Feb 20, 2024 February 20th, 2024 |
Question: Who were Keitel and Jodl? (hint: World War 2)
Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: When movies went from silent to sound, many silent actors struggled to maintain their celebrity status. Buster Keaton was contracted to MGM and they put him in films partnered with a comedian with a distinctive voice. Who was it?
-------------------------------------------------------------
History for 2/20/2024
Birthdays: Honore' Daumier, Nancy Wilson, Ansel Adams, Cindy Crawford, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robert Altman, Roger Penske. Phil Esposito, Jennifer O’Neill, Ivanna Trump, Mike Leigh, Lili Taylor, Sidney Poitier, Rihanna (Robin Rihanna Fenty) is 38
1258- The Mongol horde under Hulugau sacked Baghdad. They were ordered by Genghis Khan not to spill any royal blood, so they took the last Caliph, Al Mostassem-Billah, rolled him in a blanket, then galloped the horde over him. The great city of the Arabian Nights was looted and burned for 40 straight days. Chroniclers said 800,000 died, and the streets ran with rivulets of liquid gold- melting from all the gilded books in the burning libraries.
1702- British King William III went riding around Hampton Court when his horse Sorrel stepped in a mole hole and threw him. He suffered a broken collarbone. But being already elderly, tuberculate and asthmatic, he died within the week. That night the friends of the exiled Stuart dynasty drank a hearty toast to the 'Little man in the velvet waistcoat', meaning the mole who dug the hole.
1725- THE FIRST DOCUMENTED SCALPINGS- Militiamen scalped ten Indians in New Hampshire. Indians of the Eastern coast and Caribbean had done the practice before. Now colonial authorities encouraged allied tribes to bring in scalps as a way of proving how many of the enemy they had killed, before being paid a cash bounty. Scalps soon became a fashionable novelty item for sale in London. Tribes adopted different scalp cuts so you would know who did it -the Cheyenne preferred a diamond cut, Sioux an oval pattern.
1792- U.S. Postal Service founded. Ironically, the only postal service that ever operated at a profit was the one established by the Confederacy under postmaster John Regan from 1861-65.
1816- "Fee-Garr-Row! Fig-Ar- Roww- Figaro-Figaro, Figaro, Figaro"- Giacomo Rossini's opera 'The Barber of Seville' premiered. Rossini endured bad press and heavy criticism at the time because another opera of the Marriage of Figaro had just been premiered by Paisiello, an inferior composer who then was enjoying more popularity than him.
1824- The first attempt to name and classify a dinosaur. At the Geological Society of London, Dean William Buckland announced the Megalosaurus or the Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield. Based on a leg bone he estimated it at 40 feet long and a bulk larger than an elephant.
1827- The Battle of Ituzaingo- The army of the Brazilian Empire defeated Argentina.
1831- First Battle of the Cahuenga Pass. Angry California rancheros led by Juan de Alvarado and young Pio Pico clashed with the Mexican territorial governor Miguel de Micheltorena. The only casualty was a mule. Alvarado later became governor himself and Pico a general in the Mexican army.
1839- The City of Washington DC outlawed dueling.
1862- Abraham Lincoln's youngest son William Wallace Lincoln or “Willie” died of bilious fever in the White House. He was age 11. A distraught Lincoln said, "My poor boy. He was too good for this earth. God has called him home.” Today, some theorize he died of cholera from drinking the swampy water of Washington.
1918- The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had promised an end to Russia’s part in World War I. Its continuation had doomed the representative government of Alexander Kerensky after the czar was overthrown. Now Lenin wanted to end the war at any cost. The Germans demanded huge parts of Poland and Ukraine as compensation. Since the Bolsheviks had demobilized the Russian Army, Lenin had to give it all away. He was gambling that the allies would win anyway. He also planned setting up Communist Party cells in Germany and Vienna that he hoped would overthrow the Kaiser. The Kaiser was defeated and toppled, and Russia did get back all her lost territory.
1925- Willis O’Brien’s silent movie The Lost World premiered. Based on Conan-Doyles 1912 novel. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes issued in a new era of special effects films. O'Brien later did King Kong and trained kids like Ray Harryhausen.
1933-"WE’VE HIRED HITLER!" German chancellor Adolf Hitler had a secret meeting with Germany's corporate leaders: Krupp, I.G. Faben, Seimans, Bayer, GAF, BASF, Daimler-Benz. He made a deal that if they financed his Nazi government, he would destroy the labor unions and communists, re-arm the nation, and suspend the eight-hour workday. The quote is by Gottfried Krupp after their meeting.
Most of the German corporate CEO's survived the war and became leaders in the postwar anti-Communist world.
1936- The film “Follow the Fleet” premiered, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
1937- The Raymond Scott Orchestra recorded his composition “Powerhouse.” Used in many Looney Tunes cartoons.
1937 Mickey Mouse short “ Moose Hunters”.
1939- The American Nazi Party held their largest rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City. 20,000 Americans goose-stepped and Sieg-Heiled under a huge portrait of George Washington, while angry anti-Fascist and Jewish groups protested outside. By 1941 most of the German American Bund had dissolved. During the war 10,000 German Americans were interned along with the Japanese and Italians. Fritz Kuhn, the organizer of the rally was jailed for embezzling his organizations funds. He was deported to Germany in 1946.
1947- In a lecture to the London Mathematical Society, Computer pioneer Alan Turing said the best way to test the intelligence of a computer would be to teach it to play chess. Earliest reference to interactive gaming.
1958- Hercules premiered, starring body-builder Steve Reeves and Sylvia Koscina. It spawned a genre of muscle-man movies set in ancient Greece and Rome. Called in Hollywood jargon, “ sword & sandal flicks”.
1962- "God Go with You, John Glenn!" Mercury -7 sent the first American into orbit.
His first words upon emerging from the space capsule were:” It was hot in there.” Glenn later became a Democratic senator and in his 70’s went into space a second time on a space shuttle in 1998. John Glenn was a combat Marine pilot, test pilot and astronaut but even he sometimes got the willies.
In 1968 while traveling with the Robert Kennedy for President entourage their chartered plane hit turbulence. Bobby Kennedy undid his seat belt, stood up and said to the cabin “ I have an announcement- Colonel Glenn- is scared!”
1980- Bon Scott, vocalist for the band AC/DC, was found dead in a friend’s automobile choked in his own vomit.
1986- The Soviets launch the first permanent orbiting space station, Mir, which means Peace. After a long career in which 7 US astronauts among many others spent time there in 2001 it finally burned up in re-entry. The International Space Station went up shortly after.
1986- Britain and France announced the project Napoleon had dreamed of 200 years earlier, a tunnel under the English Channel – the Chunnel.
1997- Chinese Chairman Deng Zhao Peng died at 92. Nicknamed Little Bottles, he was the last leader from Mao Zedong’s original Long March days.
2005- First episode of Seth Green’s Robot Chicken premiered on TV.
2006- The animated film Wallace & Gromet: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, won the British Academy Award (BAFTA) for the best British Film of the year. It beat out The Constant Gardner, and Pride & Prejudice.
==============================================================
Yesterday’s Question: When movies went from silent to sound, many silent actors struggled to maintain their celebrity status. Buster Keaton was contracted to MGM and they put him in films partnered with a comedian with a distinctive voice. Who was it?
Answer: Jimmy Durante.