Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

Today is Worldwide Water Day. Lack of potable water is the second leading cause of death in many Third World countries. So please remember to recycle your 'precious bodily fluid'.

Here is your Today in History -

March 22, 1622 -
A band led by the Brother of Powhatan slaughters 347 settlers near Jamestown, in the first Indian massacre. Just think if the Indians had just followed the thought through ....




March 22, 1895 -
Auguste and Louis Lumiere first demonstrated motion pictures in Paris using celluloid film. Unless it was March 19, 1895, or December 28, 1894, or cellulite instead of celluloid. And it may have been in Milan, or Warsaw, and it's possible it wasn't Louis and Auguste Lumiere, but Tanya and Sophie Belcher. It depends who you ask. It wasn't much of a movie anyway "just footage of workers leaving the Lumiere Factory at the end of their shift”so the ambiguity surrounding its debut shouldn't be so surprising.




March 22, 1972 -
National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommends ending criminal penalties for possession of marijuana. No subsequent administration has heeded their recommendation.




March 22, 1978 -
One of the Flying Wallendas, 73 year old Karl Wallenda, plunges to his death on a cable strung between two hotels in San Juan, PR.




March 22, 1991 -
Ivana divorces The Donald and gains the respect of a nation.



This Day is Show Biz-
William Shatner, arguably the world's great actor, was born today in 1931. But what about truth, what about beauty.




Two leading lights of twentieth century musical theatre were born on March 22: Stephen Sondheim (1930), best known for his work on Gypsy, West Side Story, Company, and Into the Woods, and Andrew Lloyd Weber (1948), best known for Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, and Phantom of the Opera.







By some mysterious natural process of compensation, March 22 is also the birthday of Marcel Marceau (1923), best known for Man Trapped in an Invisible Box.




Have you been paying attention. Please match the Russian Czar (Tzar, Tsar) with how he met his untimely end:

A. Nicholas II
B. Peter III
C. Paul I
D. Peter the Great
E. Ivan VI
F. Alexander II

1. Overthrown by his own wife, imprisoned, killed by his wife’s favorite
2. Struck in the head with a sword, then strangled and trampled to death in his bedroom.
3. Killed by a bomb thrown by a revolutionary
4. Overthrown in a coup, exiled, imprisoned, killed while trying to escape
5. Caught a chill and died
6. Shot to death by revolutionaries

And so it goes.