THE MORON’S ALMANAC © 1999, JustMorons.com
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Almost as reliable as the Farmer’s Almanac®, but without all that crap about farming.
*** Volume 2, Number 2 ***
*** Sunday, April 18 through Saturday, April 24 ***
If your browser supports hyperlinks, you can access the online edition of the almanac, with all its links and images and sounds and furies, its books and movies and CDs, by clicking here:
http://www.justmorons.com/almanac.html.
--- MORONIC TRIVIA ---
(Answer below)
Where is London Bridge?
---THIS WEEK’S VITAL MORONIC INFO---
April 18
Health Day in Kiribati
Independence Day in Zimbabwe
April 19
Constitution Day in Venezuela
April 20
St. George’s Day in Canada
April 21
Tiradentes Day in Brazil
Secretaries’ Day in the U.S.
April 22
Earth Day on Earth
April 23
National Sovereignty and Children’s Day in Turkey
April 24
Genocide Memorial Day in Armenia
National Day in Niger
Arbor Day in the U.S.
--- FROM ROMULUS TO REMUS ---
On April 21, 753 BC, Romulus founded Rome. He had been planning it for a while with his evil twin, Remus, who had a bad work ethic and therefore insisted it couldn’t be built in a day. He thought it was a clever observation, so he kept repeating it. It got so irritating that finally Romulus slew him. (This was in the old days, remember, when slewing was pretty serious stuff.)
Rome got big and powerful, then declined, then fell, and then rose again, a pattern familiar to those who’ve followed John Travolta’s career.
On April 18, 1480, Lucrezia Borgia was born in Rome, the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI. The Borgias were one of Rome’s great families, establishing a tradition of treachery, intrigue, and deceit that has rarely if ever been surpassed (although not for lack of trying).
The Borgias were such a bloody bunch that it’s hard to imagine why they never caught the attention of a certain Englishman (or Britishman) born less than a hundred years later, on April 23, 1564. This was William Shakespeare (no relation), whose tragedies gloried in bloody betrayals. For example, there’s the Tragedy of Julius Caesar, in which a Roman general thinks he’d like to be emperor, other people disagree, and everyone dies in the end. Or the Tragedy of Macbeth, in which a Scottish Thane thinks he’d like to be king, other people disagree, and everyone dies in the end. Or the Tragedy of Hamlet, in which a young prince thinks, and everyone dies in the end.
(The blurry line between royalty and entertainment is perhaps best illustrated by the marriage of Prince Rainier of Monaco—son of King Rainy—and American actress Grace Kelly, on April 19, 1956.)
Mr. Shakespeare wrote a lot of other plays and died in the end—on April 23, 1616. His accomplishments are all the more remarkable when you consider that he died on the same day he’d been born.
England and Britain were proud of Shakespeare, and eventually decided that if they had another Queen Elizabeth, maybe they’d have another Shakespeare. Queen Elizabeth II was therefore born on April 21, 1926.
William Shakespeare II never materialized, however, but if he had he could have written good Tragedies about Adolf Hitler, born April 20, 1889, and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, born April 22, 1870. (Ulyanov later became Lenin, invented the Communist Party in Russia, and made himself first Head Bastard of the Soviet Union.)
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra died the very same day as Shakespeare. Mr. Cervantes was a brilliant Spanish humorist, best known for his novel Don Quixote, in which an old man suffering from acute mental illness rides around the Spanish countryside hallucinating, then dies.
Another brilliant humorist died on April 21, 1910: this was Mark Twain, or Samuel Clemens. Mr. Twain, or Mr. Clemens, or both, had performed throughout the American south with Joel Chandler Harris on several occassions; Mr. Harris was the creator of the popular character Uncle Remus, the identical twin of Uncle Romulus.
And this is where we came in.
--- THIS WEEK IN HISTORY ---
On April 18, 1923, Yankee Stadium opened in the Bronx, exactly 148 years after Paul Revere rode from Charleston to Lexington to warn Massachusetts colonists that the British were coming. Coincidence? I bet they’d like you to think so.
On April 21, 1816, Charlotte Brontë was born. She and her two hideous sisters dwelt in a dark cave, feeding on human flesh and sharing one eyeball between them, until finally being slain by wily Odysseus... unless that was the Gorgons, in which case the Brontës were just some nice English ladies who wrote a bunch of books and poems.
On April 21, 1989, tens of thousands of students and workers poured into Tiananmen Square in defiance of government requests that they please not. The Chinese government subsequently did its best to assure the world that there was nothing unusual in a few thousand students getting tanked.
On April 22, 1904, Robert Oppenheimer was born. Mr. Oppenheimer is known as the father of the atomic bomb. Its mother has never been identified to anyone’s satisfaction, which only underscores the lax security at Los Alamos.
On April 22, 1451, Isabella I, Queen of Castille, was born. She also became Queen of Aragon in 1479. She was Christopher Columbus’s patron, and must therefore share some of the responsibility for the many thousands of casinos across America.
--- BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK ---
April 18
Conan O'Brien (1963)
Eric Roberts (1956)
Clarence Darrow (1857)
Lucrezia Borgia (1480)
April 19
Tim Curry (1946)
Jayne Mansfield (1933)
April 20
Carmen Electra (1972)
Jessica Lange (1949)
Harold Lloyd (1893)
Adolf Hitler (1889)
April 21
Charles Grodin (1935)
Elaine May (1932)
Elizabeth II, Queen of England (1926)
Anthony Quinn (1915)
Charlotte Bronte (1816)
April 22
Peter Frampton (1950)
Jack Nicholson (1937)
Vladimir Nabokov (1899)
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870)
Immanuel Kant (1724)
April 23
Sandra Dee (1942)
Lee Majors (1940)
Shirley Temple Black (1928)
William Shakespeare (1564)
April 24
Shirley MacLaine (1934; note that this represents only Ms. MacLaine’s most recent incarnation, and does not reflect previous lives, etc.)
--- THE MORONIC FINANCIER ---
A lot of financiers will charge you good money for advice on how to invest your money in the current stock market. (Respecting the laws of supply and demand, the moronic financier does not charge for his advice.) One way to get a better return on your investments is to not pay for advice from people who wouldn’t have to sell advice if they actually knew how to make money on the market. Another, probably more reliable way would be to pay for their advice, lose everything, suffer emotional distress, pick a number between one and nine, tack about eight zeroes to the right of it, and then sue them for that amount.
Hot stock pick of the week: Look at some nice stock charts. Invest in the stocks whose charts have tiny little bars on the left and great big ones on the right. (Note: red bars are bad.) Do not invest in any stocks that use pie charts, or that chart with human skulls instead of colored bars. Do not invest in a company if their prospectus has a smiley face on the cover.
Trivia solution: (d) On April 18, 1968, London Bridge was sold to American Robert McCullough for one million pounds (shipping and handling not included); it was then rebuilt in Lake Havasu, Arizona.
--- ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST ---
(See the online version of the almanac for custom weekly forecasts every Wednesday night.)
The planets are aligning themselves in unusual configurations, so astronomers will have a bitch of a week. The rest of us can expect the same old routine, day in, day out, one thing leading to another, and nothing really amounting to much.
--- THIS WEEK’S FARMING TIP ---
If you're looking for a weekly farming tip, we suggest you look almost anywhere but here. Weekly farming tips appear in the Farmer’s Almanac®. This is not the Farmer’s Almanac®. This is the Moron’s Almanac. Please try not to get us mixed up again: it confuses us and embarasses the farmers. Thanks.
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