Quiz: What are jerrycans? (hint: a holdover from WW2)

Yesterday’s Quiz: Which president had the first Air Force One?
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History for 5/30/2023
Birthdays: Czar Peter the Great, Benny Goodman, Mel Blanc, Stepin Fetchit, Boris Pasternak, Irving Thalberg, Milt Neil, Howard Hawks, Gale Sayers, Agnes Varda, Michael J. Pollard, Wynonna, Keir Dullea is 86, Ceelo Green is 47, Idina Menzel is 51

1431- At Place de Vieux-Marche’ in English controlled Rouen, St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. She was only 19. Her last request was for a priest to hold up high a crucifix, so she could pray aloud above the flames. When an English knight watched the maid call out to Christ as she died, he exclaimed in grief: "Brothers, we are lost, because I think we have just killed a Saint! " She was made a saint in 1920. Tradition says even after her death, her remains were incinerated a second time to break them down further. Then the ashes scattered in a river to ensure no one with preserve any “heretical” relics of her.

1593- English playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in an argument over a restaurant check at the Bulls Tavern in Depford. Marlowe, whose plays included “Tamburlane” and “Dr Faustus", was one of Shakespeare's competitors, and found time for some espionage on the side. Writer Sir Anthony Burgess theorized there may have been more spy-stuff to this case than not wanting to pay for ale & kippers. The murderer, Ingram Frizer, was quickly pardoned by Queen Elizabeth I, and Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave.
The recent theory was it wasn’t Marlowe whose body was buried. That he was smuggled to Italy to act as a special agent for Lord Walsingham. His plays continued to some out under the name William Shakespeare. Many of Will’s best plays date from after Marlowe’s “death”. Romeo and Juliet the following year. Many were set in cities in Italy like Verona, a place Will had no knowledge of, but Marlowe had visited extensively.

1630- King Gustavus Adolphus gave an emotional farewell speech to the Swedish Diet as he prepared to leave with his army for Germany. He had pledged to take up the Protestant cause in the brutal Thirty Years War then raging across Europe. Gustavus won many victories but he never saw Sweden again, because he was killed in battle at Lutzen in 1632.

1787- THE CRUCIAL VOTE creating the U.S. Constitution. The delegates of the thirteen states (actually twelve, Rhode Island refused to participate) had originally come to Philadelphia to iron out some bugs in the system called the Articles of Confederation.
On this day they were convinced to accept “the Virginia Plan” authored by James Madison and strongly backed by NY’s Alexander Hamilton. This was to scrap the entire U.S. government used up till then, and create a new central government with a two chamber Congress based on the Roman Senate. Also an elected chief magistrate called, at first, 'The Executive" and later The President. Some politicians not attending the meeting, like Patrick Henry and Sam Adams, were outraged. Thomas Jefferson, then ambassador in Paris, was dubious about the elected-president idea. “So they’ve decided to saddle us with a Polish King” he quipped, meaning an elected figurehead monarch with no real power. Aaron Burr wrote:” Same old pork, different sauce.”

1788- French philosopher Francois Voltaire died of uremic illness at age 84. He breathed his last cradled in the arms of Benjamin Franklin. He had been trying to write a chapter of a new dictionary, trying to keep himself going by drinking 20 cups of coffee a day. A great critic of the Catholic Church, he refused the Sacrament up to the last but was still smuggled away after death to be buried in sacred ground. In 1793 his remains and Rousseau’s were moved to the Pantheon.
In 1814 a Royalist ghoul broke into Voltaire and Rousseau’s tombs, stuffed their bones into a sack and threw them into a garbage dump. The whereabouts of his remains are unknown to this day.

1806- ANDREW JACKSON KILLED CHARLES DICKINSON IN A DUEL. -the hotheaded Jackson challenged Dickinson after he welched on horse racing bet. After Jackson accused him, he made insulting remarks about Jackson’s wife Rachel, calling her a scarlet lady. In Long County Kentucky they faced off with pistols at ten paces.
Dickinson got off a shot first. Eyewitnesses said you could see the puff of dust from Jackson's jacket where the bullet entered his ribs. Amazingly, instead of falling, Jackson just coldly stood there, staring. He then lifted his gun and shot Dickinson dead. 
Jackson would carry the lead ball in his chest for the rest of his life, alongside two others earned in Indian wars.
When asked why he didn’t forgive Dickinson and shoot wide, He replied: "I'd have killed Dickinson, even if he had put a bullet in my brain!"

1821 - James Boyd patents the Rubber Fire Hose.

1848- William Young patents the ice cream freezer.

1883- A rumor among the strollers on the Brooklyn Bridge that the bridge was falling caused a panic and 12 people were trampled. Young street kid Al Smith recalled being under the bridge and seeing a rain of bowler hats and parasols as the crowd pushed and shoved. To prove the bridge was absolutely safe, the mayor asked P.T. Barnum to parade his circus elephants over the bridge to Brooklyn.

1899- Female outlaw Pearl Hart robbed the Globe, Arizona stagecoach.

1913- It’s Albanian Independence Day! The Treaty of London signed, ending the First Balkan War and acknowledging the independence of Albania. The Second Balkan War started thirty days later.

1919- Hollywood entrepreneur Charles Tolman bought a natural declivity north of Hollywood Blvd called Daisy Dell. People had been picnicking in the grass there for years. Now Tolman wanted to build a concert amphitheater. Conductor Hugo Kirchhofer remarked “ It looks like a big bowl!” So it became the Hollywood Bowl thereafter.

1921-In Tulsa Oklahoma, a 19 year old black man named Dick Rowland got into an elevator operated by a white girl named Sarah Page. We’ll never know what actually transpired, but Rowland was later arrested for allegedly assaulting Page. Page claimed he grabbed her arm but nothing more. This incident led to the massing of mobs that resulted in the Great Tulsa Race Massacre. Thousands were killed, businesses torched, and the black neighborhoods were actually bombed from the air.

1922- The Lincoln Memorial dedicated. The huge statue of Lincoln seated was carved by an Italian immigrant family in the Bronx. While President Harding talked, a guest of honor was elderly 86 year old Robert Todd Lincoln, Abe Lincolns only surviving child. He was a former Secretary of War. It was his last public appearance.

1927- In one of the more disturbing Memorial Day parades in New York City history, one thousand Ku Klux Klansmen and blackshirted Italian Fascists tried to march down Broadway, and got into fistfights with bystanders.

1930- The Lockheed Terminal was rededicated as Burbank Airport.

1935 - Babe Ruth's last game. He went hitless for the Boston Braves against Phillies.

1942- The British RAF launch the first of their 1000 plane bombing raids on Germany, this one flattened the city of Cologne.

1955- The New York chapter of the Catholic League of Decency pressured Loews Theater on Broadway to take down a giant 30-foot billboard of Marilyn Monroe trying to push her skirt down.

1961- Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo was ambushed in his Chevrolet. Shot five times, he was left dead in the street.

1962- Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem had its first performance.

1972- Director choreographer Bob Fosse filmed a live performance of Liza Minelli’s one-woman show Liza with a Z. It was telecast in Sept. and became a sensation.

1994 - Death of Baron Marcel Bich, Italian-born French engineer and industrialist who created an empire of disposable BIC pens, lighters and razors.

2003- Pixar’s Finding Nemo opened in general release.

2020- Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the Dragon Rocket with two astronauts into orbit. The first private company space launch, and the first time American astronauts blasted off into orbit from America since the space shuttle program was retired ten years ago.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which president had the first Air Force One?

Answer: Franklin Roosevelt was given a DC-3 as the first presidential flying office. But FDR disliked flying and preferred to go by train. So First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt used it for her appearances. In 1945 Harry Truman used his own plane exclusively, named the Spirit of Independence. President Eisenhower’s plane was the first to officially be given the designation Air Force One.

Quiz: Which president had the first Air Force One?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Why is an American soldier called a G.I. ?
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History for 5/29/2022
Birthdays: John F. Kennedy, King Charles II (the "Merry Monarch"), Bob Hope, G. K. Chesterton, Patrick Henry, Oswald Spengler, T.H. White, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Josef Von Sternberg, LaToya Jackson, John Hinckley Jr., Al Unser Jr., Beatrice Lilly, Danny Elfman, Annette Benning is 65, Melissa Etheridge is 62, Rupert Everett is 65

For those who are curious why America celebrates Memorial Day in May instead of November 11th like most of Europe, it is because of our Civil War.
The main Confederate field armies surrendered in early April; it took this long to quiet the entire countryside, the last fighting on May 27th. Once the countryside was finally at peace, the U.S. government declared a Day of Remembrance of the fallen. Abolitionist named James Redpath reported back to Washington that newly freed black families in Charleston South Carolina would decorate the graves of fallen union soldiers with flowers. The locals were only decorating their own Confederate graves. Later in 1868, Mary Cunningham Logan, wife of General John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union Army Veterans Organization, went to Petersburg, where she mentioned to her husband the Southerners were decorating the graves of their soldiers.
The holiday was first called Decoration Day, and the first formal one was held May 28, 1868. By the end of WWI in 1918, Americans had gotten used to honoring all their war dead at the end of May, and the holiday’s name changed to Memorial Day.

526 AD -An earthquake destroyed the city of Antioch. Another major quake two years later caused much rebuilding efforts to be abandoned. Once one of the largest cities in the ancient world, on a par with Rome and Athens, today it is a forgotten little Turkish border town.

1415- The Grand Council of churchmen at Constance trying to heal the Great Schism ordered the deposition of Pope John XXIII. John ran the Vatican like a mercenary captain, taxing everything including gambling and prostitution. It was said he had slept with 200 women including maids, matrons and nuns. He fled Constance disguised as a groom and was given sanctuary by Cosimo de Medici of Florence. Today he is counted an AntiPope, an illegal one, so Salvatore Roncalli in 1958 was given his number John XXIII.

1453- CONSTANTINOPLE CONQUERED BY THE TURKS- Sultan Mehmed II the "Scourge of Christendom" stormed the capitol of the old Byzantine Empire. His great cherry wood cannons firing giant stone balls blew great holes in the city walls, proving the end of castles as serious defenses.
When he knew the battle was lost, the last Eastern Emperor of the Romans, Constantine XI Paleologus, sallied out sword in hand and went down fighting. His body was identified out of a pile of corpses only by the bejeweled purple shoes. As Mehmed II rode into the city in triumph he recited a Persian poem:" A spider weaves it's web in the palace of the Caesars, a shadow falls over the House of Amonhasarib.”
Except for Spain, Christian Europe hadn’t given much thought to expansionist Islam since the Crusades. Now Turkey became Europe’s number one rival for the next 300 years. The Byzantine Empire’s loss did have one beneficial effect on Western Civilization. All the fleeing Greek scholars, with their arms full of the works of Plato and Aristotle, would settle in European capitols and help spark the Renaissance.

1606- Michel Caravaggio the artist shot a man over a tennis match. Caravaggio was a mad-artist before the term was invented. The police records of Rome show the master painter constantly in trouble, seducing man, woman and child, throwing rocks at soldiers, stabbing waiters, etc.

1660- RESTORATION DAY- After Oliver Cromwell executed King Charles I, he declared the British Monarchy abolished, and ruled England as The Lord Protector. The Commonwealth never became a true representative government. It just replaced a king with a dictator. When Cromwell died in 1659 he tried to leave his son Richard Cromwell in his place. But the son is not the father. The rickety system didn’t work, and Richard got the nickname “Tumbledown-Dick”. A junta of generals led by General Monck had no choice but to recall King Charles’ son Charles II from exile in Holland to come ascend the throne. This day King Charles II entered London. For many years after Restoration Day was a holiday in the UK. In the rural counties today is also called Happy Oak/Apple Day commemorating when Charles was on the run from Cromwells troops he hid in an oak tree.

1692- The Battle of La Hogue- Great naval battle when the French fleet of Admiral de Tourville was ordered by Louis XIV to attack an Anglo-Dutch navy despite being heavily outnumbered. The French admiral did a brilliant job but lost anyway, and the French monarch turned his back on the navy, abandoning supremacy of the seas to England.
Once considered the most important naval engagement until Trafalgar, La Hogue is now mostly remembered on cheap, framed prints of naval battle paintings you see hanging in doctor’s waiting rooms.

1765 - Patrick Henry gave a defiant speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses against the English Stamp Act. Someone in the crowd yelled "Treason!" Henry smiled: "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

1780- THE WAXSAWS or TARELTON’S QUARTER- In the later part of the American Revolution the British Army tried encouraging Loyal Americans to fight their Rebel brothers. A British officer named Banastre Tarleton raised a hard riding company of American Loyalist dragoons to subdue unruly South Carolina. But Tarleton had a sadistic streak that made him go beyond the gentlemanly war of the era.
At the Waxsaws in North Carolina, Tarleton rode down a company of Virginia militia and slaughtered them as they tried to surrender. After the battle ended he ordered his men to comb the battlefield and bayonet the wounded. So he won the tactical victory but Butcher Tarleton’s tactics made more enemies than friends for his side. Many North Carolina hill country folk who had been sitting out the war lost kin at the Waxsaws and so joined the American side in droves. Knowing they may get “Tarleton’s Quarter” made many Minutemen fight harder rather than surrender.

1790- Two years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, Rhode Island had still not ratified the document. Rhode Island refused to send delegates to the convention drafting it, and only after the other twelve states threatened to completely sever all commercial ties with it did they knuckle under and vote to join the union, but only by a majority of only two votes.

1814- Napoleon’s Empress Josephine died of a cold contracted while entertaining Czar Alexander of Russia. She was 50. A woman’s fashion of the time was to wear a flimsy muslin dress dampened with water to make it see-through, the equivalent of the modern wet T-shirt. Dressed this way she went for an evening stroll through the gardens of Malmaison with the Russian emperor, caught a chill and soon expired. Napoleon learned of her death while he was in exile on Elba. He locked himself in his room for two days grief stricken. He admitted, “ I loved her, but I did not respect her..”

1843- John C. Freemont began his second surveying expedition mapping out vast areas of California and Oregon and studying its geography. For this he was nicknamed the Pathfinder and later became the first presidential candidate of the new Republican Party.

1848- Wisconsin became a state.

1856- THE LOST SPEECH- Former Congressman Abraham Lincoln was called upon to deliver the adjournment speech to the convention inaugurating the new Illinois Republican Party. He had decided to abandon his strategy of mincing words about slavery and “hit it hard.” Lincoln delivered what many regarded as the best speech of his life, a speech better than the Gettysburg Address or “With Malice Towards None” the Second Inaugural.
And maddeningly for history we have no record of what he said. The newspapermen jotting it down shorthand were so amazed by what they heard that they stopped writing, confident they would share the notes of a colleague later. Even Abe’s close friend Herndon, who was a prodigious note taker, gave up after fifteen minutes, admitting he “threw pen and paper away and was swept up in the inspiration of the hour”. The speech made Lincoln one of the rising stars of the party, yet we don’t know anything he said that night.

1859 –Illinois Congressman Abe Lincoln says in a better documented occasion "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of time, but you can't fool all of the people all of time"

1905- Third Day of the Battle of Tsushima Straights. Japanese Admiral Togo catches up to the second half of the Russian Navy and sinks it. In 1985 Japanese salvage crews brought up a huge hoard of gold bullion meant for the payroll for the Tsarist sailors. A Japanese venture capitalist tried to use it to buy back the Kurile Islands- the few small islands in the north that Soviet Russia invaded in the closing days of World War II and have never given back. Russia said 'No Deal."

1908- Teddy Roosevelt signed the first ban on child labor in the U.S.

1911 -The first Indianapolis 500

1912- In Philadelphia, 15 young women were fired by the Curtis Publishing Company for dancing "Turkey Trot" during their lunch break.

1914- THE COLONEL REDL AFFAIR- In the years before World War I, the Great Powers of Europe spent vast sums on spies and agents to discover each other's future war plans. The period was known as the “soft war” not unlike the Cold War of a later generation. Coloneloberst Redl was on the Austro-Hungarian General Staff but was passing information on to Russian Intelligence. He was exposed by an Italian double agent who was also his male lover. According to the Austrian military code of honor, Redl was forced by his fellow officers to shoot himself. An eccentric man, his apartment was filled with life-size mannequins in chairs. Hungarian director Istvan Szabo made an award-winning film in 1986 about Redl with Klaus Maria Brandauer. There were earlier films made of the story in 1931 and 55.

1932- The BONUS MARCHERS reached Washington D.C. Men who joined the army during the Great War were promised an extra bonus to be received in 1945. Similar bonuses were given by the Gov’t to Civil War Veterans in the 1890s. But by 1932 the Great Depression had so ruined people's lives a movement was started by a Portland veteran named Captain William Waters to pass a bill in Congress to get their bonus early. Veterans would lobby congress by mounting a poor people's march on Washington. People's marches of this sort had happened before, like "Coxey's Army" in 1896, the Civil Right's march in 1964, and the Million-Man March in 1995. Veteran's groups came from all over the nation and by the time they got to Capitol Hill they numbered around 80,000. The set up shantytowns on the Mall nicknamed “Hoovervilles”.

Everyday Senators going to work had to slip through a huge line of homeless men shuffling silently around the Capitol Building. The Hoover government panicked and believed Soviet-style revolution was imminent. The opposition to the bonus bill was led by Senator Howard Vidal, father of writer-activist Gore Vidal and uncle to Al Gore.

1941-THE GREAT WALT DISNEY CARTOONISTS STRIKE.. The picket line and campsite went up across the street where St. Joseph's Hospital is today. Chef's from nearby Toluca Lake restaurants would cook for the strikers on their off time and the aircraft mechanics of Lockheed promised muscle if any ruff stuff was threatened.
Picketers included Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace), Walt Kelly and Margaret Selby (later Kelly) (Pogo), Bill Melendez (A Charlie Brown Christmas), Steve Bosustow and John Hubley (Mr. Magoo), Maurice Noble and Chuck Jones (What's Opera Doc?), George Baker (Sad Sack), Dick Swift ("the Parent Trap") Frank Tashlin (Cinderfella) Ade Woolery (Playhouse), and four hundred others. Animators from Warner Bros. MGM and Walter Lantz marched with their Disney brothers and sisters, because they knew this was where the fate of their entire industry would be settled. Celebrities like Dorothy Parker, Frank Morgan, and John Garfield gave speeches. The studio claimed no one of importance was on strike.

The strike was eventually settled by Federal arbitration and a little arm twisting by the Bank of America. Many of the artists who left the studio afterwards set up U.P.A. and pioneered the modern 1950's style.

1942- JOHN BARRYMORE- The great dramatic actor, the first American to dare to play Hamlet in England, died of cirrhosis and kidney failure at age 60. Whether the infamous prank actually happened where Raoul Walsh, Bertholdt Brecht, Peter Lorre, W.C. Fields and some others (the "Bundy Drive Boys") kidnapped Barrymore's body from Pierce Brothers Funeral Home and propped it up at the poker table to scare the willys out of Errol Flynn is a matter of debate. Flynn and Paul Heinried said it was true, writer Gene Fowler said it was false. John Barrymore's last words were to screenwriter Gene Fowler: "Say Gene, isn't it true you are an illegitimate son of Buffalo Bill?"

1942- Bing Crosby recorded "White Christmas," debatably the greatest selling record of all time.

1952- Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norga became first men to reach the top of Mt. Everest. The tallest mountain on the Earth.

1954- New York Police raided the studio of Irving Klaw, the photographer of the Betty Page kinky pin-up photos. Klaw tried to appeal to the Supreme Court but couldn’t get a hearing.

1956- Hollywood director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man) drowned himself in his pool. His career was over and his health was deteriorating from a series of strokes. Bruises were found on his head and at first the police suspected foul play. It wasn’t until 1989 his gay partner made his suicide note public. His head had struck the pool’s bottom as he jumped in causing the bruise.

1972- Moe Berg died of old age. He was a master spy who using a front as a catcher for the Washington Senator’s Baseball team. He was fluent enough in quantum physics to converse with Einstein. He was once ordered by Washington to go to Switzerland and meet with Rudolph Heisenberg, the Nazi Einstein, and kill him if he felt the Germans were getting too close do developing their own atomic bomb. He chose not to shoot him. In his later years he was a regular contestant on TV game shows. Believe it or not!

1973 - Columbia Records fired president Clive Davis for misappropriating
$100, 000 in funds, So Davis went on and founded Arista records.

1977 - Janet Guthrie becomes 1st woman to drive in Indy 500.

1978 - Bob Crane, (Hogan-Hogan's Heroes), died at 49 under mysterious circumstances. He was found in a Tucson hotel room surrounded by pornography, bludgeoned to death by a camera tripod. The murder was never solved.

1987 –pop singer Michael Jackson attempted to buy the XIX century remains of Joseph Meredith a.k.a. the Elephant Man.

1999- Hikers in a Malibu ravine discovered the remains of Phillip Taylor Kramer, the bass guitar player of the 1960’s band Iron Butterfly. The musician had disappeared four years before. Now his skeleton was found sitting in his Ford Aerostar at the bottom of a steep ravine.

2003- The BBC aired a news expose alleging that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government “sexed up” or exaggerated the proof of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to justify the unpopular invasion of Iraq. The documentary named a shy government researcher named Dr. David Kelly as the perpetrator. He committed suicide as a result.

2007- Apple sold it’s first iPhone.
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Quiz: Why is an American soldier called a G.I. ?

Answer: GI stood for Government Issue. When you were drafted everything you got, your helmet, boots, socks, said Government Issue. So a G.I. Joe meant a government issue guy.

Quiz: Why is an American soldier called a G.I. ?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is a crustacean?
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History for 5/28/2023
Birthdays: Solomon 970 BC, Noah Webster, Dr. Joseph Guillotine, William Pitt the Younger, General Pierre Beauregard, Ian Fleming, Jim Thorpe, The Dion Identical Quintuplets 1930, Gladys Knight, Jerry West, Dietrich Fisher-Deiskau, Sandra Locke, T-Bone Walker, Taffy Abel (one of the first professional hockey stars), John Fogarty is 78, Carey Mulligan is 38, Carol Baker.

585 BC- THALES ECLIPSE An early recorded Solar Eclipse. It struck blind people who dared to look at it, and it scared away the armies of King Cyaxerxes of Media and King Alyattes of Lydia who were about to fight a battle. Not wishing to anger the Gods any further, they immediately made peace.

20AD- Tiberius’ general Drusus celebrated a triumph over the Pannonians (Hungary).

1358- THE JACQUERIE- In the Middle Ages the oppression of the peasantry coupled with the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War reached their breaking point. Major peasant revolts began to break out all over Europe. In Italy they’re called the Ciompi, in England, Wat the Tyner’s revolt, and outbreak today in France was called the JACQUERIE (after "poor Jacques" or peasant). The outraged peasants burned manor homes and castles and massacred nobility without any real plan. To English and French knights class meant more than national feuds, so they took time out from their Hundred Years’ War to join together to chop up their uppity peasants.

1453- The night before his final assault on Constantinople, Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, addressed his troops:" I give you the capitol of the ancient Romans, the greatest city in the world! I give you her women and children, her silks and jewels. All I ask is that you leave me her buildings and monuments. I want the city for myself!" Then battalions of belly dancers danced for the men, but no sex was permitted until the battle ended.

1494- The official "birth" of Scotch - though it probably had been around much earlier, on this date, the Scottish Exchequer recorded a purchase of malt by a friar to make "aqua vitae", the first written reference to spirits in Scotland. Scottish King James IV particularly liked the stuff. Called in Gaelic “Uisge beatha”, this got corrupted by English speakers into “Whisky”

1742 - 1st public indoor swimming pool opens at Goodman's Fields, London.

1786- French explorer the Comte de Perouse became the first European to set foot on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. "The climate of Mowhee is quite delightful." He wrote. Then spending only three days there he hurried his ship on to the Northwest coast of America.

1853- THE CRIMEAN WAR BEGAN- England and the French Empire declared War on Russia over Russia’s trying to beat up Turkey and annex the Bosporus. England and Russia spent the nineteenth century in a tactical struggle for supremacy in Central Asia not unlike the Cold War the Soviet Union fought with America after World War II. The name for the Anglo-Russian duel was "the Great Game". It only heated up once, producing such artifacts as the Charge of the Light Brigade, Balaclava Helmets and Florence Nightingale. Roger Fenton also followed the army to the Crimea as the first war-photographer.

1871- THE COMMUNE OF PARIS CRUSHED- As the occupying Prussian Army looked on, the regular French army loyal to the conservative government of President Alphonse Thiers recaptured Paris from the workers-revolutionary government called the Paris Commune. In the fierce house to house fighting the Hotel Du Ville -city hall was completely destroyed, as well as the Royal Palace of the Tuileries (the open area of the Louvre in front of there the glass Pyramid is.) and the Palace of Saint Cloud.
One hundred and fifty revolutionaries were lined up against the wall in Pere Lachaise Cemetery and shot. Today the Wall of the Communards is still there, and you can see the bullet holes. In Russia young Nikolai Lenin studied the Commune and when he formed his Bolshevik Party he took as his flag the red banner of the Commune.

1892- The Sierra Club formed.

1905- Second day of the Battle of Tsushima Straights- Japanese Admiral Togo, having shot up the first half of the Russian Navy waits for the other half.... They were slowly chugging their way around the world being sent from the Black and Baltic seas to the Sea of Japan.

1928 - Dodge Brothers Automobile Inc & Chrysler Corp merged.

1929 - 1st all color talking picture, "On With the Show" exhibited (NYC).

1935- Tortilla Flat published. The first novel by John Steinbeck.

1940- Throughout World War I the tiny Belgian Army held out heroically against huge German forces. In World War II the story was different. As the Allied frontlines crumbled before the relentless Nazis armored Blitzkrieg, this day the Belgian Army surrendered unconditionally. The surrender left retreating British and French forces dangerously exposed, were it not for quick thinking divisional commander who plugged the line and enabled the escape to Dunkirk. General Bernard Law Montgomery first caught the notice of Churchill and the English high command.

1941- THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE- Labor pressures had been building in the Magic Kingdom since promises made to artists over the success of Snow White were reneged on, and Walt Disney’s lawyer Gunther Lessing encouraged a hard line with his employees. The union claimed they had a majority of employee rep-cards signed, which Walt Refused to acknowledge. On this day, in defiance of the federal Wagner Act, Walt Disney fired animator Art Babbitt, the creator of Goofy, and thirteen other cartoonists for demanding a union. Babbitt had emerged as the union movements’ leader. Studio security officers escorted him off the lot. “Would you mind if I collect my pencils?”
That night in an emergency meeting of the Cartoonists Guild at Hollywood Legion Hall, Art’s assistant Bill Hurtz, made a motion to strike, and it was unanimously accepted. Bill Hurtz will later go on to direct award-winning cartoons like UPA’s "Unicorn in the Garden". Picket lines go up next day in Hollywood animation’s own version of the Civil War.

Walt Disney nearly had a nervous breakdown over the strike, and a federal mediator was sent by Washington to arbitrate. In later years, Uncle Walt blamed the studio’s labor ills on Communists. The studio unionized completely, but the hard feelings remained for their rest of their lives.

1948- During the Israeli War of Independence the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem surrendered after a long siege by the Arab Legion. The Legion was a force organized and led by a British soldier of fortune Sir John Bagot-Glubb or Glub-Pasha. The main Jewish community was in west Jerusalem but the Holy places of the Old City were in the eastern part. Jews lost the Wailing Wall until retaken in the Six-Day War of 1967.

1954- Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 3D premiered.

1957- The National League Baseball owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants to move west to California.

1960- George Zucco 74, a character actor who specialized in horror movies like Blood from the Mummies Hand, died. One version says he died of fright in a mental hospital in San Gabriel California. He was convinced that H.P. Lovecraft's Great God Cthulu was after him. He actually died of natural causes in a nursing home.

1961- Amnesty International, a human rights organization, is founded. It was the result of an Appeal for Amnesty, written in the London Daily Observer by Peter Benennson, who read of several Portuguese students who were arrested because they were overheard in a cafe making a toast to Freedom.

1966- the It’s a Small World exhibit, which had been created for the 1964 NY Worlds Fair, reopened at Disneyland, California.

1977- George Lucas film Star Wars opened in wide release across the country.

1981- The Bambi Murders- Police hunt Playboy Bunny Bambi Bembenek for shooting her husband’s ex-wife in Milwaukee. She was captured but escaped prison in 1990.
Just follow the little stiletto high heel footprints.

1983- “What a Feeling” the theme from the film Flashdance by Irene Cara and Giorgio Moroder reached the top of the pop charts. Everyone began dancing with leg warmers and baggy sweaters torn at the neck.

1987- A young German student named Matthias Rust rented a Cessna airplane in Helsinki, and flying low to avoid radar flew right into the heart of the Soviet Union. Evading a forest of missiles, radar and anti-aircraft weapons, he landed his little plane right in the middle of Red Square at the Kremlin. The ensuing furor and humiliation cost many Russian generals their jobs.

1998- After a dinner at Buca di Beppo in Encino, Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman was shot to death by his wife Brynne as he slept. She was a heavy drinker and pill user. At 6:00am as the LAPD were knocking Brynne turned the gun on herself. Hartman’s last role was doing the English dub of Gigi the cat in Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.

2004- Lorenzo, animated short came out with the Disney film Raising Helen. Directed by Mike Gabriel, from an idea created decades ago by 95 year old storyman Joe Grant.

2005- The great London clock Big Ben mysteriously stopped for 45 minutes.

2005- Actress Lindsay Lohan was photographed passed out drunk in her car shortly after a court hearing for a DUI.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a crustacean?

Answer: The genus category of shellfish, crabs, lobsters, prawns, langoustines, etc.

Question: What is a crustacean?

Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean in Japanese to write in Kanji?
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History for 5/27/2023
Birthdays: James 'Wild Bill' Hickock, Julia Ward Howe, Aemelia Jenks-Bloomer, Dashell Hammett, Leopold Goldowsky (the inventor of Kodachrome film), Hubert H. Humphrey, Herman Wouk, Harlan Ellison, Joseph Feines, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Richard Schiff is 68, Peri Gilpin, Paul Bettany is 52, Dr. Henry Kissinger is 100

605AD, Today is the Feast day of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who saw children in the slave docket and when told 'Those are Angles"-The barbarian tribe that England is named for. Augustine replied: Non Sunt Anglicai, Sunt Angeli” -Those are not Angles, those are Angels" -please forgive my Latin grammar. Augustine of Canterbury should not be confused with the Saint Augustine of Hippo, who wrote the Confessions.

1647-The first witch execution in Salem Massachusetts. Contrary to popular perception, more witches were hanged than burned at the stake.

1647- Peter Stuyvesant inaugurated as Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam. The one-legged old soldier was a strict Calvinist sent by The Dutch West India Company to “clean up the town”.

1703- Czar Peter the Great laid the cornerstones for his new capitol Saint Petersburg. The Baltic Port was called at one time Petrograd, then Leningrad, but was changed back to the original name in 1989. Peter made it the capitol until Lenin moved it back to Moscow in 1917.

1831- Mountain man Jedediah Smith was killed fighting Comanches.

1874- Prostitution was outlawed in Los Angeles central business district.

1895 - British inventor Burt Acres patented a film camera/projector

1905- BATTLE OF THE TSUSHIMA STRAIGHTS- Grand Admiral Togo and the Japanese Navy destroy the Imperial Russian fleet in a battle that announced to the world Japan had become a world power. It had been only 55 years since Admiral Perry forced the opening of its feudal society. Mahatma Ghandi said also the victory was a beacon to all colonialized peoples that the Europeans could be defeated at their own games.
Of course the Japanese weren't fighting for altruistic motives but to see who would take over Manchuria and Korea. One-eyed Admiral Togo was trained as a samurai until their profession was abolished in 1877. When a midshipman cadet in England, had been nicknamed "Joe Chinaman" by the tars. After this battle he became one of the most respected naval strategists of the age. Ishiroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of Pearl Harbor, was his ensign at the time.

1930- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOTCH TAPE -Chemist Richard Drew of Saint Paul Minnesota invented cellophane tape, marketed by the 3M Company under the brand Scotch. It was called Scotch after the stereotype perception that Scots people are frugal with money, so it’s a good value. Three years later Drew invented Masking Tape as a way for car manufacturers to paint cars two tone.

1933- Disney’s cartoon “The Three Little Pigs” premiered, whose song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” became a national anthem of recovery from the Great Depression.
Director of the short Burt Gillette left Disney afterwards to run the Van Beuren Studio in New York.

1935- The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (The NRA) program. Roosevelt responds by unsuccessfully trying to stack the court with judges more to his liking. He referred to them as 'The Nine Old Men', a sobriquet Walt Disney would borrow in 1949 for his top animators.

1937- San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened.

1941- The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by massed Royal Navy ships and torpedo planes. The British sailors of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales helped the German sailors out of the water saying: ”Now you, one day it may be us.” That December, the Prince of Wales sent to the Pacific where it was sunk by the Japanese.
The Bismarck’s pet cat was rescued floating on a piece of wood. The British destroyer that picked him up was torpedoed and sunk a few months later. The cat was rescued from that sinking too. That cat, named “Unsinkable Sam”, survived the war and lived a long happy life at the retired sailors home in Belfast.

1942- Top Nazi official in occupied Czechoslovakia, Reynhard Heydrich, was assassinated by a resistance agent, who casually lifted a bomb out of a vase of flowers and tossed it into his car as it drove by. Hitler angrily responded by ordering the SS to select a Czech village at random and destroy it. They picked Lidice; they leveled it and murdered all its innocent inhabitants.

1942- The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor after being shot up in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The crew expected to be sent Stateside for weeks of major repairs, but the word came down from Admiral Nimitz that the Yorktown had to be ready for battle in just three days! Nimitz needed all his forces for an anticipated Japanese strike at Midway. 1,500 dockworkers labored around the clock patching her up. The Yorktown left on schedule to achieve the victory at Midway Island on June 5th.

1943- In a secret meeting in German occupied Paris, young French resistance leader Jean Moulin got all the various separate underground movements to unite under Charles DeGaulle's Free French. Moulin was eventually captured by the Gestapo and tortured to death, but le Maquis- i.e. resistance, continued the fight until the liberation.

1948- Walt Disney feature Melody Time released, featuring Pecos Bill.

1949- Actress Rita Hayworth married playboy Prince Aly Khan. Prince Aly Khan, 1911-1960, was born in Italy a son of dispossessed Pakistani royalty to the Aga Khan II. He lived his life as an international playboy, socialite and sportsman, making love to women from actress Rita Hayworth to Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela Churchill-Harriman. Cole Porter wrote him into a song. He died when he crashed his sportscar in France.

1961 – The first black light is sold.

1969 – Construction on Walt Disney World Florida began..

1968- At this time 350 Americans a week were dying in Vietnam, and in 12 days George W. Bush’s student deferment was up! But never fear, his family was pulling strings. So even though the normal wait was a year, this day George W. Bush was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard on the first day he applied.

1977- Punk band The Sex Pistols release their hit God Save the Queen, the Fascist Regime, in time for the Queen’s Jubilee year. Her Majesty preferred the Beatles’ All You Need is Love.

1991- The Milwaukee police question serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer after finding a distraught, bleeding young Laotian immigrant in the street. The boy was struggling to shake off the effect of date-rape drugs given him by Dahmer. After deducing that it was merely a spat between gay lovers, the police returned the boy to Dahmer, who killed and ate him later.

1994 – Nobel Prize winner and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after a twenty-year exile.

1995- Actor Christopher Reeve was left paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in an equestrian event in Charlottesville,Va. He became a spokesman for stem-cel spinal chord research, but his efforts in the US were frustrated by powerful religious-right lobbyists. Christopher Reeves died in 2004.

1997- President Bill Clinton liked to appease his critics by appointing conservative judges despite popular perception of him as a Liberal. This day this practice came back to bite him when the conservative Supreme Court of William Rheinquist unanimously rejected Clinton’s plea that a President should not be subject to a private lawsuit while in office. A woman named Paula Jones with heavy funding from the religious right was suing him for sexual harassment. Of course, when President Trump was in office he was being sued by several women for sexual harassment, yet none of those cases were ever allowed to proceed until he was out of office.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean in Japanese to write in Kanji?

Answer: It is the most formal style of calligraphy, using classical Chinese characters. In was also the style of Japanese print used in Manga comics.

Quiz: Many famous American entertainers are of Jewish ancestry. Which one of these people is NOT Jewish? a) Jerry Seinfeld, b) Lady Gaga, c) Larry David, d) Lewis Black.

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What does it mean to ostracize someone?
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History for 5/25/2023
Birthdays: Miles Davis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josef Broz Tito, Igor Sikorsky, Pontormo, Bennett Cerf, Claude Akins, Leslie Uggams, Bill Bojangles Robinson, Frank Oz (Richard Frank Oznowicz), Beverly Sills, Robert Ludlum, Anne Heche, Irwin Winkler, Mike Myers is 60, Ray Stevenson, Ian McKellen is 84

194BC- The Roman temple of Fortuna Virilis was dedicated on the Quirinal Hill.

1085- King Alfonso VI of Aragon took Toledo from the Moors.

1521- German Emperor Charles V declared Protestant reformer Martin Luther a heretic and an outlaw. The German states that rallied to Luther’s new teachings fought their emperor in the Schmalkalden Wars. Even Charles’ own sister became a Lutheran.

1720- John Copson became the first Insurance Agent in the New World.

1787- First meeting of delegates in Philadelphia to write the U.S. Constitution.
Interestingly enough, nobody really asked them to. They were only summoned by Congress to iron out some bugs in the Articles of Confederation. However, James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York hatched a plan to chuck the whole system and write a whole new document. They called it The Virginia/New York plan.

1810- When Napoleon conquered Spain, the colonies of Latin America puzzled about where to send their taxes to? To the French occupation government in Madrid? Or the Spanish Royal family in exile in Naples? This day Argentina had a better idea. They formed a national assembly ( Primera Junta) and in July declared the Republic of Argentina.

1865- Mary Lincoln and her son Tad moved out of the White House where she had been holed up in seclusion since the night of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. She had been too traumatized to attend the funeral or accompany the body back to Illinois.

1878- Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore or The Lass that Loved a Sailor premiered at the Savoy in London.
When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

1895- Author and playwright Oscar Wilde sentenced to prison for sodomy.
The terrible conditions of his imprisonment in Redding Gaol broke his health and lead to his early death in exile in 1900. In a 1995 ceremony honoring him in Westminster Abbey it was revealed the laws that sentenced Wilde were still on the books in England.
The Victorian hypocrisy was compounded by the fact that so many great men of the British Empire privately acknowledged a preference for their own sex- Gordon of Khartoum, Sir Cecil Rhodes, Lawrence of Arabia, Nicholson the Tiger of the Punjab, and more. Queen Victoria once said after a meeting with Earl Kitchener of Omdurman: ”I was told my lord does not prefer the company of women. Still, I found him to be a pleasant speaker.”

1906- Putting on the Ritz! Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz opened London’s Ritz Hotel. The first hotel to feature unheard of luxuries like a telephone and an indoor toilet in every suite!

1911-The beginnings of Mexican Revolution forced longtime dictator Gen. Jose Porfirio Diaz into exile. As a young man Diaz had fought the French under Juarez, but he later seized power for himself and ruled for thirty years. Under him Mexico industrialized and gained railroads, electric power, telephones and schools. He once said:" My poor Mexico. Too far from Heaven and too close to the United States."

1911- Thomas Mann visited Venice Italy. On the Lido Beach he was inspired to write A Death in Venice.

1915- Following up on the widespread massacres of Armenians, today the Ottoman Turkish government began mass deportations of their Armenian citizens.

1917- In World War I, Germany bombed London for the first time not with zeppelins but with new Gotha biplane bombers.

1923- Britain and France recognized the Hashemite Kingdom of TransJordan, ruled by Abdallah Ibn Hussein.

1927- Ford had put America on wheels with the Model T, the most successful car in history. Today they stopped making the Model T after 15 million cars, costing on average $300 each, $26 dollars down with monthly payments.

1932- Flamboyant New York Mayor Jimmy Walker testified before the Seabury Commission. The corruption scandals of his administration will force him to resign.

1932- Mickey’s Revue, the first Disney cartoon that featured the character that would eventually be called Goofy.

1935- Babe Ruth hit his final home runs. The Bambino was in his last year, working out his contract with the Boston Braves. This day in Pittsburgh, the Babe showed his old form when he hit three home runs and a single. His record of 714 home runs held for over sixty years.

1942- First day shooting on the film “Casablanca”.

1944- Yugoslav partisan leader Marshal Tito escaped a German attack designed just to kill him.

1946- Chuck Jones cartoon Hare Raising Hare, where Bugs meets a large shaggy monster originally named Rudolf, later Gossamer, “Monsters are such interesting people…”

1950- Brooklyn Battery Tunnel opened in NYC.

1957- Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows ended after nearly a decade. The show built a legendary writers room, employing future star writers like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen and Neil Simon. The show also pioneered the executive strategy of producer Sylvester “Pat” Weaver to not let the show be owned by an entire sponsor, but the network would produce the show and would sell the sponsor commercial time in 30 second chunks. Pat Weaver’s daughter is Sigourney Weaver. Your Show of Shows was finally bested in the ratings by The Lawrence Welk Show.

1961- THE SPACE RACE- The United States had been chafing about how far ahead the Soviet Union was in the exploration of space. In an address to Congress this day President John F. Kennedy pledged the wealth and resources of the U.S. to beating the Soviets to the Moon. "Our pledge is within the next ten years to send a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth… We choose to go to the Moon not because it will be easy but because it is hard!" The Moon landing was achieved in 1969. Today it is acknowledged that without the motivation of the Cold War the conquest of the Moon would have happened much more slowly.

1965- The Saint Louis Gateway Arch dedicated.

1968- The Rolling Stones released the song Jumping Jack Flash.

1969- John Schlesinger’s film Midnight Cowboy premiered. The first X-rated film to ever win the Oscar for Best Film. This is the film where Dustin Hoffman yells “Hey! I’m walking here!”

1977- The premiere of George Lucas’ movie Star Wars. The movie opened on the 28th. After Universal passed, Twentieth Century Fox picked up the distribution but let the backend profits go to Lucas. First because they had taken a loss with the failure of Dr. Doolittle, and second because they didn't think the film would do any serious business. Even George Lucas didn’t expect the film to break even. Fox's market research department told studio head Alan Ladd Jr: 1). don't make this movie; no one will go see a science fiction movie; and 2). change the title; no one will go see a movie with "War" in the title. Fox executives had predicted the studios hit for that summer would be "Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry" with Peter Fonda and Susan George.
Star Wars was a monster hit. It was like there were no other movies playing that summer. It sold out Grauman’s Chinese in Hollywood 50 weeks in a row. George Lucas became a seriously rich man and developed THX sound, digital animation and Industrial Light and Magic special effects. The film’s popularity ran so ahead of expectations, that at Christmas when you purchased a Star Wars game you got an empty box with a pink IOU note in it pledging to get you the game when they printed more.

1979- Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Alien opened. It featured the exotic designs of Swiss artist H.R. Giger, and John Hurt with a classic case of chest pains!

1980- Evangelist Oral Roberts claimed he saw a 900-foot Jesus over his bed.

1983- Return of the Jedi opened. It was originally Revenge of the Jedi, but George Lucas changed the name just a month before.

1986- Hands Across America stunt to help hunger has 7 million people at one time holding hands at noon.

1994- First International Conference on the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee and CERN talked on how to unify existing internet systems into the new World Wide Web.

2000- NUKE THE MOON. During the Cold War, it was revealed that in 1958 in the panic over Sputnik, US scientists proposed to explode a nuclear bomb on the moon. There would be no mushroom cloud because that requires an atmosphere, and the flash would only be visible for a few seconds. What the purpose would be other than to scare the BeeJeezus out of the Russkies no one knew. This dumb-ass idea was soon scrapped.

2020- George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, was arrested for allegedly buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. Officers handcuffed him on the ground and sat on him. Then Officer Derek Chauvin knelt with his full weight on Floyds neck for over 8 minutes while he choked to death, moaning “I can’t breathe”.
Floyd’s death set off massive protests across the USA and around the world. For two weeks, hundreds of thousands marched and battled police in the streets. President Trump fled to a bunker under the White House and had to be talked out of having the National Guard fire on the crowd. The massive show of police and military firepower on the streets to confront this protest all managed to be mysteriously missing on Jan. 6, 2021 when the US Capitol was attacked.
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Yesterdays Quiz: What does it mean to ostracize someone?

Answer: Ostracism was a system in Ancient Athens to vote to exile someone. This way the democracy assured some individuals never got too powerful. Top general Alcibiades aided an old man with weak eyesight write his name on the ballot of ostracism.