June 27, 2016 June 27th, 2016 |
Quiz: What is circular reasoning?
Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: We understand the metaphor of when someone is undermined. But where did the phrase originate?
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History for 6/27/2016
Birthdays: Swedish King Charles XII "the Madman of the North", Helen Keller, Norma Kamali, Charles Stuart Parnell, Bob" Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan, Emma Goldman, Marine General Chesty Puller, Walter Johnson, Ross Perot, Isabella Adjani is 61, Lauren Hill, Alice McDermott, J.J. Abrams is 50, Tony Leung ChuWai is 54, Toby McGuire is 41. Katherine Beaumont the voice of Alice in Alice in Wonderland and Wendy in Peter Pan is 78.
1542- Juan Cabrillo set sail from Mexico to explore the unknown California Coast. He was told he might find the magic kingdom of Queen Califa, an island east of Asia, next to the Earthly Paradise, populated with brown amazons with golden swords. He got the idea from a popular novel of the time.
1652 - New Amsterdam passed the 1st speed limit law in the New World.
1693 – The first woman's magazine "Ladies' Mercury" published in London.
1743- The English under George II defeat the French at Dettingen, and composer Georg Frederich Handel wrote in celebration the Dettingen TeDeum.
1787- English historian Edward Gibbon completed his most famous work-"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". The massive history ran thousands of pages and took twenty years to write. When he presented the first volume, bound in gold, to mad King George III, the King said: -" What's this? Another damn big, black book, eh Mr. Gibbon? Scribble, Scribble!! "
1788- The Battle of the Liman. Catherine the Great's fleet defeated the Turkish navy in the Black Sea near the Moldavan coast. What is memorable about this was one of the Russian admirals was Pavel Ivanovich Jones, or John Paul Jones from the US Navy. During the night Jones got in a little boat manned by one Cossack named Ivak and had himself rowed out into the middle of the Turkish Navy to inspect it. The Cossack spoke good Turkish and learned the fleet's passwords but it was still incredibly dangerous.. Jones suffered no discovery and even paused to write graffiti on the stern end of a Turkish battleship to prove he was there. He wrote in chalk the French: "This ship to be burned- Paul Jones". Next day it was.
1804-The Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr challenged former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to a duel. Hamilton (the guy on the ten-dollar bill) had slandered Burr in the press and on previous occasions he had also challenged James Monroe and General Charles Lee (a critic of George Washington’s). Between this challenge and the duel on July 11th, Aaron Burr fought another one with his cousin. The two men still had to sit side by side at an Independence Day banquet on July 4th.
1829- James Smithson died. The English scientist had amassed a huge fortune from patents yet was snubbed by polite London society because of his illegitimate birth. So he turned his back on his mother country and willed all his money to the United States, specifically asking a museum be set up in his name. The Smithsonian Institute was the result.
1844- Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother Hyram were killed by a mob in Illinois. After being shot down Smith’s body was propped up and used for target practice. A man drew his Bowie knife to decapitate the body but Mormon folklore says his hand was stopped by a thunderbolt.
1847- New York and Boston linked by regular telegraph service.
1862. Battle of Gaines Mill. For the first time, the army launched two large observation balloons to observe enemy troop movements. The Washington and the Intrepid. The rebels launched their own balloon, called the Gazelle. Young George Armstrong Custer went for a ride in one.
1863- George Gordon Meade named commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. The quiet Pennsylvanian was awoken out of his sleep at three a.m. by a courier sent by special train from Washington. At first he thought he was under arrest. General Meade would have command for just one week before he would have to fight the greatest battle in U.S. history- Gettysburg.
1864- Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. General Sherman's Yankees are thrown back by Joe Johnston's Confederates near Atlanta.
1876- Major Gibbon's column discovered the remains of Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn. It was near one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the dry sun. At first from a distance they thought the naked bloated bodies were skinned buffaloes. Custer’s men had all been paid their monthly wages before riding out of Fort Lincoln. The Indians were uninterested in paper greenbacks, so among the carcasses little piles of money were blowing through the greasy grass. Because hostile Indians were still in the vicinity.
Gibbon's men hastily buried the soldiers where they fell. A few years later when a proper burial detail arrived to re-inter the bodies and remove Custer's remains to West Point they had trouble telling just who was who. So they shoveled a few bones and some yellow hair into a box and called it Custer. As late as 1991 Gen. George A. Custer III has refused to have the West Point tomb opened for DNA testing.
1905- Big Bill Haywood banged a board on the table to call to order the First Meeting of the I.W.W.-the International Workers of the World. Mother Jones, Dorothea Parsons, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman and Fighting Bob LaFollette were also present. The I.W.W. nicknamed the Wobblies, was a labor movement that sought to unite all working people into one big international organization. Their romantic message of labor brotherhood, carried by poor folksingers like Joe Hill, was popular among miners and farmworkers. But their radical politics terrified big business. When they came out against U.S. participation in World War I the government violently suppressed them.
1922 - Newberry Medal 1st presented for kids literature, the first winner was Hendrik Van Loon.
1949 - "Captain Video & His Video Rangers," debut on DUMONT-TV.
1950- Seoul fell to North Korean troops. President Truman ordered U.S. troops to Korea without asking Congress for a declaration of war. He calls it a "police action." The Marines wrote on their tanks" Truman’s Police". Truman later told his aide Dean Acheson "Dean, I’ve spent the last five years trying to avoid a decision like the one I just had to make." The U.N. Security Council voted for a force to be sent to Korea without the Soviet Union's ambassador being present. Nations like Turkey, Holland, Britain, France, and Australia pledge to send troops for the force.
1954- Rebels organized by the CIA overthrow the elected government of Guatemala.
1962- Daryl F. Zanuck showed up at the quarterly meeting of the exec board of 20th Century Fox, and in a celebrated corporate showdown, he wrested back control of the company he founded in 1935, but had lost control of.
1966- TV soap opera Dark Shadows premiered. Barnabas Collins was the first vampire to have issues with his job, and so became the ancestor of the modern romantic vampires of True Blood and Twilight.
1973- Senior White House Counsel John Dean testified to the Watergate committee that President Richard Nixon maintained an Enemies List. The list ran from Senator Ted Kennedy and journalist Daniel Shore, to June Foray and Bill Scott, who did the cartoon voices of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose.
1984- Hollywood introduced the PG-13 rating to indicate graphic violence, invented for the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
1995- Boyishly proper British actor Hugh Grant is busted for soliciting sex from a Sunset Blvd. street hooker named Divine Brown. Grant had just released a film called “ The Englishman Who went up a Hill and Came down a Mountain". Pundits had fun changing the title to "The Englishman who went to L.A. a Hugh, and Came Back a John."
2007- British Prime Minister Tony Blair stepped down after ten years. His security police nickname in office was Bambi.
2008- Pixar’s WALL-E opened in theaters.
2011- The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team franchise filed for bankruptcy. The team owners, Mr & Mrs Frank McCourt wrecked the teams finances fighting over their personal divorce proceedings.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: We understand the metaphor of when someone is undermined. But where did the phrase originate?
Answer: In the Middle Ages, one of the methods to attack a castle was to dig a tunnel under a section of wall, causing the wall to collapse. Today it’s a metaphor for subverting the basis or proof of an argument.