History for 1/9/2004
Birthdays: Woody Guthrie, Richard Milhouse Nixon, Ray Bolger, Roy Disney Jr., William Powell, George Balanchine, Judith Krantz, Bob Denver, Crystal Gayle, Joan Baez, Simone de Beauvoir, Sir Rudolph Bing, Herbert Lom, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joely Richardson
Festival of Janus, the namesake of January, Roman God of gateways and doors, not to be confused with Terminus, God of borders and terminal points, Lemintinus the God of Threshholds and stoops. Cardea the Goddess of hinges or Forculus the God of the door leaves and sectioned doors.
1349- The Jewish population of Basel Switzerland were locked up in a building and burned to death. People thought they were responsible for bringing the Black Plague to their town.
1570- Ivan the Terrible, just getting the suspicion that the city of Novgorod
may be plotting treason, surrounded the city and massacred 20,000 people.
Afterwards he tells the survivors:
" Forget your wrongs."
1768- Former English cavalry sergeant Phillip Astley combined trick riding in
a tight circular ring with a clown and some jugglers and took it all on the
road. The first Circus.
1769- Gaspar De Portola and Fra Junipero Serra set sail from Mexico to
colonize California. The California coastline had been explored by Juan De Cabrillo, Francis Drake and others 250 years earlier but since there were no
gold-encrusted Aztec-type cities to plunder it was quickly forgotten. Conquistadors don’t surf. The King in Madrid was finally moved to order the colonization of California to limit the encroachments of Russian fur trading settlements and English claims to Oregon territory.
1793- Aeronaut Jean Pierre Blanchard and his dog flew by hot air balloon from
Philadelphia to Woodbury New Jersey. President George Washington was a
spectator. Blanchard toured Europe and America doing flights in Montgolfier’s
balloon until killed in a crash in 1809. Young Napoleon once undid the ropes of his tether for a laugh.
1806- In London this day was the great funeral of Admiral Horatio Nelson,
killed at the moment of victory in the Battle of Trafalgar. He was interred under the center of Saint Pauls Cathedral in a tomb built for Henry VIII's chancellor Cardinal Woolsey. Woolsey fell from royal favor before he ever got a chance to use it. The huge stone coffin stayed around in storage until a suitable hero popped up. An early example of recycling.
1825- KING CAUCUS- Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams have dinner.
The presidential election was deadlocked between Adams and Andrew Jackson with Clay a distant third. Over sherry Clay offers his electoral votes to Adams in exchange for the Secretary of State job. So Adams wins the election with the electoral votes of states like Kentucky where not one soul voted for him.
People were furious over the stolen election since Jackson had won all the
popular vote. In the next election Jackson won easily and began major reform of the electoral system, judging by our problems this last election, obviously the reforms didn’t go far enough. The public also remembered Clay's role and never voted for him for president ever again.
1847- THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES-after a small battle near modern San Gabriel
Commodore Richard Stockton and the U.S. cavalry retake Los Angeles and end resistance by the native Mexican population 'the Californios' to U.S. rule. The Californios had driven out the Yankee occupiers three times before.
1847- First U.S. governor of New Mexico territory Charles Bent is murdered
and scalped by angry Mexican- Indians after the U. S. conquering army had moved on. His trading post Bent’s Fort still stands today.
1857- The Fort Tejon earthquake shook Los Angeles This was the last major
quake in Southern Cal of the great San Andreas Fault, an estimated 8.0 !
1860- The Star of the West, a ship sent to re-supply Union held Fort Sumter
sitting out in Charleston Harbor, was fired on by Southern shore batteries on
Morris Island and forced to turn around. These are the first hostile shots fired between North & South but the incident was not enough to trigger the U.S. Civil War.
1914 -John Randolph Bray takes out patents on the principles of film
animation: cycles, arcs, keys and inbetweens. He even later tries to sue Winsor McCay, who had already been using them for years.
1924- The breakfast cereal Wheaties invented.
1936- Actor John Gilbert died of a heart attack after years of alcohol abuse.
The accepted reason was he was a has-been silent film star who's voice was too thin and squeaky for talking pictures. Actually his voice wasn't too bad, some of it may of had to do with his punching Louis B. Mayer in the mouth when Mayer made a crude remark about Gilbert's sexual relations with Greta Garbo -something like "Why marry her when you're getting it anyway ?.."-BOP! . Mayer got up and screamed: "I'll ruin you if it costs me millions!"
Gilbert's fading popularity and decline into alcohol as his second wife
Virginia Bruce’s film career blossomed was the inspiration for "A Star is Born".
1939- Top Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin was hired by Walt Disney. He
quit after two fruitless years and left so angry he wrote a children’s book
called the "Bear that Wasn’t" about his experiences. In 1945 he went into
Paramount’s live action division and became the director of the Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis comedies.
1959- The tv series Rawhide debuted, starring a young Clint Eastwood.
President Lyndon Johnson was a Rawhide fan and in a released White House tape the theme from Rawhide can be clearly heard on his TV in the background. "Rollin’, Rollin’ Rollin’; keep them dowgies moving…"
1968- THE BATTLE OF QUE SANH- Que Sanh was a U.S. Marine firebase at the
western tip of the Vietnamese DeMilitarized Zone and was placed to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This day the Marine base was surrounded and attacked by huge North Vietnamese forces. General William Westmorland growled to his corps commanders "This will NOT be the American Dien Bien Phu !" Dien Bien Phu was the disastrous 1954 siege which drove the French from Vietnam. The U.S. media at the time portrayed Que Sanh as an epic showdown in the tradition of Gettysburg or Guadalcanal, but to the Vietnamese General Ngyun Vo Giap it was a feint to the real offensive to occur a week later when the Tet Lunar New Year holiday began....
1972- In a rare press conference by telephone from the Bahamas reclusive
billionaire Howard Hughes declared the biography done of him by Clifford Irving
was a total fabrication.
1976- First day of shooting in Philadelphia of the movie Rocky. It was the first movie to utilize the Steadicam, a system that balanced hand-held camera shots.
1987- THE OCTOBER SURPRISE- The Ronald Reagan White House released a
memorandum from 1980 proving the sales of weapons to Iran did help bring about the release of American Embassy hostages. Even though the negotiation for the sale was begun under Jimmy Carter. The Ronald Reagan media spinners encouraged the idea that all the Old Gipper had to do was show up in the White House for the mad mullahs to release our people and hightail it outta’ town. Now the truth was out, but alas too late and not enough of a media sound bite for a dazed and
confused public to care.
Birthdays: Woody Guthrie, Richard Milhouse Nixon, Ray Bolger, Roy Disney Jr., William Powell, George Balanchine, Judith Krantz, Bob Denver, Crystal Gayle, Joan Baez, Simone de Beauvoir, Sir Rudolph Bing, Herbert Lom, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joely Richardson
Festival of Janus, the namesake of January, Roman God of gateways and doors, not to be confused with Terminus, God of borders and terminal points, Lemintinus the God of Threshholds and stoops. Cardea the Goddess of hinges or Forculus the God of the door leaves and sectioned doors.
1349- The Jewish population of Basel Switzerland were locked up in a building and burned to death. People thought they were responsible for bringing the Black Plague to their town.
1570- Ivan the Terrible, just getting the suspicion that the city of Novgorod
may be plotting treason, surrounded the city and massacred 20,000 people.
Afterwards he tells the survivors:
" Forget your wrongs."
1768- Former English cavalry sergeant Phillip Astley combined trick riding in
a tight circular ring with a clown and some jugglers and took it all on the
road. The first Circus.
1769- Gaspar De Portola and Fra Junipero Serra set sail from Mexico to
colonize California. The California coastline had been explored by Juan De Cabrillo, Francis Drake and others 250 years earlier but since there were no
gold-encrusted Aztec-type cities to plunder it was quickly forgotten. Conquistadors don’t surf. The King in Madrid was finally moved to order the colonization of California to limit the encroachments of Russian fur trading settlements and English claims to Oregon territory.
1793- Aeronaut Jean Pierre Blanchard and his dog flew by hot air balloon from
Philadelphia to Woodbury New Jersey. President George Washington was a
spectator. Blanchard toured Europe and America doing flights in Montgolfier’s
balloon until killed in a crash in 1809. Young Napoleon once undid the ropes of his tether for a laugh.
1806- In London this day was the great funeral of Admiral Horatio Nelson,
killed at the moment of victory in the Battle of Trafalgar. He was interred under the center of Saint Pauls Cathedral in a tomb built for Henry VIII's chancellor Cardinal Woolsey. Woolsey fell from royal favor before he ever got a chance to use it. The huge stone coffin stayed around in storage until a suitable hero popped up. An early example of recycling.
1825- KING CAUCUS- Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams have dinner.
The presidential election was deadlocked between Adams and Andrew Jackson with Clay a distant third. Over sherry Clay offers his electoral votes to Adams in exchange for the Secretary of State job. So Adams wins the election with the electoral votes of states like Kentucky where not one soul voted for him.
People were furious over the stolen election since Jackson had won all the
popular vote. In the next election Jackson won easily and began major reform of the electoral system, judging by our problems this last election, obviously the reforms didn’t go far enough. The public also remembered Clay's role and never voted for him for president ever again.
1847- THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES-after a small battle near modern San Gabriel
Commodore Richard Stockton and the U.S. cavalry retake Los Angeles and end resistance by the native Mexican population 'the Californios' to U.S. rule. The Californios had driven out the Yankee occupiers three times before.
1847- First U.S. governor of New Mexico territory Charles Bent is murdered
and scalped by angry Mexican- Indians after the U. S. conquering army had moved on. His trading post Bent’s Fort still stands today.
1857- The Fort Tejon earthquake shook Los Angeles This was the last major
quake in Southern Cal of the great San Andreas Fault, an estimated 8.0 !
1860- The Star of the West, a ship sent to re-supply Union held Fort Sumter
sitting out in Charleston Harbor, was fired on by Southern shore batteries on
Morris Island and forced to turn around. These are the first hostile shots fired between North & South but the incident was not enough to trigger the U.S. Civil War.
1914 -John Randolph Bray takes out patents on the principles of film
animation: cycles, arcs, keys and inbetweens. He even later tries to sue Winsor McCay, who had already been using them for years.
1924- The breakfast cereal Wheaties invented.
1936- Actor John Gilbert died of a heart attack after years of alcohol abuse.
The accepted reason was he was a has-been silent film star who's voice was too thin and squeaky for talking pictures. Actually his voice wasn't too bad, some of it may of had to do with his punching Louis B. Mayer in the mouth when Mayer made a crude remark about Gilbert's sexual relations with Greta Garbo -something like "Why marry her when you're getting it anyway ?.."-BOP! . Mayer got up and screamed: "I'll ruin you if it costs me millions!"
Gilbert's fading popularity and decline into alcohol as his second wife
Virginia Bruce’s film career blossomed was the inspiration for "A Star is Born".
1939- Top Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin was hired by Walt Disney. He
quit after two fruitless years and left so angry he wrote a children’s book
called the "Bear that Wasn’t" about his experiences. In 1945 he went into
Paramount’s live action division and became the director of the Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis comedies.
1959- The tv series Rawhide debuted, starring a young Clint Eastwood.
President Lyndon Johnson was a Rawhide fan and in a released White House tape the theme from Rawhide can be clearly heard on his TV in the background. "Rollin’, Rollin’ Rollin’; keep them dowgies moving…"
1968- THE BATTLE OF QUE SANH- Que Sanh was a U.S. Marine firebase at the
western tip of the Vietnamese DeMilitarized Zone and was placed to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This day the Marine base was surrounded and attacked by huge North Vietnamese forces. General William Westmorland growled to his corps commanders "This will NOT be the American Dien Bien Phu !" Dien Bien Phu was the disastrous 1954 siege which drove the French from Vietnam. The U.S. media at the time portrayed Que Sanh as an epic showdown in the tradition of Gettysburg or Guadalcanal, but to the Vietnamese General Ngyun Vo Giap it was a feint to the real offensive to occur a week later when the Tet Lunar New Year holiday began....
1972- In a rare press conference by telephone from the Bahamas reclusive
billionaire Howard Hughes declared the biography done of him by Clifford Irving
was a total fabrication.
1976- First day of shooting in Philadelphia of the movie Rocky. It was the first movie to utilize the Steadicam, a system that balanced hand-held camera shots.
1987- THE OCTOBER SURPRISE- The Ronald Reagan White House released a
memorandum from 1980 proving the sales of weapons to Iran did help bring about the release of American Embassy hostages. Even though the negotiation for the sale was begun under Jimmy Carter. The Ronald Reagan media spinners encouraged the idea that all the Old Gipper had to do was show up in the White House for the mad mullahs to release our people and hightail it outta’ town. Now the truth was out, but alas too late and not enough of a media sound bite for a dazed and
confused public to care.
