Question: What is meant by noblesse oblige?

Quiz: Georgetown was named for King George III, and Charlottesville for Queen Charlotte, who is Memphis Tennessee named for?
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History for 9/27/2023
Birthdays: King Stefan Bathory of Poland, Thomas Nast, Arthur Penn, Mike Schmidt,
Meatloaf, William Conrad, Dick Schapp, Samuel Adams, George Cruikshank, Jayne Meadows, Wilford Brimley, Shaun Cassidy, Greg Morris, Amanda Detmer, Avril Lavigne is 39, Gwyneth Paltrow is 51

1538- The Battle of Preveza- The huge navy of German-Spanish Emperor Charles V, Venice, Genoa, the Pope and the Knights of Malta have a showdown with the Great Turkish fleet off Corfu. At one point the Turkish Corsair Barbarossa "Red Beard" tried to lure the Christian ships into the same Bay of Actium where the Roman Augustus defeated Anthony & Cleopatra 1,500 years before. The Turks won the battle but this may have had to do with the fact that the Christian admiral Andrea Doria was a Genoese who didn't mind seeing the Venetians lose.
The one other significant fact of the battle was at one point Turkish galleys surrounded Venice's powerful new warship named 'La Galleon". It bristled with more cannon than anyone had ever seen on one boat. As the Turks attacked with light forecannon and prepared to board, the Venetian commander Carmandiolo ordered all his guns to fire at once- the first Broadside.
The tactics of using armed rowing galleys, which had ruled the Mediterranean since the ancient times was now obsolete to square rigged sailing ships bristling with guns. The Turkish “Barbary Corsairs” would continue to raid Christian Mediterranean ships for another three hundred years.

1771-Young artist Francisco Goya entered a scholarship competition sponsored by the Art Academy of Parma. He lost to an artist named Bettino. Judges said about Goya’s work: "Crude and ugly colors".

1810- Battle of Bussaco. The Duke of Wellington stopped the French army of one of Napoleon’s Marshal Massena in Portugal. One of the reasons for Wellington’s successes in Spain and Portugal was he had a top rate intelligence gathering system run by a man named Grant.
Colonel Colquhoun Grant was once captured by the French and imprisoned in the fortress of Verdun. He escaped, and while on the run he paused to spend three weeks partying in Paris! He would brazenly walk down the Boulevard St. Germain in his bright redcoat of His Majesties 11th Foot. When French police would ask him who he was, he would say he was from The United States Army! Since not many Parisians had seen a real American yet, nobody disputed his story. So he got away with it.

1821- After a ten-year struggle, Spain acknowledged the independence of Mexico. The last royal commander, Agustin’ de Iturbide, changed sides and this day marched The Army of the Three Guarantees into Mexico City. He tried to become Emperor of Mexico. Less than a year later Agustin’ I was deposed by young republican officers like Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna who declared a Republic. Iturbide was allowed to go into exile, but a year later returned and tried again. This time he was shot.

1854- The first modern steamship disaster. The SS Arctic collided with the SS Vesta in the mid-Atlantic. The captains ordered women & children first into the boats but the crewmen rebelled and took the lifeboats for themselves. 85 lived, 485 died.

1894- New York’s Aqueduct Racetrack, the Big A, opened.

1903- THE WRECK OF OLD 97- The Southern Pacific express jumped the tracks at 90 miles an hour and plunged into a ravine near Danville North Carolina. The disaster inspired the first great country music hit. Written in 1924, recorded by everyone from Woody Guthrie to Johnny Cash.

1910- The Black & Decker tool company formed. Starting with the first portable electric drill in 1919 they became the first power tool company.

1919- Entrepreneur Frank Toulet partnered with Oregon restaurant manager Joe Musso to open a new restaurant in the heart of Hollywood. First called Franks Café, then Musso & Frank, it became an important hangout for the movie industry. Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Valentino, Garbo and Douglas Fairbanks ate there. Bogart and Bacall hung out at the bar. It is still in the business today, still the same menu, and you can still see Hollywood types having power meetings there. The front window-box seat was there so cowboys could keep an eye on their tethered horse.

1934- “I’M SICK OF THIS CAT & MOUSE GAME!” shouted gangster Baby Face Nelson as he was cornered by two FBI agents on a rural road south of Chicago. While his gang and wife looked on in amazement, Baby-Face Nelson boldly walked out in the open, down the middle of the road, his tommy gun blazing away at the G-Men. He was riddled with 17 bullets, but still killed the two feds. Nelson died the next day and was left in a ditch.

1934- The character of Oliver “ Daddy” Warbucks first appeared in Harold Gray’s comic strip Little Orphan Annie.

1935- 13-year-old singer Frances Gumm of the singing Gumm Sisters signed an exclusive contract with MGM Pictures. Louis B. Mayer changed Frances’ name to Judy Garland.

1937- J R Tolkien’s’ The Hobbit first appeared in bookshops.

1938- Bob Hope first sang “Thanks For the Memory” on his NBC radio show. It became a hit in his movie appearance in “The Big Broadcast of 1938.”

1939- WARSAW becomes the first world capitol to fall to a Nazi Blitzkreig. The city was surrounded and bombarded for weeks. German generals after the war admitted they had stripped their western front to deal with the unexpected Polish resistance; had the British and French attacked across the Rhine there wouldn’t be much they could do. But the western front stayed quiet, the armies of Democracy mobilized too slowly. As the Polish defenders were slowly wiped out with bombs and shells, Radio Warsaw kept broadcasting Chopin's Revolutionary Etude over and over as a sign that the city was still alive. Eventually the signal fell silent.

1939- The Mysterious Death of Werner Von Fritsch. Generaloberst Baron Von Fritsch was one of the architects of the rebuilt German Army after the World War defeat and oversaw its development into one of the most efficient killing machines in history. But the old Prussian nobleman was never an ardent Nazi and he grew resentful of Hitler’s mad plans for world domination. Hitler had him forcibly retired. This day during the Polish campaign Von Fritsch was reported killed by snipers leading a patrol. Why was a top general staff officer was leading a little patrol out in the middle of nowhere is a mystery. Was Von Fritsch courting death? Was he done in by the Gestapo, and the ambush story made-up?

1940- Germany, Italy and Japan signed a tripartite alliance aimed at the United States. They would be known as The Axis Powers. The diplomat who signed for Japan, Mr Kurusu, would later be sent to Washington to discuss peace while Pearl Harbor was being bombed.

1943- THE FOUR DAYS OF NAPLES- Naples was a city known for its tough street gangs. This day in advance of the American armies closing in the city the Neapolitans rose in revolt and fought the occupying Germans with knives, scissors, clubs, rocks, anything they could get their hands on. Young actress Sophia Loren remembered seeing from her window a ten-year-old boy climb onto a Nazi tank and push a gasoline-bottle bomb through its view slit.

1944- Evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson died in hospital from an overdose of sleeping pills. She was 53. MacPherson was one of the most powerful evangelists of the 1920s with thousands of followers donating millions of dollars.

1947- Disney’s film Fun and Fancy Free, featuring Mickey and the Beanstalk.

1950- After a week of hard house-to-house fighting the South Korean capitol of Seoul was declared liberated from North Korean occupation.

1954- The Tonight Show premiered. Steve Allen was the first host.

1961- Hanna Barbera's "Top Cat" show premiered. Do you remember the words to the theme song..? "Top Cat, the most effectual- Top Cat, who's intellectual: Close friends get to call him T.C., Providing it's with dignity. Top Cat, the indisputable leader of the gang... He's the Boss. He's a pip. he's the championship, He's the most tip-top, Top Cat !"

1962- Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was published. The best seller first brought to the public’s eye how indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides, particularly DDT, was damaging the environment and killing off wildlife.

1964- The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John F. Kennedy. Today, despite two investigations 8 out of 10 Americans still believe Oswald was part of a conspiracy. Even Lyndon Johnson had his doubts. Documents pertaining to the case, like Oswald's tax returns, and how he could re-enter the U.S. from Soviet Russia without a passport after renouncing his citizenship, are still kept top secret. Evidence like President Kennedy's brain disappeared from the lab and witnesses to contrary theories kept dying from car accidents and karate chops. Maybe we’ll know more when the CIA’s papers on the assassination are unlocked in 2060.

1977- Bob McKimson, Warner animation, director of many Looney Tune shorts, collapsed and died of heart failure in front of Friz Freleng and Yosemite Sam animator Gerry Chiniquy while having lunch. He was 66. Fellow animator Art Leonardi had asked Bob for a souvenir drawing that morning, Bob drew him a Bugs Bunny but as he was leaving Art reminded him that he neglected to sign it. Bob said as he walked out "Oh, I'll get to it after lunch..."

1989- The Japanese corporate giant Sony purchased Columbia Pictures.

1996- The Taliban captured the Afghan capitol of Kabul and established their hardline fundamentalist regime. They were driven out temporarily by the US invasion in 2002 but returned to full control in 2021.

2001- While America was still in shock over 9-11 and anthrax attacks, President Bush in a speech at O’Hare Airport stated that although we may be attacked again at any moment, and it may be more horrible than 9-11, the best thing we could do… is to go shopping; “ go to the mall, vacation at Disneyworld….enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed….”

2003- Hours after the season’s final concert, in the dead the night, the historic bandshell at the Hollywood Bowl was demolished. After a long legal fight with preservationists, the historic 1929 structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, that Gershwin and Stokowski played in, was replaced with a new shell with better acoustics.
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Quiz: Georgetown was named for King George III, and Charlottesville for Queen Charlotte, who is Memphis Tennessee named for?

Answer: The city of Memphis in ancient Egypt. In the colonial period towns were named for royal benefactors. After the Revolution there was a fashion for names from classical civilization. American towns were named Troy, Syracuse, Sparta, Corinth, Ithaca, Athens. Etc.