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July 31, 2023 July 31st, 2023 |
Question: In art, what does it mean to work chiaroscuro or chiaro-scuro?
Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In Britain, when one asks for two guineas, how much is that in modern money?
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History for 7/31/2023
Birthdays: Liberace, General George H. Thomas the "Rock of Chickamagua", Sebastian Sperling Kresge the founder of S.S. Kresge stores, Milton Friedman, Sherry Lansing, Geraldine Chaplin, Kurt Gowdy, Dean Cain, Leon “ Bull “Durham, Primo Levi, Fred Quimby, animator Ken Harris, Ted Cassidy who played Lurch in the Adams Family, Wesley Snipes is 61, and according to J.K. Rowling, today is the birthday of Harry Potter
1358- The Mayor of Paris Etienne Marcel was killed trying to defend his city from the King of France’s royal army. Marcel tried to use the chaos of the English Hundred Years War to gain independence for Paris like the city-states of Italy. He governed the city with a bodyguard of Malletards, workmen who wielded huge two-handed sledgehammers instead of swords. After Marcel fell, Paris was governed by a royal appointee. There would be no Mayor of Paris until the Revolution in 1789. Today the Mayor of Paris is considered a direct step to the French Presidency.
1498- Christopher Columbus discovered Trinidad.
1620- The Pilgrims set sail for America. They were aiming for Virginia but washed up in Massachusetts instead. Comedian Eddie Izzard noted:” The Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth and landed in…. Plymouth! How convenient for them!”
1703- In London, writer Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) was made to stand in the public pillory for writing critical satires of the Her Majesties government and Church. The pamphlet was The Shortest Way with Dissenters.
1720- Height of the Great Plague of Marseilles- A bubonic plague of such ferocity hits the city that the regional parliament at Aix en Provence drew a line around the city and forbade anyone to enter or leave. Order within the city collapsed and the Bishop of Marseilles with his Jesuits took over the day-by-day functions. Everyday the Bishop, seated on a huge wagon of corpses pulled by convicts chanting the "Miserere' would lead a procession to church. Ahh, the good ole' days.. In later years people never forgot the heroism of the prelate. When the French Revolution ordered the despoiling of churches, the people of Marseilles refused to throw down the statue of their hero bishop.
1763- Battle of Bloody Bridge. British Captain Dalyell tried a surprise attack on Chief Pontiac’s camp to relieve the Indian siege of Fort Detroit. But Pontiac was forewarned. His warriors shot up Dalyell and his men. Pontiac slew the captain and ate his heart.
1776- Francis Salvador, a South Carolina plantation owner was killed in a skirmish with British troops. He became the first of the Jewish faith to die for American Independence.
1790- The U.S. Patent Office opened.
1793- THE BIRTH OF THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM IN AMERICA- Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson informed President George Washington of his intention to resign. Jefferson was frustrated with his endless feuds with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Adams. Although he told Washington he wished to retire to Monticello, in reality he planned to direct the strategy of his new opposition party the Democratic-Republicans. The party that became the Democratic Party was first called the Republicans, the term “democrat” was then seen as an insult. Jefferson called Hamilton’s Federalist party “the Monocrats” because he felt they had royal ambitions. From now on with few exceptions the U.S. President’s cabinet would not be a coalition of differing viewpoints but all from one party. The modern Republican Party would not be born until Lincoln’s time, 60 years in the future. Washington was appalled that his old friend and fellow Virginia planter Jefferson would take partisanship so far that he would desert his cabinet. George Washington thought political parties a bad idea because it encouraged people to put the needs of their party over the needs of their country.
1798- Admiral Horatio Nelson sighted Napoleon's fleet anchored in the bay of Aboukir at the mouth of the Nile. Since it was too late that evening to fight, the one-eyed, one armed admiral ordered dinner to be served. Over port he told his captains; "Gentlemen, tomorrow I shall gain either a peerage, or a crypt in Westminster Abbey."
1813- The British invaded New York State at Plattsburgh.
1830- The Revolution of the Ten Days- King Charles X of France overthrown and replaced with his cousin Louis Phillipe d' Orleans as a constitutional monarch, The event was remembered by Delacroix in his painting "Liberty Leading the People". The Royal French Army was deliberately held back from suppressing the rebellion by their leaders. They were Napoleon’s old Generals Marmont and Soult. Honore Daumier liked to draw new King Louis Phillipe“ The Bourguois Monarch” as a fat pear in a top hat. Prince Metternich the premier of Austria correctly predicted this uprising would signal a new round of revolutionary ferment throughout Europe: ”When Paris Sneezes, Europe catches the cold.” King Louis Phillipe’s descendants, the D’Orleans branch of the Bourbon family, are the present heirs to the throne, should the French Nation ever desire a monarchy again.
1904- Russia completed the Trans-Siberian Railroad, linking the Ural Mountains and European Russia with the Pacific Coast.
1914- Europe spirals down into world war. The Czar of Russia changed his mind one more time and ordered the Russian Army to mobilize. He told his chief of staff ” You may smash your telephone now, for I will not change my mind again.” The French government decided to reject a last minute German warning to keep away from their coming war with Russia. France ordered general mobilization.
The leader of the French Socialists and best hope for European peace, Jean Jaure' had helped diffuse a similar crisis the previous year by chairing a last minute international summit in Switzerland. This night Jean Jaure’ was sipping wine in a Paris café, when a bullet came through the window and killed him. Someone obviously didn’t want him to spoil the fun.
1914- Meanwhile in America the reaction to the war in Europe was THE WALL STREET PANIC OF 1914. American investors feared the coming war would cut off European markets for their goods and thus be disastrous for business. So many sell orders deluged the exchange that on the advice of Treasury Secretary MacAdoo and J.P. Morgan, Jr. the New York Stock Exchange closed down completely until December.
Brokers began to meet in the street around Wall and Nassau streets and make deals anyway. These 'Gutter-Brokers" were the world's only open functioning stock market for several months. Ironically the war proved a boon to U.S. industry (stock in Dupont went up 400%) and caused the U.S. to supplant England as the world's largest creditor nation.
1917- The PASSCHENDALE OFFENSIVE also called the Third Battle of Ypres began- Field Marshall Sir Douglas "Whiskey Doug" Haig proved he learned nothing from the last 3 1/2 years of trench war by ordering a massed standing infantry attacks right into massed German machine guns. Even today the War Office is vague on the losses, but the estimate is between now and November, tens of thousands of young Britons and Canadians were slaughtered to move the front line 1/2 a mile. When hearing of the high casualties, Sir Douglas said:" Oh dear, have we really lost that many?" Poet Siegfrid Sassoon later wrote, “ I died in Hell, and they called it Paschendaele.”
1922- Ralph Samuelson invented water skis.
1930- Radio mystery show “The Shadow” premiered. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…heh, heh, heh.” Orson Welles did the voice of the crime fighting Shadow for a year in 1937 for $185 a week.
1945- Still at the Potsdam conference, Pres. Harry Truman gave the orders to use the Super Cosmic Bomb (a-bomb) on Japan, but not before Aug 2nd, to see if Japanese peace overtures through the Swedish Embassy were sincere. He conferred with General Eisenhower in Europe, but Ike was against the idea:” It was unnecessary to use that thing on those people.”
1945- Allied authorities capture arch-collaborator Pierre Laval hiding in Austria. Laval was the premier and chief organizer of the pro-Nazi Vichy French government under Marshal Petain. He cooperated in the transporting of thousands of French Jews to Nazi death camps, and many others Frenchmen to slave labor camps. After a sensational trial Laval, tried to poison himself, but was nursed back to health long enough so he could hang.
1948- President Truman dedicated New York City’s second major airport Idlewild Field. In 1963 it was renamed JFK Airport.
1954- Steve Allen married Jayne Meadows.
1966- Birmingham Alabama held a massed rally to burn Beatles records after John Lennon casually joked that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus.
1960- Elijah Mohammed set up the African-American movement the Nation of Islam, called by some the Black Muslims.
1962- Malaysian independence.
1968- Charles Schulz introduced Franklin, the first black character into his Peanuts comic strip.
1970- Black Tot Day- The British Navy officially ended its centuries old custom of giving a ships crew a ration of rum.
1971- Apollo 15 astronaut went for a drive on the surface of the moon in their land-rover.
1977- Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz had kept normally unflappable New York City in the grip of fear for one year. This night he killed his last victim. He was caught because of his Volkswagen beetle being illegally parked. When writing the ticket the policeman noticed the 44 cal. pistol sticking out of a paper bag on the seat. Berkowitz was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences and today says he is a born-again Christian and he doesn’t like to dwell on the past. While in Attica he made friends with Mark David Chapman, the murderer of John Lennon.
1992- Bebe’s Kids released, the first animated feature directed by an African American, Bruce W. Smith.
1992- The Robert Zemeckis’ comedy Death Becomes Her opened. With Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. It is the first film that widely used the new digital matte technique to replace traditional optical printing.
1995- The Walt Disney Company bought the ABC Network, the Discovery Channel and ESPN.
1999- Premiere of Brad Bird’s movie The Iron Giant.
2006- Elderly Cuban dictator Fidel Castro handed over leadership to his brother Raul Castro and went into retirement.
2020- The Twitter accounts of famous people like former Pres Obama, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk were hacked for a sophisticated bitcoin scam. The person arrested was not a foreign agent or terrorist, but a 17 year old High School student from Tampa, Fla., named Graham Clark.
2022- George Jetson of the 1960s TV show The Jetsons was born. The show is set when George was age 40, in 2062.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Britain, when one asks for two guineas, how much is that in modern money?
Answer: About 2 Pounds, 10 Pence. A Guinea was a gold coin introduced in England in 1663. A quarter ounce of gold minded in a place in Africa called Guinea. It lost its significance when the currency was reformed in 1814, then again in 1971. But the name still pops up in slang.
July 30, 2023 July 30th, 2023 |
Question: In Britain, when one asks for two guineas, how much is that in modern money?
Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is an Arriviste?
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History for 7/30/2023
Birthdays: Georgio Vasari, Henry Ford, Emily Bronte', Casey Stengel, Roy Williams, Vladimir Zworykin, Arnold Schwarzenegger is 76, Ed "Kookie" Byrnes, Peter Bogdanovich, Delta Burke, Henry Moore, Anita Hill, Lawrence Fishburne is 62, Jean Reno is 74, Hilary Swank is 49, Christopher Nolan, Lisa Kudrow is 60
101 B.C.- Marius of Rome defeated two migrating hordes of German barbarians, the Teutons and Cimbri, at Raudine Plains. Marius built a fortified camp in their path and held them off until he was ready and his men got over their fear of these strange looking wildmen. Warriors taunted the Romans: “Do you have any messages for your wives? For we shall be with them soon!” When one frustrated German warchief marched up to the gates and challenged Marius to single-combat, Marius laughed and sent out a gladiator, "Here, fight him. He loves to fight." When he felt they were at last ready Marius marched out his legions and they defeated the barbarians.
1540- When King Henry VIII broke England away from the Catholic Church, he spent some time trying to decide just how Protestant England should be. The confusion was made manifest this day when at Smithfield, he burned at the stake three Catholics for not wanting to be Protestant, then three Protestants for questioning Catholic doctrine.
1619- The Virginia House of Burgesses formed, the first legislative body in the US.
1700- The British Succession Crisis- The 11year old Duke of Gloucester, only surviving child of Princess Anne and the grandson of King James, died of smallpox. This left England with no future prince, only a gouty old princess who had 17 miscarriages or dead children, and widowed King William III of Orange- childless, and tuberculate. The exiled Catholic king James II Stuart was living in Rome, waiting to be recalled. Many Whig politicians even wanted to chuck the whole system and make Britain a Republic! Odds Fish! Parliament solved the crisis with the Act of Settlement of 1701- That Anne would reign as Queen after William of Orange died, and then the Protestant family of her cousin the German elector of Hanover, George I would reign. This act reinforced the law that a Catholic could never again rule England.
1729- The City of Baltimore founded. Named for Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore.
1733- The first lodge of Freemasons in the US opened in Boston.
1792- LE MARSEILLAISE- During the French Revolution, an officer named Rouget de Lisle wrote a song called Chant for the Army of the Rhine.
A young volunteer from Montpellier called François Mireur sang it at a patriotic gathering in Marseille. The local national guard liked it so much they adopted it as their marching song. By the time The Marseilles guards made their entrance into Paris the fame of their song had spread. Le Marseillaise quickly became the clarion call of the Revolution and the national anthem.
In the 1970s The first lady of France Mitterand, caused a furor when she suggested changing some of the more bloodthirsty lyrics of the song. Like “ We’ll water our fields with the blood of our enemies.”
1810- Father Miquel Hidalgo, who began the Mexican revolution against Spain, was shot by firing squad. But the revolt continued until Mexico achieved independence in 1823.
1847 - Queen Victoria noted in her diary today she took a swim in the ocean for the first time. She entered a cottage on wheels called a bathing house and while she changed into her fully covered bathing costume the cottage was rolled into the water by means of cranks and pulleys. Another time she was at the beach at Ostend, Belgium, she noticed the curious habit there of women swimming with their hair loose " down to their hips, like penitents."
1864- Confederate raiders led by Jubal Early looted and burned the Northern town of Chambersburg Pennsylvania, in retribution for Yankee depredations down south.
1864- THE CRATER- One of the strangest battles of the Civil War. A Pennsylvania coal mine engineer convinced General Grant to dig a tunnel under Robert E. Lee's army and fill it with 8 million pounds of gunpowder. The massive explosion blew 4,500 troops into the air and created the first man-made mushroom cloud. It created a crater 30 feet deep and 200 yards wide. No one had ever seen anything so terrible. However the follow up Union attack was so badly bungled the rebels had time to recover from their shock and fight back. Instead of using a highly trained fresh black regiment, Grant instead sent in two exhausted frontline regiments who were told they were going to a rest area. He didn’t want to be accused of racism. The Union troops were supposed to attack around the rim of the crater, Instead they went down into it through a bottleneck and were massacred by the rebs from above as they tried to climb up the steep 30 foot walls. Troops bayoneted each other trying to get out of the slaughter pen. Another chance to end the war early was ruined. Grant sacked the commander, a General Ledlie, who spent the battle drinking brandy in the rear. "The generals dismissal was a great loss to the enemy" one officer wrote. It all accomplished nothing. One soldier said: "I hope we never make war like that again".
1867- After the Civil War the conquered states of the South were divided up into districts of military occupation. On this day General Phil Sheridan was removed from the military governorship of Texas and Louisiana for being too harsh. During his two years in charge, Sheridan sacked the Governors of Texas and Louisiana, as well as the mayors of New Orleans, Shreveport and Galveston. He hated Texans as unreconstructed rebels that should have gotten what Atlanta got. "If I owned both Hell and Texas and was forced to choose, I'd sell Texas and live in Hell!"
1889- Start of the Sherlock Holmes mystery, the Naval Treaty.
1915- WWI, At the Battle of Hooge, the Germans first introduced hand-held flamethrowers as a weapon.
1916- The Black Tom Pier Explosion- Throughout World War I German spies and saboteurs were active on American waterfronts. On this day German agents Kurt Jahnke and Lothar Witzkhe detonated two million pounds of explosive destined for the European battlefields on a New Jersey pier behind the Statue of Liberty. It caused 45 million dollars in damage, windows on Wall Street shattered and the Statue's arm was knocked slightly loose. In later years the park service would forbid tourists from climbing up to the torch. The success of German agents in America in World War I was a reason why in World War II-army intelligence struck a deal with the Mafia to keep peace on the waterfront.
1917- Two New York hotel detectives caught Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them off with $20 each. "I thought I wouldn't get off for under a thousand!" he told a friend. Later as President, Harding always kept a guard at the door.
1929 -The Hollywood Bowl musicians go on strike.
1932-Walt Disney’s “Flowers and Trees” the first Technicolor Cartoon. Disney had worked out a deal with Technicolor creator Dr. Herbert Kalmus to use his technique exclusively for two years to show larger Hollywood studios its quality.
1932- The first Los Angeles hosting of the Olympic Games in their spanking new Coliseum. Gold medalists in swimming Larry Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weissmuller later became movie stars. Another medalist, the Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku, began to teach the Californians about a new sport- surfing!
1935- The first paperback book. Andre Maurois 'Ariel, a Life of Shelley', published in this new form by Penguin Books of London.
1936- Producer David O. Selznick bought the movie rights to the best-selling novel “Gone With The Wind” from an ailing Irving Thalberg. The "boy genius" Thalberg was hoping that Selznick would ruin himself in the process of making this film. Thalberg was convinced that GWTW would prove to be a massive flop because "Costume dramas are box office poison."
1938- Adolf Hitler awarded the Third Reich’s highest civilian medal to American industrialist Henry Ford. He admired Ford’s anti-Semitic views. Ford paid for copies of the racist book Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be placed in American libraries. CBS reporter William Shirer noted when interviewing Hitler, that he had translations of Ford’s own newspaper the Dearborn Independent on his desk. The Chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce also got a medal from Der Fuehrer in recognition the international corporate support of the Nazi regime. They admired the way Hitler suppressed unions, the 8 Hour Work Day and other bad-for-business items.
1948 - Professional wrestling premieres on prime-time network TV (DuMont)
1954 - Elvis Presley joins Local 71, the Memphis Federation of Musicians.
1955 – Pres. Eisenhower signed the bill declaring "In God We Trust" to be the official motto of the USA replacing E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one). It had been on coins since 1864. This was around the same time "under God" was also added to the Pledge of Allegiance.
1959- Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor patented the integrated circuit.
1962- Italy adopts a total ban on cigarette advertising. Consumption of cigarettes doubled.
1963 –Escaped British spy Kim Philby was found living in Moscow.
1965- President Lyndon Johnson signs the Medicare Act and issues the first medicare card (#00001) to former president Harry Truman.
1966 - BATMAN: THE MOVIE, and based on the 1966 BATMAN television series, opened. Directed by Leslie H. Martinson and starring Adam West, Burt Ward, Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin,
1972- John Boorman’s thriller Deliverance, with Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty.
1974- President Richard Nixon turned over his White House tapes on Watergate after being forced to by the Supreme Court. That same day the House Judiciary Committee voted three acts of impeachment against the President.
1975- Teamster union boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared while on the way to a lunch meeting with Teamster officials at a small Detroit restaurant. He once said: "Bodyguards? Who needs bodyguards?" He hated Bobby Kennedy so much that when he learned of his assassination, he ordered the half-masted flag at his union office run back up to the top and spent the day at the track celebrating. Rumor has it he currently resides under the goalposts at Giants Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. Another story is that he was strangled by a Mafia hit man named Sal Briguglio, then his body was taken to an auto fender factory, cut up and the pieces thrown into vats of boiling zinc. Briguglio was himself whacked in 1978.
1986- Walt Disney released “Flight of the Navigator”, directed by Randal Kleiser, featuring early photo-real CG VFX done by Canadian studio Omnibus.
1988- The last Playboy Club in America closed. It was in Lansing, Mich. In 2006 Hugh Hefner opened a Playboy Club themed casino in Las Vegas.
1999- The Blair Witch Project opened in theaters. The low-budget indy became a huge hit due to an on-line grass roots campaign claiming that the footage of teenager encountering the supernatural was genuine.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is an Arriviste?
Answer: A ruthlessly ambitious person, especially one who has recently acquired wealth or social status. An unscrupulous social-climber.
July 29, 2023 July 29th, 2023 |
Question: What is an Arriviste?
Yesterday’s Question Answered below: “ Shave and a Hair-cut. Two Bits.” How much in real money is two-bits?
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History for 7/29/2023
Birthdays: Alex de Tocqueville, Benito Mussolini, Clara Bow, Natalie Wood, Paul Taylor, Sig Romberg, Dag Hammarskjold, Peter Jennings, Michael Spinks, Maria Ouspenskaya, Dave Stevens creator of the Rocketeer, Ken Burns is 69, Booth Tarkington, David Warner, Steven Dorff, Professor Irwin Corey, William Cameron-Menzies, Peter Jennings, William Powell, Will Wheaton
1014- Battle of Kleidion, BalaThistau- Byzantine Emperor Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer defeated an entire Bulgar horde. He had 15,000 captured warriors blinded, leaving one man in one hundred with one eye to lead them all home. When Samuel the Bulgar Khan beheld his mutilated army limping back, he dropped dead in shock.
1030- Battle of Stiklestaad- One of the largest Viking battles ever- King Olaf the White went down fighting the still pagan Norsemen of Denmark and Sweden and became St. Olaf the Martyr. Olaf's method of converting Vikings to Christianity was similar to his uncle King Olaf Tryggvason, which was to sail a big fleet of dragon ships up and down the coast and chop anybody who didn't want to be baptized.
But while Tryggvason's death in battle at Svoldr spawned some great epic poems and music by Edvard Grieg, Olaf the Saint's death spawned miracles and shrines and he was canonized a year later. Anxious Vikings who wanted to fence-sit in this struggle over religion took to wearing an amulet that turned one side resembled the Cross, while turned over became the Hammer of Thor.
1527- King Charles of Spain informed his ambassador in England that he would advise the Pope to refuse a divorce for King Henry VIII and his wife Catharine of Aragon. And since King Charles had the Pope in prison, I would say that about settled the matter.
1565 - Mary Queen of Scots married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.
1567- The ten month old baby James VI, the offspring of Lord Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots was named King of Scotland in Edinburgh. It’s the last James would ever see his mother. His father was murdered and his mom beheaded by Queen Elizabeth, but after a number of guardians James had the last laugh. Eventually he become King of both Scotland and England.
1588- The SPANISH ARMADA DEFEATED. The great armada was sent originally to ferry the Duke of Parma's army from Holland over to England. Elizabeth didn't have much in the way of militia so the crack Spanish troops once landed probably could have taken London without too much difficulty. The admiral in charge of the fleet, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia was a replacement for the late famous captain Don John of Austria and the equally dead Marquis of Santa Cruz. Medina-Sidonia admitted he knew nothing about ships.
This day was the BATTLE OF GRAVELINES, largest engagement of the Armada and the English navy under Francis Drake. They pounded one another and after Medina Sidonia discovered he could not pick up Parma’s army he resolved to sail home. The bulk of the Armada was destroyed by a North Sea storm off Ireland. When Medina-Sidonia appeared before King Phillip II, he replied: “I told Your Majesty I knew nothing about ships!”
Although this great victory of the British Navy saved England, Queen Elizabeth's budget for them was amazingly stingy. More British sailors died from rancid food than Spanish gunfire. The English fleet had to break off its attack when they ran out of cannonballs. Spain sent other armadas at England over the next few years, but this was the most famous.
1693- Battle of Neerwinden- With the command “En Advance!” the French under Marshal Turenne attacked William of Orange with these newfangled "bayonets", combining the power of a pike with a musket. One of the French leaders was Pierre Montesqiou Comte D'Artagnan, the model for the hero of Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers.
1792- Maximillien Robsepierre stood up in the National Assembly and for the first time openly called for the dethronement of their King Louis XVI.
1813- General Junot, boyhood friend of Napoleon, and veteran of a dozen battles, suffered a nervous breakdown and jumped out of a window to his death. It was said he went mad, but could it possibly have been an early example of PTSD? Despite being so tight with Bonaparte, he couldn’t rise above the rank of general of division because he just didn’t have the ability. Ironically there was a costume ball that night and he jumped in his costume.
1848- The Tipperarry Revolt. At the height of the great potato famine William Smith O’Brien and his Young Ireland Movement tried to declare Independence. After a skirmish with police in a cabbage patch, they were rounded up and shipped to New Zealand.
1890- Near Auvers-sur-Oise, artist Vincent Van Gogh went behind a hay bale and was shot. He lingered for two days and died of blood poisoning. He was 37. His brother Theo was so distraught he died six months later of a brain disease and melancholia.
For many years everyone believed Van Gogh committed suicide. Recent scholarship established that van Gogh may not have shot himself, but tussled with a group of neighborhood children who liked to taunt the “Crazy Man”. A boy named Rene’ Secretan acted like a cowboy and carried a pistol. In the melee’ his pistol went off. Van Gogh later said he did it to himself to spare the children any jail. Decades later as an old man, Rene’ Secretan confessed he fired the fatal shot.
1900- King Umberto I of Italy was shot and killed by anarchists. The assassin was Angelo Bresci, a silk merchant from Patterson New Jersey who had returned to the old country to rid Italy of monarchs.
1914- Czar Nicholas of Russia changed his mind about mobilizing his army, writes his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in English, their common tongue, and warned that rising pressures were forcing him to declare war. "Could not the Austro-Serbian dispute be settled by the Hague Conference? Your Loving Nicky".
Wilhelm scrawled in the margin "Rubbish". Later Wilhelm too had second thoughts about blowing up Europe and went up to his Bavarian hunting lodge to sulk about it. The German army chief of staff Von Moltke talked him out of his funk." How could you let down all those wonderful guys working long hours at the general staff by declaring peace?"
1918- At Grey’s Inn in London, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill first met Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then US Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Twenty years later, they would become close friends while running a much larger war.
1920 - 1st transcontinental airmail flight from NY to SF.
1922- In Kansas City, Walt Disney released his first Laugh-o-Gram short- Little Red Riding Hood, animated by Rudy Ising.
1927- Dr Phillip Drinker and Dr Louis Shaw installed the first Iron Lung breathing apparatus at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
1931- George Bernard Shaw traveled to Moscow and met Josef Stalin.
1938- Three Missing Links- a Three Stooges comedy with the boys as cave men and Ray Crash Corrigan in a gorilla suit.
1942- Orson Welles left Rio De Janiero after RKO fired him and stopped production of "It's All True". RKO also had “the Magnificent Ambersons” re-cut to a more acceptable 90 minutes and fired the executive producer first who brought him to Hollywood.
1944- THE WARSAW UPRISING-As the Red Army under Marshall Voroshilov approached the eastern Praga suburbs of Warsaw, Radio Moscow broadcast a cryptic message to Poles inside their occupied capitol to “resist the occupying forces”. The Polish underground resistance the Home Army, or the AK, took this as the signal to rise and take the city the way the French underground taken key point of Paris. But Stalin tricked them. He had no intention of cooperating after the war with an independent Polish force. He let the AK battle the Nazis for weeks alone and the Red Army didn’t move into downtown Warsaw until they were all dead.
1946- In Los Angeles, Jazz great Charlie Parker had learned of the death of his baby daughter back in New York. He showed up for a recording session so drunk and high his producer had to hold him up in front of the mike. Later that night he fell completely apart, ran naked down the street, set fire to his hotel room smoking in bed. The cops had to shake him violently to wake him, he fought with them and they beat him up and threw him in jail. He was committed to the Camarillo Mental Hospital.
1948- Former Disney assistant-animator Hank Ketcham’s comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appeared.
1952 - 1st nonstop transpacific flight by a jet.
1957-Happy Birthday NASA! President Eisenhower signed the bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA to oversee the space program, separate from the military.
1957- Tonight with Jack Paar premiered.
1962- The film “Dr No” premiered, introducing the world to the suave spy James Bond 007. They first considered Cary Grant, David Niven, Patrick McGoohan, and James Mason, who all turned them down. So, the producers chose young Scots actor Sean Connery. Ian Fleming wrote of the choice, “Disaster!!” Connery had just starred as the villain in a Tarzan film, and they wanted him to film the sequel. But he asked for a time off to go do “a little spy picture.”
1965 - Beatles movie "Help" had its Royal World premiere at the London Pavilion in the West End. Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon in attendance. The film actually opened a month later. People said the movie was filmed “in a haze of marijuana smoke” and most people on the film didn’t know what was next as they were writing it as they went along.
1974- Mamas and the Papa's chubby singer Mama Cass Eliot died of a stroke, not as was widely believed from choking on a sandwich. She was 32.
1976 -SON OF SAM- Demented postman David Berkowitz committed his first murder in the Bronx. Berkowitz believed his neighbor’s dog Sam was Satan and was telling him to go out and kill. He would point his 44 cal. gun at random at a young couple on the street or in a car and shoot them. As the year went on and he was undetected he wrote letters taunting the police and New York newspaper columnist Pete Hamill. See next entry.
1977- THE DAY OF HATE- Son of Sam Killer David Berkowitz announced in the press that he would kill again on the one year anniversary of his first shooting- he declared it to be the Day of Hate. By now New York City was thoroughly in a panic. The seeming randomness of the killings got under the skin of the usually blasé’ New Yorkers. Nightclubs and discos closed, women clipped and dyed their hair because Sam liked to shoot long haired brunettes. Even the Godfather John Gotti pledged the services of the Mafia to catch the lunatic. After a tense night nothing happened. Berkowitz was arrested two days later.
1981- Prince Charles of England married Lady Diana Spencer. The ill-fated fairy tale wedding was seen around the world on live television. Unknown to Di at the time was Prince Charles was already romantically involved with Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles.
1987- Ice cream makers Ben & Jerry announce the flavor Cherry Garcia, named for rock singer Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Jerry is gone, but the ice cream rocks on.
1989- Miyazaki’s film Kiki’s Delivery Service premiered in Japan.
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Yesterday’s Question: “ Shave and a Hair-cut. Two Bits.” How much in real money is two-bits?
Answer: Two bits was slang for .25 cents. When coins were scarce in the Colonies, before the Revolution, they would cut up a Spanish silver reale coin into eight pieces to make change. These were called 'bits'. Hence 'pieces of eight' 'two bits' and 'four bits'. (Thanks NB)
July 28, 2023 July 28th, 2023 |
Quiz: “ Shave and a Hair-cut. Two Bits.” How much in real money is two-bits?
Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is the law of eminent domain?
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History for 7/28/2023
Birthdays: Beatrix Potter, Jacqueline Kennedy, Richard Rogers, Ibn al’ Arabi- philosopher 1165, Marcel Duchamp, Rudy Vallee. Sally Struthers, Peter Duchin, Vida Blue, Joe E. Brown, Jim Davis the creator of Garfield, Frankie Yankovic the Polka King, Elizabeth Berkley, Earl Tupper the inventor of Tupperware, Hugo Chavez
450AD- Roman emperor Theodosius II died without a designated heir. Rome had already fallen so nobody was too fussed about it.
754 A.D. Pope Stephen III crowns Pepin the Short King of the Franks or French. Pepin was the son of Charles Martel and the father of Charlemagne. Pepin had asked for the Pope’s help to legitimatize his overthrow of the last king of the Merovingian Dynasty, Childeric IV, whom he had locked up in a monastery. In return he gave his military guarantee to the Vatican’s hold over a buffer state in the center of Italy. The Papal States would remain a political reality for 1,100 years until absorbed into united Italy in 1870.
1428- The Aztecs overthrew the Tepanec kingdom and begin their rise to empire. While the Inca of Peru were a homogeneous empire the Aztec ruled Mexico by conquest and subjugation of other tribes. So, when Cortez and the Spaniards arrived in 1519 they found lots of native tribes happy to help them against the Aztecs.
1540- Henry VIII married his fourth queen Catherine Howard. This was seen as an old man's autumn fancy. Henry was in his 50's and Catherine a teenager who still had the hots for boys her own age, a bad idea if she wished to keep her head.
1586 - Sir Thomas Harriott first introduced potatoes to Europe. At first people thought they were poisonous because their blossom resembled that of toxic nightshade.
1588- The English sea captains Thomas the Earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Drake were playing a game of bowls when they were told the Spanish Armada had been sighted off the coast of Cornwall. The Armada was so big, just the front row of ships reached seven miles across. Leicester coolly said:" Come Drake, there’s time to finish the game." They finished their game, then defeated the Armada the next day.
1609- Sir George Somers was shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of Bermuda.
He stayed to build a settlement, claiming the island for Britain.
1615- French explorer Samuel de Champlain reached Lake Huron.
1655- Poet, playwright and duelist Cyrano de Bergerac died in Paris. The famous play about him and his big nose was written by Edmond Rostand in 1895.
1750- Composer Johann Sebastian Bach died at age 65. He had suffered blindness in his old age but is eyesight returned shortly before his fatal stroke. One of his final compositions was a chorale prelude: "Come, Kindly Death- come for my life is dreary, and of earth I am weary, etc."
He and his wife Anna Magdelena had 17 children, and 7 more by his first wife. Many of whom became composers Johann Christian Bach, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, etc. Bach’s music was soon forgotten until rediscovered by Mendelssohn and others in the 1820s.. Albert Einstein’s brother Alfred said Bach’s music" almost makes one want to become Christian."
1788- Master British portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds visited the other master British portrait painter Sir Thomas Gainsborough, who was dying or cancer. They had been enemies for years, but now at the end they made up. When Reynolds left him, Gainsborough said "Goodbye until we meet in the Hereafter, Van Dyck in our company."
1794-The Thermidor Reaction, The end of the "Reign of Terror". After thousands of deaths, a group of French politicians called the Directorate overthrew Maximilien Robespierre and have him and his Jacobin followers guillotined. Robespierre didn't go quietly, a soldier named Charles Merda shot him in the face shouting Vive la Republique!" His brother Augustin Robespierre tried to escape out a window but just succeeded in breaking his hip.
At the guillotine Robespierre’s second in command Saint-Just was defiant to the end:
" I curse the dust I'm made of! I give it to you! Scatter my bones and Republics shall spring from them!" Robespierre wasn't so eloquent on the scaffold. He just bellowed in pain from the jaw wound. A woman shouted at him:" Go to Hell, Villain, and go knowing with you go the curses and maledictions of every wife, every mother!" When his head plopped into the basket Parisians cheered for 15 minutes. Then they smashed the fearsome guillotine. As dictator Napoleon was careful to keep few political prisoners and if he executed any he used a firing squad. He renamed the place where the guillotine was Place de la Concord.
In 1891 a hit play about this event opened in Paris called “Thermidor” for the month in the French Revolutionary calendar. The chef of the Café de Paris created a new seafood dish in its honor, Lobster Thermidor.
1808- The Turkish Janissaries, the royal guard, deposed Sultan Mustapha VI and replaced him with his cousin Mehmed II. The Janissaries were the real power in Istanbul at this time, keeping a supply of royal princes in the harem, to be taken out as needed. Sultans sometimes picked what Harem girl they would favor that night by how many garlic cloves she could hold in her bellybutton.
1809- Battle of Talavera. General Sir Arthur Wellesley defeated the French army in Spain and for that was made Viscount Wellington. Sir Hugh Gough, who would later earn fame conquering the Punjab in India, was young officer at the time. In this battle Gough was so grievously wounded he was left for dead on a pile of corpses. Wellington happened to be riding by and was commenting to his staff upon his bravery, when to prevent being buried alive, Hugh Gough signaled by pushing his arm up out of the corpses and waved his hat at the startled Wellington." You-hoo..M’Lord, I’m not dead yet…"
1812- General Light Horse Harry Lee was a Revolutionary War hero and had eulogized George Washington as "First in War, First in Peace, First in the Hearts of his Countrymen".
But this day the old general got involved with mob violence in Baltimore while trying to protect a publisher friend who was against "Mr. Madison’s War with the British”, what we now call the War of 1812. Despite his fame, Lee was dragged by a mob and beaten senseless, one of his eyes almost gouged out. He went to the West Indies to convalesce –and escape his creditors, but he never fully recovered. His 5-year-old son was future Civil War General Robert E. Lee.
1821- Peru declared independence from Spain.
1839- Italian revolutionary Guisseppe Fleschi wanted to assassinate the king of France, King Louis Phillipe. He rigged up a strange device that could fire 25 gun barrels simultaneously. He pointed this machine at the king during a military parade and pulled the string. All the guns went off but not one hit their intended target. Ironically, the only person killed was the elderly war minister Marshal Mortier, an old general of Napoleon's, who had spent thirty years amid shot and shell and had never even been scratched.
1841- The body of Mary Cecilia Rogers was pulled out of New York Harbor. The sensational murder of the “Beautiful Cigar Girl” inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”
1858- The French photographer Nadar went up in a balloon and took the first aerial photograph.
1866- BUFFALO SOLDIERS- An act of Congress called for the creation of two all black cavalry regiments to serve in the peacetime army's frontier duty. These units, the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry became the famous "Buffalo Soldiers". They were so named by the Indians because an African Americans’ hair resembled the tuft of hair between a buffalo's horns to them, a symbol of strength. Buffalo Soldiers defeated the Apaches and charged up San Juan Hill right alongside Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Their captain in Cuba named John Pershing was given the nickname Blackjack Pershing not for a love of cards, but for preferring leading black troops to white.
1867- The Daughters of St. Crispin, the first women's labor organization.
1896- Happy Birthday Miami! The City of Miami incorporated.
1882- Parsifal, the last opera of Richard Wagner was produced at Bayreuth. As a way to ensure its financial solvency Wagner left instructions to never tour Parsifal but it should forever stay at Bayreuth. This lasted a few decades.
1898- Spain asks for peace talks with the United States to end their war. The Spanish American War began in April and ended in December.
1914- THE RUSH INTO WORLD WAR I ACCELERATED. Britain suggested an international conference to settle Austria’s grievances against Serbia. Austrian Foreign minister Berchtold informed the British ambassador that it was too late for mediation because Austria had already declared war. The German Kaiser was having second thoughts but slipped out of Berlin to go yachting to avoid the Russian ambassador who was trying to make him commit to discussing peace. Part of the muddle that aggravated the meltdown of diplomacy, was many of the top European statesmen were on their summer holiday while this crisis deepened.
1932- The movie White Zombie with Bela Lugosi opened.
1932- THE BATTLE OF ANACOSTIA FLATS- Capitol Hill was surrounded by 20,000 Bonus Marchers- unemployed World War I veterans and their families who desperately marched to Washington to demand help from the ravages of the Depression and their promised back pay.
On this day, President Hoover's response was to order the US Army to drive them away by force. Gen. Douglas MacArthur with his aides Patton and Eisenhower send tanks, saber wielding cavalry and bayonet armed troops to break up the homeless peoples dwellings. Facing them on the makeshift barricades eyewitnesses saw a black man waving a large American flag and Charles Frederick Lincoln, a direct descendant of Abraham Lincoln. These poor veterans and their families had come from as far as Honolulu. No record was kept of how many were killed or died on the walk home.
Pres. Hoover was jubilant that order was restored, and the public was jubilant when they voted him out of office later that year.
1933- The first singing telegram. It was delivered to singer Rudy Valee by Western Union operator appropriately named Lucille Lipps.
1945- Congress endorses United Nations Charter. Congress' refusal to join the League of Nations in 1919 help doom that organization.
1945-A B-25 Mitchell bomber flying in thick fog struck the 78th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City. It killed a dozen people, including some when one of its 1,500 lb. engines shot through the building and down onto 33rd street. One woman in an elevator had the cables cut and fell 80 stories at 200 miles an hour to the basement. Miraculously she lived.
Despite the devastation, the building did not collapse but stayed sound. As a result, US and World air traffic control standards were stiffened, air traffic controllers finally got the power to order planes down, and large planes are kept away from flying over large urban areas.
1948- In honor of the death of D.W. Griffith, all Hollywood studios observed three minutes of silence.
1948- The Premiere of " Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" For you hardcore film trivia fans this film is the only other time than the original Tod Browning movie that Bela Lugosi played Count Dracula on film.
1954- The film On The Waterfront opened. Producer Sam Spiegel originally wanted Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly as the leads. But Kelly took Hitchcock’s Rear Window instead, and Marlon Brando and Eva Marie-Saint became available, much to the annoyance of Sinatra.
1958- HAPPY LEGO DAY! Danish toymaker Gotfried Kirk Christiansen patented the interlocking plastic bricks. The LEGO empire began.
1965- VIETNAM- President Lyndon B. Johnson had been wrestling with a problem since June 5th. In Vietnam, the war against the Communist guerrilla Viet Cong was going badly. Strategic bombing of the North has failed to stop incursions in the South and the latest government in Saigon had fallen and been replaced by a group of generals led by Ngyen Kao Key. Johnson had to decide to pull, out or expand US commitment. Retired presidents Truman and Eisenhower advised him against going in.
This day, at a routine Friday 12:30 PM press briefing, calculated to not be well attended, LBJ made the announcement that US forces in Vietnam would be expanded dramatically from 75,000 to 125,000- eventually to 450,000 by the end of 1967. What LBJ wasn’t saying was he had now decided that US ground troops would carry the bulk of the fighting. Not just to prop up the South Vietnamese army, but defeat the North Vietnamese Army, without ever invading North Vietnam. He would still try to do his Great Society Programs while running a trillion-dollar war that all his experts doubted was winnable.
This one decision destroyed Johnson’s Presidency and cracked the thriving post war economy creating recession and domestic political turmoil.
1971- Photographer Diane Arbus probed increasingly darker subject matter, circus freaks, severe birth defects. This day she committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, then slitting her wrists.
1978- National Lampoons Animal House directed by John Landis opened.
1987- Disney's Oilspot and Lipstick premiered at Siggraph Anaheim. Directed by Michael Cedeno. It was an early experimental all CGI film.
1998- In Afghanistan the Taliban ordered mass destruction of television sets. They also forbade the Internet and shaved the heads of their national soccer team for daring to wear shorts.
1999- Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco declared today Marilyn Chambers Day, in honor of the San Francisco native, and star of classic porn like Behind the Green Door.
2061- The next predicted appearance of Halley’s Comet.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the law of eminent domain?
Answer: The state reserved to itself the right to seize your land for the creation of large public works, like the building of railroads or roadways. They can’t always snake around everyone’s private property. James Madison added it into the Constitution as part of the Fifth Amendment. Eminent Domain superseded any legal deeds, the state gave you monetary compensation. And if you were lucky, it might actually be what the land was really worth.
July 27, 2023 July 27th, 2023 |
Quiz: What is the law of eminent domain?
Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Which movie came out first? Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?
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History for 7/27/2023
Birthdays: Confucius, Alexander Dumas fils, Enrique Granados, Hillaire Belloc, Maureen McGovern, Keenan Wynn, Leo Durocher, Peggy Fleming, Bobby Gentry, Jerry Van Dyke, Vincent Canby, Betty Thomas, Ilya Salkind, David Swift –director of the Haley Mills Disney films like The Parent Trap, Maya Rudolph is 51, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is 46, Norman Lear is 101
1214- THE BATTLE OF BOUVINES- Called the most famous battle you never heard of.
Ever since 1066 there was a sticky point of medieval etiquette, because the King of England was also Duke of Normandy, so technically a vassal of the King of France. Yet the King of England also ruled over half of France, the Angevin empire. For years nobody pushed the question. Finally, paranoid English King John I had his boy nephew Arthur of Brittany killed for fear he would try to overthrow him. King Phillip of France convened a Feudal trial over the murder, and as his feudal suzerain formally stripped King John of his French provinces of Aquitaine, Gascony, Poitou, Brittany, Vexin, Anjou and Normandy. King John naturally didn't go along with this, and the issue was decided by battle. Bouvines today is a field where the Lille Airport is.
The French victory at Bouvines doubled the size of France and cut England off from the continent of Europe. King Phillip was hailed as Phillip Augustus. King John's nickname became John Lack-land and John Softsword. Although the English tried several more times to get back Normandy, England went on to develop its own unique society, instead of being a French adjunct. King John even grew to prefer speaking English over French.
1361- Battle of Visby, King Valdemar of Denmark defeated the people of Gotland in Sweden. Its remembered because it left one of the largest mass graves of Medieval soldiers ever discovered.
1586- Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first tobacco pipe home to England from America.
Columbus had of course brought cigars and other duty-free home years earlier, but tobacco was one of the goodies that kept England interested in American colonies after everyone realized there weren’t any more gold-rich Aztec-Inca Empires to plunder. King James I called smoking a filthy and unhealthful habit, but Raleigh persisted. He even paused for a few last puffs before putting his head on the executioner’s block.
1661- England passes the Navigation Act, spurring shipbuilding, especially in the U.S colonies. The masts of the British Navy were harvested from tall New Hampshire oaks.
1667- At Sulzbach near Baden, a cannonball killed Marshal Turenne, general of Louis XIV. Turenne was one of the most brilliant commanders of the age and idolized by military strategists like Napoleon.
1861- One week after losing the Battle of Bull Run, Union Army commander Irwin MacDowell was replaced by General George B. McClellan. “Little Mac” McClellan was a brilliant organizer with a Napoleon complex a mile wide. He once kept President Lincoln and the Secretary of War cooling their heels in his drawing room while he took a nap. Never able to defeat Robert E. Lee, he would persist in writing friends letters like “Once Again God has chosen me to be the savior of My Country.”
1880- BATTLE OF MAIWAND: The Afghan leader Ayub Khan's tribesmen destroyed a British invasion force. Dr. Watson told Sherlock Holmes he was there. Afghans recall a heroic young girl named Malala who grabbed a flag and braved the bullets. While the British remember a little terrier named Bobbie who was a regimental mascot and was wounded several times. He was brought to London and received a medal from Queen Victoria, but he was later run over by a London taxi. Shoulda stayed in Afghanistan where it was safer.
1900- HUNS- In Bremerhaven, Kaiser Wilhelm II addressed a contingent of German marines about to embark for China to help in the international effort to put down the Boxer Rebellion. Caught up in the moment, Wilhelm cried: "Take no prisoners! Kill all those who fall into your hands! As the deeds of the Huns of Attila resound through history for their ruthlessness, so like the Huns, make the name of Germany live in Chinese annals for a thousand years!"
An embarrassed chancellor Von Bulow called it "The worst speech of the year and possibly of the Kaiser's career." He tried to release an edited version to the press. When the Kaiser read the edited speech, he said: My dear Bulow. You left out all the good parts." Germans got the nickname Huns for years afterwards.
1914- Austria declared war on Serbia. The first declaration of World War I.
1921- Two Toronto scientists, Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate the hormone Insulin to treat diabetes.
1921- SHAKESPEARE & CO. opened in Paris. The English language bookshop on the Seine owned by Sylvia Beach was the most famous hangout for the U.S. expatriate intellectuals. Shakespeare & Co. championed writers like James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Carlos Santayanna, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Sherwood Anderson and more.
During the liberation in 1944, the shop was liberated personally by Ernest Hemingway who shot snipers off its roof. After paying his respects to Sylvia, Hemingway and his G.I. buddies went on to liberate the Ritz hotel and its famous wine cellar.
1937- The invading Japanese Army entered Beijing, then called Peiping, the former Peking. Most of the art treasures of the old Imperial City had been crated up and moved to Taipei.
1939- Nazi High Command gave secret orders for German supply ships to put to sea, fill up on supplies like fuel oil and ammunition at neutral harbors in the Americas and take their positions in the Atlantic. In effect, this is the first hostile move against Britain, four and a half weeks before the attack on Poland and the declaration of war.
1940- HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUGS BUNNY. Tex Avery’s short-"A Wild Hare”-There were several earlier prototypes of the famous rabbit, white with a different voice, but this is the short that is generally accepted as his birthday.
In the late 30s, a fashion among some animators in LA was to spend the weekend up in the High Sierras hunting. Most of them were terrible at it, and when they came back with nothing, got a lot of teasing from their buddies. At Looney Tunes, a few guys did gag drawings of designer Ben Hardaway fruitlessly hunting a rabbit. His nickname was Bugs, because he originated from Chicago, like gangster Bugs Moran. Being Bugs or Bugsy was also slang then for crazy. The gag drawings were of Hardaway and " Bug's Bunny". Bob Givens created the first official model sheet of the character.
In this short Bugs says “Whats Up Doc?” for the first time, co-opting a line uttered by Clark Gable while chewing a carrot in the 1934 Frank Capra hit “It Happened One Night”.
Interestingly, voice actor Mel Blanc was allergic to carrots, and kept a bucket nearby to spit them out after chewing. He experimented with chewing other vegetables, but he claimed nothing sounded as good as raw carrots.
1946- Writer Gertrude Stein died at age 72. Her last words to Alice B. Toklas were:" What is the Answer?" When Alice said nothing, Gertrude said:" Well then, what is the Question?"
1953- THE KOREAN WAR ENDS- The Treaty of Panmunjom. After 170,000 Americans casualties and millions of Koreans & Chinese killed, the treaty fixed the border basically where they were in 1950. The South Korean Government was outraged and considered it a betrayal, because it accepted the permanent division of Korea in to two parts. South Koreans weren’t even allowed at the negotiations. But America and China were tired of the endless death and stalemate and wanted out.
Before the treaty went into effect, South Korean President Sygmun Ree opened all POW camps and let all the North Korean troops who didn’t want to return home, run free. South Korea never signed the treaty, so it is still technically at war with the North.
1953- The Tonight Show debuted on NBC. Its first host was Steve Allen.
1965- The U.S. Government forces cigarette companies to print warning labels on the their packages about the hazards of smoking.
1977- John Lennon got his green card. Richard Nixon considered him a dangerous radical. Several times he was under 60-day notice to leave the country.
1977- Allegro Non Troppo opened in American theaters. Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto’s homage to Walt Disney’s Fantasia.
1986- Gregg Lemond became the first American to win the Tour de France bicycle race.
1993- IBM announced it would eliminate 35,000 white-collar jobs. Downsizing becomes a popular sport in corporate America. The more workers laid off, the higher your stock rose. The chairman of General Electric Jack Welch, was nicknamed “Neutron Jack” after the neutron bomb that kills off people but leaves buildings intact. He was lionized as a hero in corporate America. He wrote op-eds in the NY Times defending his practice of outsourcing American jobs.
1996- A bomb packed with nails goes off during Olympic celebrations in Atlanta Georgia. One woman was killed, and dozens injured. While hunting the bomber, the media decided to focus on an overweight security guard who lived with his mom named Richard Jewel. Ironically Jewel was the one who first alerted police to the suspicious package, and tried to evacuate the area, otherwise more people would have been killed. After weeks of merciless hounding by the press, the FBI declared Jewel completely innocent. In 2003 the police finally caught the real culprit, abortion clinic bomber and backwoods fruitcake Eric Rudolph.
2007- The Simpson’s Movie debuted.
2016- In an election speech, Donald Trump declared “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 (Hillary Clinton) emails that are missing.” According to the Mueller Probe, soon after this speech the level of Russian hacking into American sites shot up dramatically.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which movie came out first? Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?
Answer: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Wizard of Oz (August 1939), Gulliver’s Travels (December 1939)