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July 21, 2023
July 21st, 2023

Question: What does it mean to be “ rich as Croesus”?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: What movie was NOT directed by Sergio Leone? The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Duck you Sucker!, Hang em High. Once Upon a Time in America.
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History for 7/21/2023
Birthdays: Ernest Hemingway, Issac Stern, Marshal McCluhan, Don Knotts, Janet Reno, Gary Trudeau the creator of Doonesbury, Eugen Shuftan inventor of the "Shuftan Effect", a cheap way of combining actors with miniatures by shooting through mirrors. Edward Herman, Robin Williams, Josh Harnett, Norman Jewison

Happy National Zippo Lighter Day. Smoking is bad but Zippos are cool- another one of life’s mysteries.

365AD- The Egyptian city of Alexandria was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami. This may have toppled the famous Pharos lighthouse.

1588-the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon, Seville, Corunna and Cadiz to attack England. One of the sailors was playwright and poet Lope De Vega.

1605- The false Dmitri crowned Czar in Moscow. Dmitri was a Lithuanian priest named Grishka who claimed to be the dead child of Ivan the Terrible come back to life. His claim was backed up with a powerful Polish magnate's private army, the Mniszechs. He captured Moscow as Czar Boris Gudunov died. But they couldn't hold it long.

1784- Abigail Adams went by coach from the English Channel via Canterbury to London to join her husband John Adams. Adams was to assume his post as first ambassador to the Court of Saint James from the new nation of the United States. Abigail wrote of her coach journey how when they passed the area called Blackheath there was fear of robbers and highwaymen. She saw one robber captured and shuddered that he would soon be hanged. She wrote in her diary:” It is good that such terrible things do not happen in America!” Why, women alone travel the roads in perfect safety!”

1798- "Soldiers! Forty Centuries look down upon you! “The Battle of the Pyramids- Napoleon's cannon mowed down the Mamelukes, who had ruled Egypt since the Crusades. He was so impressed with their courage that he later enlisted a corps of them in his own army. It was speculated around this time the Sphinx lost its nose. French troops used the Sphinx for target practice. The battle was actually fought a distance from the Pyramids, but Nappy disliked the title Battle of Embaba’s Melon Patch, so Battle of the Pyramids it was.

1821- After ten years as Prince Regent. George IV was finally crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey, but without his Queen Caroline. They couldn't stand one another and he was trying to divorce her. So, when she showed up in her state carriage for the coronation, on the kings orders the Lords and Peers rushed to shut the cathedral doors, leaving her out in the crowd of spectators.

1861- THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN or MANASSAS JUNCTION- First major engagement of the Civil War. Irwin McDowell's Yankees and Pierre Beauregard's Confederates had unknowingly adopted the exact same battle plan, feint with right and strike around the left. They would have completely marched around each other if they hadn't blundered together. The North was so confident of victory Washington society turned out with picnic baskets to watch the fun.
What they saw was a horrible Union defeat and they were caught in the mob of panicked soldiers running back to the Capitol. They later called it called the Great Skeedadddle. Uniforms weren't standard yet and many states sent their men in colorful militia costumes. The union men from Wisconsin wore grey and the Rebels from Pensacola Florida wore blue. Both were shot at by their own sides. Rebel General Thomas Jackson was holding off union assaults when a dying general shouted, "Look, there stands Jackson like a stone wall!" The nickname stuck.
Stonewall Jackson had told his men:" When you charge, howl like furies." For the first time the famous Rebel Yell was heard. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was so nervous he rushed to the battlefield in a locomotive. When he arrived on the scene he tried to make a speech to rally the spirits of some ragged soldiers he thought had fled. Turned out they were Stonewall Jackson's veterans, just resting after they won the battle for him.
Bull Run could have been an American Waterloo, because the Yankee army was completely destroyed, and nothing stood between the southerners and the White House, only 40 miles away. But the gray-backs were also disorganized and exhausted, so the pursuit was called off. The Civil War would not be won in one big battle but would drag on for four bloody years.

1865- The Civil War over and Abraham Lincoln dead, the hard line cabinet of Pres. Andrew Johnson voted to put Confederate ex-president Jefferson Davis on trial for treason. Former lawyer Davis was hoping for just such a trial; so he could force the issue of the Constitutional legality of secession out into the open and maybe even get a ruling from the Supreme Court. It was just for these reasons that cooler heads prevailed and the treason charge was never acted upon. After two years in prison Davis was quietly released and allowed to retire.

1884- In one of the dirtiest elections in U.S. history, the New York Post broke the story of Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland fathered a child out of wedlock and abandone

d the mother. Cleveland admitted paternity but won election anyway, because the Republican James G. Blaine was even worse. Just as Cleveland pioneered the Democratic preoccupation with sex, Blaine pioneered the cozy relationship between the Republicans and big business. He had taken so many kickbacks, his nickname was the Tatooed Man. A leading Protestant divine stood with Blaine and accused the Democratic Party of being “ The Party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." Every Irishman in the country immediately voted for Cleveland. (around forty per cent of the population of New York alone, was Irish at the time). Republicans chanted "Ma, Ma! Where’s My Pa!- Dems countered" He’s Going to the White House, Ha Ha Ha!" another ditty was: "Mary is healthy and so is the Kid, We Voted for Cleveland and we’re damn glad we did!"

1917- Ford introduced their first truck, the Model TT. It weighed one ton and had a new innovation not in regular automobiles, a reverse gear.

1936- Republican Spanish troops besiege the Fascist fortress of ALCAZAR. They maintained a telephone hookup with the commander, Colonel Moscardo, to try and convince him to surrender. At one point they told him they were going to shoot his son if he didn't give up. The colonel said: " Put my son on the phone!" Hello son?" Put your faith in God, shout Viva Espana, and Die like a Man!" Moscardo never surrendered and the siege was broken.

1939- Disney short “The Pointer” directed by Clyde Geronimi. Mickey gets whites in his eyes.

1944- Democratic Presidential Convention nominates Sen. Harry Truman of Missouri to be Franklin Roosevelt's Vice President on the second ballot. As early as December 1943 the Democratic party leaders knew FDR was a dying man. Whoever was his running mate would in all likelihood become President. With World War II not finished and the United Nations to create, this was a pretty important choice.
The incumbent Vice President Henry Wallace was an eccentric who had a guru, sent field scientists to China and India to look for traces of teenage Jesus, but was the choice of the liberal wing of New Dealers. Democratic Party Chairman Robert Haneghan pulled every string he had to get Wallace off the ticket and Truman on. Truman himself didn't want the job and Roosevelt was promising it to everyone he met.
At last Truman agreed, and Haneghan barred a pro-Wallace demonstration. He even sent a man with an ax upstairs to threaten the convention organist to stop playing "The Corn Grows High in IOWA" (Wallace's home state). Truman talked to Roosevelt only once or twice before FDR died and Truman had to decide whether to drop the A-Bomb and form the post-war world. Wallace tried a third party presidential run with Chet "the Singing Cowboy" Taylor as running mate in 1948. Robert Haneghan said-"The only epitaph I want on my tombstone is: AT LEAST HE PREVENTED HENRY WALLACE FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT!"

1954- The Fellowship of the Ring, first book of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, first published. Tolkien’s friend C.S. Lewis said the book “came forth like thunder on a summers day..”

1954- The Geneva Accords were signed, dividing French IndoChina into North and South Vietnams. This division was only to be until elections were organized, which never happened. This only set the stage for the terrible Vietnam War that lasted until 1975.

1959- Judge Frederick van Pelt-Bryan ruled that D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not pornography and therefore could be sent through the U.S. postal system.

1969- The Lunar module had landed on the 20th. Buzz Aldrin admitted years later that Neil was the first to walk on the moon, but he was the first to pee on the moon. Houston control said, “I can see you’re smiling there, Buzz…”

1970- In Egypt the Aswan High Dam completed, finally controlling the annual summer flooding of the Nile.

1971, The New York Times ran an article about Taki 183 on the front page of its inside section, titled "Taki 183 Spawns Pen Pals. Taki was the first graffiti tag artist. Taki was a nickname of a man named Demetrius from 183 St. In the late 1960s-1970s his tag seemed to be everywhere. Although graffiti has been around since the Egyptians and Romans, this helped spark the modern fascination.

1974- Constantin Karamanlis returned to Greece from exile to signal the restoration of Greek democracy after the rule of the Colonels Junta fell.

1980- SAG went on strike for actor's residuals from videocassette and cable TV sales.
The actors hit the bricks twice more, in 1988, 2000, 2008. And now in 2023.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What movie was NOT directed by Sergio Leone? The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Duck you Sucker!, Hang em High. Once Upon a Time in America.

Answer: Hang em’ High was directed by a man named Tom Poston. Clint Eastwood had a falling out with Leone, and wanted to do a spaghetti western without him.


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