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July 29, 2023
July 29th, 2023

Question: What is an Arriviste?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: “ Shave and a Hair-cut. Two Bits.” How much in real money is two-bits?
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History for 7/29/2023
Birthdays: Alex de Tocqueville, Benito Mussolini, Clara Bow, Natalie Wood, Paul Taylor, Sig Romberg, Dag Hammarskjold, Peter Jennings, Michael Spinks, Maria Ouspenskaya, Dave Stevens creator of the Rocketeer, Ken Burns is 69, Booth Tarkington, David Warner, Steven Dorff, Professor Irwin Corey, William Cameron-Menzies, Peter Jennings, William Powell, Will Wheaton

1014- Battle of Kleidion, BalaThistau- Byzantine Emperor Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer defeated an entire Bulgar horde. He had 15,000 captured warriors blinded, leaving one man in one hundred with one eye to lead them all home. When Samuel the Bulgar Khan beheld his mutilated army limping back, he dropped dead in shock.

1030- Battle of Stiklestaad- One of the largest Viking battles ever- King Olaf the White went down fighting the still pagan Norsemen of Denmark and Sweden and became St. Olaf the Martyr. Olaf's method of converting Vikings to Christianity was similar to his uncle King Olaf Tryggvason, which was to sail a big fleet of dragon ships up and down the coast and chop anybody who didn't want to be baptized.
But while Tryggvason's death in battle at Svoldr spawned some great epic poems and music by Edvard Grieg, Olaf the Saint's death spawned miracles and shrines and he was canonized a year later. Anxious Vikings who wanted to fence-sit in this struggle over religion took to wearing an amulet that turned one side resembled the Cross, while turned over became the Hammer of Thor.

1527- King Charles of Spain informed his ambassador in England that he would advise the Pope to refuse a divorce for King Henry VIII and his wife Catharine of Aragon. And since King Charles had the Pope in prison, I would say that about settled the matter.

1565 - Mary Queen of Scots married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.

1567- The ten month old baby James VI, the offspring of Lord Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots was named King of Scotland in Edinburgh. It’s the last James would ever see his mother. His father was murdered and his mom beheaded by Queen Elizabeth, but after a number of guardians James had the last laugh. Eventually he become King of both Scotland and England.

1588- The SPANISH ARMADA DEFEATED. The great armada was sent originally to ferry the Duke of Parma's army from Holland over to England. Elizabeth didn't have much in the way of militia so the crack Spanish troops once landed probably could have taken London without too much difficulty. The admiral in charge of the fleet, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia was a replacement for the late famous captain Don John of Austria and the equally dead Marquis of Santa Cruz. Medina-Sidonia admitted he knew nothing about ships.

This day was the BATTLE OF GRAVELINES, largest engagement of the Armada and the English navy under Francis Drake. They pounded one another and after Medina Sidonia discovered he could not pick up Parma’s army he resolved to sail home. The bulk of the Armada was destroyed by a North Sea storm off Ireland. When Medina-Sidonia appeared before King Phillip II, he replied: “I told Your Majesty I knew nothing about ships!”
Although this great victory of the British Navy saved England, Queen Elizabeth's budget for them was amazingly stingy. More British sailors died from rancid food than Spanish gunfire. The English fleet had to break off its attack when they ran out of cannonballs. Spain sent other armadas at England over the next few years, but this was the most famous.

1693- Battle of Neerwinden- With the command “En Advance!” the French under Marshal Turenne attacked William of Orange with these newfangled "bayonets", combining the power of a pike with a musket. One of the French leaders was Pierre Montesqiou Comte D'Artagnan, the model for the hero of Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers.

1792- Maximillien Robsepierre stood up in the National Assembly and for the first time openly called for the dethronement of their King Louis XVI.

1813- General Junot, boyhood friend of Napoleon, and veteran of a dozen battles, suffered a nervous breakdown and jumped out of a window to his death. It was said he went mad, but could it possibly have been an early example of PTSD? Despite being so tight with Bonaparte, he couldn’t rise above the rank of general of division because he just didn’t have the ability. Ironically there was a costume ball that night and he jumped in his costume.

1848- The Tipperarry Revolt. At the height of the great potato famine William Smith O’Brien and his Young Ireland Movement tried to declare Independence. After a skirmish with police in a cabbage patch, they were rounded up and shipped to New Zealand.

1890- Near Auvers-sur-Oise, artist Vincent Van Gogh went behind a hay bale and was shot. He lingered for two days and died of blood poisoning. He was 37. His brother Theo was so distraught he died six months later of a brain disease and melancholia.
For many years everyone believed Van Gogh committed suicide. Recent scholarship established that van Gogh may not have shot himself, but tussled with a group of neighborhood children who liked to taunt the “Crazy Man”. A boy named Rene’ Secretan acted like a cowboy and carried a pistol. In the melee’ his pistol went off. Van Gogh later said he did it to himself to spare the children any jail. Decades later as an old man, Rene’ Secretan confessed he fired the fatal shot.

1900- King Umberto I of Italy was shot and killed by anarchists. The assassin was Angelo Bresci, a silk merchant from Patterson New Jersey who had returned to the old country to rid Italy of monarchs.

1914- Czar Nicholas of Russia changed his mind about mobilizing his army, writes his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in English, their common tongue, and warned that rising pressures were forcing him to declare war. "Could not the Austro-Serbian dispute be settled by the Hague Conference? Your Loving Nicky".
Wilhelm scrawled in the margin "Rubbish". Later Wilhelm too had second thoughts about blowing up Europe and went up to his Bavarian hunting lodge to sulk about it. The German army chief of staff Von Moltke talked him out of his funk." How could you let down all those wonderful guys working long hours at the general staff by declaring peace?"

1918- At Grey’s Inn in London, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill first met Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then US Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Twenty years later, they would become close friends while running a much larger war.

1920 - 1st transcontinental airmail flight from NY to SF.

1922- In Kansas City, Walt Disney released his first Laugh-o-Gram short- Little Red Riding Hood, animated by Rudy Ising.

1927- Dr Phillip Drinker and Dr Louis Shaw installed the first Iron Lung breathing apparatus at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

1931- George Bernard Shaw traveled to Moscow and met Josef Stalin.

1938- Three Missing Links- a Three Stooges comedy with the boys as cave men and Ray Crash Corrigan in a gorilla suit.

1942- Orson Welles left Rio De Janiero after RKO fired him and stopped production of "It's All True". RKO also had “the Magnificent Ambersons” re-cut to a more acceptable 90 minutes and fired the executive producer first who brought him to Hollywood.

1944- THE WARSAW UPRISING-As the Red Army under Marshall Voroshilov approached the eastern Praga suburbs of Warsaw, Radio Moscow broadcast a cryptic message to Poles inside their occupied capitol to “resist the occupying forces”. The Polish underground resistance the Home Army, or the AK, took this as the signal to rise and take the city the way the French underground taken key point of Paris. But Stalin tricked them. He had no intention of cooperating after the war with an independent Polish force. He let the AK battle the Nazis for weeks alone and the Red Army didn’t move into downtown Warsaw until they were all dead.

1946- In Los Angeles, Jazz great Charlie Parker had learned of the death of his baby daughter back in New York. He showed up for a recording session so drunk and high his producer had to hold him up in front of the mike. Later that night he fell completely apart, ran naked down the street, set fire to his hotel room smoking in bed. The cops had to shake him violently to wake him, he fought with them and they beat him up and threw him in jail. He was committed to the Camarillo Mental Hospital.

1948- Former Disney assistant-animator Hank Ketcham’s comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appeared.

1952 - 1st nonstop transpacific flight by a jet.

1957-Happy Birthday NASA! President Eisenhower signed the bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA to oversee the space program, separate from the military.

1957- Tonight with Jack Paar premiered.

1962- The film “Dr No” premiered, introducing the world to the suave spy James Bond 007. They first considered Cary Grant, David Niven, Patrick McGoohan, and James Mason, who all turned them down. So, the producers chose young Scots actor Sean Connery. Ian Fleming wrote of the choice, “Disaster!!” Connery had just starred as the villain in a Tarzan film, and they wanted him to film the sequel. But he asked for a time off to go do “a little spy picture.”

1965 - Beatles movie "Help" had its Royal World premiere at the London Pavilion in the West End. Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon in attendance. The film actually opened a month later. People said the movie was filmed “in a haze of marijuana smoke” and most people on the film didn’t know what was next as they were writing it as they went along.

1974- Mamas and the Papa's chubby singer Mama Cass Eliot died of a stroke, not as was widely believed from choking on a sandwich. She was 32.

1976 -SON OF SAM- Demented postman David Berkowitz committed his first murder in the Bronx. Berkowitz believed his neighbor’s dog Sam was Satan and was telling him to go out and kill. He would point his 44 cal. gun at random at a young couple on the street or in a car and shoot them. As the year went on and he was undetected he wrote letters taunting the police and New York newspaper columnist Pete Hamill. See next entry.

1977- THE DAY OF HATE- Son of Sam Killer David Berkowitz announced in the press that he would kill again on the one year anniversary of his first shooting- he declared it to be the Day of Hate. By now New York City was thoroughly in a panic. The seeming randomness of the killings got under the skin of the usually blasé’ New Yorkers. Nightclubs and discos closed, women clipped and dyed their hair because Sam liked to shoot long haired brunettes. Even the Godfather John Gotti pledged the services of the Mafia to catch the lunatic. After a tense night nothing happened. Berkowitz was arrested two days later.

1981- Prince Charles of England married Lady Diana Spencer. The ill-fated fairy tale wedding was seen around the world on live television. Unknown to Di at the time was Prince Charles was already romantically involved with Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles.

1987- Ice cream makers Ben & Jerry announce the flavor Cherry Garcia, named for rock singer Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Jerry is gone, but the ice cream rocks on.

1989- Miyazaki’s film Kiki’s Delivery Service premiered in Japan.
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Yesterday’s Question: “ Shave and a Hair-cut. Two Bits.” How much in real money is two-bits?

Answer: Two bits was slang for .25 cents. When coins were scarce in the Colonies, before the Revolution, they would cut up a Spanish silver reale coin into eight pieces to make change. These were called 'bits'. Hence 'pieces of eight' 'two bits' and 'four bits'. (Thanks NB)


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