Jan 18, 2017 January 18th, 2017 |
Quiz: Why is Los Angeles’ NBA team called the Lakers? What lake?
Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who was Button Gwinett? ( hint: American history)
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HISTORY FOR 1/18/2017
Birthdays: Daniel Webster, A.A. Milne, Joseph Glidden, Oliver Hardy, Cary Grant- born Archibald Leech, Danny Kaye, Emmanuel Chabrier, Bobby Goldsboro, Pierre Roget (Roget’s Thesaurus), Ray Dolby (Dolby sound), John Boorman, Kevin Costner is 62, Jason Segel is 37
1486- King Henry VII Tudor married Elizabeth of York, a daughter of the dowager queen in the just concluded War of the Roses. This further confirmed his legitimacy as king, ending a long period of dynastic instability.
1535- Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded the city of Lima Peru.
1630- The Great Conde’, French general and uncle of the king, is imprisoned by order of Cardinal Mazarin, the successor of Cardinal Richelieu. Conde’ escaped, and for the next thirty years would lead Spanish and German armies against France. Still, this was not seen as a bad thing because nobody had invented nationalism yet, so the king forgave him in 1660.
1701- For services rendered in stopping French King Louis XIV from invading the Rhineland, The Margrave/Elector Frederick of Brandenburg received permission to reorganize his realm as a kingdom, the new Kingdom of Prussia. From his capitol of Berlin the Prussians set out to become a world power. In 1870 they unified the German speaking nations into the nation we now called Germany. See below.
1777- San Jose California founded.
1778- Captain Cook landed at Waimea Bay in Kauai and "discovers" Hawaii. He named the place the Sandwich Islands after his boss John Montague the First Lord of the Admiralty the Earl of Sandwich. The King of Hawaii Kamehameha III didn't think this was the spirit of Aloha, and after numerous squabbles between the sailors and natives Captain Cook was killed. The ensign who rallied the shore party and got them safely home was the future Capt. Bligh.
1817- Jose San Martin led an army of Latin American rebels over the Andes Mountains in an epic march to free them from Spain.
1854- THE KINGDOM OF WALKER- Soldier of Fortune William Walker declared himself president of the Republic of Lower California-a new country formed out of the Mexican state of Sonora and Baja California. It didn’t stick and he had to run for it. A few years later Walker and a gang of U.S. mercenaries actually succeeded in overthrowing the government of Nicaragua and making himself a king. But soon after the Nicaraguans put him up before a firing squad.
1865- This was a target date John Wilkes Booth had to spring his plan to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln out of his box at Ford’s Theater and exchange him for thousands of Confederate POW’S to continue the South’s war effort. That the young actor naively planned to physically overcome and truss up the 6’5" president who although in ill health was an ex-wrestler, then sling him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, jump 12 feet to the stage and carry him off in front of an audience, is a strange plan to say the least. Lincoln did attend the theater that night but Booth canceled the plan, because he had to prepare to do Romeo the day after tomorrow. His real job superseded his hobby as a conspirator.
1871-GERMAN UNIFICATION- Wilhelm of Prussia crowned first Kaiser of Germany in a ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. At one time Germans lived in 38 little princedoms that were great for operettas but lousy as a political entity. Germans formed a symbolic parliament in Frankfurt and formed nationalist societies called Tugenbund to dream of unification. But Prussian Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck said "unity would not be won by parliaments and papers, but by Blood and Iron!" Bismarck had first defeated Austria to ensure Germans would look to Berlin and not Vienna for leadership, then he picked a war with France to unite all the German peoples against their old enemy. So the crowning was two-fold the highpoint of victory over France and the symbol of unification. Sulky Wilhelm I didn’t want to be an emperor and was happy as king of Prussia, but Bismarck bullied him into it.
1903- President Teddy Roosevelt and King Edward VII exchanged the first wireless messages long distance between Washington and London. The system was invented by Gugielmo Marconi.
1908- Frederic Delius orchestral tone poem Brigg Fair premiered.
1910- The birth of the aircraft carriers. In San Francisco Bay, aviator Eugene Ely became the first to take off and land his plane on a ship. The first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, was a converted coal tender.
1912- Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, "Scott of the Antarctic" reached the South Pole to discover the Norwegian flag of Pier Ammundsen, who got there first. –D’oh!
1919- American Society of Cinematographers formed (ASC).
1919- The Bentley Motorcar Company formed.
1943- The Red Army broke the 900 day Nazi siege of Leningrad.
1943- As part of the war effort the US government ordered the sale of sliced bread be stopped for the duration. The phrase “ the greatest thing since sliced bread” entered the slang vocabulary.
1945- After weeks of bitter street fighting, Nazi forces surrendered Budapest to the Red Army. Major Otto Skorzeny, the Nazi commando who rescued Mussolini and organized American speaking infiltrators for the Battle of the Bulge, now shifted his efforts to organizing the Nazi escape route pipeline to the sympathetic countries in South America.
1948- Mahatma Ghandi broke an121 hour fast that halted Hindu-Moslem rioting.
1949- Look Magazine published a photo essay called "Prizefighter". The photographer was a young kid from the Bronx named Stanley Kubrick. Mr Kubrick said he now wanted to try filmmaking.
1952-The Hollywood Animation Guild chartered. Originally the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839, signatories included Disney legends Milt Kahl, Les Clark, John Hench and Ken Anderson.
1962- The US Army in Vietnam began an experiment with spraying the jungle with chemical defoliants to get at hidden Vietcong guerrillas. The chemical Agent Orange defoliated jungles but also infected thousands of American serviceman and Vietnamese civilians who continue to die from cancers decades after.
1962- THE FRENCH CONNECTION- NYPD cracked a drug ring smuggling heroin from South East Asia into New York via Marseilles. The French Connection bust nabbed $3.5 million in dope and made heroes out of the two detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grazzo. Egan joked to Grazzo:" I’ll betchya Paul Newman will play me and Ben Gazzarra you!" Actually Gene Hackman played Egan and Roy Scheider Grazzo in the Oscar winning 1971 film. Both cops retired from the force to make careers in show biz. Ironically while the film was being made the real heroin from the case disappeared from the NYPD evidence lockup and was replaced with bags of corn starch. It was never recovered.
1964- Plans are revealed for building New York City’s World Trade Center towers.
1977- The cult documentary PUMPING IRON premiered. Filmmakers George Butler and Rob Fiore maxed out his American Express card to the tune of $35,000 to bring this look at the little known world of professional bodybuilding to the screen. The film first brought to the public a charmingly confident Austrian body builder named Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said he wanted to try acting someday. Also Lou Ferrigno who would also star in movies and as the TV Hulk. Many years later as a Republican icon, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to buy the rights to the film so he could edit out the scenes of him smoking a joint.
1978- In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, rock star Frank Zappa described most rock journalism as " People who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read."
1987- National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition premiered.
1990- In a room at the Vista International Hotel in Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry was videotaped by the FBI toking on a crack pipe with his mistress Rasheeda. Doh! He served time in jail, but was re-elected mayor anyway.
1990- Rusty Hamer, who played Danny Thomas’ son in the TV show Make Room for Daddy, put a 357 Magnum to his head and pulled the trigger. He was 42.
1991- Saddam Hussein started firing Soviet SCUD missiles at Israel. By a prearranged agreement, even though they were under attack, Israel did not retaliate with their own air force, but left it to US & Coalition forces to neutralize the missiles.
1993- The CIA admitted that it paid Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega $300,000 to be an operative.
2004- The I HAVE A SCREAM SPEECH. Democratic presidential challenger Howard Dean gave an address after losing the New Hampshire primary. Known for his energy, at one point he got so carried away he let out a jubilant yelp above the cheering throng. The media picked this up and played it to death. Soon it would be impossible to think of Dean as a serious candidate. Republican White House strategist Karl Rove later admitted it would have been harder to defeat Howard Dean than John Kerry, but then there was that scream.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was Button Gwinett? (hint: American history)
Answer: Famous as the most obscure signer of the Declaration of Independence. A delegate from Georgia, he was later killed in a duel. Signature collectors say his signature is much more valued than Thomas Jefferson, who signed a lot of things.