July 6, 2023 July 6th, 2023 |
Quiz: Which Walt Disney movie came out first? Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, or Cinderella?
Yesterday’s questions answered below: What is the difference between a Saint, an Angel and an Archangel?
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History for 7/6/2023
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Czar Nicholas Ist, Frida Kahlo, Della Reese, Bill Haley,
Nancy Reagan, Sylvester Stallone is 77, Merv Griffin, Janet Leigh, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sebastian Cabot, James Bodrero, The Dalai Lama, LaVerne Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, Geoffrey Rush is 72, Ned Beatty, President George W. Bush is 77, Fifty Cent is 48, Jennifer Saunders is 65.
Happy St. Fermin's Day, the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Remember when running the trick to it is keeping ones self directly in front of the bull’s head. This area between his eyes is his blind spot.
83 B.C.- Sulla stormed Rome and defeated the supporters of Marius. This first civil war amongst powerful Roman factions is known as “The Wars of Marius & Sulla" or “the Social Wars”. As dictator, Sulla published lists of hundreds of political enemies called the Proscribed. If you were on that list, anybody could kill you without trial. Sulla had on his staff a student intern who recently changed sides. His name was Julius Caesar.
1190- Death of Henry II, King of England and the Angevin Empire – he ruled a territory almost as great as Charlemagne but his reign was marred by the martyrdom of
Thomas à Becket and quarrels with his family. Henry had pledged to go on Crusade to liberate Jerusalem and after his death his Crusade was taken up by his son Richard the Lionhearted. In the end Henry was so disgusted by the feuds with his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and sons Richard, Geoffrey and John Lackland, legend has it his dying breath was a curse on his own family.
1480- The Duke of Gloucester was crowned King Richard III. He is referred to as the Last Plantagenet, meaning the last of the bloodline of Geoffrey of Anjou and Richard the Lionhearted. He was defeated and killed by Henry VII of the House of Tudor. The recent discovery of his remains proved he really did have a spinal deformity. Whether he was the villain as Shakespeare and Hollingshed portrayed him, is a matter for scholars to argue over. Shakespeare was writing plays for the granddaughter of the man who killed him, so that would obviously color his interpretation of events.
1495-Battle of Fornovo- King Charles VIII of France begins a new round of European kings invading Italy by marching on Naples and defeating a combined army of the Italian city states. The warrior king Charles eventually died back home by hitting his head on low doorway. Doh!
1560-The Treaty of Edinburgh- after a small war, victorious Scottish Presbyterian rebels compel Mary Queen of Scots dismiss her French troops from Scotland and declare freedom to worship, which meant Scotland was going Protestant. Representatives of Queen Elizabeth of England also demanded Mary renounce forever her claim to the throne of England. Mary’s mother was King Henry VIII’s sister. Mary refused that.
1685- THE BATTLE OF SEDGEMOOR AND THE BLOODY ASSIZES.-The illegitimate son of King Charles II, the Duke of Monmouth, tried to overthrow his Catholic uncle King James II with the help of many old Roundheads, angry that the Catholic monarch was planning to subvert the liberties won by Cromwell in the English Civil War. This day Monmouth hightailed it for the hills while his army was cut to pieces in battle.
After the battle the punishment of the rebels under Judge Jefferies was so brutal it was nicknamed the Bloody Assizes. An assize was another name for circuit court. Hundreds were beheaded, tongues cut out, limbs branded with hot irons, then transported as slaves to the Bahamas and Barbados to cut sugar cane. Refined sugar was a new delicacy sweeping the nation. To this day many lighter skinned Bahamians can claim descendant from these condemned rebels. In the 1890s Rafael Sabatini wrote a novel about one slave who escaped to become a pirate named Captain Blood, later made into an Errol Flynn movie.
1809- THE IMMORTAL BELOVED LETTERS- Composer Ludwig van Beethoven never married, but not for want of trying. The bad tempered loner loved several women but never had a serious relationship beyond prostitutes. After his death, several love letters were found. The letters written this day were of a supremely passionate nature, where he begged some unknown woman to keep an appointment with him at some unstated rendezvous in Hungary. “Though still in bed my thoughts go out to you, My Immortal Beloved…” The letters were never sent and have no addresses or names. Who was this Immortal Beloved Beethoven yearns for?
1809-Battle of Wagram- Napoleon defeated the Austrian army of Archduke Charles. The Austrian soldiers wore white uniforms, so the French called them: "Soldats de la creme'". Napoleon planned this battle out so well that as soon as he was satisfied the enemy was toast, even though fighting still raged all around him, he took a nap on a leopard skin rug.
1843- THE REBECCA RIOTS In the countryside of Wales people’s anger against rents, tolls and tariffs took an unusual form. A big farmer named Tom Rees (Twm Carnabwth in Welsh) Dressed up in ladies petticoats, darkened his face and led a mob of 200 similarly dressed to smash a toll road barrier near Pontaldulais. They called themselves The Rebeccas from a passage in the Bible Genesis 24:60,” Rebecca mother of millions, let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them.” Later that year the Rebecca protests died out and those the police captured were transported to Australia.
1853- In Ripon, Wisconsin, Free-Soil Whigs and other lefty radicals form the new Republican Party. They were first called the Anti-Nebraska Men, rejecting the Nebraska Compromise, then Black-Republicans for awhile because of their strong anti-slavery stance.
1885- Louis Pasteur gave the first inoculation to cure rabies.
1886 - Horlick's of Wisconsin offers the first malted milk to public. It began as an attempt to create a new type of baby formula.
1895- A businessman named William Sydney Porter returned from Honduras where he had fled after being indicted for embezzlement. He had returned because he had learned of the illness of his wife. Porter was sent to prison, and while there began writing little stories which he later published under the name O. Henry.
1906- THE GREAT FUNERAL OF JOHN PAUL JONES- The heroic sea captain of the American Revolution in Paris in 1792. Ill and forgotten, he had no friends. Writer Thomas Carlyle said Jones “resembled an empty wineskin.” The few mourners at the little Paris cemetery were he was interred were all admiring Frenchmen and children he had given coins to on the street during his walks through the Luxembourg Gardens. The American ambassador skipped his funeral because of a dinner party he didn’t want to miss. A Frenchman named Simonot had embalmed Jones in brandy in a lead sealed barrel because he figured the American government wanted to ship him home. He was amazed when they were too cheap to even cover the transport fees. Jones’ sword and medals were pawned to pay for the funeral.
A century later America had become a great power. Scientists set about to look for John Paul Jones remains. They discovered the lead barrel in Paris’ Old Protestant Cemetery. The brandy embalming kept him so well preserved they could do an autopsy on the body. Jones had died of bronchial pneumonia and kidney failure at age 45. President Teddy Roosevelt shared Jones’ dream of a powerful US Navy. He used the occasion to stage a grand re-internment in Annapolis Naval Academy.
So on his birthday rows of battleships booming salutes and mile-long processions of marching US Marine and French honor guards gave John Paul Jones the grand funeral he always felt he deserved, just 113 years late.
1917 As Lowell Thomas’ newsreel cameras rolled, Lawrence of Arabia and Bedouin Sheik Ouda Abu-Tai captured the Red Sea Port of Aqaba from Turkish troops. The battle was dramatized in the 1962 David Lean epic Lawrence of Arabia.
1917- King George V withdrew his offer of asylum to his first cousin Czar Nicholas II and his family. With European crowns falling all around him, George was concerned about his own.
1925, Walt and Roy Disney place a $400 deposit ($5,750.00 in modern money) on a lot located at 2719 Hyperion Avenue, in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Their aim is to build a big new studio.
1928- The film "The Lights of New York" premiered at the Strand theater on Broadway. 1927's the Jazz Singer popularized sound movies while still being half silent. This film was the first with an all dialogue track.
1938- THE EVIAN CONFERENCE- No, it wasn't about bottled water. Since 1933, the refugees fleeing the Hitler’s Third Reich grew to tens of thousands. President Franklin Roosevelt called for a summit of Western powers at Evian France to discuss the issue of the rising numbers asking asylum in the democracies. 32 nations participated. The conference turned into a parade of diplomats making excuses. It accomplished nothing. From 1938 to 1944 only half the quota for U.S. visas allowed were ever filled. The rest were held up by red tape while the Holocaust raged. Also the British Mandate authority bowed to Arab anger to restrict immigration to Palestine. Saudi Prince Ibn Saud said:” Why should we be punished for the sins of Europe?” The only nations on Earth who accepted unrestricted Jewish immigration from the Nazis were Holland and Denmark. Young delegate and future Israeli leader Golda Meir was asked what she hoped to get out of the conference. “All I want to see before I die is for my people to get something else beyond Expressions of Sympathy.”
1944- A fire broke out in the main tent of Ringling Bros Circus during a children’s matinee in Hartford Connecticut. The big top had been waterproofed with a paraffin solution thinned with gasoline and now that mixture engulfed the tent in flames. 168 died and 682 more were injured, mostly children. In 1950 a mad arsonist named Robert Segee admitted he started the Hartford Circus Fire.
1957- Chuck Jones short "What’s Opera, Doc?" debuted. “Kill da wa-bitt, kill da wa-bitt..."
1957-16 year old John Lennon first met 15 year old Paul McCartney at a church picnic near Woolton, England. Lennon invited McCartney to join his first band called the Quarrymen, but McCartney missed their first engagement because of a boy scout trip.
1964 - Beatles' film "Hard Day's Night" premieres in London. The bands iconoclastic, antics portrayed by Richard Lester’s surreal free style direction set the style for the music videos of the future.
1965- TV sitcom F-Troop premiered. Shortly after the series began production it was learned that lead actress Melody Patterson (Wrangler Jane) fibbed on her paperwork and was actually underage, she was 16 years old. She kept the part, but the writers had to tone down any sexual innuendo in the scripts. The show did well, but is rarely show today because of the racially insensitive humor towards indigenous people.
1965 - Rock group Jefferson Airplane formed.
1967- The state of Biafra tried to win its independence from Nigeria. In the Civil War that followed a million of its citizens died of malnutrition and the images shocked the world.
1974- The first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keilor’s ode to small town life in Minnesota. Brought to you by Powdermilk Biscuits. His last broadcast was in 2016, and was forced to leave his company in 2017 due to Me-To allegations of sexual misconduct with his employees.
1996- Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump opened in theaters.
1998- French workers at Disneyland Paris theme park went on strike for better pay and not having to smile constantly like Americans do.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the difference between a Saint, an Angel and an Archangel?
Answer: A saint is a mortal who got promoted for doing nice things. An angel is a supernatural being who carries out the orders of God. An Archangel is a super class of angel used chiefly for battling Lucifer, ending the world, etc. Archangel Michael, Gabriel, Rafael.