November 29th, 2008 sat. November 29th, 2008 |
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QUESTION: In live action movie shooting, what are sides?
Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who was Haddon Sundblom and why was he important to Christmas?
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History for 11/29/2008
Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Vin Scully, Gary Shandling, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen of the Coen Bros., Jacques Chirac, Kim Delaney, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee
1830- The Polish November Uprising. Polish nationalists rise up against the Russian occupiers in one of their many romantic, but hopeless efforts. In America romantic literary figures like Hawthorne, Poe, Longfellow and Morse were terribly moved and wrote lots of epic poems, but not much else was done to help. Edgar Allen Poe in an opium induced delirium would run out of his Bronx cottage and march up and down the street with a musket in his hand shouting: "To Warsaw! To Warsaw!" Luckily the local constable was well aware of Mr. Poe's eccentricities and sent him home to bed.
1890- The first Army-Navy football game held at West Point. Midshipmen beat the cadets 24-0.
1915- John Randolph Bray's "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" cartoon. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animated cartoons, creating positions of layout, background painters, inkers, cel painters, checkers and camera. Before this one artist like Winsor McCay and an assistant did everything. After 1919, Bray shifted his studio's focus from entertainment shorts to educational and gov't training films. Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer and Shamus Culhane all got their start at Bray's.
1929- Commander Richard Byrd radioed he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. Commander Byrd had flown over the North Pole in 1926 with his friend Floyd Bennett but Bennett had since died and when Byrd made it over the South Pole he dropped a small American flag weighted with a stone from Bennett’s grave.
1942- For World War II, the U.S. declared coffee would be rationed along with sugar, gasoline and rubber. And lots more. People put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". Gas Ration cards were listed as C, B & A. The C card meant essential war worker, police & fire, so they had unlimited access to gasoline. A cards were the least important.
1959-The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darins’ rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.
1961- NASA sent Enos the Chimp into orbit.
1963-THE WARREN COMMISSION- President Lyndon Johnson set up the Warren Commission to investigate the murder of John F. Kennedy. He had originally thought the Dallas Homicide Squad was sufficient, but public outrage demanded more.
The Commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and participants included future president Gerald Ford, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State Alan Foster Dulles and future Senator Arlen Spector, who as a young attorney argued for the validity of the "magic bullet" theory”. That one bullet went through Kennedy, bounced, went through Gov. Connolly, ricocheted, went through Connolly a second time, zinged, and wound up sitting in Gov. Connolly's bedsheets in the hospital with no surface dents or marks on it -or something like that.
After ten months the Warren Commission concluded that President Kennedy was killed by a lone nut and there was no conspiracy. In 1975 the House Committee on Assassinations concluded to the contrary that Kennedy probably was the victim of a conspiracy but what it was is unknown. To this date there are still two million documents pertaining to the case kept classified, including Lee Harvey Oswald's tax returns, and how in a cold war blacklist-happy country, someone like Oswald, who had renounced his U.S. citizenship and lived in Moscow could re-enter the United States without a passport. Theories abound –that Attorney General Robert Kennedy squelched evidence that might have tarnished his brother’s record by proving his links to mobsters, to the CIA, Castro or space aliens pulling the trigger. Also that Jackie Kennedy when she was dying of cancer told all in a document her lawyers are instructed to keep secret until the year 2063. No matter, in the end the Warren Commission’s unsatisfying conclusions spawned a generation of conspiracy buffs.
1963- After the Kennedy assassination comic Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the dead president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies in 1962, but now it wasn’t funny anymore and Meaders career collapsed. He died of emphysema in 2004. When Lenny Bruce first took the stage after the Kennedy assassination, he opened with a long drag on his cigarette and sighed:” ….Man…. Vaughn Meader is really screwed!”
1967- Robert MacNamara, who was Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, resigned to become president of the World Bank.
2001- former Beatle guitarist and composer George Harrison died of cancer.
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Question: Who was Haddon Sundblom and why was he important to Christmas?
Answer: Haddon Sundblom 1899-1976, was a top illustrator who defined our idea of what Santa Claus looks like, via his many Coca Cola ads. Sundblom also created the Quaker Oats Quaker and Aunt Jemima.
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