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JUly 14, 2023
July 14th, 2023

Quiz: The Pennine Mountains are in what country?

Yesterday’s Quiz: It’s been revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas was recently admitted to a secret society of ultra-rich and famous people called the Horatio Alger Society. Who was Horatio Alger?
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History for 7/14/2023
Birthdays: Issac Bashevis Singer, Frederick Maytag, inventor of the electronic washing machine-1857, Emiline Pankhurst, Woody Guthrie, Gerald Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Jerry Rubin, Scott Rudin, Rosie Grier, Harry Dean Stanton, Polly Bergen, Gustav Klimt, Terry Thomas, Jimmy Hoffa, Dave Fleischer, Bill Hanna, Walt Stanchfield, Joel Silver, Vincent (Big Pussy) Pastore

Happy Tape Measure Day.

1415- Joanna II, the Queen of Naples called Joanna la Loca (Crazy Joanie), allows the prostitutes of Avignon to form their own guild. Solidarity Forever.

1690- King William III of Orange landed in Ireland near Carrickfergus with a large Anglo-Dutch Army to confront James II Stuart.

1756- In one of the opening moves of the Seven Years War, the French crossed Lake Ontario and captured Fort Oswego. The French commander Vaudreuil wrote: The howling of our Canadians and Indians soon convinced the defenders to surrender."

1789- BASTILLE DAY-THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. In France the anger of the common people over economic hardship and arrogant indifference of the King and nobility finally exploded in mass violence. The focus of the people’s hate was the Bastille, a huge fortress- prison that towered over Paris rooftops, her cannon aimed at the people in the streets. The Parisians got guns and stormed the prison. Ironically, the royal government was intending to phase out the prison anyway.
When the gates were forced opened only a handful of petty thieves came out, including a lunatic who shouted:" I am God! " But the symbolism was what counted.
Miles away at Versailles, King Louis XVI had just written in his hunting diary- July 14th 1789-" Rien- Nothing" when he heard the commotion. He said:" What is that? A revolt?" The Duke de la Rochfoucauld said:" No Sire, a revolution!"

1790- On the first anniversary of the French Revolution, the U.S. Congress voted a celebration in solidarity with a fellow republic.

1791- The Irish rebel Wolftone stands on the heights above Dublin and swears eternal opposition to the English. This is considered the legendary birth of the IRA.

1793- Charlotte Corday stabbed French Revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat in his bathtub. Marat had to receive callers in his tub because of a skin affliction. He was known for sayings like "If we cut off a thousand heads today, it saves us cutting off ten thousand tomorrow!" and:" We'll strangle the last king, with the guts of the last priest!" Corday was the daughter of one of his victims, a moderate politician called a Girondist. Young artist Madame Tussaud was allowed to make a death mask of Marat while still in the tub and David's painting shows him expiring with a Christ-like calm.

1798- President John Adams signed the ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS, which stated you could be jailed, and if an immigrant deported, for saying anything critical of the U.S. government. Outraged Thomas Jefferson said he was afraid to write down his views anymore in the face of such a law. Despite the obvious conflict with basic Constitutional rights, the Alien and Sedition Acts were never successfully challenged in court. In 1801 the time limit on the Acts were allowed to elapse without renewal and incoming President Jefferson pardoned all those jailed under them.
The Acts come up every now and again when politicians need a legal precedent for jailing someone, like during the McCarthy period of the 1950’s. In 1998 they were alluded to when Judge Kenneth Starr wanted to jail people who wouldn’t cooperate in his Monica Lewinsky scandal probe, and in 2003 in the Patriot Acts.

1850 - 1st public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration

1853 – In emulation of the London World Exposition at the Crystal Palace, the 1st US World's fair opens at the Crystal Palace NY.

1862- Every old sailors worst nightmare came true. This day the US Navy did away with the daily rum ration, in effect outlawing all alcohol on a ship except for medicinal purposes.

1863- After their defeat at Gettysburg Robert E. Lee's Confederate army finally crossed the Potomac back to the safety of Virginia. Abe Lincoln was furious that his victorious General George Meade wouldn't pursue the defeated rebels and finish them off before they could escape, maybe shortening the Civil War by a year. But the cautious General Meade thought his own army too exhausted and didn’t want to press his luck. Meade then angered Lincoln further by issuing a public thanks to his army for" Driving the Enemy off our soil." Lincoln responded:" Pennsylvania is our soil, but so is Virginia! They are not a foreign army!" Lincoln superseded Meade in authority with Grant who kept him in a secondary role.

1868- Seward's Folly- Congress authorized the purchase of Alaska from Russia.

1882- BILLY THE KID SHOT- Fort Sumner New Mexico sheriff Pat Garrett hid in a closet in the Kid's hotel room and shot him in the back as he was sitting on the bed, taking his boots off. Billy's last words were:" Who's there?" Backshooting was how Billy killed most of his victims. Billy was 21. After blasting away, Pat Garret panicked and scrambled out into the street without waiting to see if his shots had their effect.
Billy had such a lethal reputation that a small crowd stood in fear outside his room for nearly an hour until they were sure the Kid wasn't just playing possum but was really dead. Even though Garrett was practically illiterate, he wrote several best-selling books on the incident, heavily embellished by pulp ghostwriter Ned Buntline. Eventually Pat Garrett too was shot in the back, this time in an argument over ownership of some goats.

1882- Gunfighter Johnny Ringo found dead in Turkey Canyon Arizona. Ringo was not part of the Gunfight at the OK Corral but he later called out Doc Holliday. Wyatt Earp claimed he had hunted down Ringo and killed him, but the court ruled it a suicide.

1892- Civil War veterans who were wounded in service were awarded an additional $50 pension by the government. Female nurses of that conflict were awarded a $12 pension. Political satirist and combat veteran Ambrose Bierce returned the money with the note" Thank you, but this was not part of the original contract when I signed on to become an assassin for my Country."

1908- The Adventures of Dollie premiered, the first movie of D.W. Griffith.

1914 - 1st patent for liquid-fueled rocket design granted to Dr. Robert Goddard. Goddard did some schooling at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA, until he blew up the chemistry building and they kicked him out. He then went down the road to a field in the town of Auburn to fire off that first successful liquid-fueled rocket.
After he became famous, WPI named the new building after him. The air pressure inside that building is kept lower than the outside pressure via a large pump in the basement... so that if the building were ever exploded again, it would implode and reduce collateral damage. It makes the outside doors really tough to open!
In l939 when the US government decided to take over the Guggenheim financed rocket experiments at Cal Tech and form the Jet Propulsion Labs they invited Goddard to join them. But Goddard didn’t want to lose his special status in his own labs by becoming a government scientist so he declined the offer.

1917- Buster Keaton made his film debut in the Fatty Arbuckle comedy The Butcher Boy.

1918- Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of Teddy Roosevelt became a fighter pilot in World War I. On this day in aerial combat he was shot down and killed. Teddy Roosevelt loved to brag about the manly virtues of war and as President continually rattled his saber at the world. But his own baby boy's death “Quinty-Que”, broke his spirit. Teddy was never the same again and died within a year.

1921-Sacco & Vancetti convicted. These men were Italian immigrants and socialists who were accused of the murder of a Massachusetts storeowner. The evidence was slight, but hey, they were foreign immigrants, and lefties. Despite protests around the world from folks like Picasso, George Bernard Shaw and Helen Keller, they were electrocuted. Folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a dozen ballads in tribute to Sacco & Vancetti." Let me sing you a ballad of Sacco-Vancetti, pour me some wine and eat some spaghetti..."

90th Anniversary 1933- Well Blow Me Down!- Max Fleischer's first "Popeye the Sailor" cartoon debuted. The character was first created by Elzie Segar for his Thimble Theater comic strip. Based on a eccentric old neighbor who smoked a pipe and liked to get into fights. Vaudevillian Red Pepper Sam provided his salty mumbles throughout the post-sync track. Fleischer soon realized the improvised mumbling was funnier than the written dialogue. When Sam asked for more money than Max Fleischer thought he was worth, he replaced him with assistant animator Jack Mercer, who remained his voice until his death in 1984.

1944- T.S. Elliott, then working for the London publisher Faber & Faber, wrote George Orwell a letter rejecting the manuscript of his book “Animal Farm” for publication. He said although the writing style was good and the most intriguing use of allegory since Swift’s Gulliver, its politics were too Trotskyite to be representative of their company. Orwell found another publisher.

1946 – Dr. Benjamin Spock's "Common Sense Book of Baby & Child Care" published

1948- The Israeli Army captured Nazareth.

1951 - 1st color telecast of a sporting event (CBS-horse race)

1951 –Triple Crown Winner Citation becomes 1st horse to win $1,000,000 in races.

1955- The Kaarman Ghia debuted. Volkswagen wanted an "image car" to compete with the sleek American designs like the Corvette and Thunderbird. So they subcontracted the Kaarman motorbus company who engaged an Italian design firm named Ghia and the distinctive little coupe was born.

1958- The last King of Iraq, Feisal II was overthrown and killed by a coup of army officers led by General Kassim. Feisals family was Jordanian, they were placed in Iraq by the British in the 1920’s to make up for losing the Hejaz (Saudi Arabia) to the house of Ibn Saud.

1967 - The new band called The Who began a US tour as the opening act for Herman’s Hermits.

1969- El Salvador and Nicaragua go to war over a soccer match.

1969- The movie Easy Rider premiered.

1978- Lee Iacocca, exec in charge of the invention of the Ford Mustang, was fired by Ford Motor Co. Henry Ford III said: "I just don’t like the man." Iacocca went on to resurrecting the Chrysler Corporation and run KookARoo Chicken restaurants.

1980- The Republican Convention nominated former California Governor, actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan. The GOP under Robert Strauss & Lee Atwater completed restructuring itself after the disaster of Watergate by creating a new-conservative alliance of Sunbelt Evangelicals and Southern Dixiecrats.
Regular Republican stalwarts who disagreed with their agenda- Rockefeller, Goldwater, Nixon were out. At 69, Reagan was the oldest man to ever run for the presidency until McCain in 2008, then Trump and Biden in 2020. Reagan said of the convention:" It’s the first time in a long while I saw myself on television in prime time."

1997- Johnny Bravo premiered on TV.

2015- After a nine-year voyage, the space probe New Horizon made a closer flyby of the planet Pluto than any spacecraft had ever done. Scientists has dismissed Pluto as a shapeless rock asteroid. Horizon showed Pluto was perfectly round, had an ice cap, and even a slightly blue atmosphere.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: It’s been revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas was recently admitted to a secret society of ultra-rich and famous people called the Horatio Alger Society. Who was Horatio Alger?

Answer: Horatio Alger (1832-1899) was an immensely popular author of juvenile novels written during the last half of the 19th century. These books always featured a young, impoverished boy who, by his high moral character and heroic deeds, rises from his humble beginnings to success and a happy life. Self-made capitalists like Carnegie, Ford and Disney pointed to the Horatio Alger stories as their inspiration. (Thanks FG)


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