Today in History 1/31/08

1606: The Gunpowder Plot conspirators (Guy Fawkes, Ambrose Rokewood and Thomas Wintour) are executed.
1747: The first venereal disease clinic opens in London.
1788: Bonnie Prince Charlie dies.
1846: In the aftermath of the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown and Kilbourntown unify as the city of Milwaukee, WI.
1815: Corn Laws are abolished in the United Kingdom. They were tariffs designed to support British corn growers. Their abolishment marked the beginnings of free trade.
1865: Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief of the Confederate Army.1865: The US House of Representatives passes a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.
1872: Zane Grey is born.1915: Germany uses poison gas against Russia.
1915: Alan Lomax, blues historian, is born.1917: Germany announces its U-boats will engage in unrestricted submarine warfare. This means that any ship flying the flag of an enemy is fair game, be it civilian or military.
1919: Jackie Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball, is born.1921: John Agar is born. He was in more episodes of MST3K than I can easily remember, but two were The Revenge of the Creature and The Mole People.1921: Carol Channing is born.
1922: Joanne Dru is born. She was in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and a ton of other Westerns.1923: Norman Mailer is born.
1929: The Soviet Union exiles Leon Trotsky.
1929: Jean Simmons is born. She played the crazy Admiral Satie in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead."
1930: 3M begins marketing Scotch Tape.
1934: James Franciscus is born. He played the Charlton Heston wannabe in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. 1936: The Green Hornet radio show debuts.
1937: Suzanne Pleshette is born.
1945: US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed, the first American soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion.1956: John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, is born.1958: The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit.1970: Minnie Driver is born.
1973: Portia de Rossi is born. She played the spoiled rich girl on Arrested Development.

Sorry, boys - she bats lefty!

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History, 1/30

1649: King Charles I is beheaded. Since his trial only began, like, a week ago, you can see that justice moved with uncomfortable swiftness in those days. Except when it didn't, as in:
1661: Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England is executed two years after he died. After Crommie kicked off (of natural causes) the Stewart line was restored when King Charles II assumed the throne. One of Chuck's first actions was to find all the people responsible for separating the royal head from the royal body and have them hung - whether or not they were already dead. They were then all thrown in a deep dark pit.
1798: A brawl breaks out in the House of Representatives as Matthew Lyon of Vermont spits in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut.
1820: Edward Bransfield lands on the Antarctic mainland.
1835: In the first assassination attempt against a US President, Richard Lawrence attacks President Andrew Johnson in the US Capitol. Both pistols misfire and Jackson beats the man with his cane. Old Hickory was kind of a dick (especially if you were of the Native American persuasion) but he sure did know how to handle would-be assassins.
1847: Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco.
1862: The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor, is launched.
1882: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is born.
1912: Barbara Tuchman, historian, is born. I recommend Stilwell and the American Experience in China.
1913: The House of Lords rejects the Irish Home Rule Bill.
1922: Dick Martin, of Rowan & Martin's Laugh In, is born.
1925: Douglas Engelbart is born. He invented the computer mouse.
1930: Gene Hackman is born.
1933: The first episode of the Lone Ranger is broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.
1933: Adolph Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.
1943: The German Gestapo shoots 200 Jews from the Letychiv slave labor camp in the Ukraine. In all, over 7,000 Jews were shot.
1948: Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu extremist.
1951: Phil Collins is born.
1956: Martin Luther King, Jr's home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1968: The Tet Offensive begins.
1969: The Beatles play their last public performance on the roof of Apple Records in London.
1972: 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers are gunned down by British soldiers in Northern Ireland in what became know as Bloody Sunday.
1974: Christian Bale is born.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History, 1/29

1595: Romeo and Juliet is first performed.
1737: Thomas Paine is born. He was a pamphleteer during the American Revolution and very nearly got his head cut off during the French Revolution.1820: King George III of the UK dies.1834: Andrew Jackson orders the first use of federal troops to suppress a labor dispute.
1843: William McKinley is born.
1845: The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is published in the New York Evening Mirror.
1850: Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to Congress.
1856: Queen Victoria introduces the Victoria Cross, which is awarded for "valour in the face of the enemy."1861: Kansas becomes the 34th state in the Union.
1880: W.C. Fields is born.

1886: Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.
1901: Allen B. DuMont is born. He is responsible for several improvements in the cathode ray tube and founded the DuMont Televison Network.
1913: Victor Mature is born.
1916: Paris is bombed by German zeppelins.
1918: John Forsythe is born. He provided the voice of Charlie on Charlie's Angels and was in MST3K episode 615 Kitten With a Whip with Ann-Margaret.1923: Paddy Chayefsky is born.
1936: The Baseball Hall of Fame inducts its first members: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson.
1940: Katharine Ross is born. She played Elaine Robinson in The Graduate.
1944: The USS Missouri is launched.
1945: Tom Selleck is born.

1948: Marc Singer is born. He was in all the various permutations of V and Beastmaster.
1950: Ann Jillian is born. I had a total crush on her in the short-lived godawful eary 80's sitcom Jennifer Slept Here, where she plays the ghost of an actress who haunts a family with hilarious results.

1954: Oprah Winfrey is born.
1958: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward get married.
1964: Dr. Strangelove premieres.

1970: Heather Graham is born. She was in Boogie Nights, which is a stupid movie, but she's sure easy to look at.1975: Sarah Gilbert is born. She played the gruff-but-lovable sister on Rosanne.1980: Jimmy Durante dies.

1989: Yugo files for bankruptcy.

Good night, Mrs. Calabash, where ever you are!

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History 1/28

814: Charlemagne dies.
1547: King Henry VIII dies. He is succeeded by Edward VI, the first Protestant ruler of England.
1596: Sir Francis Drake dies of dysentery off the coast of Panama.
1754: Horace Walpole, in a letter to Horace Mann, coins the word serendipity.
1724: The Russian Academy of Sciences is founded in St. Petersburg by Peter the Great.
1760: Pownal, Vermont is created by Benning Wentworth as one of the New Hampshire grants. It's way down in the southwest portion of the state.
1813: Pride and Predjudice, by Jane Austen, is published.
1820: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discover the Antarctic continent.
1846: The Battle of Aliwal, India is won by British troops commanded by Sir Harry Smith.
1871: During the Franco-Prussian war, the Siege of Paris ends with French defeat and armistice.
1890: Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, is born. Unlike his portrayal in the movie he really was a very horrible person.
1910: John Banner is born. He played Sgt. Schultz on Hogan's Heroes.
1912: Jackson Pollack is born.
1915: The US Coast Guard is created by an Act of Congress.
1917: Municipally owned streetcars take to the streets of San Francisco (a Quinn-Martin production).
1932: Japanese forces attack Shanghai.
1933: Jack Hill is born. He directed such exploitation classics as Switchblade Sisters, Foxy Brown, and Coffy.
1934: The first ski tow in America beings operation in Woodstock, VT at what would later be known as Suicide Six.
1936: Alan Alda is born.
1945: Supplies begin to reach China over the newly opened Burma Road.
1956: Elvis makes his first TV appearance.
1958: Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate begin their infamous murder spree with the killings of her parents and infant sister.
1958: The Lego company patented their design of Lego bricks.
1959: Vince Lombardi is named head coach of the Green Bay Packers.
1959: Frank Darabont is born. He directed The Shawshank Redemption.
1969: Mo Rocca is born.
1973: John Banner dies on the same day he was born. Freaky!
1978: Fantasy Island premieres.
1981: Ronald Reagan lifts remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls helping to end the 1979 energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.
1981: Elijah Wood is born.
1986: The Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds after liftoff killing all 7 people aboard.
1996: Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, dies.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History 1/27

1606: Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot are put on trial.
1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born.
1785: The University Of Georgia, the first public university in the US, is founded.
1825: The US Congress approves Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, clearing the way for the Trail of Tears.
1832: Lewis Carroll is born.
1850: Samuel Gompers, US labor leader, is born. He founded the American Federation of Labor.1850: Edward J. Smith, captain of the Titanic, is born.
1880: Thomas Edison receives a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.
1888: The National Geographic Society is founded.
1900: Admiral Hymie Rickover is born. He is known as the father of the nuclear navy. He also changed the practice of naming subs after fish to naming them after US cities saying, "Fish don't vote."1918: Elmore James, bluesman, is born.
1921: Donna Reed is born. She was never more lovely than she was in It's a Wonderful Life.1936: Troy Donahue is born. He one one half of the basis for The Simpsons character Troy McClure - the other half being Doug McClure.
1939: The first flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.1940: James Cromwell is born. He played the nerd father in Revenge of the Nerds and Zefram Cochran in Star Trek: First Contact and about a million other roles.
1944: Nick Mason, drummer for Pink Floyd is born.
1949: The Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
1951: Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during atest of the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.

l-r: Grissom, White, Chaffee

1954: Peter Laird is born. He is the co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles along with Kevin Eastman.
1955: John Roberts, 17th Chief Justice of the United States is born.
1956: Mimi Rogers is born. Not only is she a classic babe, but she's also a crackerjack poker player.1957: Frank Miller, comic book artist and writer, is born.
1964: Bridget Fonda is born.
1965: Alan Cumming is born. He was deliciously evil in the vastly underrated Josie and the Pussycats movie.
1967: More than 60 nations sign the Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.
1973: The Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War.
1993: Andre the Giant dies.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Scot fight! Scot fight!

I only wish I could get the original article that started it, but I'd have to pay for it. This is from Britain's Financial Times.

Tunku on the rocks over scotch habit

Published: January 12 2008 02:00

From Mr Malcolm Lloyd.

Sir, The fact that Tunku Varadarajan ("Down with pubs," FT Magazine, January 5) adds ice to scotch marks him as a philistine and, therefore, incapable of making any intelligent comparisons whatsoever.

Malcolm Lloyd

Tip from a tippler

Published: January 19 2008 02:00

From Mr Edward Brady.

Sir, Malcolm Lloyd’s labelling of Tunku Varadarajan as a philistine for adding ice to his scotch is as harsh as it is misguided (Letters, January 12/13). My formative drinking years in Scotland were spent in the company of whisky tipplers who diluted their spirit with an equal measure of plain water. Not only can whisky cope with such a dilution, it also makes the drink go much further – an important consideration for us frugal Scots.

Edward Brady

Transform your scotch with water

Published: January 26 2008 02:00

From Mr Kevan Pegley.

Sir, Your correspondent Edward Brady (Letters, January 20/21) has adopted a curious position for a self-proclaimed Scot: he appears to think ice and water are equivalent. Chemically they may be, but in their effect on scotch they are as different as the stuff on which the Titanic was sailing to the stuff that sank it.

Water releases the flavour of scotch by weakening the bonds between its aromatic molecules; ice reduces its temperature, making those same bonds more difficult to break.

My formative drinking years were spent avoiding scotch completely. Much later in life an old friend – a Scot – introduced me to the transformation water effected. I urge your readers to try the difference.

Kevan Pegley

I drink my Scotch right from the bottle! No, no, I don't. I slurp it out of a stripper's navel. No, I don't do that either. I drink Scotch over ice because that's the way I've always done it. And I started doing that in college because it was cool that way, daddy-o. But I'm certainly not going to throw myself into the middle of a big Scot fight about the proper way to drink Scotch. I would politely point out to the gentlemen that an inability to look past petty differences and band together in the face of a common foe is what doomed the Welsh. And if the Union is to be torn asunder, as does seem to be the style these days, then suddenly you've got your historically ruthless neighbor to the south to deal with again.

The interesting thing is that all of the UK's nuclear weapons are in Scotland, so if Little Scotland goes it alone, they're going holding a pretty big whip. They might force us all to drink our Scotch with water!

It's better than a C.H.U.D. infestation.

Beware the Blob!

City Battles Giant Blob
LEWISTON, Maine -- A large, mysterious blob has taken over a major sewer line in the city of Lewiston, leaving public works crews stumped as to how to budge it.
According to city officials, the stretch of 12-inch pipe on Main Street backed up on Jan. 13, and the city has been trying unsuccessfully to clear the line ever since.
Deputy Public Services Director Kevin Gagne told News 8 the doughy, 90-foot mass is comprised of grease, flour and rags.
Gagne said the city has chosen to replace the 170-foot line at a cost of between $40,000 and $60,000. Work is expected to begin this week.

Aww, kittens!

There's talk of getting some kittens around the house. It would be nice to have some critters to get on my old grimalkin's nerves. Here are some kittens fighting over a box:

Today in History, 1/26

1340: Edward III of England is declared King of France. Well, he declared himself King of France, the French actually had other ideas. But at this time, most of being king was having the stones to declare yourself king and having the army to back it up.
1564: The Council of Trent issues its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing the distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
1788: Arthur Phillip establishes Sydney, Australia.
1837: Michigan becomes the 26th state.
1861: Louisiana secedes from the Union.
1880: General Douglas MacArthur is born.1893: Abner Doubleday, creator of baseball, dies.
1905: Charles Lane is born. He played Mr. Potter's "little old rent collector" in It's A Wonderful Life but he was in a million other things.
1905: Maria Von Trapp is born.1907: The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III is introduced to the British military and remains the oldest military rifle still in official use.
1911: Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful seaplane.
1918: Nicolae Ceausescu, Romanian dictator is born. He would come to a sorry end.
1918: Philip Jose Farmer is born. He wrote the epic Riverworld series, which I always felt was overrated.
1925: Paul Newman is born.

A little somethin' for the ladies!

1928: Roger Vadim is born. He directed Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy starring his wife Jane Fonda.

"Hey, Jane, does my hand taste funny to you?"

1929: Jules Feiffer, cartoonist, is born.
1934: The German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact is signed. It didn't take.
1935: Bob Uecker is born.
1946: Gene Siskel is born.
1955: Eddie Van Halen is born. I had no idea he was Dutch. I loved this video as a kid, but now that I watch it, it seems incredibly stupid. Yes, teach your pre-teen boys to objectify women! And that lowering the sunglasses-to-get-a-better-look-at-a-pretty-woman trick? They never think that's cool.

1958: Ellen DeGeneres is born.
1962: Lucky Luciano dies.
1973: Edward G. Robinson dies. His last role was in Soylent Green.
1979: Nelson Rockefeller dies, under mysterious circumstances. As in, nude in a cheap motel with a wiener pump and a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. He's also known for giving the finger to a bunch of hecklers at the 1976 Republican National Convention.1979: The greatest TV show in the history of the world, The Dukes of Hazzard premieres.

1980: Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations.
1988: The Phantom of the Opera premieres on Broadway.
1992: Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia is going to stop targeting the US with nuclear weapons.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History, 1/25

1327: Edward III becomes King of England
1533: Henry VIII secretly marries Anne Boleyn.
1627: Robert Boyle is is born. He was the chemist who came up with Boyle's Law.1741: Benedict Arnold is born.
1759: Robert Burns is born.
1787: Daniel Shays leads the aptly named Shay's Rebellion to seize the Federal arsenal to protest debtor's prisons.1825: General George Pickett is born.
1863: General Ambrose Burnside is relieved of command of the Army of the Potomac.
1881: Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.
1905: The world's largest diamond, the Cullinan, is discovered in Pretoria, South Africa.1919: The League of Nations is founded.
1924: The first Winter Olympics is held in Chamonix, France.
1945: The Battle of the Bulge ends.
1947: Al Capone dies of a heart attack.1943: Tobe Hooper is born. He directed many horror movies, but he's still most famous for the first one, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
1945: Leigh Taylor-Young is born. She played the "furniture" Shirl in Soylent Green.
1949: The first Emmy Awards are presented.
1971: Charles Manson and three female Family members are found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders.1971: Idi Amin becomes Uganda's president.
1981: Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's widow is sentenced to death.
1990: Ava Gardner dies.1995: The Russians mistake a Norwegian research rocket for a US Trident missile and come a hair's breadth from launching their own missiles.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

I don't have a dog in this fight.

Some Internet group calling themselves "Anonymous" has declared war on the Church of Scientology. As is the fashion these days, they did so in the form of a YouTube video:




Ooooh! Predictably, the whole of the blog-o-sphere is in an uproar. I just like the imagery in the video. Coupled with the text-to-speech voice it's pretty hypnotic. I'm betting that the whole thing was cooked up by some bored kids.

Today in History 1/24

41: Caligula is assassinated by his Praetorian Guards.
1679: King Charles II disbands Parliament.
1754: Andrew Ellicott is born. He surveyed the boundaries for Washington, DC.1776: Henry Knox arrives at Cambridge, MA with the artillery that he has transported from Fort Ticonderoga.
1848: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter's Mill in California, kicking off the California Gold Rush.1862: Edith Wharton is born. She wrote the dreary novels The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome.1873: Leon Czolgosz, anarchist and assassin of President William McKinley is born.
1907: Lord Robert Baden-Powell founds the Boy Scout movement.1916: In Brushaber v. Union Pacific, the Supreme Court declares the federal income tax constitutional.
1917: Ernest Borgnine is born.
1924: Saint Petersburg, Russia is renamed Leningrad.
1927: Alfred Hitchcock releases his first film, The Pleasure Garden.

1928: Desmond Morris is born. He wrote The Naked Ape in 1968 and it remains controversial today.
1935: The first cans of beer are sold in the US. (Krueger's Finest and Krueger's Cream Ale).
1939: Ray Stevens is born.

1941: Neil Diamond is born.
1943: Sharon Tate is born. She was an actress and one of the victims of the Manson Family Tate-LaBianca murders.1946: Michael Ontkean is born. He played Sheriff Harry S. Truman on Twin Peaks.
1947: Warren Zevon is born.
1949: John Belushi is born. I never thought he was very funny. The "I'm a slob!" act got old in a hurry. "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life," as Dean Wormer said to Flounder.

1951: Yakov Smirnoff is born. Now that's funny!
1957: Adrian Edmondson is born. He played the wannabe punker Vyv Basterd on The Young Ones, perhaps the most accurate portrayal of college ever put on TV.
1962: Stanley Lord, captain of the SS Californian on the night of the Titanic disaster dies.1965: Winston Churchill dies.
1967: Phil LaMarr is born. He provides the voice of the Green Lantern on the most recent incarnation of Justice League.
1968: Mary Lou Retton is born, and the world gets a little more perky.1970: Matthew Lillard is born. If you can watch him in the Wing Commander movie and not want to murder him, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
1972: Japanese Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi is found hiding in a Guam jungle where he had been since the end of WWII.
1975: Larry Fine, Stooge, dies.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History, 1/23

1533: Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, learns she is pregnant. The baby would grow up to be Queen Elizabeth I.
1556: The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, kills as many as 830,000 in China.
1789: Georgetown College becomes the first Catholic college in the US.
1855: The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in Minneapolis, MN.
1855: John Moses Browning is born. He invented the Browning Automatic Rifle.1898: Randolph Scott is born. He is best known for all the westerns he starred in.
1919: Ernie Kovacs, comedian, is born.

1923: Walter M. Miller, Jr. is born. He wrote A Canticle for Leibowitz.
1937: In Moscow, 17 leading Communists go on trial accused of participating in a plot by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Stalin.
1943: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins.
1943: Gil Gerard is born. He played Buck Rogers on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
1944: Rutger Hauer is born. So watch Blind Fury or Ladyhawke tonight!
1950: Richard Dean Anderson is born. I used to love MacGyver when I was a kid.

1957: Wham-O produces its first Frisbee.
1960: The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a record by descending to 35,798 feet in the Pacific Ocean.1964: The 24th Amendment to the US Constitution, banning poll taxes in national elections, is ratified.

1964: Mariska Hargitay is born. She's the daughter of Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield and stars on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

She takes after her mother!

1968: North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming that it had been on a spying mission.1973: Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord had been reached with Vietnam.
1978: Terry Kath, of the rock band Chicago, accidentally shoots himself in the head, believing the gun was unloaded.
1978: Jack Oakie dies.
1989: Salvador Dali dies.
Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up