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Feb 7, 2024
February 7th, 2024

Question: What is the difference between immigrating and emigrating?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Question: What does it mean to be caught between Scylla and Charybdis?
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History for 2/7/2024
Birthdays: St. Thomas Moore, Eubie Blake, Sinclair Lewis, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Laura Ingalls Wilder writer of Little House on the Prairie, Gay Talese, animator Jim Tyer, James Spader is 64, Chris Rock is 59, Eddie Izzard is 62, Ashton Kutcher is 46

310 AD- Feast of St. Theodore the General. He commanded a Roman legion under the Emperor Licinius in Pontus. After admitting he had converted to the outlaw sect Christianity, he was tortured and burned in a furnace. Two years before the ban on Christians was lifted.

457AD- After the death of the Roman Emperor Marcian, General Aspar proclaimed his friend General Leo the Armenian to be the new emperor of the Eastern Empire.

1601- Elderly Queen Elizabeth I dallied with a courtier named Robert Devereaux the Earl of Essex. This hot headed toyboy soon got it into his head he could overthrow the old Queen and take over her government. This night at his estate- the original Essex House, flattering friends paid for a performance of Master Shakespeare’s play Richard II. Queen Elizabeth’s spies overheard and told her; the symbolism of Essex watching a play about a monarch overthrown was not lost on her. Next day the Essex plot was crushed. Essex and all his theater-loving buddies went to the headsman’s block.

1792- The major European powers- Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain and England announced a grand coalition to crush the Revolution in France. They considered it a pre-emptive war to prevent a French people’s-style revolution from overthrowing their own monarchies. About the only ally the French had was the American Republic, but they were too weak and too far away to be of any help.

1796- Napoleon & Josephine’s engagement was announced.

1807- BATTLE of EYLAU- Up until the 20th century, armies traditionally avoided fighting in winter because of the added hardships of weather. After chasing the Russian army up into Northern Poland, Napoleon put his French army into winter quarters and proceeded to snuggle up with his new mistress Countess Maria Walewska. Unfortunately, a French division bumped into the main Russian army and a battle ensued. Everyone rushed there and an inconclusive slaughter raged in a blinding snowstorm. The battle was only ended when Marshal Murat massed all the French cavalry into one big juggernaut and sent it smashing through the Russian center.

1882- John L. Sullivan defeated top boxer Paddy Ryan in a ferocious bareknuckle brawl in Gulfport Mississippi. There were no official boxing championship belts yet, but John L. Sullivan boldly declared himself the Champion of the World. The title stuck. He’d travel from town to town, building his legend: "I’m John L. Sullivan and I can lick any man in the house!!” and he always did.

1900- In Barcelona a new young talent named Pablo Picasso had his first show.

1904- The Great Fire of Baltimore.

1910- The town of Hollywood was absorbed into the growing City of Los Angeles.

1925- Professor Raymond Dart of the University of South Africa named the small human like skull found in a lime deposit Australopithicus, a missing link between ape and man.

1931- Aviatrix Amelia Earhart married publisher George Putnam.

1937- PACKING THE COURT-Since seizing the initiative in 1933 to battle the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt was used to having his own way with Congress. After the Supreme Court struck down important components of his National Recovery Act (NRA) as unconstitutional, FDR this night informed leading Senators that he was introducing a bill to expand the Supreme Court so he could name his own men and create a majority to do his bidding. The heretofore docile Senate rose up and defeated FDR’s scheme, the resistance led by his own vice president Cactus Jack Garner. The newly invigorated Congress continued to defy Roosevelt until Pearl Harbor.

1939, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep was published. Chandler was a 51-year-old ex-oil company executive who had taken up writing at the age of 45, after being fired for alcohol-soaked absenteeism. Over the previous five years he had published enough crime stories in the pulp magazines to survive, but this was his first novel, the first of seven featuring the inimitable detective, Philip Marlowe.

1940- Disney's second animated feature "Pinocchio" opened at the Central Theater in Manhattan. It cost a staggering $2.6 million to make.

1942- Despite being under heavy Japanese attack, British commander Sir Spencer Percival vowed that Singapore, The Gibraltar of the East, would resist to the last man. Singapore surrendered one week later.

1942- Detroit assembly lines ceased all production of automobiles and focused exclusively on war material- tanks, planes, trucks, until 1945. When President Roosevelt challenged carmakers to help make America the "Arsenal of Democracy" in 1939 they dragged their feet. Now the government sweetened their orders with guaranteed profits, labor peace, and they could sell at incredible discount the factories built at government expense.

1944- German Panzergrenadiers launched a heavy counterattack on the Allied beachhead at Anzio Italy. Panzergrenadiers were elite infantry, the equivalent of the U.S. 101 Airborne.

1950- The US recognized the nation of Vietnam not as ruled by Ho Chi Minh but ruled by French mandate under the Emperor Bao Dai.

1960- JFK PARTYS WITH THE RATPACK-Before he created the Peace Corps and Camelot, presidential candidate John Kennedy needed to relax and raise some hell. So in total secret he helicoptered down to Las Vegas and spent this night at the Sands Hotel with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and his brother in law, actor Peter Lawford. These men were famous for their all-night Rat Pack parties, heavy drinking, girls, poker and more. Sinatra introduced Kennedy to a party girl named Judith Cambell Exner, who would claim JFK as a lover at the same time as she was sleeping with Sam Momo Giancana, the head of the Chicago Mafia. In the wee hours of dawn, Kennedy slipped away to continue his race for the White House.

1964- THE BRITISH ROCK INVASION BEGAN. Thousands of screaming fans welcomed THE BEATLES to New York for their first U.S. Tour. The last music out of England to be taken seriously by Americans was The Lambeth Walk, now the UK announced itself as a powerhouse of rock & roll. For a Brit to do Rock & Roll in America was as audacious as an American reciting Shakespeare in Stratford, but the welcome for the Beatles was so overwhelming that other bands like The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Herman’s Hermits soon followed.
Local New York disc jockeys Cousin Brucie and Murray the K wiggled to the front of the crowds and got a national audience by following the young musicians around. The crowds of teenagers were so excited they mobbed a Rolls Royce in front of the Warwick Hotel where the Beatles were staying just because they figured a Rolls Royce would be something they drove in. They actually used taxicabs.

1964- The GI Joe action figure born. In 1974 it got the Kung-Fu Grip.

1968- During the Vietnamese Tet offensive, a US Army colonel issued a statement to the A.P. after burning the tiny village of Ben Tre.:" We had to destroy that village in order to save it." It typified the sometimes-dizzy logic the Army used to justify its actions.

1971- Women in Switzerland receive the right to vote.

50th Anniversary 1974- Mel Brook’s classic comedy “Blazing Saddles” opened in theaters.

1979- Nazis Angel of Death Dr. Josef Mengele was living in hiding in Brazil. This day the old man had a stroke while swimming and drowned. His death was kept secret until 1985.

1989- Retired tennis champ Bjorn Borg was rushed to a Madrid hospital and had his stomach pumped after he tried to overdose of sleeping pills. He survived and today is 66.

1992- Twelve European nations sign the Maastricht Treaty of European Union.

1994- Jean Bertrand Aristide sworn in as democratically elected president of Haiti. He was overthrown shortly afterward.

2001-After being overthrown, Jean Bertrand Aristide sworn in as President of Haiti again. He was overthrown again in 2003.

2002- President George W. Bush issued a determination “…that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which affords minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees.'" This gave direct permission to torture our prisoners, something every American leader since George Washington would not allow.

2014- The Lego Movie premiered. Directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord.

2020- During an interview with journalist Bob Woodward, President Donald Trump admitted he always knew that the Covid-19 virus was deadly, spread through the air, and likely to be a serious health emergency. Nevertheless, within the week he was giving public speeches where he called Covid a hoax that would go away by itself. He didn’t want the bad news to affect his chances at re-election. Woodward sat on this information until his book came out later that Sept. Meanwhile, Americans were dying by the thousands.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to be caught between Scylla and Charybdis?

Answer: Made famous by Homer in the Odyssey, The narrow straights between the toe of Italy and Sicily was known to be perilous to mariners. Scylla was a deadly six headed sea monster, and Charybdis was a deadly whirlpool. So being caught between Scylla and Charybdis means the stuck between two bad options.


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