianca Macias at St Tropez Town Hall.
They later divorced and Bianca became a famous habitue’ of trendy discos and fashion magazines.

1971- Tor Johnson died of a heart attack at age 68. Swedish wrestler turned actor Tor’s preferred role was the bald eyeless zombie in classics like Plan Nine from Outer Space and Bride of the Monster.

Happy Birthday to meee...what? Oh, I'm dead? Oh...never mind....

1977- A small Westchester radio station WENW hired a thin, gawky, college grad as a DJ- Howard Stern. US radio would never be the same.

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Yesterday’s Question: What is a Lonesome Jennie?

Answer: In the middle of the night, it is the feint whistle of a far off freight train.

Posted by:Tom

May 11th, 2008 sun.- ARISE, WORKING ARTISTS!

Sun, 11 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

courtesy Andybudd.com
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Occasionally in American history, Government tries to enact dumbass laws, and we, as a responsible electorate, have to kick their butts over it. The Dredd Scott Decision of 1858, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1881, Prohibition 1919 and now this proposed Orphaned Work law.

The problem is explained by Mark Simon in his piece in AWN.com, and with their kind permission, I quote from him:

An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission.

Currently, you don't have to register your artwork to own the copyright. You own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. Right now, registration allows you to sue for damages, in addition to fair value.

What makes me so MAD about this new legislation is that it legalizes THEFT! The only people who benefit from this are those who want to make use of our creative works without paying for them and large companies who will run the new private copyright registries.

These registries are companies that you would be forced to pay in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work.

It is currently against international law to coerce people to register their work for copyright because there are so many inherent problems with it. But because big business can push through laws in the United States, our country is about to break with the rest of the world, again, and take your rights away.

With the tens of millions of photos and pieces of artwork created each year, the bounty for forcing everyone to pay a registration fee would be enormous. We lose our rights and our creations, and someone else makes money at our expense.

This includes every sketch, painting, photo, sculpture, drawing, video, song and every other type of creative endeavor. All of it is at risk!

If the Orphan Works legislation passes, you and I and all creatives will lose virtually all the rights to not only our future work but to everything we've created over the past 34 years, unless we register it with the new, untested and privately run (by the friends and cronies of the U.S. government) registries. Even then, there is no guarantee that someone wishing to steal your personal creations won't successfully call your work an orphan work, and then legally use it for free.

In short, if Congress passes this law, YOU WILL LOSE THE RIGHT TO MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR OWN CREATIONS!

Why is this allowed to happen? APATHY and MONEY.

Artists have apathy and corporations have money.

For the complete article, check-http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3605

I agree. As artists, we prefer to think we are better than all this squalid money and politics, so we can't be bothered. But the truth is, when we don't bother, people do things like this to cheat us. Mozart and Beethoven didn't die rich. Vermeer and Rembrandt had their things auctioned off to raise money. It's not just all about talent. We have to remain vigilant, and defend our rights as artists!

Artistas!No Pasaran!

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The Society of Illustrators, Photographers Guild, Graphic Artists Guild, The Illustrators Partnership,even the prestigious NATIONAL CARTOONISTS SOCIETY, founded by Charles Schulz and Mort Walker among others, is taking the unusual step of urging you to write Congress in opposition to the pending Orphan Works Act of 2008. If enacted, this radical legislation will undermine key elements of your copyright protection. The House and Senate have different versions of the bill, and there are likely to be some modifications, but nothing under serious consideration makes this legislation remotely acceptable.

To take action, simply click this link ( http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/ ) and select one of the form letters. We recommend the letter titled “For Visual Artists – Any Image Can Be Infringed”. All you’ll need to do is add your contact information at the bottom of the page and press “Send Message”. It’s as easy as it is important.

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Question: What is a Lonesome Jennie?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: When designing the character Speed Racer, Japanese artist Tatsuo Yoshida was inspired by an American. Who?
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History for 5/11/2008
Birthdays: Salvador Dali', Chang and Eng Bunker-the original Siamese Twins-1811, Irving Berlin, King Oliver, Martha Graham, Dr Richard Fenyman, Mort Sahl, Baron Munchausen, Jean Jerome, Phil Silvers, Foster Brooks, Denver Pyle, Henry Morgenthau, Doug McClure, Randy Quaid, Natasha Richardson, Rev Louis Farrakhan

1780- A RUDE SHOCK TO THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA.- That was how it was described by a Tory minister back in London, when the British Army captured the last major American seaport- Charleston, South Carolina. Colonial General Lincoln and 2500 regulars lay down their arms, it is the largest surrender of American troops in the Revolutionary War. At one time or another during the Revolution all of the largest US cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston were under British occupation. The capture of Charleston also wiped out what little was left of the U.S. Navy. John Paul Jones was sitting on a beach in New Hampshire waiting for a new ship to be built. It was the French fleet, not the American, that won the Revolution at sea. Up till then the British strategy had been to wait out the bankrupt Yankees and concentrate on fighting the French and Spaniards in the Caribbean. George Washington recognized this strategy was working since Congress was broke and the unpaid Yankee Army on the verge of mutiny. But the victory at Charleston encouraged London to deviate from their plan and commit new armies to conquer America from the South. That decision led to the great British defeat at Yorktown.

1792- Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River in the Oregon territory.

1812- A merchant named Bellingham who's business was ruined by the Napoleonic wars, walked into the lobby of the House of Commons, and shot Prime Minister Sir Spencer Percival. He was the only British Prime Minister ever assassinated.

1864-JEB STUART FELL- Confederate commander of cavalry Jeb Stuart was a Beau-Sabeur who always rode into the thickest of a fight. This day one soldier shouted:” General, you must love bullets!” Stuart replied:” I don’t love bullets, but I can’t hide from them. I got a feeling I’m not going to survive this war.” Then he rode into battle with Sheridan’s cavalry at Yellow Tavern six miles north of Richmond. A dismounted Yankee marksman spotted the familiar gray horseman with the black plumed hat and cape. As he rode by he emptied his carbine into him. Gutshot, Stuart still managed to ride a mile to the rear before being taken insensible from his horse. He died shortly afterwards. He was 31. Jeb Stuart loved partying and kept around him a colorful crowd that included Sweeny the banjo player, accompanied by Stuart’s manservant Bob on bones and a German aristocrat dragoon named Major Heros Von Borcke, who traveled from Prussia to fight for Dixie. Stuart called him "My dear Von". After his death Von Borcke returned to Germany where he flew the rebel Stars & Bars over his castle in Geisenbrugge in Thuringia until his own death in 1895.

1878-Young anarchist Erik Hymdel tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm Ist. People today fear Al Qaeda but in the "Gilded Age" 1870's to 1920's it was the Anarchist movement- the stereotypical men in broad hats and long black coats with smoldering round bombs. They believed that society itself was the problem and if it could be broken down only then would everyone be truly free. In the times mentioned they assassinated an American President -McKinley, the Tsar of Russia, the Kings of Italy and Portugal, The President of France, The Empress of Austria, took shots at Edward the Prince of Wales and dynamited countless buildings like Wall Street Banks and the Los Angeles Times. When they were executed they usually shouted "Long Live Anarchy!" at the end. Composer Richard Wagner flirted with the movement and once wrote the anarchist philosopher Bakhunin" I work for the same goal as you, namely, a World in Flames."

1945-After the Nazi Germany surrendered, the Nazi governor of occupied Norway, Josef Treboven, committed suicide by sitting on a stick of dynamite. When Wile E, Coyote does it, its funny, but Norwegian Nazis? Very messy.

1956 - Pinky Lee Show last airs on NBC-TV

1972 -On the Dick Cavett talk show Beatle and peace activist John Lennon said his phone had been tapped by FBI. It turns out it was, but at the time we all thought he was just paranoid from too many drugs.

1981- The musical play CATS opened in London.

1981- Bob Marley died of brain cancer at age 36. Jamaican Marley and his group the Whalers made Reggae mainstream in pop music around the world. Ja –Mahn!

1992 - Carlos Herrera, chef, bartender and inventor of the Margarita, died at age 90

1992- Elizabeth McDonald, inventor of the detergent cleanser Spic & Span, died at 98.

1997- Deep Blue, a computer developed at IBM, defeated top world chess champion Gennady Kasparov.
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Yesterday’s Question: When designing the character Speed Racer, Japanese artist Tatsuo Yoshida was inspired by an American. Who?

Answer: Yoshida based his design on Elvis Presley in the film Viva Las Vegas.

Posted by:Tom

May 10th 2008 sat.

Sat, 10 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: When designing the character Speed Racer, Japanese artist Tatsuo Yoshida was inspired by an American. Who?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who were the parents of Robin the Boy Wonder?
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History for 5/10/2008
Birthdays: Fred Astaire, Sir Arthur Lipton (inventor of the teabag), Nancy Walker, John Wilkes Booth (assassin of Lincoln) Mark David Chapman (assassin of John Lennon), David O. Selznick, Ariel Durant, Jim Abrahams, Donovan, Homer Simpson,Bono is 48

1748- English slave trader John Newton’s ship was caught in a violent Mid Atlantic storm and was about to go under. When Newton prayed to God he would reform his life if he made it through this gale, the storm broke. Newton not only stopped his slave trading ways but he wrote a hymn, Amazing Grace. "Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, to Save a Wretch Like Me! I was lost, but now I’m found, etc."

1775- FT. TICONDEROGA- Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen surprise the great fortress in the dead of night and capture the cannons Washington needed to drive the British out of Boston. 20 years earlier the British took huge losses taking that same fort from the French. All the British commander lost this time was his trousers, he was captured in his nightclothes. As Allen and Arnold woke him he scowled: "By who's authority do you do this?" Allen retorted: " In the name of Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"

1796- THE BATTLE OF LODI- The Austrian Army in Italy attempted to slow Napoleons pursuit of them by blocking a bridge with 14 cannon and daring the French to cross. This is where the beginning of Napoleons legend among his men starts to form. He whips up the confidence of his men to the point where they enthusiastically rush across the bridge and overrun the cannon. Even though Napoleon is the army’s commander he is out in front sharing the danger from shot and shell sighting his cannon like a corporal. This is when men start to call him "The Little Corporal". He later told a friend’ They haven’t seen anything yet." Another older general said:" You know, that little bastard scares me."

1869- THE GOLDEN SPIKE- At Promontory Utah the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific met, finally connecting the entire U.S. continent by rail. Before this when you wanted to go from New York to San Francisco you had to take a boat to Havana, then Nicaragua, take a mule train through jungle then get a third ship up the Pacific coast to California. The millionaire directors of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific came to Utah for the ceremony. The racing rail gangs had actually passed each other and had to correct a detour of 250 miles. When the rich men were called upon to swing the large sledgehammers to drive in the golden spike both missed and hit the ground -one had a hangover. A workman had to actually accomplish the deed. The link completed an electric circuit to send telegraph news of the event simultaneously to New York and San Francisco. They celebrated by the synchronized firing of cannon east over the Atlantic and west out over the Pacific, symbolically telling the world to watch out! That America was now a continental power that has got its act together.

1869- CREDIT MOBILIER SCANDAL- The stock company that handled the transcontinental railroad's budgets, Credit Mobilier, billed the government $175 million dollars for the job when it actually only cost $86 million. When the figures were disputed gov't officials were given bribes of Credit Mobilier stock to keep quiet. When the scandal finally broke in 1872 many of Republican Pres. Grant's top officials were implicated. When Vice President Schuyler Colfax was asked about a deposit slip for $10,000 marked the same day as a Credit Mobilier payroll slip made out for the same amount, he remarked it was a political donation from a benefactor whose name he couldn't remember who died shortly after anyway. He said the check fell out of his morning newspaper at breakfast.

1893- The U.S. government declares the Tomato officially a vegetable and not a fruit.

1908- The First Mother's Day celebrated, it became a national holiday in 1914. The holiday was inspiration of a lady named Anna Jarvis, who spent the rest of her life trying to keep it from being commercially exploited. She died broke and surrounded by mothers day cards sent from well wishers.

1928- General Electric starts up WG4 Schenectady, the first US T.V. Station.

1933- Nazis Leader Josef Goebbels holds the first mass book-burning in Berlin. Goebbels said: " We consign everything unGerman to the flames." 20,000 works by Thomas Mann, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Freud and Einstein are burned.

1940- British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned. Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister to deal with the war crisis. "I have nothing to offer except Blood, Sweat and Tears." No, he was not offering to share his old rock and roll albums, he invented the phrase.

1941- THE STRANGE FLIGHT OF RUDOLPH HESS. Rudolph Hess was Adolph Hitler’s trusted right hand and one of the top Nazis in the German Reich. This day at the height of Nazis power Hess commandeered a Messerschmidt fighter and flew alone to England. He was arrested and he claimed to have a secret mission to try and reach Churchill and negotiate peace. Hitler declared Hess had gone mad and allied leaders refused to meet with him. After the war Hess was sentenced to life in prison at Spandau. To eyewitnesses at the Nuremberg trial he did indeed appear deranged. Historians have always speculated what the secret message Hess was carrying from Hitler to Churchill. In 1991 on the 50th anniversary historians expected the secret files to at last be declassified, but the British government put them under a new top secret seal for another 100 years.

1963- On the advice of George Harrison and Little Richard, Decca Records signed a new teen band called the Rolling Stones to a recording contract.

1994- Nelson Mandela inaugurated as first black president of South Africa.

1994- Former children’s party clown and serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection. Police found 28 children buried around his house. His last words: "Kiss My Ass!"

1996- DEADLIEST DAY ON MOUNT EVEREST- One dozen mountain climbers with their veteran guides and Sherpas are caught on the summit by a hurricane-like blizzard. Pinned down by 100 mile an hour winds and a wind chill of one hundred degrees below zero. They soon run out of oxygen 29,800 feet above sea level. Eight die, two blindly walked off the South Escarpment and plunged 7,000 feet. Two had to have limbs amputated from frostbite. The groups leader Rob Hall called his base camp on his cellular phone who connected him with his pregnant wife in New Zealand so he could say goodbye before dying. The climbers were doctors, lawyers and executives who paid $65,000 apiece not counting airfare and Tibetan permits. Mount Everest would claim 11 more lives that spring and seven in 1997 yet a waiting list remains of hundreds of people wanting to climb to the top of the world.
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Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who were the parents of Robin the Boy Wonder?

Answer: They were an acrobat troupe, the Flying Graysons. After mother and father were both murdered by gangsters as a warning to their circus owner to pay protection money, orphaned son Dick Grayson moved in with Bruce Wayne, aka Batman.

Posted by:Tom

May 9th, 2008 friday- A Citizen of Hollywood

Fri, 09 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

We were shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Robert Nudelman. He was only 52 and died suddenly when visiting his elderly father in Tuscon.

Robert Nudelman in the green shirt on the far right facing the others.

Over the years I've spent a lot of my spare time working with a number of non-profit organizations to benefit the film and animation community. I feel it's important to give back to the community that has taken me in and counted me one of them. I noticed that in each non-profit organization, while most of us donate what little time we can, there always seems to be one or two individuals who work tirelessly with scant regard for their own interests. These are the foot soldiers, the boots on the ground. These people are always there when you arrive at an event, and can always be counted upon to be the last to turn out the light after sweeping up.

Robert Nudelman was such a person for the organization Hollywood Heritage. An archivist and historian, his passion was to stop or at least slow down the despoiling of Old Hollywood by developers. He was an integral part of Hollywood Heritage and the LA Conservancy, organizations dedicated to preserving what is left of the original buildings that Cecil B. Demille, Marlena Dietrich and William Powell would have recognized.

I got to know Robert well through HH meetings, parties at the Wattles Mansion, and when we did the Afternoon of Remembrance annual service for the Animation community. Robert was always the one clearing away chairs, setting up microphones, adjusting lights and later locking up. His knowledge of Hollywood history was encyclopedic. For many years he was involved with a project with actress Debbie Reynolds to catalog her huge collection of film memorabilia.

But more than that, Robert was an aggressive champion against encroaching development. He would regularly go downtown to attend longwinded sessions of the L.A. City Council,the Parks Commission, the LA Landmarks Commission and the City Planning Commission. Small wonder several testimonials today are coming from LA City Council Members like Eric Garcetti. He would come back with word of the organization filing suit to save one building, get landmark status for another. He would describe the step by step legal gyrations he witnessed in detail so intricate, he could have James Ellroy shouting "enough already!"

It pained him whenever we lost one, like when the original Brown Derby was demolished. I recall he was furious when Frank Lloyd Wrights' beautiful Bandshell for the Hollywood Bowl was bulldozed in the middle of the night. "Sure they say the new one will have better acoustics and you won't notice the difference" he scowled. " But the fact is, that is NOT the band shell Frank Lloyd Wright built, that Gershwin, Paderewski and Duke Ellington played in! Thats been destroyed forever" He vowed to never go back again. He was even unafraid to go up against the Kennedy Family when they supported the demolition of the Ambassador Hotel, where Senator Bobby Kennedy was shot, to be made into a new neighborhood high school.

That was Robert. Every structure was a battle won or lost. Robert once estimated Hollywood lost a third of it's old structures just in his lifetime. " Tourists who come from Germany or China aren't coming to look at another Starbucks or GAP!"

Robert Nudelman told me he once got to interview Hitler's filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl shortly before she died at age 101. He asked her about her infamous Hollywood tour in 1938, when the only filmmaker who didn't boycott her was Walt Disney. She told him that the reason Walt Disney wanted to meet her was not about politics, but that he was still annoyed that his film Snow White lost out to her Olympia at the Venice Film Festival. Walt wanted to see it, to know why.

He smiled his little sardonic smile when he described how Leni Reifenstahl autographed a glossy B/W photo to him: " To Robert Nudelman, My Favorite Jew."

Yet thanks to the tireless efforts of Robert and the people of Hollywood Heritage and the LA Conservancy, more of the public now takes seriously the precious antique nature of central Hollywood, and developers think twice before reaching for that bulldozer. A great international city should have not only modern skyscrapers, but a legacy. The idea of Hollywood is not owned by a few real estate developers, city officials, and fast food salesmen. Hollywood is an idea that belongs to the world. And it is our duty to keep it and preserve it for the world.

When the Kodak Center was built on Hollywood and Highland where the Academy Awards are now held, Robert and his friends were looking over their shoulders to make sure the developers kept their promise to restore Graumann's Chinese Theatre and courtyard to it's original 1927 beauty, getting rid of an ugly aluminium box office and marquee added in the 1950s. When the Disney Company bought the old El Capitan Theater, they first wanted to turn it into a 16 screen multiplex. But Robert and the Conservancy convinced them it would be better to go the other way and restore this old 1927 movie palace where Citizen Kane premiered and the first meetings of the Screen Actors Guild were held. Disney caught the restoration-bug and later restored Manhattan's New Amsterdam Theater,where the original Ziegfeld Follies were performed.

Robert, I can't believe you are gone. There were to be some conferences on the Golden Age Movie Moguls on Memorial Day at the Huntington, I fully expected to meet you there and compare notes on Richard Schickel and Neil Gabler.

Adieu, My Friend. You are now stardust, but your work remains- The restored El Capitan Theater, The Restored Graumann's Chinese, The Restored Pig & Whistle Restaurant, The Max Factor Building, the Cinerama Dome, The Restored Egyptian Theater, the landmarked 3400 Cahuenga aka the Hanna & Barbera Building. The Palladium Theater where Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey brought Swing to the West Coast. The Restored Hollywood and Vine. The restored Ravenswood Apartments where Mae West lived.

Johnny Grant may have been the honorary Mayor of Hollywood, but you were it's greatest citizen. Because of you, your unknown and unheralded efforts, People from around the world can still visit, admire and click their cameras at the stately old landmarks of Hollywood.

There is more about Robert on the Hollywood Heritage website on my links page, and here is a link to his LA Times obituary.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nudelman9-2008may09,0,6704234.story?track=rss
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Quiz: Who were the parents of Robin the Boy Wonder?

Yesterday’s Question: What does the name Mahdi mean?
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History for 5/9/2008
Birthdays: John Brown, James Barrie the creator of Peter Pan, Henry J. Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum, Glenda Jackson, Billy Joel, Candice Bergen, Mike Wallace is 90, Pancho Gonzales, James L. Brooks, Albert Finney is 72
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To the ancient Romans this was the Lemuria, the Festival of Death . Like the ancient Greek Anthesterion in February the Lemuria was a deal made with the Underworld that the dearly departed were allowed to visit the surface world and you should leave your door open and leave out food for them. This way they won't haunt you and you'll have good luck all year.
At sunset tomorrow the head of the house (Pater Familias) walks through the house hitting a little bronze gong, he throws a handful of black beans over his shoulder and chants 'With These Beans I Redeem Myself and My Family. O Shades of My Ancestors Depart ! Lemuria has Ended!'

1754- THE FIRST NEWSPAPER CARTOON- Ben Franklin in his Pennsylvania Gazette prints a drawing of a segmented snake with each piece named for a colony with the inscription: Join or Die. ( Okay, it's not Calvin and Hobbs but it's a start).

1785 - British inventor Joseph Bramah patents the beer-pump handle. So pull us a dram for a pint of pure.-i.e. I’d like a glass of Guinness Stout, please.

1887- Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show did it’s first performance in Europe. In London the English public thrilled to displays of trick riding, wild red Indians, cowboys and little Annie Oakley the trickshooter.

1927- Commander Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett fly over the North Pole in a Fokker monoplane called the Josephine Ford. He beats by two days famed Norwegian explorer Roald Ammundsen who flew over the Pole in a dirigible built by Mussolini. Remember Lindbergh hadn’t flown across the Atlantic yet and it was ten years before the Hindenberg disaster, so a dirigible was considered much safer than an aeroplane. Commander Byrd won the Medal of Honor and became a household name. A modern biography based on his diary now contends he really didn’t go over the Pole as he claimed but turned back 150 miles short. He was too drunk to tell anyway. Although a former World War One pilot by now he had grown terrified of flying.

1932 – London’s Piccadilly Circus first lit by electricity.

1935- The First Belch heard on nationwide radio. Melvin Purvis (the FBI man who killed John Dillinger) was doing an ad for Fleischmann’s Yeast when he committed the offense,dubbed “The Burp Heard Round the World”.

1937- ACTOR’S SHOWDOWN WITH L.B.MAYER- In a dramatic confrontation the heads of the Screen Actor’s Guild Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone go to MGM boss Louis B. Mayer’s beach house during a Sunday garden party. While IATSE-Capone mob gangster Willie Bioff stood by to give Mayer moral support, Montgomery told Mayer he had a 96% strike vote from the actors, so if Mayer didn’t recognize SAG as the sole bargaining agent for actors they would paralyze Hollywood monday morning!
Mayer considered, then gave in. Bioff got from the actors a deal that the IA would back off if the actors would withdraw their support from a rival union to IATSE’s organizing the behind the scene’s technical artists. That night 5600 actors and friends celebrated at Hollywood Legion Stadium. Next morning 200 waited in line to get their SAG cards including Garbo and Jean Harlow.

1937- Burne Hogarth began drawing the Tarzan comic strip. Hal Foster had been in contract negotiations with the syndicate over money and the right to his originals. He had created Prince Valiant as a bargaining chip when the syndicate called his bluff by giving the Tarzan job to Hogarth. Foster went on to greater glory with Valiant.

1955- HAPPY BIRTHDAY KERMIT THE FROG! Washington D.C. station puts on a young Univ of Maryland grad named Jim Henson as filler before the TODAY Show. He antics with his green frog called Kermit, fashioned from fabric from one of his mothers old green coats. The Muppets are born.

1960- Dr. Gregory Pincus introduced the Birth Control Pill Enovid-10, aka The Pill.

1961- John F. Kennedy's newly appointed head of the FCC, Newton Minow, did his first major address to a luncheon of top television executives. In his speech he blasted them for TV’s mindless content and violence and called television: " A Vast Wasteland."
What makes it historic is it's the first time anybody had noticed just how lousy TV is and how badly we are all addicted to it. In the show Gilligan’s Island, the boat they were on was nicknamed the Minnow for Newton Minow.

1970- THE MORATORIUM DAY- Largest of the nationwide youth protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam and Cambodia. President Nixon was obsessed by the protests. He had a bunker command post built under the White House where video monitors observed the “long haired peaceniks” outside. Retired CIA director Bill Gates confessed in his memoirs that as a young operative he took the day off to go protest as well as did a lot of other CIA agents. In Chicago young student and future comic John Belushi was dragged off by friends after being struck in the chest with a fired tear gas shell.

1995-Happy Birthday Ebola! The Center of Disease Control published findings on a new deadly strain of virus appearing near Kinshasha Zaire and called it the Ebola Virus.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The largest independent militia in Iraq today is the Shiite force called the Mahdi Army. In 1881 British Gen. Gordon fought a Sudanese leader called the Mahdi. What does the name Mahdi mean?

Answer: In Sunni and Shiite Moslem theology the 12 Imam is supposed to be the Mahdi, the Expected one, The Ultimate Savior of Mankind as in the Hebrew Mossiach, or Christ, Messiah.

Posted by:Tom

May 8th, 2008 thurs.

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Congratulations to fellow animator Seth McFarlane, he of Family Guy and American Dad, for making a $100 Million dollar deal with Fox. As one creative to another, I salute any one of us who can start with a pencil and end up making $100 Million bucks!

I feel like the Warner Bros fish who puts a gun to his temple and says" Now, I've seen everything!" BLAM!

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Quiz: The largest independent militia in Iraq today is the Shiite force called the Mahdi Army. In 1885, British Gen. Gordon fought a Sundanese leader called the Mahdi. What does the name Mahdi mean?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Why does the term quarantine mean isolating people with a contagious disease? If someone has Typhus, you give them 25 cents?
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History for 5/8/2008
Birthdays: Harry Truman, Roberto Rossellini, Leopold Bakhunin, Louis Gottschalk, Oscar Hammerstein, Ted Sorenson, Sonny Liston, Toni Tennille, Ricky Nelson, Peter Benchley, Thomas Pinchon, David Attenborough, Keith Jarrett, Alex Van Halen, Melissa Gilbert is 43, French illustrator Jean Giraud aka Moebius is 69, Enrique Inglesias is 32, Don Rickles is 82

1587- The Roanoke Colony settlers leave England for Virginia (named by Sir Walter Raleigh for Queen Elizabeth, "the Virgin Queen"). When a supply ship reached their colony in 1590 the houses were intact but the colonists had all disappeared, leaving no remains or signs of violence, but only a cryptic message CROTOAN carved on a tree.

1824- Ludwig Von Beethoven performed his Ninth (Choral) Symphony and Missa Solemnis in concert for the first time. Even though he was stone deaf he was still in demand as a conductor. The orchestra trained themselves to ignore the Maestro's baton waving and follow the lead of the concert-master ( first violinist ). It was said when they finished and the audience was cheering poor Beethoven was still flapping his arms about and moaning the melody, unaware of the sound of his own voice.

1878- David Hughes invents the Microphone while trying to get over bronchitis.

1910-Mazeltov! Russian-Jewish immigrant glove salesman Schmuel Gelpfisch married Blanche Lasky, the daughter of vaudeville performer Jesse Lasky. Gelpfisch later changed his name to Goldfish, then Goldwyn. He and his father in law Jesse Lasky went into the new flicker business and started the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. They moved to Hollywood and in 1915 they merged with Paramount Pictures and Goldwyn merged into Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. Both became top Hollywood producers.

1933- When the Rockefellers were building their huge office complex, Rockefeller Center, in New York City they decided to get one of the greatest living Mexican painters, Diego Rivera, to design the murals for the interior of the atrium " Man at the Crossroads ". This despite the fact that Rivera was well known as a radical communist. Soon Nelson Rockefeller noticed Rivera was painting in the center of the mural a huge heroic portrait of Lenin stepping on John D. Rockefeller’s face! Over Rivera’s protests Rockefeller ordered the mural painted over and no record of its existence ever kept. But on the night before the painting was to be destroyed Swiss art student Lucienne Bloch slipped a camera into her shirt. While Frida Kahlo distracted the guards she took the only photos of the mural for posterity.

As a young art student I heard about the Lenin mural, but scoured Rockefeller Center in vain trying to find it.

1943-Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood"- Ooohh Wolfy !

1954-DIEN BIEN PHU- The Communist Viet Minh guerrillas decisively defeat the French in Indochina. The French strategy was to place a forward base in the heart of the guerrilla infested jungle to lure the Vietnamese into the open and defeat them. Instead they got a modern version of the Little Big Horn with the French Legionairies going down under endless waves of attacking Vietnamese. The guerrilla forces had carried large howitzers in small pieces up mountaintops and assembled them to rain shells down on the French.

1962-"A Funny thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum" opened on Broadway.

1962- Director Joe Mankiewicz shot the climactic spectacle scene of Cleopatra –Elizabeth Taylor, entering Rome through the Arch of Titus on a mobile sphinx surrounded by thousands of extras. The shot had been delayed six months after a stunt woman fell off an elephant and then the light in the Forum had not been right. When she appeared in the scene the thousands of Italian extras were supposed to shout "Hail Cleopatra!" but instead they shouted "Liz! Liz!"

1978-In court, postman David Berkowitz, confessed to being "Son-of-Sam" or the "44 caliber killer", the serial killer who terrorized New York City by shooting to death teenage couples at random and toying with letters to journalist Pete Hamill. Berkowitz said he received his orders to shoot people from his neighbor's dog "Sam". His reign of terror had the normally blase' city so upset that in a scene out of Fritz Lang’s "M", godfather John Gotti pledged the services of the Mafia to catch the maniac. Police finally caught Berkowitz when they found his Volkswagen Beetle illegally parked and noticed the infamous 44 handgun sticking out of a paper bag on the front seat. In Attica prison, Berkowitz made friends with Mark David Chapman, the murderer of John Lennon.

1991- President Bill Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, propositioned waitress Paula Jones at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock. With her legal bills financed by the Clinton-hating Neo-Cons, her case went as far as a Supreme Court. They decided to allow her to sue a President while in office. Clinton’s attorney didn’t help things with statements like :" Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park and who knows who you’ll turn up". She got a lot of publicity, an $850,000 settlement and a nude spread in Penthouse Magazine.

1996- South Africa adopted its first post-apartheid constitution.

1998- The impotence drug Viagra gains national prominence when retired senator and Presidential Candidate Bob Dole confessed on the Larry King talk show that he participated in the drugs test trials and the had "thoroughly enjoyed himself."
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why does the term quarantine mean isolating people with a contagious disease? If someone has Typhus, you give them 25 cents?

Answer: Quarantine comes from the French number 40- Quarante. Medieval justice decreed that when plague broke out in a town, the way to keep it from spreading was to draw a line around it and not let anyone in or out for 40 days. Others say it was invented in Venice- quaranti giorni, to isolate for 40 days a plague ship coming into harbor.

Posted by:Tom

May 06, 008 tues

Tue, 06 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: What was St. Paul’s real name?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does DC comics stand for?
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History for 5/6/2008
Birthdays: Maximillien Robespierre, Sigmund Freud, Rudolph Valentino, Orson Welles, Robert Peary, Willie Mays, Stewart Granger*, Bob Seger, Toots Schoor, Andriana Caselotti- the voice of Snow White,Tony Blair, Anne Parillaud- Nikita in La Femme Nikita, , George Clooney is 48,

*English actor Stewart Granger had to change his name to get into Hollywood movies. His real name was Jimmy Stewart.

1527- THE SACK OF ROME- Pope Clement VII "the Medici Fox" played the diplomatic tango with the world powers a bit too clumsily and Emperor Charles V of Spain, Holland and Germany launched an army at Rome. Charles gave his general Charles De Bourbon a hangman's noose dipped in gold, a "Golden Rope to Hang the Pope" The Vatican armies were led by the late Pope Julius's bastard son Maria Della Rovere who didn't like Clement so he kept his army out of the whole war. The city of Rome’s defense was organized by the artist Benevenuto Cellini. He managed to get off one shot before escaping out the back door and that shot killed Charles de Bourbon, so now a loot crazed mercenary army with no commander was let loose in the richest city in Europe. The troops pillaged for months, only the plague drove them out. Many of the troops were newly converted Protestants, so they looked forward to despoiling the Great Whore of Rome. They entered the orphanage of Santo Spirito and slaughtered all the patients, then ran into St. Peters and massacred all the harmless people who sought sanctuary there. They dressed a donkey in cardinals robes, proclaimed Martin Luther pope and made campfires in the Sistine chapel-which is why the fresco was darkened by smoke. Pope Clement escaped the golden rope, but the Vatican never regained the power it once had and popes actually started to concentrate on spiritual stuff!

1793- American artist Gilbert Stuart arrived back home after a stay in Europe dead broke. In the Age of Gainsborough, Romney and West, Stuart didn’t do so well. He left America because he was tired of being pestered to do copies of his famous portrait of George Washington, the one that is currently on our dollar bill.

1862- Henry David Thoreau dies at age 44. When his sister asked him :"Have you made your peace with God?" Thoreau replied:" I was unaware that we had ever quarreled."

1903-A bronze plaque was attached to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. On it was a poem The New Colossus by a young Jewish immigrant woman named Emma Lazarus. She was disturbed by the Anti-Semitic violence in Russia and wrote this inspired by the symbol of the Statue. “Give Me your Tired, Your Poor..” The French creators had intended the Statue of Liberty to symbolize political liberty but Lazarus’s poem had confirmed the Statue as“ The Mother of Exiles ”.

1915-Babe Ruth hits his first home run. He was a Boston Red Sox pitcher at the time. He will finish his career with 714 home runs, a record that held for decades until Hank Aaron.

1919- Seattle dockworkers go on strike refusing to load weapons destined to fight fellow workers in the Russian Revolution.

1919- Wizard of Oz creator L.Frank Baum died of heart disease at 62. He was trying at the time to buy real estate in Los Angeles for an Oz- theme amusement park.

1937-The Giant Zeppelin Graf HINDENBURG EXPLODED while landing in Lakehurst New Jersey. Despite the horrible film images 63 of the 90 passengers and crew escaped.
People to this day aren’t sure what happened, from an igniting from static electricity to an anti-nazi saboteur firing a flare gun into the hydrogen gas bags. The explosion originated behind the large swastika on the tail. The previous year a visit from a German luxury liner the S.S. Bremen caused a riot on the New York City docks as demonstrators fought police to tear the hated Nazi flag down. It was possible at that time to fly a dirigible with non flammable helium, but it was much more expensive than hydrogen and the worlds chief supplier of helium, the United States, was reluctant to sell Hitler that much of the strategic chemical. The American ground crew wanted to give a gift to the German captain who was dying of 3rd degree burns, so they presented him with an engraved cigarette lighter! (tacky) My grandparents told me they drove out to see the wreckage with a huge crowd. Even though it was still smoldering people were prying chunks off it for souvenirs.
Zeppelins were once supposed to be moored to the top of the Empire State Building but that never came about. By 1939 Goring ordered all remaining zeppelins and hangers scrapped for their valuable materials.

1937- THE FLEISCHER STRIKE-Cartoonists vote to strike Max Fleischers Studio after Max fires 13 animators for union activity and complaining about the 6 day work week.
The strike was settled several weeks later when parent company Paramount forced Max to concede. Strikers sang "We're Popeye the Union Man! We're Popeye the Union Man! We'll Fight to the Finish, Cause We Can't Live on Spinach ! We're Popeye...etc."

1937- The Society of Motion Picture Art Directors formed.

1941- A friend of Bob Hope who was now in the military suggested the comedian come and entertain troops on their army post. Hope takes the suggestion and it becomes his signature event. Into his eighties he entertained servicemen around the world in five wars.

1949-EDSAC invented in England. The first computer that could store data in it’s memory.

1954- Oxford student Roger Bannister ran the first Four Minute Mile. His time was 3:59.04.

1994- The Channel Tunnel or Chunnel opened between Folkestone England and Calais France.

2001- Variety reported that the Walt Disney Company in promoting their upcoming summer film Pearl Harbor, had canceled plans for Pearl Harbor Happy Meals at MacDonalds, as being in bad taste. Hmmm…do ya think..?

2003- A giant tornado destroyed the factory in Jackson, Tennessee that produced most of the world’s supply of Pringles Potato Chips.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does DC comics stand for?

Answer: Detective Comics. Founded in 1934 as National Allied Publications, they began publishing detective comics and action comics in 1936. Superman and Batman first came out as Action and Detective comics respectively.

Posted by:Tom

May 07th, 2008 weds.

Tue, 06 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: Why does the term quarantine mean isolating people with a contagious disease? If someone has Typhus, you give them 25 cents?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What was Saint Paul's real name?
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History for 5/7/2008
Birthday: Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilyich Tschaikowsky *, Gary Cooper**, Gabby Hayes, Robert Browning, Marcus Loew of Loews Theater chain, Darin McGavin, Edward Land (inventor of the Polaroid lens and camera), Bob Clampett, Amy Heckerling, Traci Lords

*It's ironic that Brahms and Tschaikowsky had the same birthday because they couldn't stand one other. Tschaikowsky referred in his diary "What an unharmonious German bastard!" The only way they'd stay at a party was if Anton Dvorak was there too.

**The great cowboy-actor from Montana who's original name was Frank James Cooper and his first ambition was to be a cartoonist for the Helena Times.

Happy Birthday, Coop! Being a movie star was fun, being rich and making love to lots of beautiful women, but I'm sure you would have rather drawn cartoons...

Happy Norwegian National Day. ’Huff Da!

Greek Festival of the Birth of Apollo.

401 B.C. SOCRATES DIED. Contrary to modern perception not everyone in ancient Greece loved philosophy. The Greeks had the same conflicts we have now between faith, tradition and rational thought and science. The scientist Anaxagoras was run out of town for saying that the Sun wasn’t Phoebus in a chariot but a burning rock floating in space. Euripides the playwright was also in trouble for doubting the Gods existence. But Socrates pushed the argument to its most extreme conclusion. The Athenian conservatives convicted Socrates of blasphemy and subverting the public morals. All hoped Socrates would just pay a fine and shut up, but Socrates unrepentant stance forced the law to go all the way to the death penalty. He was ordered to commit suicide by being given a cup of Hemlock. Actually it wasn’t a cup., the poison was held in a leaf of Romaine Lettuce, then called Lettuce of the Isle of Cos. His friend Crito said “You don’t deserve to die!” To which he replied: “You weep because you would rather I did deserve death? ”Socrates students like Plato and Xenophon continued on and became great writers on their own. My favorite story was that Socrates wife Xantippe was always yelling at him for wasting his time philosophizing when he should be working at his real job as a stone-cutter. After one loud tirade she dumped a pisspot's contents on his head. Socrates looked at his friends and replied:" After thunder one should expect some rain."

1863- Hard-fighting Confederate major general Earl 'Buck' Van Dorn was killed, but not in battle. A Tennessee doctor named J.G. Peters made an appointment with the general, went up behind him while he was at his desk and shot him in the back of the head. Peters then calmly got back into his carriage and rode to Union lines. Peters wasn't a Yankee assassin. He was expressing his disapproval of the fact that the handsome Van Dorn was having an affair with his wife.

1914-Paramount Pictures formed by a consortium led by Jesse Lasky and Cecil B. Demille.

1915- THE LUSITANIA- The Civilian oceanliner Luisitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. 1,198 drowned, including many Americans. The Kaiser later gave a medal to the U-boat Captain Walter Schweige. These acts outraged American opinion and led us into World War I, despite many pro-German immigrants. It was revealed later that the reason Lusitania sank so quickly, just 18 minutes - even Captain Schweige was surprised- was that it's cargo hold was full of explosives. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill fought the German U-boat blockade by covertly transporting purchased American weapons on hospital ships, civilian ocean liners and let some British freighters illegally fly the flags of neutral countries. The German government knew that the Lusitania had been classified by the British admiralty a military cruiser. The German government apologized to the American government and stopped the unrestricted U-boat campaign for two years, but the Lusitania shifted neutral U.S. public sympathy irrevocably to the Franco-English side. Winsor McCay later did the animated film about the incident.

1926- Gangster Al Capone killed 3 men with a baseball bat over dinner.

1937-Nobel Prize winning writer William Faulkner hired by MGM Studios, earning $500 a week. He celebrated by going on a two week long drinking binge. When MGM's Head of Writing Sam Marx had him tracked down to an Oakie migrant camp in the Imperial Valley, he was dragged off boozily whining: " Ah only wanna write for Mickey Mouse !!"

1941-Glen Miller records the "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" for RCA. the first gold record million seller.

1942- Battle of the Coral Sea-The U.S. Navy, suffering only defeats up 'til then, stops a Japanese task force. This is the first engagement in which the two fleets never saw each other, but fought long distance with carrier launched airplanes. Veterans commented that one of the sadder losses was when the aircraft carrier USS Lexington went down, she took the fleet's supply of 6 Bugs Bunny cartoons with her. War is Hell.

1945- V.E. Day. Grand Admiral Doenitz, the successor to Adolph Hitler, officially surrendered the Third Reich to the allies. They repeat the ceremony to the Russians next day. There was a fear after the fall of Berlin that the remaining Nazis would form a 'National Redoubt" in the Bavarian Alps or that a "werewolf army" of young fanatics would continue to fight on as guerrillas with poison gas. But that threat failed to materialize. Admiral Doenitz said after the signing:" I feel we shall not see our flag fly over a prosperous Germany in our lifetime." Well, not in your lifetime, Karl....

1945- In a top secret test at Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project scientists detonated, in the desert, a single blast 100,000 pounds of TNT. This was to measure the effect of a blast that big and provide a control to gauge the effectiveness of the Atomic Bomb. 100,000 pounds of TNT became known as one Kiloton. The Hiroshima A-Bomb was 20 kilotons, the largest thermonuclear device was 50 kilotons.

1966- “Monday Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas becomes #1 in the pop charts.

1996- Comedian Martin Lawrence went berserk and ran down a main intersection in Van Nuys Cal. raving and waving a pistol. When asked to explain himself, Lawrence blamed it on “Dehydration.”

1998- Apple Computers introduced the iMac.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was Saint Paul's real name?

Answer: He was originally a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus. He became known as Paul, the Greek version of his name, since that was the common second tongue of the ancient Middle East.

Posted by:Tom

May 5th, 2008 mon

Mon, 05 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: What does DC comics stand for?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: Who was the first Superhero?
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History for 05/05/08
Birthdays: Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Cochrane called Nellie Bly, Soren Kierkegard, Alice Faye, James Beard, Michael Palin, Pat Carroll, Patrick Ewing, John Rhys Davies, Lance Henriksen, Pat Carrol the original Ursula the Sea Witch is 81.

National Teacher's Day.

National Cartoonist's Day.

2349BC- According to Flemish Bishop Ussher, a XVI Century cleric who tried to calculate a date for every event in the Bible, today is the day Noah’s Ark struck dry ground on Mount Ararat.

840- Louis the German, a son of Charlemagne, died of fright after witnessing a total eclipse of the sun.

1504 -Sir Anton of Burgundy, known as The Great Bastard, dies at 82. We don’t know much about this knight but you gotta wonder how he got that nickname!

1800- Shortly after winning his Federalist parties nod to run for re-election President John Adams was told by his wife Abigail Adams” Tis a pity that politicians would sacrifice all that Good men hold dear and Sacred just to win an election.” Of course, that doesn’t happen today, now does it?

1821"...le Armee'......Josephine....." Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of St.Helena at age 52. Recent radioactive analysis of his hair samples reveal that in his last 18 months the arsenic level in his body went up 150%. Did he die of stomach cancer like his father or was he poisoned as he stated in his memoirs ? Was there too many bits of mercury and arsenic in his prescribed medicines or the wallpaper ? The debate continues to this day.
When the news reached England King George IV was in the middle of trying to get divorced from his estranged wife Queen Caroline so he could marry his mistress. When an aide announced to him :"Sire! Your Majesty's greatest enemy has died !" George replied: " She is-? Oh, Thank the Lord !"

1862-HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO- Battle of Puebla-Mexican Juaristas under a daring young general named Porfirio Diaz defeated a French invasion force. After Benito Juarez’s presidency Porfirio Diaz made himself dictator and reigned until being ousted in the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

1889- THE PARIS WORLD EXHIBITION opened. This exposition was what the Eiffel Tower was built for: it was the centerpiece of this World's Fair. At the time, it was the world's tallest free-standing metal structure, and hailed as a marvel - and now as an enduring symbol - of the Industrial Revolution. Yet it is still almost a hundred feet shorter than the largest building ever constructed (presumably by mass of construction materials!), the
Great Pyramid at Giza, which is 500 feet tall; only six feet short of Seattle's Space Needle! Americans remembered it as the event where American painting first stood out on the world stage, despite being given a small gallery space between Bosnia and Denmark. The judging of the artwork was controversial. Here they are trying to show the world the uniqueness of American painting yet with not a single Copley, Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer or Mary Cassatt was accepted. James McNeill Whistler considered himself American although he lived most of the time in London. When the show was announced he patriotically entered a dozen paintings but the American judges rejected them all. He angrily re-submitted them as a British artist and won a gold medal.

1891-Carnegie Hall in New York opens. One old musician told me the acoustics are so perfect that you can fart in the trumpet section and you'll be heard in the second balcony.

1953- Broadway Director Jerome Robbins was riding high after directing hits like On the Town and King & I when he was labeled a Communist by Ed Sullivan. To save his career, this day he testified before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee HUAC and named names. One actress he finked on Jack Gilford's wife-Margaret Lee said” I’ve just been stabbed by a wicked fairy”. Ironically Robbins went on to direct two of his biggest hits “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the Fiddler on the Roof using blacklisted actors like Zero Mostel, Bea Arthur and Jack Gilford, who all hated him.

1960- Soviet Premier Khruschev announces to the world press the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia. President Eisenhower vigorously denied anything of the sort until Khruschev in a world media news conference produced the planes wreckage and pilot Lt. Francis Gary Powers. The incident not only deepened the Cold War, but for the first time in modern history a U.S. President was caught lying his head off. For the most recent time, uh, what’s in the news today?

1961- Alan Shepard became the first American in space on board Friendship VII. The rocket took him 115 miles into space but not high enough to achieve an orbit. That was done one year later by John Glenn. Shepard was kept on the ground in his capsule for so long he had to pee in his suit. In the upside down position the fluid ran up his back and puddles in his helmet behind his head. Ick.

1968- Albert Dekker, star of monster movies like Dr. Cyclops, was found hanged in his bathroom, handcuffed, and wearing ladies lingerie. A narcotics needle was sticking in his arm. The police declared it an 'auto-erotic episode that had gone wrong."

hey, so I like to party in my own way. Don't go all Hollywood Babylon on me!

1975- Anne Rice’s novel The Interview With The Vampire first published.

1985- President Ronald Reagan started a firestorm of controversy among WWII veterans when he laid a wreath in Germany at a cemetery in Bitburg that contained graves of 49 Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. Some of them may have participated in the infamous Malmedy Massacre of US prisoners. When looking for a place for Reagan to stay the State Department scouted around for a German host who was conservative but had no Nazi connections. Finally they found a Baron who was born in 1942. So Reagan stayed at his castle. Once there the Baron revealed even though his father was not in the Nazi party, his godfather was Adolf Hitler! Doh!

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Quiz: Who was the first Superhero?

Answer: The problem is to define where the concept of Superhero, a fictional character with superhuman powers, differs from a Hero of Legend, like Hector, Achilles, Theseus, Robin Hood, Siegfried, Mushashi Miyamoto. In this definition then the first superhero was the Sumerian King Gilgamesh, the hero warrior of the epic story of 2600BC, who was “ two thirds god and one third man”.

You could argue the first superhero of American literature was Natty Bumppo called Hawkeye. In the James Fennimore Cooper novels like The Last of the Mohicans (1826) he was the super-frontiersman- drawn out of stories of real life heroes Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. This form later adapted to the Western cowboy, making a fictional hero out of real scout Buffalo Bill Cody, then into the Industrial Age with Tarzan the Apeman in 1910. In modern comics the supra-human superhero began with 1938’s Superman, and from then on it was Up, Up and Awaaayyy!!

Posted by:Tom

May 4th, 2008 sun

Sun, 04 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: Who was the first Superhero?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?
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History for 5/4/2008
Birthdays: Bartolomeo Christofori'-inventor of the piano, Audrey Hepburn –real name Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten, Roberta Peters, Maynard Ferguson, Howard Da Silva ,Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, George Will, Pia Zadora is 54

1493- the Papal Bull Inter-Contrera and the Treaty of Tordesillas was announced. Pope Alexander VI Borgia divided up the non-European world between Portugal and Spain- saying Spain could conquer everything west of the Cape Verde Islands like America and Portugal could have everything east like Africa and India. Damned sporting of him! Columbus knew of this impending treaty when he sailed so may have deliberately falsified coordinates in his ship's logs to hide the fact he was violating Portuguese territorial waters to catch the transatlantic current he counted on.

1626- Peter Minuit arrived at the settlement of New Amsterdam to be it’s first governor.

1715- A French inventor demonstrated the first folding umbrella.

1776-While marching up the California coast Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola came upon a Chumash Indian village on a big placid bay. It being Saint Monica's feast day he named the bay Santa Monica.

1876- THE ARREST OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER- General Custer almost didn't make his fateful ride to the Little Big Horn. He had gotten in big trouble with the Grant administration when he testified to Congress about waste and corruption in the War Department. He even implicated President Grant's own brother-in-law Orville as leading a graft ring and his testimony helped impeach Secretary of War William Belknap.
On May 4th when Custer stepped off a train in Chicago he was intercepted by two officers who told him he was under arrest and should remain there to await orders. He defied this order and continued on to Fort Lincoln where he tearfully begged Generals Terry and Sheridan to intercede for him to get his Seventh Cavalry back. Terry's written pleas to Grant and Sherman worked and Custer was allowed to resume his command. Terry had drawn up a contingency plan for a Colonel Hazen to lead the Seventh to the Little Big Horn. So we almost had Hazen's Last Stand.

1886-The HAYMARKET RIOT. A defining incident in U.S. labor history. Striking workers demonstrating in Chicago for an eight hour workday confront mass police and militia. Suddenly a bomb explodes among the police who open fire on the crowd. The culprits are never identified but authorities blame the union leaders- The Haymarket Eight - who are all arrested. Despite an international outcry from celebrities like George Bernard Shaw and William Morris they are all convicted and hanged. The Haymarket incident was considered damaging to the prestige of the union movement at the time but the union organizers hanged on circumstantial evidence became martyrs to the average working person. As the defiant Albert Parsons dropped from the gallows door he shouted: "Oh America, Let the voice of the People be heard!" A decade later a Chicago mayor reexamined the evidence and concluded they had executed innocent men. He lost his bid for reelection. In 1968 a monument erected to the policemen was blown up by hippy radicals.

1891 –THE DEATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES According to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle this was the day Sherlock Holmes, perished at the Reichenback Falls grappling with sinister Prof. Moriarity- The Napoleon of Crime. Conan Doyle had tired of his eccentric detective and wanted to get on to other types of writing like novels. But English readers were horrified he had killed off the great sleuth. Conan-Doyle couldn’t take a walk down the street without someone stopping him:” Sir, How could you?!” When touring the US he wanted to lecture about historical subjects but people only wanted know more about Holmes and Watson. After a while Arthur Conan-Doyle gave in and began a new series of the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1897- In Paris during a charity cinematograph show the nitrate film catches fire and 200 die. Movie film before the 1940’s was made from a very unstable mixture and could explode from the slightest contact with flame.

1927-The Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences formed. Studio heads Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer originally conceived the Academy as an an arbiter and ombudsman where studio artists could air grievances without fear of retaliation, thereby sidetracking the call for unions. It didn't work because of the nature of it's founders. Writer Dorothy Parker commented: "Going to the Academy with your problems is like trying to get laid in your mother's house, someone's always peeking through the curtains"
After the stock market crash the Academy supported the studio heads enforced employee salary cuts. Soon all pretense as a human resources ombudsman was abandoned and AMPAS focused on being the arbiter of artistic achievement.

1959- At the first Grammy Awards, Ross Bagdasssarian, aka David Seville, won two Grammies for the Chipmunk Song.

1967- The Big Mac hamburger is invented in a MacDonald's restaurant in Uniontown Pennsylvania by franchise manager Jim Deligatti. After trying names like The Aristocrat and the Blue Ribbon Burger, the name Big Mac was coined by Esther Glickstein Rose, a legal secretary at MacDonalds Chicago offices. The Big Mac went national in 1968.

1970- KENT STATE- Two days after Vice President Spiro Agnew tells law enforcement associations that" you should treat the student anti-war protesters as you would have treated the brown shirted stormtroopers." Ohio National Guard units opened fire on college demonstrators at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine, two of whom weren't even protesting but had just paused to watch. Troops also fired on students at Jackson State a week later. These incidents and the fatal bombing of a science lab by militants at Wisconsin later in the month caused the public to recoil from increasingly militant rhetoric over Vietnam. Shortly afterwards one friend recalled seeing President Nixon at an appearance in Akron mutter something to the effect that he wished more students had been gunned down at Kent State. President Nixon had called the anti-war protesters "bumbs". The middle class father of one of the slain students wrote him: "Mr President, my daughter was not a bumb!"

2000- The Love Bug Computer virus ravaged the worlds commerce through Microsoft Outlook causing $10 billion dollars in damage and shutting down temporarily the e-commerce of large firms like Reebok. It was launched by a Phillipino AMA Computer College graduate student as part of his thesis.

2001- Bonnie Lee Blakely, the wife of actor Robert Blake, was found in her car dead of a gunshot wound to the head outside of Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City, Ca. They had just had dinner and Mr. Blake had returned into the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left at his table. In 2005 the actor was acquitted of his wife’s murder, but lost a wrongful death suit to Blakely’s family. It is still on appeal. Why did Robert Blake bring a gun to his dinnertable? I guess it’s if the waiters get snippy or something.

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Yesterday’s Question: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?

Answer: In 1809 writer Washington Irving wrote a fanciful History of New York, by the fictitious author Deidrich Knickerbocker. It celebrated the port’s early Dutch colonial roots. To the growing young American City already feeling that arrogance that so annoys the rest of the country, it provided a nostalgic central mythology. Members of old New York families started calling each other Knickerbockers. The book also coined the nickname for New York City- Gotham.

Posted by:Tom

May 3rd, 2008 sat

Sat, 03 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Just got back from a week in New York City doing final mixes on two episodes of CLICK & CLACK'S AS THE WRENCH TURNS. Had some pizza, a toasted bagel with cream cheese and a Carvel soft cone with chocolate sprinkles. Mission Accomplished!

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Question: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Which one of the four men who wrote the Gospels, Luke, Mark, Matthew and John, actually knew Jesus personally?
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History for 5/3/2007
Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70's singer Englebert Humperdinck, Dule Hill

1702-William Hyde- Lord Cornbury arrived from England to be Royal Governor of colonial New York. This English aristocrat surprised the solid Dutch Calvinists of former Nieu Amsterdaam by his eccentric behavior. His favorite pastime was dressing up in ladies clothing and jumping out at people at night and pulling their ears. When in drag he bore an uncomfortable resemblance to England¹s Queen Anne. He later explained he dressed this way so the colonists could see what their queen in England looked like, but nobody believed him. There is today a painting of the Lord Governor in drag at the New York Historical Society . It was alleged that he was a fence for pirates and once asked the New York City council for money to repel a fictitious French attack, which he pocketed and bought the land today called Hyde Park.

Lord Cornbury in drag at the New York Historical Society

1812- A new poem called Childe Harold¹s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1848- Working people of Saxony revolt against their king. Leo Bakunin the father of anarchism and the composer Richard Wagner were two of the leaders. The Prussian army was sent to help put down the workers and Wagner fled into Switzerland, but not before he had the pleasure of burning down the Leipzig Opera House.

1851- San Francisco burned down.

1863-2nd Day Battle of Chancellorsville-Lee sent Stonewall Jackson 12 miles swinging around the Yankee Army flank to attack them from behind. O.O. Howard, the Union General in charge of that area wouldn¹t believe the scouts reports of an imminent attack and when a German immigrant officer demanded he prepare Howard accused him of being drunk. Then Jackson¹s men burst out of the woods and sent the Yankees running. The fighting lasted well into the evening and confusion reigned in the darkness. General Daniel Sickles division got into a vicious three way firefight with a Confederate division shooting at him from one side and his own reinforcements shooting at him from the other. Stonewall Jackson and his staff had ridden out beyond his lines to observe the Yankee preparations for tomorrow. He was riding back towards his own lines when a shot or two rang out. General A.P. Hill called out " Don't shoot! Were Southerners! ". But the Mississippi colonel in charge had been surprised once already that night by enemy cavalry :" It's a Yankee trick! Pour it into them, boys !" A mass volley hit Jackson and several other officers." My boys, my own boys!" Jackson groaned. He died two weeks later.

1888- Poem "Casey at the Bat" published.

1948-THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theater chains had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years and a World War later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature.

1968- THE PARIS '68 REVOLT- Police are sent into the Sorbonne University in Paris to break up student demonstrations. The grounds of the university had never been violated by police, even during the Nazi occupation. This act enraged the student leaders who are joined by labor unions and there is fighting in the streets of Paris for the next three weeks that eventually brought down the DeGaulle gov't. All night political meetings center in the Odeon theatre as the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and John Luc Goddard make intellectual manifestations of aesthetic freedom."The More I make Love, the More I make Revolution!" One of the student leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bedit "Danny the Red". Conservative media tried to draw attention to Cohn-Bendit¹s Jewish foreign background . This caused an even larger angrier march of everyday Parisians and Unionists chanting: "We are all Jews!"

1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts.

1971- National Public Radio¹s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first national news program with women news anchors- Linda Ellerbee and Susan Stanberg.

1973- Chicago¹s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the worlds¹ tallest office building.

1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once. So thank Gary that you get endless messages like "Biancas Backdoor Bliss" and "Nigerian Bank Trustee Investment schemes."

1979- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. The green grocers daughter called the Iron Lady dominated British politics for the next twenty years.

1985- The White House confirmed rumors that President Reagan would occasionally adjust his schedule on the advice of a San Francisco astrologer.

1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company tells a congressional committee that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears. -Uh-huh.

1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.
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Yesterdays Question: Which one of the four men who wrote the Gospels, Luke, Mark, Matthew and John, actually knew Jesus personally?

Answer: It's amazing that a book so central to Western Civilization has an authorship that is so little understood. Some Biblical scholars maintain that Saint John the Evangelist is the St. John the Apostle who was the only one who was not martyred, and lived to a great age. Modern scholarship concludes that the oldest of the books, the Gospel of Mark, was written in 120AD, so then all four could not have lived long enough to meet Christ. In fact, some scholars contend that Matthew not only is not the Matthew the Tax Collecting Apostle, but that five people wrote that one work under his name. Still other groups like the Southern Baptists maintain that the whole work is written by God, and so can't be interpreted or doubted. But all acknowledge that the Bible was edited by the Vatican who declared it complete at one point.

So when a Gospel of St. Thomas appeared in a 1945 dig in Nag Hammadi Egypt, everyone kinda hemmed and hawed and put it on the trivia shelf. This even though scholars like Joseph Cambell declared it the genuine voice of St. Thomas the Apostle. But no one seems to want to open the argument of what is in the Bible. So the discussion continues.

Posted by:Tom

May 2nd, 2008 friday

Fri, 02 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Question: Of the four men who wrote the Gospels- Mark, Luke, Matthew and John, which ones actually looked Jesus in the face and spoke with him?

Yesterday's Quiz answered below: Who wrote On Civil Disobedience, a philosophy followed by Ghandi and Martin Luther King?
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History for 5/2/2008
Birthdays: Czarina Catherine the Great, Domenico Scarlatti, Manfred Von Richtofen the Red Baron, Bing Crosby, Dr. Benjamin Spock the Baby Doctor, Vernon Castle, Theodore Bikel, Lesley Gore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Satyajit Ray, Pinky Lee, Link Wray of the Wraymen, Dwayne Johnson called The Rock is 36

1349- The Kings of England and France are forced to declare a ten year truce in their Hundred Years War because of the ravages of the Black Plague. After all, how can one be expected to have a good war when everyone was already dead?

1519- Leonardo Da Vinci died at the chateau of Amboise in the arms of King Francis Ist. He had accepted the offer of the French King of a stable retirement (even then artists worried about that kinda stuff). Two hundred and eighty years later during the French Revolution peasants broke into his tomb to get the lead lining for cannonballs and threw his bones in a pile. So no one is sure where he's buried.

1797- One of the marvels of Europe today is the preservation of the City of Venice. Beyond an occasional flood Venice never had a great fire or destruction by war. Many of the buildings are as old as Notre Dame. Venice was a naval power so all of her wars were fought out at sea. Venice was besieged once by Pepin the son of Charlemagne in 967AD, this day in 1797 Napoleon pursuing his conquest of Italy declared war on the Venetian Republic. They immediately surrendered.

1808- Spanish Independence Day- Napoleon had invaded Spain and put his older brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. The Spanish called him "Pepe Bottaglia" (Joey Bottles-due to his fondness for drink) and bitterly hated the French occupation. Reacting to the occupation of Madrid, the Spanish people riot in the Playa Del Sol and cut up all the French soldiers they can find. The French arrest and shoot them. Francisco Goya does lots of neat drawings and paintings. The Spanish invention of organized small scale partisan actions they will give the name "guerilla" warfare.

1863- Battle of Chancellorsville - Robert E. Lee is surrounded by the superior Union army of "Fighting Joe" Hooker. Hooker bragged: "God have mercy on General Lee, for I shall have none!". Lincoln was more realistic: "The hen is the wisest of all animal creation. She does not cackle until AFTER her egg is laid." Lee gets out of the trap and defeats Hooker.

1932- Jack Benny's Radio Show on radio debuts. Oh Rochester! Mel Blanc the voice of Bugs Bunny did many characters and voices on the show, including the engine of Jacks¹ old Maxwell automobile.

1933- The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. The Inverness Courier published an account of a couple who sighted Nessie and offered a reward for proof.

1952- the British Airline B.O.A.C. began the first trans-Atlantic jet plane service. This began the class of globe-trotting rich partygoers named Jet-Setters. BOAC later became British Air.

1957- Frank Costello had taken over the Lucciano New York crime family after Lucky Lucciano had been deported permanently to Sicily. Another Lucciano triggerman named Vito Genovese felt he had been passed over. This day Frank Costello was crossing the lobby of his apartment on Central Park West when Vinny " the Chin" Gigante came up behind him: "Hey Frank, this is for you!" and started shooting. Costello was left for dead but Vinny bungled his job- Costello was only grazed in the skull. He recovered but wisely decided to retire from racketeering. Costello¹s job went to Carlo Gambino.

1957- Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy the Commie Hunter died in an asylum from hepatitis and advanced alcoholism.

1967-" Say It Loud, I¹m Black and I¹m Proud!" The Black Panther Party announced it¹s armed militancy to the US and the world by trying to break in with shotguns on the California State assembly during a vote. The US media would ring with the words and images of Bobby Seale, Elderidge Cleaver and Huey Newton.

1972- J. EDGAR HOOVER DIED. He had been F.B.I. director since 1934. Despite his numerous achievements like neutralizing Axis espionage in World War Two and he had half the Ku Klux Klan informing on the other half, he never seemed willing or able to attack the Mafia . While the FBI chased lone criminals like Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde, the big national syndicates of Capone and Lucciano functioned unmolested. Some say it was because he knew they would expose the FBI chiefs cross-dressing lifestyle. Hoover lived in a long term relationship with his second in command Clyde Tollson. That didn¹t stop him from outing high profile gays in the Truman and Johnson administrations and ruining their careers. J. Edgar needed his secrecy to pursue his high profile war on "American Immorality". Hoover was convinced Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King were Communist spies. The Kennedy brothers hated him but he seemed to have enough dirt on them to stay in power. When Bobby was attorney general forced Hoover to come to his office at the ringing of an electric bell like a butler, which drove the old man crazy. When Lyndon Johnson was asked why he still kept the F.B.I. director around he said:" I¹d rather keep the old bastard on the inside pissing out, than on the outside pissing in.".

1972- First day shooting on Steven Speilbergs film JAWS. The giant mechanical shark used as a prop was nicknamed "Bruce" after Speilberg¹s lawyer.

1982- During the Falkland's War a British helicopter equiped with Exocet missles sank Argentina's largest battleship, the Belgrano. Tacky London tabloids ran as the headline over the burning ship- "Gotcha !" Interestingly the Belgrano was a refitted 45 year old American battleship, the U.S.S. Phoenix, that had survived the Pearl Harbor attack.

1982- The 24 hour Weather Channel started.

1997- Movie star Eddie Murphy was busted for picking up transvestite hooker Artisone Seiuli at 4:45 in the morning on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. Murphy said he was just being a good Samaritan and giving the young He/She a ride home.
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Yesterday's Quiz: Who wrote On Civil Disobedience, a philosophy followed by Ghandi and Martin Luther King?

ANSWER: The first writings spelling out the doctrine of passive-non violent disobedience was a paper written by Henry David Thoreau in 1849. Entitles On Civil Disobedience. He was against the U.S. War with Mexico, which was also opposed by Daniel Webster, Lincoln and Grant. Thoreau refused to pay his taxes as a protest and so was fined by his local constable.

Posted by:Tom

May 1st, 2008 thurs

Thu, 01 May 2008 12:00:00 PST

Quiz: Martin Luther King and Gandhi fought the establishment with Civil Disobedience.
Who coined the term- Civil Disobedience?

Yesterday's question answered below: What is ersatz? like ersatz coffee?
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History for 5/1/2007
Birthdays: Mary Harris a.k.a.Mother Jones, Marshal Vauban 1633, Benjamin Latrobe, Calamity Jane, Joseph Addison, Kate Smith, Jack Paar, Joseph Heller, Rita Coolidge, Steve Cauthen, Judy Collins, Glen Ford, Ray Parker Jr., Maurice Noble, Fyodor Khytruk, Louis Nye, John Woo, Wes Anderson,

Happy Birthday Eric Goldberg!

May or Maius is named for Maia, Roman god of flowers, daughter of Fauna and Vulcan.

62BC- Publius Clodius Pulcher- The Handsome, seduced the wife of Julius Caesar by dressing like a woman and sneaking into Caesars home while the women were celebrating the secret sacred mysteries of Bona Dea. Caesar wasn¹t too upset because he was sleeping around as well. Part of Greco-Roman religious mysteries was the drinking of a wine mixed with herbs approximating the effect of modern LSD. Sex, Drugs and Latin Conjugations!

1373- Dante Alighieri met the love of his life Beatrice at a MayDay party in Florence. Although she married another he was inspired to write his Divine Comedy to her.

1886- MAYDAY- In most of the world except the U.S. this is Labor Day. Ironically the tanks and red banners that used to parade down Tianamehn or in Havanna celebrate events that began in the United States. In 1886- The Knights of Labor- an underground movement of unions came out in the open and announced itself America's first national labor organization. On this day they called for strikes against all employers who wouldn't institute an 8 hour workday. The norm in America was 12 hours, 7am to 7pm six days a week. 500,000 people go out on 1,700 strikes and paralyze the nation's economy. The authorities crushed the strikes with violence, shootings, arrests and firings with a brutality that shocked the rest of the world. Karl Marx said: " Isn't it amazing what's happening in America ?". The 8 hour day doesn't become normal in America until 1913. In 1889- in Europe the International Socialist Congress declaring itself in sympathy with the embattled American worker designated May 1st as International Worker's Day. In 1894 American Federation of Labor, a less militant successor to the Knights, ask President Cleveland to move Labor Day from May 1st to the end of August. This was so people can have a holiday between Independence Day and Thanksgiving, but also a Labor Day free of "radical politics".

1893- The WORLD COLUMBIAN EXHIBITION opened in Chicago. A great White City topped by the first Ferris Wheel, a giant that carried passengers higher than the crown of the Statue of Liberty. Worlds Fairs then still had a certain amount of cheap sensationalist burlesque to attract customers uninterested in dynamos and new farming exhibits. Candy maker Milton Hershey inspected some new German milk chocolate machines and was inspired to build his business around chocolate. This exhibition was made famous by the erotic gyrations of an hootchie-cootchie dancer named Little Egypt. It was the first example of belly dancing in America but the famous tune "In the Land of Oz Where the Ladies Smoke Cigars" was not written in Egypt but by a local songwriter named Joe Blume. It also displayed the World¹s Largest Red Cedar Bucket, then filled with lager beer. I had the pleasure of seeing the Bucket at Mufreesboro Tennessee, minus the beer.

1898- BATTLE OF MANILA BAY- Admiral Dewey's fleet sinks the Spanish fleet when
he gives the order to the captain of the USS Olympia :"You may fire when ready, Gridley:" I'm sorry, Bugs Bunny didn't say it first. The Spanish admiral Marquis de Montijo is remembered in Spain as a hero for even trying to engage the Americans with his outdated and outgunned fleet. Forgoing the support of shore batteries he deliberately drew his ships up away from the city of Manila so civilians wouldn't get hurt in the battle and his ships could sink in shallow water. Hundreds of Spanish sailors were killed but the only Yankee swab who died was an engineer who had a heart attack from all the excitement.

1902- Richard Outcault's comic strip Buster Brown and Tige first appeared. Outcault, the creator of the first hit cartoon the Yellow Kid was so famous that as part of his deal to do this strip he negotiated the first back-end deal for a percentage of the merchandise sales.

1914-THE BIRTH OF THE BIG BLUE- Thomas Watson got a job at a little business machine company called CTR, the Calculating, Typewriter and Regulating Company. He quickly rose to the top and renamed the company International Business Machine or IBM. When he retired in 1956 it employed 60,000 and is one of largest companies in the world.

1931- The Empire State Building in New York dedicated. For fifty years it was the worlds tallest office building and King Kong¹s hangout. It¹s topmost deck was designed to be a dirigible mooring post but despite several tries no zeppelin has ever been able to park there. A Goodyear Blimp attempted mooring there in 1976 but the highwinds bobbed it around like a bucking bronco. The building was dedicated during the depths of the Great Depression when business was so bad it was nicknamed the 'Empty State Building'.

1939- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia exports it's first barrel of crude oil.

1939- The first Batman comics created by Bob Kane appear on newsstands.

1941-ROSEBUD- Orson Welles film "Citizen Kane" debuted at the Paramount theater (the El Capitan) in Hollywood. At the last minute William Randolph Hearst's friend Louis B. Mayer tried to buy and destroy every print of the film and the Hearst press went crazy attacking it. Hearst spokesperson Louella Parsons threatened "A Beautiful Lawsuit" if the film was not pulled. Despite winning some Oscars the film didn't do well in it's initial release, but it remains one of the greatest films of all time. Welles said later:" The problem I've always had is my movies become classics ten years later."

1960- THE U-2 INCIDENT Soviet authorities shoot down a high observation U-2 spy plane violating Soviet airspace and capture the pilot Francis Gary Powers. Ironically President Eisenhower had ordered a halt to the U-2 spy program but the Pentagon tried to get one more flight in. After 1989 the US Government admitted the overflights of Russian airspace had been going on since 1950. In those ten years the Soviets had shot down around 20 planes with a loss of 100-200 U.S. servicemen killed or sent to die in Siberian Gulags, ignored by their government to whom they did not officially exist. Powers¹s plane was hit and disintegrated. He fell 70,000 feet but miraculously he survived. Before he was captured he at first hitchhiked a ride from a Russian couple going to a wedding. They saw nothing strange in the uniformed man and when they noticed he couldn¹t speak Russian in the middle of Russia they decided he must be Bulgarian.

1967- Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas.

1989- Walt Disney Feature Animation in Orlando Florida opens. It closed in 2006.

1993- The Florida Animation Union Local 843 chartered.

1997- Frank Gifford, ABC television sportscaster and husband of morning show celebrity Kathy Lee Gifford, was caught on videotape doing the nasty with stewardess Suzie Johnson. She got paid by a tabloid and posed nude for Playboy.

1997- Bebe, the dolphin who played Flipper on the television show, died at age 40.

1997- Tony Blair defeated Tory John Major to become Prime Minister of Britain.

2003-MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? President George W. Bush lands a military jet onto the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to deliver a speech declaring the war in Iraq to be officially over. In the next three years 2800 more Americans would be killed, 25,000 wounded. A big banner on the carrier read Mission Accomplished. The White House said it was set up spontaneously by crewmen, but later admitted it was conceived, printed and hung by West Wing functionaries. George also broke the 220 year tradition of a sitting president never appearing in military uniform, scrupulously kept by real soldiers like Washington, Jackson, Grant and Eisenhower.

I got my George W. Bush flight suit G.I.Joe packed away in storage next to my sixpack of BillyBeer, as an investment in the future.

2005- The Sunday Times of London first printed the Downing Street Memo. It was minutes of a meeting between US and British strategists that proved that the Bush White House was irrevocably settled on removing Saddam Hussein from the leadership of Iraq by force in 2002. This while the official spin in the media was that America was only going to war as a last resort. The US Media gave this story little coverage.

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Yesterday's Question: What is something that is Ersatz? Like Ersatz Coffee?

Answer: Towards the end of WWII, as shortages of basic staples wracked Germany, the Nazi government created fake consumer goods like coffee made from sawdust and chicory. These products were called Ersatz, replacements, and touted by the Propaganda Ministry as better than the originals.
So long after the war is over, the term ersatz lives on to denote fake products.

Posted by:Tom