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Aug 20, 2020
August 20th, 2020

Quiz: What modern country was originally the French colony of IndoChine (IndoChina)?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: For those born after 1970, In what country is Saigon?
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History for 8/20/2020
Birthdays: President Benjamin Harrison, Sukenoba Nishikawa, Bernardo O’Higgins, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, H.P. Lovecraft, Art Tatum, Issac Hayes, Connie Chung, Jacqueline Susanne, Rajiv Ghandi, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Joan Allen is 64, Fred Durst, Alan Reed -the original voice of Fred Flintstone, Slobodan Milosovic’, Amy Adams is 46

Feast day of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

480 B.C. -THE THREE HUNDRED SPARTANS- When Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece the King of Sparta Leonidas decided the best place to try and stop him was in the narrow pass of Thermopylae. But the Spartan senate and other allied Greek states refused to send troops until they completed the Olympiad festival. It was forbidden for Greeks to wage war during the Games. So Leonidas went with the 300 Spartans of his bodyguard, and a thousand more allied troops, to try and stall ten times their number. After repulsing several attacks a traitor showed Xerxes a goat path around the Spartan position. Leonidas could still have retreated but he, his three hundred and some other Greek allies decided to stand and fight to the last man. They were wiped out, but they bought enough time for the Greeks eventual victory.

Later a monument was erected over their bones: O xein angellin Lakdaimoniois hoti tede keimetha tois keinon rhemasi peithomenoi- which means "Go Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that True to their Command, Here We Lie."

636 A.D. Battle of Yarmuk- The Arab armies led by Caliph Omar defeated the Byzantine Greeks and captured Palestine and Jerusalem. The Caliph Omar received the defeated Byzantine Emperor Romanus Diogenes with a cup of fruit flavored ice called sherbat or sorbet. Omar was a very devout Moslem and spurned the vanity of a white charger, preferring to travel by donkey, as the Prophet Mohammed had done. The custom was for high-born prisoners like an emperor to be ransomed back. But the Byzantine court was so angry, they refused to pay for loser Romanus.

1191- At the siege of Acre, Richard Lionheart had 3,000 Arabs and their families slaughtered in front of Saladin just to piss him off.

1619- A Dutch ship anchored at the English colony at Jamestown Virginia and landed the first African slaves. Twenty people. By the American Revolution, three million African people had been forcibly brought to America to serve as slaves. There was white slavery as well in the form of indentured servitude, but that had mostly died out by the American Revolution. In 1809 when an international treaty was signed to outlaw the overseas slave trade, even though despots like the Czar of Russia signed it, the only nation that refused was the United States.

1648- Battle of Lens, the last battle of the Thirty Years War. Archduke Leopold defeated somebody or other. The Thirty Years war went on so long that all those who started the war in 1618 had died and by 1648 nobody remembered how the whole damn mess got started in the first place.

1672- THE DAY THE DUTCH ATE THEIR PRIME MINISTER. Jan DeWitt had governed the Netherlands as Grand Pensioner of the Republic for four terms. But by now many Dutch hated him for his weak handling of wars with England and France. They wanted the more resolute leadership of young William III of Orange. Jan De Witt resigned his offices and when his brother Cornelius was imprisoned, Jan went to his aid. A mob broke into the Gevangenpoort jail. As unsympathetic guards looked on they beat Jan and Cornelius to death and hung their bodies from a lamp-post. Some reports say the mob tore strips of flesh from their bodies and ate them.

1741-VITUS BERING DISCOVERED ALASKA and helps colonize California. Well, he didn't actually help, but for 200 years Spain had ignored it's Southwest colonies because there were no more gold-rich Inca empires there. But when Berring opened the Pacific coast to Russian colonization, the King of Spain freaked and ordered towns and missions built up the California coast. Britain also rushed its’ claims to Washington State and British Columbia. This is why Juan De Cabrillo explored the California coast in 1542, but cities like L.A. and San Francisco weren't founded until 1776.

Bering was a reluctant explorer. The Dane had heard Czar Peter the Great was giving cushy salaries to skilled European sailors. But when Bering arrived in Russia the Czar ordered him to travel 3,700 miles to Siberia, build a fleet and explore the arctic because the Czar had always wondered if America and Russia are connected. He went off and fooled around in the Arctic Sea for awhile, then went back and said it wasn't. The Czars scientists said that wasn't good enough, go back and do it again! Finally, he discovered his Bering Straights, but died of scurvy in the Aleutians before he ever got paid.

1794- Napoleon Bonaparte was released from prison at Caps d’Antibe. He was arrested with the leading Jacobins when Robespierre was overthrown. Nappy was friends with Robespierre’s brother.

1862- SECOND BATTLE OF BULL RUN or MANASSAS. Robert E. Lee maneuvered the larger Union army of General George Pope back onto the old Bull Run battlefield and smashed it, sending thousands of bluecoats running back to Washington, -again. Pope considered himself a man of action and bragged "From now on my headquarters are in the saddle!" To which one wag wrote :"It's not the first time that a general had his Headquarters where his Hindquarters should be !' Confederate General James Longstreet was nursing a foot wound so he directed the decisive attack wearing bedroom slippers instead of boots.

After three spectacular Yankee defeats in just two months, the Confederate cause was looking pretty good. In London, Prime Minister Palmerston wrote Lord Liverpool the foreign secretary that Washington or Baltimore would soon fall into rebel hands and a special steamboat was kept waiting at the navy docks to rush President Lincoln and his cabinet to safety when the capitol fell. The time may have arrived for England to offer her mediation to negotiate a ceasefire. Emperor Napoleon III of France was also offering Paris as the site of an international peace conference to oversee the final separation of North and South.

1866- One year after the Civil War ended President Andrew Johnson declared the great insurrection officially over and rescinded all remaining wartime regulations and edicts, reinstating Habeas Corpus, etc.

1882 -Peter Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" premiered in Moscow. The composer said of all his works the two pieces he liked the least were the 1812 Overture and the Nutcracker Suite. Overture 1812 was Richard Nixon’s favorite classical piece.

1896 – The Dial telephone patented. It was nicknamed the Gravediggers Dial because it was invented by funeral director Almon Strowger. His inspiration to create the automated switching system was the local telephone operator was the wife of his competitor in the funeral business. She kept sending all inquiries for an undertaker to her husband. The rotary dial and Strowger switching system was the world standard until replaced by the touchtone button system in the 1980s. Even though the dial phone is a memory, the words remain when we speak of dialing a phone number.

1913- The first successful parachute jump. French balloonists experimented with parachutes in the 1790's but this is the first practical one.

1940- In Mexico City exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky was assassinated. While writing at his desk he was hacked in the skull with a mountain-climbers pick. His murderer Ramon Mercador- alias Jules Antoine, alias Jackson, was paid by Stalin's agents. He got into Trotsky's household by dating one of the maids. It was rumored that part of the Stalinist cell in Mexico was famed painter David Siqueiros. Trotsky was having an affair with famed painter Frida Kahlo. Leon Trotsky predicted Stalin would try to get him while the world's attention was distracted by the Hitler War in Europe. When Mercador was released from a Mexican prison, Stalin presented him with the Order of Lenin.

1940- In a radio speech Winston Churchill praised the efforts of the Royal Air Force in fighting Hitler's bombers-"Never have so Many, owed so Much, to so Few.'

1953- The Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in Women first published. Alfred & Clara Kinsey’s study proved to the conservative American public that 50% of women had premarital sex, liked sex for more than just procreation, and 25% had an extramarital affair. This document following their 1948 report on sexual behavior of men revolutionized social attitudes towards sex and feminism.

1954- President Eisenhower’s intelligence chief Allan Foster Dulles presented a paper on Far East Policy in which he urged that the US support be given to the post colonial government of South Vietnam in opposition to communist Ho Chi Minh.

1971. FBI documents prove this day the Nixon White House began to covertly investigate journalist Daniel Schorr because of his anti-war editorials. President Richard Nixon kept an enemies list of people he imagined to be opponents to his administration. It began with obvious liberals like George McGovern and Ted Kennedy, then expanded as far as June Foray the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

1972- Star Hollywood directors Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin announced a partnership in a new production company called "The Director's Company". Young punks Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were also involved. The partnership lasted two years then collapsed.

1982- Ralph Bakshi's film Hey Good Lookin'.

1982- President Reagan sent the Marines into civil war torn Beirut Lebanon.

1985- Israel shipped 96 American-made shoulder held missiles to the radical Ayatollahs of Iran. This was part of the Iran-Contra scheme. When Congress had forbidden the Ronald Reagan White House to send any money to Anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua, Reagan’s people cooked up this scheme to sell the Iranians weapons for covert funds for the Nicaraguan Contras.

1989- George and Joy Adamson, the naturalists who inspired the book Born Free, were murdered by Somali poachers with machetes in Kampi Ya Simba, Africa.

1994- Studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg resigned from the Walt Disney Company.

1998- THE WAG THE DOG ATTACKS- After the Al Qaeda terrorist organization bombed US embassies in Africa, the Clinton Administration looked for an opportunity to hit back. This day the CIA got word that senior Al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden were gathered in a remote Afghan camp for a meeting. President Clinton ordered a spread of cruise missiles launched to kill them. The missiles hit their target, but Osama got away. In Washington, the hostile Conservative press had a field day accusing Clinton of making the strikes only to distract public attention from the Monica Lewinsky Sex Scandal. It alluded to a popular movie out at the time called Wag the Dog, where a scandal ridden president rigs a phoney crisis to distract public attention.
Bill Clinton was stymied in any further efforts, and Osama bin Laden lived on to plan 9-11.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: For those born after 1970, In what country is Saigon?

Answer: It was the old Republic of South Vietnam. Today called Ho Chi Minh City.


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