Feb 13, 2020 February 13th, 2020 |
Quiz: What does it mean to be idiosyncratic?
Answer to yesterday’s question below: In discussing the fake news internet campaigns planned for the elections, people mention “Potemkin News sites” as a tactic. What does that mean?
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History for 2/13/2020
Birthdays: Giambattista Piazzetta, Bess Truman, Grant Wood, Lord Randolph Churchill, Fyodor Chaliapin, Peter Tork, Oliver Reed, Chuck Yeager, Woody Hayes, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Carol Lynley, Kim Novak is 87, George Segal is 86, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Springer is 74, Stockard Channing is 75, Kelly Hu, Mena Suvari
Happy International Radio Day!
1503- This day during the endless wars of the Italian Renaissance, outside the town of Barletta things were interrupted by a unique event. Angered by a French captain who said that all Italians were a race of sissy-girlie-men, thirteen Italian knights challenged thirteen French knights to single combat. Both armies lined up and cheered like a sporting event. The knights fought until all thirteen Frenchmen were down.
1547- Catherine Howard, the 5th wife of Henry VIII was beheaded. The execution was held on the exact spot where wife Number 2 Anne Boleyn was beheaded six years before.
1635- The Boston Public School for Boys opened, the oldest public school in North America.
1692- THE GLENCOE MASSACRE. Pro-English Scottish forces try to make the Highlands accept King William of Orange and renounce allegiance to the Stuart dynasty by singling out a particularly rowdy clan for annihilation. The MacDonalds of Glencoe were smaller than the MacDonalds of Keppoch, so they were to be the example. Ironically the leader of the clan was trying to get King James in exile to release him from his oath of obedience when the soldiers of Clan Argyll and Campbell came visiting.
The soldiers used the highland tradition of hospitality to gain entrance into the MacDonald hall, then started slaughtering everyone just when their hosts were bringing out wine. This blatant betrayal of hospitality and the magnitude of the massacre backfired on the perpetrators, and made Glencoe a bitter symbol of Scottish Nationalism.
1693- The Virginia College William & Mary founded.
1742- The first English Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, resigned when his Tory government fell after ruling for 20 years.
1765- Dr. Benjamin Franklin stood up in the British House of Commons and argued the justice of the American protest of the Royal Stamp Act, against all the government MP’s. He won and the hated Act was repealed. This probably delayed the American Revolution for a decade.
1820- Five years after Waterloo and twenty-five after the French Revolution guillotined his great uncle, the Duc de Berry, the heir of the kings of France, was assassinated outside of the Paris Opera by a republican terrorist. The Bourbon family's dynastic survival would now depend on the minor branch, the House of Orleans.
In the mean time Napoleon was sitting in exile on the equatorial island of St. Helena. If you are a fan of the "Napoleon was poisoned theory", modern scientists doing radioactive analysis of hair samples noted that after this incident the arsenic content in Napoleon's body goes up 150%.
1863- President Lincoln hosted a wedding reception at the White House for P.T. Barnum star attraction General Tom Thumb and his bride. Lincoln was heavily criticized at the time for having such a frivolous party during the depths of the Civil War.
1866-The first daylight bank job. In Missouri, the Clay County Savings Bank is robbed of $60,000 by a young ex confederate guerrilla named Jesse James.
1867- The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss Jr premiered in Vienna. Brahms was a personal friend of Strauss. An anecdote from the time is that Strauss's stepdaughter approached Brahms with a customary request that he autograph her fan. Brahms inscribed a few measures from the "Blue Danube," and then wrote beneath it: "Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms."
1886- Artist Thomas Eakins resigned in disgust his professorship at the Philadelphia Academy of Art when he was criticized for having women students in his art class drawing male nudes. At that time the men still were not fully nude, but wore a kind of thong with a pouch for their junk.
1914- ASCAP founded.
1917- German spy H-21. Also known as the beautiful Mata Hari, was arrested in Paris.
1932- Free Eats, the first Our Gang short comedy to feature Spanky MacFarland.
1933- comic strip character Blondie married Dagwood Bumstead.
1939- Producer David O. Selznick replaced directors on Gone With the Wind. George Cukor was out, Victor Fleming was in after completing The Wizard of Oz. Vivien Leigh liked Cukor who was known for directing women, but Clark Gable convinced the producers that the film needed an action director. About 15 minutes of George Cukor’s work remains in the picture. Victor Fleming loved Gable, but didn't get along with Vivien Leigh and came to hate the controlling Selznick. David O. brought in Sam Wood to direct second unit when Fleming fell behind.
At the end Victor Fleming had one more tantrum when Selznick proposed giving Wood and Cukor equal co- screen credit. Yet despite it all, Gone with the Wind became a box office success. For many years critics and polls declared the greatest Hollywood movie ever made. A decade after its release, Clark Gable went up to David O. Selznick at a party and said: "Maybe I'm wrong about disliking you David, 'Gone With the Wind' keeps getting re-released and keeps me a star." Selznick once said:” My biggest fear is that all I shall ever be remembered for is producing Gone With the Wind.”
1935- German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptman found guilty of the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby and electrocuted. Up until the end he kept declaring his innocence. The chief of police in the town of Bergen New Jersey where the murder occurred was the father of Desert Storm General Norman Schwarzkopf.
1937- Hal Foster's comic book hero Prince Valiant first appeared.
1945- THE FIREBOMBING OF DRESDEN. Some experts say the annihilation of this militarily defenseless city was an act of revenge for Rotterdam and Coventry, the fact was at the Yalta conference several days earlier Stalin had asked that the major German cities on his eastern front be bombed by his Anglo-American Allies to delay Nazi divisions withdrawn from Norway and Holland to be used to slow the Red Army 's advance. Dresden was to be a major assembly point for these new reinforcements. Still, it's a legacy the Allies find troubling.
On this day in the early evening 845 British bombers followed by 700 American dropped thousands of tons of incendiary bombs in a pattern calculated to cause a firestorm. The temperature reached 800f degrees, the church bells melted and the oxygen was literally sucked out of the air by cyclonic winds. By conservative estimate 35,000-100,000 people were killed. Young American P.O.W. Kurt Vonnengut was in a group made to help dig out bodies. The experience changed his life, and he later wrote his accounts in the classic anti-war novel "Slaughterhouse-5"
1959 -Happy Birthday BARBIE! Mattel introduced the plastic nymph, from a German doll named 'Bild Lilli" based on a character in a comic strip by Reinhard Beuthin. Mattel co-owner Ruth Handler had it re-designed and changed to 'Barbie" after the nickname of her daughter Barbara.
1964- The Invention of Cool Whip.
1996- The off-Broadway musical Rent by John Lawson, premiered
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Yesterdays Question: In discussing the fake news internet campaigns planned for the elections, people mention “Potemkin News sites” as a tactic. What does that mean?
Answer: In the 1760s Czarina Catherine the Great’s minister Prince Potemkin dressed up miserable ramshackle villages with beautiful modern facades to make the monarch believe that progress was being made. A Potemkin Village came to mean a lie dressed up as a truth. This election fake web news sites pretending they are real will spread disinformation about candidates.