courtesy plexipixel.com

My Seattle friend and old USC alumn Chris Liles sent me this image of Dick Williams doing his thing and pushing his DVDs at the DigiPen event up in Starbucks land. Chris is in the front row.

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“A waiter approaches: ‘Can I interest you in the chicken, or would you prefer the platter of sh*t with bits of broken glass in it?’ To be undecided in this election is to ask how the chicken is cooked.” ~ David Sedaris


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Question: Was George Washington a Republican or a Democrat?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Is it true Fanta sodapop was invented by the Nazis?
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History for 11/3/2008
Birthdays: The Roman writer Lucan 39AD, John Montague the Earl of Sandwich and inventor of the same, Walker Evans, William Cullen Bryant, Stephen Austin, Bronco Nagurski, Andre' Malraux, Vincenzo Bellini, Bob Feller, Karl Baedeker author of the Baedeker guidebooks, Ken Berry, Michael Dukakis, Tom Schales, Lulu, Roseanne Barr is 56, Senator Russell Long, Osamu Tezuka,

361AD- JULIAN THE APOSTATE BECAME EMPEROR OF ROME, upon the death of is uncle Constantius II. Julian's life was much like Claudius 300 years earlier, except the Imperial Family's official religion was now Christianity. The children of Constantine the Great fought, intrigued, seduced and poisoned each other with great gusto, then went to Church. This had a funny effect on bookish young Julian, and he decided Christianity was the mistake and everyone was a lot better off worshiping Jupiter, Hercules, bulls and such like the good old days. He just couldn't command it so, because Rome had been Christian for 50 years and would just kill him rather than switch. So he had to move cautiously. He was slain in battle with the Persians after only a five year reign, before he could affect any real change, but if he had reigned as long as Constantine did ( 30 years) the world might've looked different. When he went on campaign against Persia he sacrificed 5,000 bulls to Mars. One Christian joked: " If it was 5,000 bulls just to start, if Caesar Julian wins any battles I fear for the market price of beef!"

1503- MONA LISA- Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by a Florentine senator Francesco del Giocondo to paint a portrait of his third wife Madonna Elizabetha or Lisa.


He fussed over the painting for four years and never gave it to Francesco, he said it was still unfinished and kept it for himself. Eventually he needed money so he sold it to the King of France, so today it hangs in the Louvre in Paris. Was her enigmatic smile because she had lost a child earlier that year and Leonardo was trying to cheer her up? He used to have musicians playing in the room when she posed. Or is she emblematic of Woman smiling at all the foibles of Men? One historian called Mona Lisa “ the Face that Launched a Thousand Reams Upon a Sea of Ink.”

1755- The Massachusetts Colony offered a bounty of 20 English pounds each for scalps of Indian children under the age of 12. Warrior scalps fetched a higher bounty, about 30 pounds.

1836- California ranchero Juan de Alvarado rallies local ranchers to overthrow Governor Juan de Michaltorena sent from Mexico City. This story may have been an early inspiration for Zorro.

1888- Jack the Ripper killed his last victim, a prostitute named Mary Kelly.

1930- Amadeo Gianini changed the name of his San Francisco based Bank of Italy to the Bank of America.

1948 -The Chicago Daily Tribune prints the famous premature headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” based on early poll returns. Truman himself was so sure he’d lost the election he went to bed early. When he awoke he discovered he had won and he had a ball mocking the newspapers and doing nasal imitations of hostile correspondent H.B. Kaltenborn.

1957- the first living thing sent into orbit, a Russian dog named Laika. He never came back down, but he probably was satisfied knowing he made history- woof.

1963- THE FIRST ALL COSMONAUT WEDDING- Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in Space, marries cosmonaut Andrisyan Nikolayev.

1966- President Lyndon Johnson signed the Truth in Packaging Act, which required all packaged foods to print their ingredients on the label.

1969- In a speech President Richard Nixon announced his opposition to young anti- Vietnam War protestors by appealing to what he called the Silent Majority. He had run in 1968 as a peace candidate.

1971- The first UNIX manual released.

1971- Carly Simon married James Taylor.

1977- Disney's Pete's Dragon starring Helen Reddy and Red Buttons.

1979- T.V. sitcom Different Strokes premiered, featuring 2003 gubernatorial candidate Gary Coleman..

1990- GM's car line the Saturn announced.

1981- WALLY WOOD was one of the most influential cartoonists of the 1950’s and 60’s. His amazing versatility enabled him to draw everything from superhero comics to very cartoony to playfully naughty girls like Sally Forth. He drew EC Comics, the Mars Attacks series, Mad Magazine, Weird Science, THUNDER Agents and much more. He had done a famous drawing of the Disney characters having sex that brought down upon him the wrath of the Disney legal dept. But hard living and deadlines took their toll. Suffering from a stroke, failing kidneys and on dialysis, this day Wally Wood put a 44 cal pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger. Police found the bullet had passed right through his head into the pillow.



1986- A Lebanese newspaper Al Schirra revealed the details of the Reagan Presidency’s illegal sales of weapons to Iran- the Iran Contra Scandal.
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Yesterday’s Question: Is it true Fanta sodapop was invented by the Nazis?

Answer: When it was obvious that America would enter the war on the side of Britain, Nazi minister Josef Goebbels worried about the average German’s taste for Coca Cola. In 1941 he ordered Max Keith, Coke’s distributor in the Reich, to come up with something else. Keeping the same staff, Keith came up with another formula they named Fantasy- Fantasie- or Fanta. After the fall of Hitler’s empire, they resumed being part of the Coca-Cola Empire