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Nov 16, 2013 sat
November 16th, 2013

Question: What is mendacity?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What is a pike? Like in pikemen.
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History for 11/16/2013
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Tiberius, Paul Hindemith, George S. Kaufmann, W.C. Handy, Burgess Meredith, Daws Butler, Bob Watson, Zina Garrison, Dwight Gooden, Maggie Gylenhall is 36

HAPPY SADIE HAWKINS DAY! Fictional hillbilly footrace race made famous by Al Kapp in his comic strip Little Abner. Don’ jes Stand by Yer Man, ketch him!

1532- THE MASSACRE OF CAJAMARCA- with promises of peace talks, Francisco Pizzarro tricked the Inca Emperor Athahualpa and his court into a narrow corral apart from their massive army. The monk Fra Francisco Valverde gave a bible to the Great Inca, declaring 'this is the voice of the Living God!" Athahualpa, who had never seen a book or European writing before, examined it a minute. "It says nothing to me" he said, and dropped it in the dust. Fra Valverde signaled and the Spaniards rushed out from all sides, slaughtering 9,000. Athahualpa was captured and later executed. Fra Valverde became Archbishop of Lima, supervised the destruction of much of Inca culture, until he was finally eaten by cannibals.

1632- BATTLE OF LUTZEN- Largest battle of the Thirty Years War, the great conflict where Protestant and Catholic countries chose up sides and battled for the dominance of Europe. The Catholic German-Spanish army of Archduke Wallenstein and the Protestant German-Swedes and of King Gustavus Adolphus pound each other all day. Gustavus had been shot out of his saddle while leading an attack and surrounded by Croat cavalry. Recognizing a leader they said:" Who are you? Gustavus answered:" I am the King of Sweden, who do seal the religion and freedom of all Germany with my blood!"

Thereupon the Croats stabbed him to death. Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar assumed command and the revengeful Swedes swept all from their path. After the battle ,Wallenstein continued to lead the German Emperor's armies until his boss the Emperor assassinated him. The Thirty Years War continued until Catholic France joined the Protestant side, the Protestant Germans fought the Protestant Swedes, and everyone who started it died. Soon nobody could remember what it was all about to begin with.

1776-THE FIRST SALUTE -The U.S.N. Andrea Doria - not the famous Italian ocean liner but a US brig of war- entered the harbor of Saint Eustachius in the Dutch West Indies. It was a trading center that today we would call an international arms market. When the Andea Doria fired the customary salvo saluting her host's flag the Governor Johannes DeGraff returned the salute to the Stars and Stripes. So in effect Holland became the first nation to recognize the United States of America as an independent country.

1776- FORT WASHINGTON- When George Washington’s minuteman army was driven out of New York City, a rearguard force volunteered to stay behind and try to stall the British advance. They fortified themselves in Fort Washington, a little stronghold in the wild country of North Manhattan approximately where the George Washington Bridge now is. When called upon to surrender, Colonel Magaw refused, saying that Americans had "joined to fight in the most glorious cause mankind has ever known!"

After three months of holding off superior British forces, this day Fort Washington fell. 3,000 Yankees surrendered to Hessian General Knyphausen. General Washington was criticized for indecisiveness over whether to evacuate the forts defenders until it was too late.

Today for some strange reason the park where the fort stood is named Fort Tryon Park, after the Tory governor of New York who was so hated by the populace he had to administer his colony from a British warship anchored in New York Harbor.

1788- KING GEORGE III COLLAPSES IN CONVULSIONS, the first signs of mental illness that would make him a blind shut-in for the last years of his reign. His condition is now known as a rare blood disorder called Porpheria, but then it had no known cure. Bleeding and ice water dowsing was the standard18th century medical treatments. He recovered for a time but the last ten years of his reign are called Regency Period, because even though he still was king his son the Prince of Wales ruled for him. George III's aides sensed something was not right with the King when while riding in his carriage in Hyde Park, George leapt out and called a large oak tree as the King of Prussia. He embraced the tree and shouted in French: "Aah, Le Roi du Prusse!"

1801- The first issue of the New York Post. Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists wanted a paper to print their views. Editor James Coleman once had to kill a man in a duel that morning and get back to the office to get the afternoon edition out. But the elitist snobs of 1800 could not see the trashy tabloid the NY Post would become in our time.

1821-William Becknell reached Santa Fe New Mexico from Independence Missouri, proving it was a faster and easier land route than traveling from Mexico City. His route became a primary path for wagon trains and stagecoaches- the Santa Fe Trail.

1863- THE MARCH TO THE SEA- After burning the City of Atlanta to the ground, General William Tecumseh Sherman turned his 50,000 Yankee army eastward for his epic March to the Sea. His men cut a wide swath through the rich farm country of Georgia, burning homes, crops, looting, killing livestock and freeing thousands of slaves. He was mostly unopposed, Confederate forces off in Virginia and Tennessee could only watch helplessly.

It was the first time since the Thirty Years War, two hundred years earlier, that an army made war solely on civilians. Sherman spared civilian lives but destroyed everything else. The discovery of skeletal Northerners POWs escaped from Andersonville Prison only increased the rage of the men to commit acts of destruction. The psychological effects of the march left deep scars on Southerners for decades to come.

1906- Opera superstar Enrico Caruso was charged for pinching a ladies butt while visiting the Bronx Zoo. Caruso claimed a monkey did it.

1907- Oklahoma and Indian territories became a state.

1915-BIRTH OF THE COKE BOTTLE- The owners of Coca Cola were concerned that the success of their soft drink was being subverted by all the various cheap imitations. They decided if they had a distinctive bottle people would recognize genuine Coca Cola. This day the first Coca-Cola appeared in their distinctive curved little green bottles, created by the Ross Glass Co. of Indiana.

1922- In the Crimea after Trotsky’s Red Army breached his defenses on the Turkish Wall, Baron Wrangel evacuated 150,000 anti-communist Russian soldiers and their dependents by sea to exile in Turkey. The end of the Russian Civil War.

1924- THE MURDER OF THOMAS INCE- Thomas Ince was a film director and early Hollywood studio owner who’s property later became the site of MGM. This day he boarded William Randolph Hearst’s yacht Oneida for a birthday party in his honor. On the boat among the guests was Charlie Chaplin and Hearsts’ mistress Marion Davies. When the boat docked Ince was dead and everyone very troubled. The official cause of death was a heart attack but there was no autopsy or investigation and the Hearst press quickly hushed things up. The legend goes Hearst discovered Chaplin and Davies in flagrante-delicto and in a jealous rage shot Ince when he came in between them. We’ll never know for sure.

1932- VAUDEVILLE DIED- Vaudeville was the generic name for one admission to a showcase of short theatrical acts- singers, comics, jugglers, trained animals, etc. Vaudeville gave their first opportunities to many great twentieth century performers like Chaplin, Jolson, the Marx Brothers, Mae West , Gypsy Rose Lee and W.C. Fields. But it was slowly supplanted by more modern forms of entertainment like Movies and Radio. If you asked experts to pinpoint a date for the official end of the popular venue, many it would say it was the date that the New York Palace Theater on Broadway, the premiere palace for Vaudeville, switched from live shows to purely Movies.

1943- Six British agents were dropped into Nazi occupied France near Angers. Three were arrested by the Gestapo before they reached Paris. The remaining three established contact with the French resistance and organized the "Vic" pipeline to smuggle shot down airmen and other allied POWs out to England. One of the resistance contacts was Francois Mitterand, who in 1981 became President of France.

1946- The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences founded. Fred Allen once said: "We call television a Medium because nothing on it is Rare or Well Done."

1952- The first time in a Peanuts comic strip where Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown was attempting to kick it.

1960- CLARK GABLE DIED- The 59 year old star had just completed the film the Misfits, a film in which director John Huston demanded a great deal of physical exertion. He had told his agent that the unprofessional antics of his moody co-star Marilyn Monroe had driven him so nuts they were going to give him a heart attack. Gable had one after shooting, and on this day while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital reading a magazine, a second heart attack killed him. He wrote his own epitaph, but it was never used- " Oh Well, Back to Silents."

1981- Actor William Holden died. The star of such classics as Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17 and Network, was told as a young actor to take a few drinks to calm the pre-camera jitters. But by now he was a hopeless alcoholic. This night at home alone and drunk, he fell and hit his head on a table edge. Too inebriated to call for help, he dabbed his forehead with bunches of Kleenex tissues until he bled to death.

1990- Disney’s feature film the Rescuers Down Under premiered. The first traditionally animated film to be painted digitally on computer instead of acetate cels and paints.

2001- The film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered to great fanfare and massive box office. Harry Potter’s creator J.K. Rowling had been so poor she at one time had been on the dole, now she was one of the richest women in the world. In England second only to Madonna and the Queen.

2002-The mysterious flu like disease SAARS first reported in Kwantung China. The epidemic spread around the world killing hundreds but was contained by the following summer.
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Question: What is a pike? Like in pikemen.

Answer: A pike is distinct from a spear, in that it was inordinately long, about 10-15 feet. A block of foot soldiers brandishing pikes formed a wall of spears that no mounted horsemen could penetrate. In the Middle Ages the Swiss perfected the pike by adding a battleaxe blade and hooks for pulling down knights. But by the 1700s pikes were supplanted by the bayonet-musket.


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