Feb 8, 2024 February 8th, 2024 |
Question: The medieval Holy Roman Empire based in Frankfurt was called the First Reich. The Nazis called themselves the Third Reich. Who was the Second?
Answer to yesterday’s question below: What is the difference between immigrating and emigrating?
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History for 2/8/2024
Birthdays: St Proclus of Constantinople 412AD, Jules Verne, Dmitri Mendeleev- inventor of the Periodic Table of Elements, James Dean, William Tecumseh Sherman, animator Ivan Ivano-Vano, Lana Turner, Jack Lemmon, Alejandro Rey, Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen in the 1950s TV Superman), Ted Koppel, Nick Nolte, Gary Coleman, Robert Klein, Seth Green, Sesame Street composer Joe Raposo, composer John Williams is 92
1587- MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS BEHEADED at Fotheringham Castle. Circumstantial evidence proved Mary had not discouraged plots to overthrow Queen Elizabeth. Truth was Elizabeth could never sit on her throne securely while Mary lived. While some could argue Elizabeth’s legitimate birth, Mary’s grandmother was the sister of King Henry VIII.
Apologists for Queen Elizabeth argue she ordered the execution with great sadness, but others say she made jests as she signed the death warrant. Elizabeth and Mary never met face-to-face. Mary’s son James accepted his mother’s death calmly, he hadn’t seen her since he was a toddler and his Presbyterian tutors all filled him with hatred for her. She was raised Catholic at the court of French Queen Marie de Medicis. She would sit at her aunties side and watch her burn Protestants.
It must have been a hard day for the headsman. First in order to ensure a good job, Mary gave a bribe to the executioner, but he muffed the first chop and had to do it in a couple of swings. Then, when the headsman picked up the head it plopped out of it's red wig. She had lost most of her hair to smallpox, as did Elizabeth and a lot of other folks. Finally, when they moved Mary's body, a yelping lap dog jumped out of her skirts and bit the headsman. The heartbroken little pet refused all food, and died soon afterwards.
1601- Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, was the toyboy of Queen Elizabeth I. On this day he shocked the court by riding through the countryside declaring his intent to overthrow the beloved old Queen. The countryside in turn surprised him when no one joined him. He was soon captured and lost his head.
1608- A fire burns down what there is of Jamestown and most of the food supply, right in the depths of winter.
1836- Davy Crockett with twelve Tennessee leathershirts arrived at the Alamo.
1864- Abraham Lincoln visited Matthew Brady's Photo Studio and posed for the photos that would one day be on the Penny and Five-dollar bill.
1865- Russian monk Gregor Mendel publishes his laws of heredity. The science of genetics is born.
1866- Elizabeth Cady-Stanton pleaded in the New York State legislature that neglect, abandonment and wanton cruelty on the part of a husband be made grounds for divorce. Her ideas became law, one hundred years later, in 1966.
1887- Congress passed the Dawes Act, which said any Indian who left his tribe and moved into white society would be granted American citizenship. All native Americans were not granted unconditional U.S. citizenship until 1924.
1893- THE FIRST RECORDED STRIPTEASE - discounting Salome. At Paris' Moulin Rouge at the Bal de Quart’z Artes, an artist's model named Mona decided to get an edge in a beauty contest judged by art students by disrobing to music while walking up and down the stage. She was arrested and fined 100 francs, and the students rioted.
1893- Congress repealed the Enforcement Acts, a key piece of reconstruction legislation that prevented local governments from cheating African Americans out of their voting rights.
1910- Boy Scouts of America incorporated on the British model.
1914- THE FIRST TRUE CHARACTER ANIMATION- Windsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" premiered as part of his vaudeville act. Up to then most U.S. animated shorts were attempts to bring popular newspaper comic characters to life, but Gertie was a new character never before seen. Some critics had wondered if animated characters weren’t some kind of man in a special suit, so McCay drew a dinosaur, a character that couldn’t possibly be impersonated by any living thing. Giving the dinosaur the personality of a precocious kitten gave the character a new level above merely drawings that move. It was the first true character animation. The brilliant draftsmanship and timing of this film would inspire the generation of Animation artists of the Golden Age of the 1930's-40s.
1915- THE BIRTH OF A NATION or The Clansman, premiered at Clunes Auditorium in Los Angeles. Film pioneer D.W. Griffith's racist movie was considered for many years the first American feature length film. The discovery in 1999 of a 1913 Richard III film predates it. Son of a Confederate veteran, it’s been thought that Griffith was making a personal statement, truth is there was a flood of films to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil War and the book the Clansman by Thomas Dixon was a national best seller. President Woodrow Wilson (another son of a Confederate soldier) endorsed the film, when he called it: "History written with a thunderbolt and I’m afraid all too true."
Birth of a Nations’ inflammatory imagery and this politically incorrect Presidential endorsement helped a rebirth of the defunct Ku Klux Klan, and caused an increase in lynching. But despite the film’s politics, it’s technique influenced world cinema.
D.W. Griffith in later years lost his fortune and became a drunken has-been. Watching him at Chasens Restaurant pathetically beg MGM studio head Dore Schary for work, inspired Billy Wilder to write Sunset Blvd.
1924, the first execution by gas chamber in the United States took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. It took Chinese gang member Gee Jong six minutes to die.
1928- Englishman John Logie Baird transmitted a still television image across the Atlantic from England to Hartsdale New York. It was a still image of a woman.
1949- Cardinal Mindzenty, the Roman Catholic primate of Hungary had been imprisoned by Pro-Nazi Hungarians after he spoke out against the regimes treatment of Jews. Nine years later this day he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Communist government for treason. He was released in 1956 and in 1971, escaped to the west. In his time Cardinal Mindzenty was celebrated as a champion of human rights like Nelson Mandela.
1960- Adolph Coors III the heir to the Coors beer empire was killed in a failed kidnapping attempt. Joseph Corbett Jr was apprehended in Canada and charged with the crime. Ironically, Adolph Coors was reputedly allergic to beer.
1961- Nebraska teenager and future movie star Nick Nolte was busted for the first time. He was accused of selling fake Draft cards so his friends could buy alcohol to celebrate his birthday.
1966- The Vatican closed its office of censorship.
1967- Georgy Girl by the Seekers goes to #1 in pop charts.
1968- The Planet of the Apes, directed by Franklin Schafner, starring Charlton Heston, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowell and Maurice Evans, premiered.
1976 - Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, and Albert Brooks, was released. It was the last score by composer Bernard Hermann, whose career began with Citizen Kane. Hermann died just before the film opened, at age 64.
2001- Walt Disney California Adventure opened.
2007- Anna Nicole Smith, centerfold, pole dancer, heiress and reality TV star, died from an overdose of prescription drugs. She was 39.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the difference between immigrating and emigrating?
Answer: Emigrating means leaving a place. Immigrating means arriving at a place. In the context of geopolitics, emigrating means leaving the country where you have been living, often one's native country, and taking up permanent residence in another country.