Feb 24, 2024 February 24th, 2024 |
Question: What was the only Hollywood movie to have 2 Nobel Prize winners working on the script?
Yesterdays Quiz answered below: In the 1960s, what was the Counterculture?
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History for 2/24/2024
B-Dazes: Roman Emperor Hadrian, Winslow Homer, Arrigo Boito, Wilhelm Grimm (of the brothers Grimm), Honus Wagner- early 1900’s baseball player called the Flying Dutchman, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Edward James Olmos, Barry Bostwick, Michel Legrand, James Farentino, illustrator Zdzislaw Beskinski, Michael Radford, Billy Zane, Steve Jobs, Abe Vigoda, Bob Kinoshita who designed the robot from Lost in Space.
495BC-The Roman Festival REGIFUGIUM in honor of the founding of the Roman Republic. The king of Rome, Tarquinus Superbus -Tarquin the Proud, capped off a history of arrogant rule when he raped Lucretia, the daughter of a nobleman named Horatius. She tells her dad, so he stabbed her to save her further shame. (I guess that's 'tough love 'or something.) The Roman people led by the Horatius family and his kinsmen Marcus Brutus drove out King Tarquin and established a republic.
For the next 450 years Rome was a democracy led by a Senate, from "senates" or elders, electing two Consuls (presidents) a year, with the common people’s spokesmen called Tribunes of the Plebs, who could veto legislation. The motto of the Republic Romans would carry to the ends of the earth was S.P.Q.R.- Senatus Populusque Romanum -The Senate and the People of Rome.
138AD- Antoninus Pius adopted as co-emperor by the aging Emperor Hadrian.
616AD- King Ethelred of Mercia died. He was baptized by Saint Augustine of Canterbury and he did a lot to convince the other Saxon kings of Britain to accept Christianity and stamp out pagan rituals. He built one of the earliest churches in London, and became Saint Ethelred after his death.
1582- THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR reforms announced- Because our Earth is a big wobbly rock on an asymmetrical orbit Julius Caesar’s 366 day calendar was losing 11 minutes every year since 45BC. For years medieval scientists like Dennis Exigius, Abu Abdalah Mohammed and Roger Bacon noticed something wasn’t quite right. By 1582, the calendar was 11 days off the solar year. Pope Gregory XI had scientist Dionysius Ingratius revised the calendar of Julius Caesar by using a 400 year cycle of 365 days with a leap day every four years and no leap year when it occurred every fourth century.
1711- Handel’s opera Rinaldo premiered in London.
1784- Alexander Hamilton established the Bank of New York, the second oldest private bank in North America. At first the Mayor DeWitt Clinton refused to grant the bank a charter. He said “corporations are sinister plots aimed at the average citizen…”
1836- As Mexican cannon pounded the Alamo, Jim Bowie took ill and was invalid to the fort’s hospital, where he remained until the end. Historians dispute whether he developed a fever or something venereal. Col William Travis now assumed overall command. He had a message slipped out past Mexican lines-“ To the People of Texas and all Americans in the World” He appealed for aid and ended his message with a bold “Victory or Death!”
The message was reprinted in newspapers throughout the US. The Alamo received no help, but the fiery message assured that the little doomed outpost would hold the attention of the everyone in North America.
1848- THE FRENCH SECOND REPUBLIC IS DECLARED. King Louis Phillipe whom Daumier caricatured as a fat pear in a frock coat and top hat, was overthrown. Austrian diplomat Baron Metternich predicted: When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold. Sure enough, inspired by the French example, urban working class revolts break out all over Europe. Berliners,Viennese, Romans,Venetians, Hungarians, Saxons and Poles all rose up and battled royal troops in the streets. 1848 is remembered as the "Year of Revolutions".
1852- Russian writer and hypochondriac Nicolai Gogol burned the second half of his masterpiece DEAD SOULS on advice of a religious mystic to atone for his sins. He died two weeks later of "brain fever".
1868- The U.S. House of Representatives voted 11 articles of Impeachment against President Andrew Johnson. Of the 11 charges only one made any legal sense, that was Johnson’s ignoring the Tenure of Office Act and firing his own Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. This act was later overturned as unconstitutional. The other charges were things like “He made such speeches wherein he spoke disparagingly of this Congress.” etc. Johnson said:” Impeach and Be Damned!” He was acquitted in the senate by only one vote. Nobody feels too sympathetic towards Andrew Johnson. He was a narrow-minded racist who’s re-election campaign slogan was “ This nation was made for the white man.” He lost to Grant.
1895- Jose Marti’ began the Cuban war of independence against Spain.
1912- The Jewish aid organization Hadassah founded.
1914- General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Maine theology professor who became a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg, and was made a general by Grant in 1864 only because he was so badly wounded, Grant figured he wouldn’t live much longer anyway. Gen. Chamberlain actually outlived Grant by thirty years and today finally died of old age.
1928- French serial killer Henri Landru, called BLUEBEARD, was executed by guillotine. Landru married ten times, bringing the ladies up to his home, murdering them, and burning them in his furnace. He'd then live off their estates and sell their furniture. When the prosecutor said :"So, you made a career out of the suffering and swindling of others !" Landru replied:" No monsieur, I am not a lawyer."
1937- MGM studio announced it acquired the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz, to be made into a movie for their new star Judy Garland. They won out over Walt Disney and Hal Roach.
1942- The radio service The Voice of America first went on the air.
1943- Fed up with the bad climate in the studio because of the Strike, master animator Bill Tytla resigned from the Walt Disney Studio.
1944- Merrill’s Marauders, a special ops trained group of Army Rangers, entered the jungles of Burma to do battle against the Japanese.
1961- Dr. Richard Leakey in Tanzania discovered the oldest known human skull.
1968- THE TET OFFENSIVE ENDS- With the U.S recapture of the old Imperial city of Hue, the Vietnamese Tet Lunar offensive was declared over. North Vietnamese General Vo Giap, the mastermind of Dien Bien Phu, had planned this assault as his masterstoke to win the war. It's failure cost him his job and destroyed the Viet Cong as an effective force. And their mass executions of South Vietnamese civilian officials cost them much civilian support and lengthened the war.
Yet even though the Vietnamese communists were strategically defeated, the battle showed the world that after years of maximum effort by the world’s most powerful country, the little North Vietnamese army was as formidable as ever. While American generals requested more troops, they already had 450,000, White House strategists like Clark Clifford began to think withdrawal.
1981- Long Island socialite Jean Harris was convicted of murdering Dr. Herbert Tarnnower, author of the popular Scarsdale Diet.
1987- US Robotics sold the first 56k modems.
1988- PARODY LAWS- The US Supreme Court upheld the right of public figures to be satirized, by throwing out a lawsuit Rev Jerry Falwell brought against Hustler Magazine owner Larry Flynt. Flynt published a gag about Rev Falwell having sex with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell tried to sue for libel. The Court ruled a public figure can be lampooned, so long as it is not presented as factual.
1989- According to the David Lynch television series Twin Peaks this is the day Laura Palmer’s body was found and F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper came to town to investigate.
1996- Los Angeles Angel Flight reopened.
1997- The announcement of the first successful cloning of a mammal embryo, a sheep named Dolly in Scotland. To prove even though they're research scientists 'boys will be boys', They used cells from a mammary gland to do the cloning, so they named their creation after busty singer Dolly Parton. After a series of illnesses, the animal was put down in 2003, living half the life span of a normal sheep, but she mated and had healthy babies normally.
2003- State Farm Insurance Company announced that they would add a clause into future car insurance policies that Nuclear Explosions and Terrorist Biological Agents would not be classified as Road Hazards and so not covered. Yep, if a Hydrogen Bomb goes off in my neighborhood, my first concern will be about my insurance premiums.
2008- Pixar’s Ratatouille won the Oscar for best animated feature.
2013- Pixar’s Brave won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
2019- Spiderman into the Spiderverse won the Oscar for best animated feature.
2022- Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded the Republic of Ukraine. Two years later he still can’t explain why. Expected to fall in a week, the Ukrainian people rallied behind their President Vlodomir Zelensky and fought back heroically. When the U.S. offered him and his family a flight out of the country to safety, he replied, “What I need is ammunition, not a ride….”
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Yesterday’s Question: In the 1960s, what was the Counterculture?
Answer: The counterculture was the Hippie movement. They believed in getting back to the land, conservation, wearing upcycled clothing (jeans were working man's clothes) making things by hand, and following Buddhist or (in some cases) Native traditions. Marijuana was cool. Other drugs were for the wannabees. (Thanks, NB)