24oct10

I'm sorry, said the diner, who hoped to get away with it, but I haven't any money to pay for that meal.
That's all right, said the cashier. We'll write your name on the wall and you can pay the next time you come in.
Don't do that. Everybody who comes in will see it.
Oh no they won't. Your overcoat will be hanging over it.


Bisquit Tortoni was the man who discovered radio.

22Oct10

A customer sat down at a table in a smart restaurant and tied a napkin around his neck. The scandalized manager called a waiter and instructed him, Try to make him understand, as tactfully as possible, that that's not done.
Said the thoughtful waiter to the customer: Pardon me, sir. Shave or haircut, sir?"


Furbelow means a vacation for soldiers.


Today is my birthdate "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME"

21oct10

Two lady school-teachers from Brooklyn, spending their sabbatical year exploring western Canada, stopped at a small and old-fashioned hotel in Alberta recently.
One of the pair was inclined to be worrisome when traveling, and she couldn't rest until she had mde a tour of the corridors to hunt out exits in case of fire. The first door she opened, unfortunately, turned out to be that of the public bath, occupied by an elderly gentleman taking a shower.
Oh, excuse me! the lady stammered, flustered. I'm looking for the fire escape. Then she ran for it.
To her dismay, she hadn't got far along the corridor when she heard a shout behind her and, looking around, saw the gentleman, wearing only a towel, running after her. Where's the fire? he hollered.

Captain John Smith was governor of New York

20Oct10

GUEST--Do you run a bus between the hotel and the railway station?
MANAGER--No sir.
GUEST--That's strange. All my friends said you would get me coming and going?



Garibaldi designed the Statue of Liberty

19oct10

A New York club had replaced its male staff with young and, in some cases, pretty waitresses.
One day a member who had been strongly opposed to the change arrived at the club for lunch.
How's the duck? he asked an attractive waitress, rather gruffly.
"Oh, I'm fine! she replied, perkily. And how's the old pelican himself?

Lady Godiva swam the English Channel.

18Oct10

So you are the new girl, said the young smart aleck to the new waitress in his hotel. What shall we call you?
Pearl, sir.
The Pearl of Great Price?
No, sir, the Pearl cast before swine.


Jack's getting terribly absent-minded of late. Why just the other day he kissed a woman by mistake.
Thought it was his wife, eh?
No, that's just it. It was his wife.


Religious History
1483 Pope Sixtus IV launched the Spanish Inquisition, placing it under joint direction of the Church and state. Tomas de Torquemada, 63, was appointed Grand Inquisitor in charge of removing Jews and Muslims from Spain.
1582 Birth of German scholar Johann Gerhard, most influential of the 17th century Lutheran theologians. His writings attained a European circulation second only to the Bible and Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ."
1651 French scientist Blaise Pascal wrote in a letter: 'Jesus Christ suffered and died to sanctify death and suffering; he has been all that was great, and all that was abject, in order to sanctify in himself all things except sin, and to be the model of every condition.'
1792 Birth of John Bowring, English statesman, linguist, merchant, theologian and author of the hymn, "In the Cross of Christ I Glory."
1812 In Washington Co., PA, the first of seven eventual conferences convened, leading ultimately to the founding in 1836 of the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States

17Oct10
Hotel Clerk---I hope you enjoyed your stay with us, sir.
Departing Guest---Well, the bed was too hard, the price too high, the food was lousy, the service slow, there's too much noise, but, by god, I certainly enjoyed your ice water.


The desk clerk received a call from one of the hotel's guests, an old maid, who complained, There's a man across the court taking a shower and he's got the blinds up.
The house detective was sent to the woman's room to investigate. He looked out her window and then said, I can't see a man over there.
You can't? replied the old maid. Get up on that trunk and look again

16Oct10

Irate Guest--Look, here the rain is simply pouring through the roof of my bedroom.
Summer Hotel Proprietor-- Absolutely according to our prospectus, sir. Running water in every room.



TODAY IN HISTORYOct 16, 1773:
Philadelphia Resolutions criticize Tea Act
Previous Day October 16 Calendar Next Day


The first public statement against the British Parliament's Tea Act was a document printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette on this day in 1773. The document became known as the "Philadelphia Resolutions."

The Tea Act of 1773 was a bill designed to save the faltering British East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as yet another example of taxation tyranny. In response, the "Philadelphia Resolutions" called the British tax upon America unfair and said that it introduced "arbitrary government and slavery" upon the American citizens. The resolutions urged all Americans to oppose the British tax and stated that anyone who transported, sold or consumed the taxed tea would be considered "an enemy to his country."

On December 16, 1773, two months after the publication of the resolutions, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawks boarded three British tea ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor in what is now known as the Boston Tea Party.

Parliament, outraged by this blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts—called the "Intolerable Acts" by the colonists—in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

15Oct10

Two ladies were attending a concert or something at the Civic Auditorium. Seated in the parquet, they looked about them.
"Nice building," said one lady.
"What style of architecture is it?"
"I'm not quite sure," said the other lady, "but I think it's Reminiscence."

TODAY IN HISTORY
Oct 15, 1917:
Mata Hari executed
Previous Day October 15 Calendar Next Day
Mata Hari, the archetype of the seductive female spy, is executed for espionage by a French firing squad at Vincennes outside of Paris.

She first came to Paris in 1905 and found fame as a performer of exotic Asian-inspired dances. She soon began touring all over Europe, telling the story of how she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari, meaning "eye of the day" in Malay. In reality, Mata Hari was born in a small town in northern Holland in 1876, and her real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She acquired her superficial knowledge of Indian and Javanese dances when she lived for several years in Malaysia with her former husband, who was a Scot in the Dutch colonial army. Regardless of her authenticity, she packed dance halls and opera houses from Russia to France, mostly because her show consisted of her slowly stripping nude.

She became a famous courtesan, and with the outbreak of World War I her catalog of lovers began to include high-ranking military officers of various nationalities. In February 1917, French authorities arrested her for espionage and imprisoned her at St. Lazare Prison in Paris. In a military trial conducted in July, she was accused of revealing details of the Allies' new weapon, the tank, resulting in the deaths of thousands of soldiers. She was convicted and sentenced to death, and on October 15 she refused a blindfold and was shot to death by a firing squad at Vincennes.

There is some evidence that Mata Hari acted as a German spy, and for a time as a double agent for the French, but the Germans had written her off as an ineffective agent whose pillow talk had produced little intelligence of value. Her military trial was riddled with bias and circumstantial evidence, and it is probable that French authorities trumped her up as "the greatest woman spy of the century" as a distraction for the huge losses the French army was suffering on the western front. Her only real crimes may have been an elaborate stage fallacy and a weakness for men in uniform.

14Oct10
Well I have been gone for a while and I figure that I would start doing this again.
I have been on facebook since I left this and there is nothing new there. So I figure that I will get back into this. Therefore enjoy and tell me whatcha think if you have time.

She--I'm continually breaking into song?
He--You wouldn't have to break in if you'd get the key.


TODAY IN HISTORY
U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.

For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis," was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet.

Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager's achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general.