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Almost as reliable as the Farmer's Almanac®, |
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Almost as reliable as the Farmer's Almanac®, |
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Volume 5, Number 7
Wednesday, April 5 - Tuesday, April 18
Listen My Children
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| VITAL MORONIC INFO April
5
ERRATUM
Have you seen the
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It was a tense April in Boston in 1775.
The colonists were simmering with resentment toward the motherland, on account of
King George III having strewn the colonies with excessive tacks, painful to step on and
bothersome to the horses. Furthermore, British cabbies had refused to unionize, and
the colonists were adamantly opposed to taxis without representation. King George III tried to assuage the riled colonists by sending them boatloads of tea. (King George III was insane.) The colonists dressed up like Indians and poured all the king’s tea into Boston harbor, proving they could be perfectly insane without any help from the king. Meanwhile, a network of colonists had been secretly meeting for some time. They reasoned that since they preferred coffee to tea, liked salad before rather than after the entree, and couldn’t make any sense whatever of cricket, they were obviously no longer British. Perhaps they had become French, or Portuguese. Finally they took a vote, which proved they were American. The king’s colonial representatives overheard some of these discussions, and decided to arrest as many of these patriots as possible, unless they could kill them first. On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere got wind of the British officers’ plan to arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams in Lexington that very night--arrests that would have been calamitous to the colony’s fledgling insurance and beer industries. Anticipating colonial unrest, British officers had deployed Regulars on all the key roads between Boston and Lexington. (The Regulars had previously proved effective even where the Irregulars and Extra Longs had failed.) Revere told some friends to hang two lanterns in Boston’s Old North Church, in order to signal his wife that he’d be late for dinner, and immediately set out for Charlestown. Once there, he mounted a horse and began the ride to Lexington. He found himself almost immediately pursued by Regulars, whom he eluded by means of wily Boston riding tactics: he took a series of lefts from the right lane and a series of rights from the left, utterly confounding his pursuers, who were anyway accustomed to riding on the other side of the street and still weren’t sure what to do at a blinking red light. One of the Regulars rode straight into a fruit stand and ended up covered in produce. Another rode through a big plate glass window that two workmen were carrying across the road. It was pretty funny. Just before midnight, Revere finally arrived at Jonas Clarke’s Lexington home, where he breathlessly informed Adams and Hancock that the British were coming. This confounded Adams and Hancock, who, like Revere, were themselves British. Once the confusion was cleared up, Adams and Hancock fled for safety while Revere and two others rushed on to Concord. Many memorable and important historical events ensued, such as the American Revolution, but by then it was April 19th, and therefore no longer appropriate to this almanac. These Weeks in HistoryGeorges Jacques Danton set up the Revolutionary Tribunal in France after the revolution, but was repulsed by the bloodshed it engendered. He argued passionately for a more temperate revolution. This was considered counter-revolutionary. The Revolutionary Tribunal therefore tried and sentenced him, and on April 5, 1794 he was beheaded. His demise is often cited as an example of poetic justice, which has to make you wonder what kind of poetry everyone else is reading. On April 7, 1943, Albert Hoffman produced LSD for the first time at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. T hat same day, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg. Calculate the distance between Salzburg and Basel. Speculate. The first elephant arrived in America on April 13, 1796. Exactly sixty-three years later, the Vatican forbade Roman Catholics from voting for communists. Coincidence? On April 17, 1961, the Kennedy administration’s secret plan to cripple Castro by inundating Cuba with thousands of wild boars backfired, as the nervous beasts leaped from their cargo ships and drowned just a few hundred yards from shore, resulting in the "Bay of Pigs." Spencer Tracy was born on April 5, 1900. Melvyn Douglas was born on April 5, 1901. Bette Davis was born on April 5, 1908. Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916. Francis Ford Coppola was born on April 7, 1939. Mary Pickford was born on April 8, 1893. Omar Sharif was born on April 10, 1932. Sir John Gielgud was born on April 14, 1904. Emma Thompson was born on April 15, 1959. Charlie Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889. And yet, Shannon Doherty was born on April 12, 1971. Moron MelodramaIt was a lovely April, but a certain beautiful young woman walked about in a daze, heavy of heart and despairing of hope. She was betrothed to a rich and cruel young man who didn’t love her. Then she met a boyishly handsome young ruffian who loved her for who she really was. His every sentiment seemed to echo those in her own soul, sentiments that had gone too long unanswered; his smile radiated warmth and joy, and quickened her blooming young heart, which had withered too long from neglect; his touch sent shivers down her spine, which had always consisted of numerous vertebrae. They fell in love abruptly and completely. Sadly, the sea broke through the dikes, and they were drowned along with 100,000 other less interesting people on April 17, 1421, in Dort, the Netherlands. (On April 15, 1912, the unsinkable Titanic sank, drowning 1,523 of her 2200 passengers and crew. On April 16, 1951, the British submarine Affray sunk in the English Channel, drowning 75. On April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake left 200,000 homeless and over 1000 dead. Let's be careful out there.) Trivia Solution: The first foreigner to receive honorary United States citizenship was (c) Winston Churchill (whose mother had been American). Give yourself ten points for a correct answer, and try not to get too worked up if you were wrong. Bonus: Churchill received the honor with uncharacteristic silence, which was nevertheless not surprising. He was dead. Farming TipIf there were going to be a farming tip this week, it would be right here. Attentive readers will by now have noticed there isn't one. That’s because this isn't the Farmer’s Almanac®. This is the Moron’s Almanac™. Please try not to get us mixed up: it confuses us and embarrasses the farmers. Thanks. Disclaimer: JustMorons.com contains polynukatrine, which has beenproven to cause a certain je ne sais quoi in laboratory animals. The Moron's Almanac™ |
MORONIC TRIVIA Who became the first ever honorary citizen of the United States on April 9, 1963? a. Albert Einstein Bonus: How did this individual respond to the honor?
BIRTHDAYS April 5 April 7 April 9 April 11 April 13 April 15 April 16 April 18 |
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