Strange Days

[jseal]

1500 ~ Duke Ludovico Sforza conquered Milan.

1781 ~ American Revolutionary War: Richmond, Virginia was burned by British naval forces led by Benedict Arnold.

1896 ~ An Austrian newspaper reported that Wilhelm Roentgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.

1900 ~ Irish leader John Edward Redmond called for a revolt against British rule.

1914 ~ Ford Motor Company announced an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day's labor.

1943 ~ Death of George Washington Carver, American educator, activist, botanist.

1964 ~ Pope Paul VI met the Greek patriarch Athenagoras I in Jerusalem, the first meeting of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity leaders since 1439.

1972 ~ President of the United States Richard Nixon ordered the development of a space shuttle program.

1997 ~ Withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.

2000 ~ The 1st day of the 2000 Al Qaeda Summit.

[jseal]

1412 ~ Birthday of Joan of Arc, French Patriot & Saint.

1822 ~ Birthday of Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist.

1838 ~ Samuel Morse first successfully tested the electrical telegraph.

1838 ~ Birthday of Max Bruch, German composer.

1884 ~ Death of Gregor Johann Mendel, the father of genetics.

1907 ~ Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome.

1918 ~ Death of Georg Cantor, German mathematician.

1942 ~ Pan American Airlines became the first commercial airline to have a flight go around the world.

1946 ~ William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) hanged for treason.

1995 ~ A chemical fire in an apartment complex in Manila, Philippines lead to the discovery of plans for Project Bojinka, a mass-terrorist attack.

[jseal]

1558 ~ France took Calais, the last continental possession of England.

1610 ~ Galileo Galilei observed the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time.

1785 ~ Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England to Calais, France in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.

1899 ~ Birthday of Francis Poulenc, French composer.

1916 ~ Birthday of Paul Keres, Estonian chess player.

1922 ~ Birthday of Jean-Pierre Rampal, French flutist.

1924 ~ George Gershwin completed Rhapsody in Blue.

1927 ~ First international telephone call - New York City to London.

1943 ~ Death of Nikola Tesla, Serbian-born inventor, electrical engineer.

1999 ~ The impeachment trial of U.S. President Bill Clinton began.

[jseal]

1324 ~ Death of Marco Polo Italian explorer.

1642 ~ Death of Galileo Galilei, Tuscan astronomer, father of the scientific method.

1735 ~ Birthday of John Carroll, first Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S.

1746 ~ Bonnie Prince Charlie occupied Stirling.

1889 ~ Herman Hollerith received a patent for his electric tabulating machine.

1925 ~ Birthday of Gerald Durrell, British naturalist and writer.

1926 ~ Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud became the King of Saudi Arabia.

1942 ~ Birthday of Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist.

1958 ~ 14 year old Bobby Fischer won the U.S. Chess Championship.

1999 ~ Cosmologists announced that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.

[jseal]

1431 ~ Trial of Joan of Arc began in Rouen.

1768 ~ Philip Astley staged the first modern circus in London.

1793 ~ Jean-Pierre Blanchard became the first to fly in a balloon in the United States.

1859 ~ Birthday of Carrie Lane Chapman Catt, women's rights leader, founder of the League of Women Voters.

1882 ~ Oscar Wilde gave his first lecture on "The English Renaissance of Art" in New York.

1890 ~ Birthday of Karel Čapek, Czech writer.

1903 ~ Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, became the second Governor-General of Australia

1951 ~ United Nations headquarters officially opened in New York City.

1960 ~ Construction of the Aswan Dam begins in Egypt.

2005 ~ Elections held to elect successor to Yasser Arafat.

[jseal]

49 BC ~ Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

1776 ~ Thomas Paine published Common Sense.

1778 ~ Death of Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish botanist.

1862 ~ Death of Samuel Colt, Inventor.

1927 ~ The film “Metropolis” by Fritz Lang premiered.

1929 ~ Tintin, a comic book character created by Hergé, made his debut. He went on to be published in over 200 million comic books in 40 languages.

1945 ~ Birthday of Rod Stewart, English singer.

1949 ~ Birthday of Linda Lovelace, pornographic film actress.

1951 ~ Death of Sinclair Lewis, American writer.

1994 ~ Lorena Bobbitt went on trial for severing the penis of her husband John.

[jseal]

1571 ~ Austrian nobility is granted freedom of religion.

1693 ~ Eruption of Mt. Etna.

1787 ~ William Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.

1843 ~ Death of Francis Scott Key, Composer.

1935 ~ Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo from Hawaii to California.

1938 ~ Birthday of Arthur Scargill, trade union leader.

1964 ~ U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry reported smoking may be hazardous to health. First such statement from US government.

1972 ~ East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

1980 ~ Nigel Short, 14, became the youngest chess player to be awarded the degree of International Master.

1992 ~ Paul Simon became the first major artist to tour South Africa after the end of the cultural boycott.

[jseal]

1665 ~ Death of Pierre de Fermat, mathematician & lawyer.

1709 ~ Little Ice Age: Two-month freezing period begins in France - The coast of the Atlantic and Seine River froze, crops failed and at least 24.000 Parisians die.

1838 ~ In order to avoid anti-Mormon persecution, Joseph Smith, Jr. and his followers left Ohio for Missouri.

1856 ~ Birthday of John Singer Sargent, artist.

1893 ~ Birthday of Hermann Göring, Nazi official.

1908 ~ A long-distance radio message was sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.

1976 ~ Death of Agatha Christie, Writer.

1991 ~ Persian Gulf War: An act of the U.S. Congress authorized the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

1992 ~ In the movie ”2001: A Space Odyssey”, the computer HAL 9000 was supposed to have been initially activated on this date.

2003 ~ Death of Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, dictator of Argentina.

[jseal]

888 ~ Death of Charles the Fat, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Swabia, East Francia, Saxony, Bavaria and Italy.

1599 ~ Death of Edmund Spenser, Poet (The Faerie Queene)

1625 ~ John Milton, 16, admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge.

1832 ~ Birthday of Horatio Alger, Jr., Unitarian minister & Author.

1854 ~ The accordion is patented by Anthony Faas.

1929 ~ Death of Wyatt Earp, Western legend.

1941 ~ Death of James Joyce, Writer.

1977 ~ Birthday of Orlando Bloom, Actor.

1991 ~ Soviet military troops attacked Lithuanian independence supporters in Vilnius.

1992 ~ Japan apologizes for forcing Korean women into sexual slavery during World War II.

[jseal]

1690 ~ The clarinet was invented in Nuremberg, Germany.

1741 ~ Birthday of Benedict Arnold, General in United States' War of Independence, turncoat.

1784 ~ The U.S. Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the American War of Independence.

1857 ~ Birthday of Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian physician, Christian missionary, philosopher, and musician, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1952.

1898 ~ Death of Lewis Carroll, Writer & Mathematician.

1900 ~ Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca premiered in Rome.

1957 ~ Death of Humphrey Bogart, Actor

1978 ~ Death of Kurt Gödel, Mathematician.

1994 ~ U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the Kremlin accords which ended the preprogrammed aiming of nuclear missiles to targets and also provided for the dismantling of the nuclear arsenal in Ukraine.

2000 ~ A United Nations tribunal sentenced five Bosnian Croats to up to 25 years for the 1993 killing of over 100 Muslims in a Bosnian village.

[jseal]

41 ~ Death of 41 - Caligula, Roman Emperor.

1870 ~ A political cartoon for the first time symbolized the United States Democratic Party with a donkey ("A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).

1892 ~ James Naismith published the rules for basketball.

1908 ~ Birthday of Edward Teller, Physicist.

1929 ~ Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., American civil rights leader.

1951 ~ Ilse Koch, The "Bitch of Buchenwald", wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany.

1953 ~ At Joseph Stalin’s behest, East German authorities began a purge of senior Jewish officials.

1970 ~ After a 32-month fight for independence from Nigeria, Biafra surrendered.

1983 ~ Birthday of Meyer Lansky, mobster.

1991 ~ The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expired, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm.

[jseal]

1362 ~ A huge storm tide in the North Sea destroyed the German island of Strand and the city of Rungholt.

1492 ~ The first grammar of a modern language, in Spanish, was presented to Queen Isabella.

1581 ~ English Parliament outlaws Roman Catholicism.

1605 ~ The first edition of “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes was published in Madrid.

1777 ~ Vermont declared its independence from New York.

1794 ~ Death of Edward Gibbon, Historian

1809 ~ Peninsular War: The British defeated the French at the Battle of La Coruña.

1957 ~ Death of Arturo Toscanini, Conductor.

1979 ~ The Shah of Iran fled Iran with his family and relocated to Egypt.

2003 ~ Space Shuttle Columbia took off for mission STS-107 which was its final one.

[jseal]

1773 ~ Captain James Cook became the first explorer to cross the Antarctic Circle.

1751 ~ Death of Tomaso Albinoni, Italian composer.

1852 ~ U.K. recognized the independence of the Boer colonies of the Transvaal.

1886 ~ Death of Amilcare Ponchielli, Italian composer.

1899 ~ Birthday of Nevil Shute, Author.

1929 ~ Popeye the Sailor Man first appeared.

1942 ~ Birthday of Muhammad Ali, the world's greatest heavyweight boxer.

1964 ~ Death of T.H. White, author.

1985 ~ British Telecom announced the retirement of Britain's famous red telephone boxes.

1998 ~ Paula Jones accused President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment.

[jseal]

1535 ~ Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.

1779 ~ Birthday of Peter Roget, Lexicographer.

1882 ~ Birthday of A. A. Milne, Author.

1892 ~ Birthday of Oliver Hardy, Comedian & Actor.

1896 ~ The X-ray machine was exhibited for the first time.

1936 ~ Death of Rudyard Kipling, British writer.


1944 ~ Birthday of Paul Keating, twenty-fourth Prime Minister of Australia.

1964 ~ Plans were revealed for the World Trade Center in New York City.

1978 ~ The European Court of Human Rights found the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.

1998 ~ Matt Drudge published the Bill Clinton - Monica Lewinsky affair story on his website The Drudge Report.

[jseal]

1736 ~ Birthday of James Watt, builder of steam engines.

1809 ~ Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, Poet & short story author.

1813 ~ Birthday of Sir Henry Bessemer, inventor.

1829 ~ Goethe's Faust premiered.

1839 ~ Birthday of Paul Cézanne, Painter.

1853 ~ Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premiered.

1920 ~ The United States Senate voted against joining the League of Nations.

1966 ~ Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India.

1983 ~ The Apple Lisa, their first commercial personal computer from Apple Computer, Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, was announced.

2004 ~ Death of David Hookes, Australian cricketer and coach.

[jseal]

1892 ~ At the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, the first official basketball game was played.

1907 ~ Death of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, Russian chemist and inventor of the Periodic table.

1930 ~ Birthday of Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut.

1937 ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States. This was the first inauguration scheduled on January 20, following adoption of the 20th Amendment. Previous inaugurations were scheduled on March 4.

1942 ~ World War II: Nazis at the Wannsee conference in Berlin decided the "final solution to the Jewish problem".

1969 ~ The first pulsar is discovered, in the Crab Nebula.

1984 ~ Death of Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimming gold medalist & Actor (Tarzan).

1991 ~ Sudan's government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country's Muslim north and Christian south.

1993 ~ Death of Audrey Hepburn, actress.

2005 ~ George W. Bush inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States.

[jseal]

1561 ~ Birthday of Sir Francis Bacon, Philosopher, Statesman & Essayist.

1643 ~ Abel Tasman discovered Tonga.

1793 ~ After being found guilty for treason by the French Convention, Louis XVI of France was guillotined.

1899 ~ Opel Motors opened for business.

1924 ~ Death of Vladimir Lenin, first leader of the U.S.S.R.

1941 ~ Birthday of Plácido Domingo, opera singer.

1950 ~ Death of George Orwell, writer.

1950 ~ Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury.

1959 ~ Death of Cecil B. DeMille, Movie Director.

1977 ~ President Jimmy Carter pardoned nearly all Vietnam War draft evaders.

[jseal]

January 22nd

1788 ~ Birthday of George Gordon, Lord Byron, Poet.

1840 ~ British colonists reached New Zealand.

1879 ~ Zulu troops achieved a Pyrrhic victory over British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana.

1899 ~ Leaders of six Australian colonies met in Melbourne to discuss confederation.

1901 ~ Death of Queen Victoria I of the United Kingdom.

1931 ~ Sir Isaac Isaacs sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia.

1953 ~ The Crucible, a drama by Arthur Miller, opened on Broadway.

1973 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Roe vs. Wade striking down state laws restricting abortion during the first six months of pregnancy.

1984 ~ The Apple Macintosh was introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with the famous television commercial "1984 (http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/1984.html)" (requires QuickTime and patience [but is generally considered one of the kickass commercials in history]).

1997 ~ Madeleine Albright became the first female secretary of state after confirmation by the United States Senate.

[jseal]

1556 ~ The Shaanxi earthquake, the deadliest earthquake in history, occured with its epicenter in Shaanxi province, China. 830,000 people may have been killed.

1832 ~ Birthday of Edouard Manet, Impressionist artist.

1849 ~ Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her MD by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, thus becoming the United States' first woman doctor.

1857 ~ Birthday of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist.

1862 ~ Birthday of David Hilbert, Mathematician.

1943 ~ World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeated the Japanese army in Papua.

1973 ~ U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.

1981 ~ Death of Samuel Barber, American composer.

1989 ~ Death of Salvador Dalí, Artist.

2002 ~ Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and subsequently murdered in Karachi, Pakistan.

[jseal]

41 ~ Death of Caligula, Emperor of Rome (AD 37-41) (assassinated by his own guards).

1776 ~ Birthday of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poet, Composer & Painter

1848 ~ California gold rush: James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento.

1888 ~ Birthday of Ernst Heinkel, aircraft designer.

1908 ~ Robert Baden-Powell began the Boy Scout movement.

1962 ~ Brian Epstein signs to manage The Beatles.

1965 ~ Death of Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the U.K.

1987 ~ In Lebanon, gunmen kidnaped Alann Steen, Jesse Turner, Robert Polhill and Mitheleshwar Singh.

1993 ~ Death of Thurgood Marshall, United States Supreme Court justice.

2003 ~ The U.S. Department of Homeland Security officially began operation.

[jseal]

1627 ~ Birthday of Robert Boyle, Chemist.

1759 ~ Birthday of Robert Burns, Poet

1791 ~ The British Parliament split the old province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada.

1882 ~ Birthday of Virginia Woolf, Writer.

1890 ~ Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days.

1924 ~ The 1924 Winter Olympics opened in Chamonix, France, inaugurating the Winter Olympic Games.

1947 ~ Death of Al Capone, Gangster.

1971 ~ Idi Amin lead a coup deposing Milton Obote and becomes Uganda's president.

1995 ~ The Norwegian Rocket Incident: Russia almost launched a nuclear attack after Black Brant XII, a Norwegian research rocket, was mistaken for a US Trident missile by the Olenegorsk early-warning radar station.

1999 ~ Death of Robert Shaw, American conductor

[jseal]

1785 ~ Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter expressing disappointment over the selection of the eagle as the symbol of the United States; he wanted the turkey.

1788 ~ A British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sailed into Sydney Harbour to establish the first permanent European settlement on the continent. Celebrated today as Australia Day.

1885 ~ Troops loyal to the Mahdi conquered Khartoum.

1905 ~ Birthday of Maria von Trapp, Singer

1925 ~ Birthday of Paul Newman, Actor.

1945 ~ Birthday of Jacqueline du Pré, Cellist

1972 ~ Death of Mahalia Jackson, Gospel Music singer.

1992 ~ Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia was to stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.

1996 ~ Whitewater scandal: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testified before a grand jury.

1998 ~ Lewinsky scandal: On television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denied he had "sexual relations" with former intern Monica Lewinsky.


Holidays and observances

Australia ~ Australia Day

Catholicism ~ Feast day of Ss. Timothy and Titus.

India ~ Republic Day

[jseal]

1606 ~ Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators began and later ended in their execution on January 31

1756 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer.

1832 ~ Birthday of Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

1901 ~ Death of Giuseppe Verdi, Composer.

1944 ~ World War II: The two year Siege of Leningrad was lifted.

1945 ~ World War II: The Red Army arrived at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland and found the Nazi concentration camp where more than 1 million people were killed

1967 ~ Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.

1978 ~ Lt Marilyn R. Koon, 161st Aerial Refueling Squadron, Arizona Air National Guard, became the first female Air National Guard Pilot.

1997 ~ It is revealed that French museums had retained nearly 2,000 pieces of art that were stolen by Nazis.

1998 ~ U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton appeared on the “Today Show” calling the attacks against her husband part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy".

[jseal]

1596 ~ Death of Sir Francis Drake, Explorer & Soldier.

1788 ~ The first penal colony was founded at Botany Bay, Australia.

1833 ~ Birthday of Charles George 'Chinese' Gordon, British soldier and administrator.

1841 ~ Birthday of Henry Morton Stanley, Explorer & Journalist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Artur Rubinstein, Polish Pianist & Conductor.

1916 ~ Louis D. Brandeis became the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

1935 ~ Iceland became the first country to legalize abortion.

1939 ~ Death of William Butler Yeats, Writer.

1986 ~ Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after takeoff killing all seven astronauts onboard.

2004 ~ September Dossier: Lord Hutton published his report into the death of Dr. David Kelly.



Holidays and observances

Catholicism ~ Feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas.

[jseal]

1845 ~ ”The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe was published for the first time.

1856 ~ Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross.

1862 ~ Birthday of Frederick Delius, Composer.

1880 ~ Birthday of W.C. Fields, Actor.

1933 ~ President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.

1956 ~ Death of H. L. Mencken, Journalist.

1962 ~ Death of Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist.

1963 ~ Death of Robert Frost, Poet.

1986 ~ The Height 611 UFO Incident.

1996 ~ President Jacques Chirac announced a "definitive end" to French nuclear testing.

[jseal]

1606 ~ Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes was executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England.

1797 ~ Birthday of Franz Schubert, Composer.

1915 ~ World War I: Germany used poison gas against Russians.

1929 ~ The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky.

1950 ~ President Harry S. Truman announced a program to develop the hydrogen bomb.

1956 ~ Death of A. A. Milne, author (Winnie the Pooh).

1958 ~ James Van Allen discovered the Van Allen radiation belt.

1968 ~ Viet Cong attacked the United States embassy in Saigon.

1996 ~ An explosives-filled truck rammed into the gates of the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka killing at least 86 and injuring 1,400.

2001 ~ In the Netherlands a Scottish court convicted a Libyan and acquitted another for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

[jseal]

1851 ~ Death of Mary Shelley, English author (Frankenstein).

1896 ~ The opera La Bohème premiered in Turin.

1920 ~ The Royal Canadian Mounted Police began operations.

1929 ~ Frenchman Charles Rigoulet is the first weightlifter to lift over 400 pounds (181 kg) in the "clean and jerk" method.

1931 ~ Birthday of Boris Yeltsin, Russian president 1991-1999.

1978 ~ Director Roman Polanski skipped bail and fled to France after pleading guilty to charges of having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

1979 ~ Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst was released from prison after her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.

2003 ~ Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas upon reentry killing all seven astronauts onboard.

2004 ~ At least 244 people trampled to death in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

2004 ~ Super Bowl XXXVIII: The New England Patriots defeated the Carolina Panthers, 32-29. During the half-time show Janet Jackson's right breast was bared.

[jseal]

1650 ~ Birthday of Nell Gwynne, English actress, royal mistress.

1653 ~ New Amsterdam (later renamed New York City) was incorporated.

1709 ~ Alexander Selkirk was rescued from shipwreck on a desert island, inspiring the book “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe.

1875 ~ Birthday of Fritz Kreisler, Austrian violinist.

1887 ~ In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day was observed.

1905 ~ Birthday of Ayn Rand, Author.

1947 ~ Birthday of Melanie, Singer.

1970 ~ Death of Bertrand Russell, Mathematician & Philosopher.

1982 ~ Hama Massacre: The government of Syria attacked the town of Hama and killed thousands of people

1989 ~ Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The last Soviet Union armored column left Kabul ending nine years of military occupation.


Holidays and observances

United States & Canada ~ Groundhog Day (http://www.stormfax.com/ghogday.htm)

[jseal]

1468 ~ Death of Johannes Gutenberg, German publisher.

1783 ~ American Revolutionary War: Spain recognized United States independence.

1809 ~ Birthday of Felix Mendelssohn, Composer.

1870 ~ The 15th Amendment (http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html#15) to the United States Constitution was passed.

1874 ~ Birthday of Gertrude Stein, American writer and patron of the arts.

1894 ~ Birthday of Norman Rockwell, American artist, illustrator

1916 ~ Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada burned down.

1959 ~ Plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper. This date becomes known as "The Day The Music Died (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/3/newsid_2802000/2802541.stm) ".

1966 ~ The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.

1969 ~ In Cairo, Yasser Arafat was appointed Palestinian Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.

[jseal]

1789 ~ George Washington was unanimously elected to be the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.

1861 ~ American Civil War: In Montgomery, Alabama the Confederate States of America was formed by delegates from six break-away United States.

1894 ~ Death of Adolphe Sax, instrument maker, inventor of the saxophone.

1902 ~ Birthday of Charles Lindbergh, U.S. aviator.

1913 ~ Birthday of Rosa Parks, U.S. civil rights activist.

1927 ~ The first talkie was released – ‘The Jazz Singer’ starring Al Jolson.

1928 ~ Death of Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate.

1974 ~ The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaped Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California.

1987 ~ Death of Liberace, U.S. musician.

1997 ~ O. J. Simpson was found to be civilly liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

[jseal]

1878 ~ Birthday of André Citroën, automobile pioneer.

1885 ~ King Leopold II of Belgium established the Congo as a personal possession.

1919 ~ Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launched United Artists.

1924 ~ The Royal Greenwich Observatory began to broadcast hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".

1934 ~ Birthday of Hank Aaron, Athlete.

1958 ~ A hydrogen bomb known as Tybee Bomb was lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.

1962 ~ French President Charles De Gaulle called for allowing Algeria to be an independent nation.

1968 ~ The Battle of Khe Sanh of the Vietnam War began.

1982 ~ Pioneering budget airliner Laker Airways collapsed owing £270 million to banks and other creditors.

1988 ~ Comic Relief held the first "Red Nose Day", which raised a £15 million in the United Kingdom for charity.

[jseal]

1564 ~ Birthday of Christopher Marlowe, Playwright.

1819 ~ Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founded Singapore.

1840 ~ Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, founding document of New Zealand.

1895 ~ Birthday of Babe Ruth, Athlete.

1903 ~ Birthday of Claudio Arrau, Pianist.

1913 ~ Birthday of Mary Leakey, Anthropologist.

1952 ~ Elizabeth II became Queen upon the death of her father George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse in a tree-top hotel in Kenya.

1959 ~ Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit.

1993 ~ Death of Arthur Ashe, Athlete.

2004 ~ In Russia, a Chechen suicide-attack in a Moscow metro killed 40 commuters, and injures a hundred and twenty-nine.


Holidays and observances

New Zealand ~ Waitangi day.

[jseal]

1478 ~ Birthday of Sir Thomas More, Statesman & Author.

1812 ~ Birthday of Charles Dickens, Novelist.

1834 ~ Birthday of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, chemist and inventor of the Periodic table of the chemical elements.

1883 ~ Birthday of Eubie Blake, Musician, Composer.

1885 ~ Birthday of Sinclair Lewis, Author.

1900 ~ The British Labour Party was formed.

1904 ~ The Great Baltimore Fire destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in 30 hours.

1964 ~ The Beatles arrived on their first visit to the United States.

1990 ~ Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly of power.

1992 ~ The European Union was formed.

[jseal]

1587 ~ Mary, Queen of Scots was executed.

1820 ~ Birthday of William Tecumseh Sherman, Soldier.

1828 ~ Birthday of Jules Verne, Author.

1855 ~ The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appeared in southern Devon.

1910 ~ The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated by William D. Boyce.

1925 ~ Birthday of Jack Lemmon, Actor & film director.

1932 ~ Birthday of John Williams, Composer & Conductor.

1949 ~ Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary sentenced for treason.

1957 ~ Death of John von Neumann, Mathematician & Quantum Physicist.

1993 ~ General Motors sued NBC after Dateline NBC rigged two crashes showing that some GM pickups could easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settled the lawsuit the next day.

[jseal]

1825 ~ After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams President.

1881 ~ Death of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Author.

1885 ~ Birthday of Alban Berg, Composer.

1900 ~ Davis Cup competition established.

1906 ~ Death of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Poet.

1910 ~ Birthday of Jacques Monod, biochemist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965

1911 ~ Birthday of Gypsy Rose Lee, Author, Actress & Ecdysiast.

1950 ~ Red scare: Senator Joseph McCarthy accused more than 200 staff in the State Department of being Communists.

1971 ~ Satchel Paige became the first Negro League player to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

1997 ~ The Simpsons surpassed The Flintstones as the longest-running prime-time animated series.

[jseal]

1837 ~ Death of Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian Poet and Novelist.

1840 ~ Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

1870 ~ The YWCA was founded in New York City.

1890 ~ Birthday of Boris Pasternak, Poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1958

1898 ~ Birthday of Bertolt Brecht, Author.

1927 ~ Birthday of Leontyne Price, Soprano.

1949 ~ Death of a Salesman opened at the Morocco Theatre in New York City.

1957 ~ Death of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Author.

1962 ~ Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

1996 ~ Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov for the first time. :(

[jseal]

1650 ~ Death of René Descartes, Philosopher.

1840 ~ Gaetano Donizetti's opera La Fille du Régiment received its first performance in Paris.

1847 ~ Birthday of Thomas Alva Edison, Inventor.

1898 ~ Birthday of Leó Szilárd, Physicist, peace activist.

1938 ~ BBC Television produced the world's first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of the Karel Capek play R.U.R. (This play coined the term 'robot.')

1961 ~ Trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem.

1978 ~ Censorship: China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, Shakespeare and Dickens.

1979 ~ Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran.

1986 ~ Death of Frank Herbert, Science Fiction author.

1990 ~ Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years, was freed from prison outside Cape Town, South Africa.

[jseal]

1544 ~ Death of Lady Jane Grey, briefly Queen of England.

1733 ~ Englishman James Oglethorpe founded the 13th and final American colony of Georgia, and its first city at Savannah.

1804 ~ Death of Immanuel Kant, German philosopher.

1809 ~ Birthday of Charles Darwin, Naturalist

1870 ~ Women gain the right to vote in Utah Territory.

1893 ~ Birthday of Omar Bradley, General.

1909 ~ The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.

1999 ~ President Bill Clinton was acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.

2000 ~ Death of Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip.

2002 ~ The trial of former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic began at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

[jseal]

1542 ~ Death of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII of England.

1866 ~ Jesse James robbed his first bank.

1883 ~ Death of Richard Wagner, German composer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Chuck Yeager, pilot of first supersonic flight.

1935 ~ A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.

1945 ~ World War II: The Royal Air Force created a firestorm in Dresden, Germany which killed tens of thousands of civilians.

1974 ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, was exiled from the Soviet Union his book The Gulag Archipelago.

1978 ~ Hilton bombing: a bomb exploded in a garbage truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two garbage men and a policeman.

1990 ~ German reunification: An agreement is reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.

1997 ~ Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope performed by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

[jseal]

1766 ~ Birthday of Thomas Malthus, Economist.

1779 ~ James Cook was killed by the natives of the Sandwich Islands.

1803 ~ Chief Justice John Marshall declared that any act of U.S. Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is void.

1895 ~ First showing of Oscar Wilde's last play “The Importance of Being Earnest” at St James's Theatre in London.

1943 ~ World War II: The Battle of the Kasserine Pass - German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps defeat the Americans under General Lloyd Fredendall.

1945 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially starting the US-Saudi diplomatic relationship.

1946 ~ The Bank of England was nationalized.

1966 ~ Australian currency was decimalized.

1989 ~ Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie.

2003 ~ Death of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal.


Holidays and observances

Catholicism ~ Feast day of Saint Valentine.

[jseal]

1564 ~ Birthday of Galileo Galilei, Tuscan astronomer, father of the scientific method, born in Pisa.

1820 ~ Birthday of Susan B. Anthony, feminist and suffragist.

1874 ~ Birthday of Sir Ernest Shackleton, British polar explorer.

1898 ~ Spanish-American War: The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, for then unknown reasons killing more than 260. This event led the United States to declare war on Spain.

1942 ~ World War II: Singapore surrendered to Japanese forces. About 130,000 Indian, Australian and British troops became prisoners of war. The fall of Singapore was the largest surrender of British military personnel in history.

1965 ~ Death of Nat King Cole, Singer.

1965 ~ A new red and white maple leaf design was adopted as the flag of Canada replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner.

1971 ~ Decimalization of British coinage completed on Decimal Day.

1988 ~ Death of Richard Feynman, Physicist.

1989 ~ Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan: The Soviet Union officially announced that all of its troops had left Afghanistan.


Holidays and observances

Canada ~ Flag Day.

[jseal]

1923 ~ Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1935 ~ Birthday of Sonny Bono, singer, music producer, television producer, Congressman.

1937 ~ Wallace H. Carothers received a patent for nylon.

1942 ~ Birthday of Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader.

1959 ~ Fidel Castro became Premier of Cuba after President Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1.

1978 ~ The first computer bulletin board system, CBBS, was created in Chicago, Illinois.

1986 ~ The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.

1989 ~ Pan Am flight 103: Investigators announced that the cause of the crash was a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player.

1999 ~ Across Europe, Kurdish rebels took over embassies and held hostages after Turkey arrested one of their rebel leaders, Abdullah Öcalan.

2005 ~ The Kyoto Protocol comes into effect.

[jseal]

1653 ~ Birthday of Arcangelo Corelli, Composer.

1801 ~ An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the U.S. House of Representatives.

1867 ~ The first ship passed through the Suez Canal.

1895 ~ Swan Lake, one of the most famous ballets, with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was first performed at full length in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1909 ~ Death of Geronimo, Apache leader.

1934 ~ Birthday of Barry Humphries (aka "Dame Edna Everage"), Actor & Comedian.

1947 ~ Propaganda: The Voice of America began to transmit radio broadcasts into the Soviet Union.

1962 ~ Death of Bruno Walter, Conductor.

1992 ~ A court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin sentenced serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to life in prison.

1996 ~ World champion Garry Kasparov beat the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

[jseal]

1546 ~ Death of Martin Luther, religious reformer.

1745 ~ Birthday of Alessandro Volta, physicist, eponym for the unit of the electric potential.

1838 ~ Birthday of Ernst Mach, Austrian Physicist & Philosopher.

1861 ~ In Montgomery, Alabama Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the first and only President of the Confederate States of America.

1885 ~ Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published for the first time.

1930 ~ While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.

1933 ~ Birthday of Yoko Ono, Singer, Artist, wife of John Lennon.

1965 ~ The Gambia became independent from the United Kingdom.

1967 ~ Death of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

2005 ~ The United Kingdom law banning fox hunting, hare coursing and other sports which kill wild mammals is enforced from this date.

[jseal]

1473 ~ Birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus, Astronomer.

1743 ~ Birthday of Luigi Boccherini, Italian Composer.

1847 ~ The Donner Party was rescued. It was noted that some of the survivors seemed to be remarkably well-fed considering their ordeal.

1861 ~ Serfdom was abolished in Russia.

1878 ~ The phonograph was patented by Thomas Edison.

1915 ~ World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli began.

1942 ~ World War II: About 150 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia.

1964 ~ Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence," the song which, in a year and a half, catapulted him and Art Garfunkel to stardom as Simon & Garfunkel.

1986 ~ The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station.

1997 ~ Death of Deng Xiaoping, Chinese Communist political leader and revolutionary

[jseal]

1626 ~ Death of John Dowland, Composer and lutenist.

1742 ~ The premiere of Giulio Cesare, an opera by George Frideric Handel, took place in London.

1835 ~ Concepción, Chile was destroyed by an earthquake

19002 ~ Birthday of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1904 ~ Birthday of Alexei Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union.

1927 ~ Birthday of Sidney Poitier, Actor.

1952 ~ The film The African Queen opened in New York City.

1962 ~ Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbited the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, to become the first American to orbit the earth.

1966 ~ Death of Chester Nimitz, American admiral.

2001 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for Russia for 15 years.

[jseal]

1743 ~ The premiere in London of George Frideric Handel's oratorio, Samson.

1875 ~ Birthday of Jeanne Calment. She then went on to live for 122 years 164 days, the longest confirmed lifespan for any human being in history.

1893 ~ Birthday of Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist.

1903 ~ Birthday of Anaïs Nin, Writer.

1907 ~ Birthday of W. H. Auden, Poet.

1916 ~ World War I: The Battle of Verdun began. The battle was fought between February 21 and 19 December 1916, and resulted in nearly one million deaths and an additional 450,000 wounded and missing.

1947 ~ Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1965 ~ Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam..

1975 ~ Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to prison.

1991 ~ Death of Dame Margot Fonteyn, ballet dancer.

[jseal]

1732 ~ Birthday of George Washington, 1st President of the U.S.

1819 ~ Spain ceded Florida to the U.S.

1857 ~ Birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World.

1879 ~ Frank Woolworth opened his first "Five Cent Store" in Utica, New York.

1935 ~ Airplanes were no longer permitted to fly over the White House.

1946 ~ George Kennan, the American charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan's analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment.

1967 ~ General Suharto takes full power in Indonesia

1980 ~ U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets 4–3 at Lake Placid, N.Y.

(I watched it happen. It really was a "Miracle on Ice")

1994 ~ Double agent Aldrich Ames was arrested.

1997 ~ Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute announced that a sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

[jseal]

1633 ~ Birthday of Samuel Pepys, Diarist.

1685 ~ Birthday of Georg Friederich Händel, Composer.

1732 ~ First performance of Händel's Orlando, in London.

1855 ~ Death of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Mathematician, Astronomer, Physicist.

1893 ~ Rudolf Diesel received a patent for the diesel engine.

1915 ~ Birthday of Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay

1927 ~ The Federal Radio Commission (later renamed the Federal Communications Commission) began to regulate the use of radio frequencies.

1945 ~ WWII - US flag raised over Iwo Jima: The 28th Regiment of the 5th Marines take Mount Suribachi

1965 ~ Death of Stan Laurel, Actor & Comedian

1998 ~ Osama bin Laden published a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and Crusaders.

[jseal]

303 ~ Galerius, Roman Emperor, published his edict that begins the persecution of Christians in his portion of the Empire.

1786 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Grimm, Philologist & Folklorist.

1803 ~ The Supreme Court of the United States, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review

1856 ~ Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician.

1943 ~ Birthday of George Harrison, member of The Beatles.

1946 ~ Juan Perón was elected president of Argentina.

1955 ~ Birthday of Steve Jobs, Computer Pioneer.

1981 ~ Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

1989 ~ Ayatollah Khomeini offered a $3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.

2001 ~ Death of Claude E. Shannon, "father of information theory".

[jseal]

1723 ~ Death of Sir Christopher Wren, Architect.

1778 ~ Birthday of José de San Martín, Argentine general, liberator along with Simón Bolívar, of Spanish South America.

1836 ~ Samuel Colt received a patent for the Colt revolver.

1841 ~ Birthday of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Painter, Graphic artist & sculptor.

1901 ~ J.P. Morgan incorporated the United States Steel Corporation.

1913 ~ The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing a graduated income tax, was ratified

1972 ~ Terrorism: Germany gave $5 million to an Arab terrorist as ransom for the passengers and crew of a hijacked jumbo jet.

1983 ~ Death of Tennessee Williams, playwright.

1999 ~ Death of Glenn T. Seaborg, Nuclear scientist.

2004 ~ On Ash Wednesday, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was released in movie theaters across the United States, grossing approximately $370 million, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film ever made.

[osuche]

February 26th

1797 ~ The Bank of England issued the first one pound note.

1802 ~ Birthday of Victor Hugo, Poet.

1848 ~ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in London.

1903 ~ Death of Richard Gatling, Inventor.

1918 ~ Birthday of Theodore Sturgeon, Science Fiction writer.

1935 ~ Robert Watson-Watt gave the first demonstration of RADAR.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee introduces WorldWideWeb, the first web browser.

1993 ~ World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center exploded, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.

1994 ~ Death of Bill Hicks, Comedian.

2001 ~ The Taliban destroyed two giant buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
__________________
eudamonia

[osuche]

February 27th

1807 ~ Birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet (The Song of Hiawatha, The Village Blacksmith, Paul Revere's Ride)

1812 ~ Poet Lord Byron gave his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddites.

1827 ~ The first Mardi Gras was celebrated in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1873 ~ Birthday of Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor.

1887 ~ Death of Alexander Borodin, composer.

1902 ~ Birthday of John Steinbeck, Writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1962.

1912 ~ Birthday of Lawrence Durrell, Writer.

1933 ~ Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire.

1951 ~ In a victory for freedom lovers, the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified.

2002 ~ Indian Sectarian Violence: a train caught fire a few minutes after it left the Godhra railway station, killing an estimated 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, triggering riots that led to the death of 1000 people, mostly Muslims.
__________________
eudaimonia

[jseal]

1827 ~ The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was incorporated, becoming the first railroad offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1833 ~ Birthday of Alfred von Schlieffen, German field marshal.

1854 ~ The United States Republican Party was organized in Ripon, Wisconsin. as a party opposed to the expansion of slavery

1900 ~ The Boer War: The 118-day "Siege of Ladysmith" is lifted.

1901 ~ Birthday of Linus Pauling, double Nobel Prize winner: Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962

1935 ~ Nylon was discovered by Wallace Carothers.

1953 ~ James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA. The formal announcement followed on April 25 following publication in Nature.

For those who would like to learn more about this interesting development:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2003/dna_at_50/default.stm
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html
In Crick’s words: http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/Crick3.pdf

1979 ~ Death of "Mr. Ed", the talking horse.

1983 ~ The final episode of M*A*S*H was broadcast in the U.S. It became the most watched television episode in history, with > 75% viewership.

1986 ~ Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was assassinated in Stockholm.

[Master Scribe]

one important date today 28 February 2005.............my oldest daughter turns 13 today............... :jump:

[jseal]

1810 ~ Birthday of Frédéric Chopin, Composer & Pianist.

1872 ~ Yellowstone National Park was established as the world's first national park.

1896 ~ Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity.

1904 ~ Birthday of Glenn Miller, Bandleader.

1912 ~ Georg Ritter von Trapp, head of the famous Austrian singing family memorialized in the musical The Sound of Music married Agathe.

1927 ~ Birthday of Harry Belafonte, Musician & Actor.

1928 ~ Birthday of Dr. Seymour Papert, South African Mathematician & Artificial Intelligence researcher.

1950 ~ Cold War: Klaus Fuchs was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union by giving them top secret atomic bomb data.

1954 ~ Nuclear testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, was detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

1966 ~ Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashed on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.


Holidays and observances

Tasmania, Australia ~ Eight Hours Day.

[jseal]

1824 ~ Birthday of Bedrich Smetana, Composer.

1836 ~ Texas Revolution: Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico.

1904 ~ Birthday of Dr. Seuss, Author.

1919 ~ The first Communist International met in Moscow.

1930 ~ Death of D. H. Lawrence, Writer.

1931 ~ Birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union.

1939 ~ Death of Howard Carter, British archaeologist.

1956 ~ Morocco declared its independence from France.

1963 ~ Release of Please Please Me in the U.K., the first LP from The Beatles.

2004 ~ Al Qaeda carried out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.

[jseal]

1706 ~ Death of Johann Pachelbel, Composer.

1831 ~ Birthday of George Pullman, Inventor & Industrialist,

1845 ~ Florida was admitted as the 27th U.S. state.

1845 ~ Birthday of Georg Cantor, German mathematician.

1847 ~ Birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor.

1923 ~ TIME magazine published for the first time.

1939 ~ In Bombay, Mahatma Gandhi begins to fast in protest of the autocratic British rule in India.

1974 ~ Roman Catholic and Lutheran officials reached an agreement for eventual reconciliation into one communion, marking the first agreement between the two churches since the Reformation.

1983 ~ Death of Hergé, Belgian comics creator.

1991 ~ An amateur video captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

[jseal]

1461 ~ Wars of the Roses: Lancastrian King Henry VI was deposed by his Yorkist cousin, who then became King Edward IV.

1678 ~ Birthday of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Composer.

1681 ~ Charles II of England granted a land charter to William Penn for what will later become Pennsylvania.

1804 ~ The Battle of Vinegar Hill, colony of New South Wales.

1861 ~ The "Stars and Bars" was adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.

1877 ~ Pyotr Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake first performed.

1917 ~ Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first female member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

1975 ~ Charlie Chaplin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

1994 ~ Four terrorists were convicted for their roles in the World Trade Center bombing which killed six and injured more than a thousand.

1997 ~ U.S. President Bill Clinton prohibited federal funding for any research on human cloning.

[jseal]

1512 ~ Birthday of Gerardus Mercator, Flemish Geographer & Cartographer.

1658 ~ Birthday of Antoine Cadillac, founder of Detroit.

1770 ~ The Boston Massacre: A pre-Revolutionary incident that grew out of anger towards British troops, occurred. Five anti-British rioters were killed.

1871 ~ Birthday of Rosa Luxemburg, German Revolutionary.

1908 ~ Birthday of Rex Harrison, English actor.

1933 ~ In the last free elections in Germany until after World War II, the Nazi Party received 44% of the vote.

1946 ~ Cold War: Winston Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent…”

1953 ~ Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died at age 73, after 29 years in power.

1993 ~ Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson is banned from athletics for life after failing a drug test for a second time.

1997 ~ North and South Korean representatives met for the first time in 25 years for peace talks.

[jseal]

1475 ~ Birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian painter.

1521 ~ Ferdinand Magellan discovered Guam.

1806 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet.

1853 ~ The Giuseppe Verdi opera La Traviata premiered in Venice.

1869 ~ Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

1888 ~ Death of Louisa May Alcott, Novelist.

1926 ~ Birthday of Alan Greenspan, American economist.

1957 ~ U.K.colonies Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent Republic of Ghana.

1982 ~ Death of Ayn Rand, Author.

1992 ~ The Michelangelo computer virus began to affect computers.

[jseal]

1274 ~ Death of Thomas Aquinas, Italian Scholastic Philosopher.

1792 ~ Birthday of John Herschel, Astronomer.

1850 ~ U.S. Senator Daniel Webster gave his Seventh of March speech in which he endorsed the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.

1875 ~ Birthday of Maurice Ravel, Composer.

1867 ~ Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone (patent # 174,464).

1936 ~ World War II: In violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany reoccupied the Rhineland.

1965 ~ In Selma, Alabama, State troopers and local law enforcement forcefully broke up a group of 600 civil rights marchers. The event was televised and was dubbed Bloody Sunday.

1967 ~ Death of Alice B. Toklas, inspiration for a million brownies.

1999 ~ Death of Stanley Kubrick, Film Director.

2001 ~ The SpongeBob SquarePants You Wish TV special airs on Nickelodeon.

[jseal]

1714 ~ Birthday of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Composer, not to be confused with his father Johann Sebastian Bach.

1862 ~ American Civil War: The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

1869 ~ Birthday of Hector Berlioz, Composer.

1917 ~ The first stage of the Russian Revolution, February Revolution breaks out in Russia.

1942 ~ Death of José Raúl Capablanca, Cuban chess player.

1942 ~ World War II: Japan captured Rangoon, Burma.

1948 ~ The United States Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violated the Constitution.

1950 ~ The Soviet Union claimed to have an atomic bomb.

1983 ~ President Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire.

1999 ~ Oklahoma City bombing: The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh.

[jseal]

1454 ~ Birthday of Amerigo Vespucci, Explorer & Cartographer.

1862 ~ American Civil War: The first battle between two ironclad warships - In a five-hour battle near Hampton Roads, Virginia the USS Monitor fought the CSS Virginia to a draw.

1900 ~ Birthday of Howard Aiken, Computing Pioneer.

1916 ~ Pancho Villa lead 1,500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17.

1934 ~ Birthday of Yuri Gagarin, Cosmonaut, first human in space.

1943 ~ Birthday of Bobby Fischer, chess player.

1959 ~ The Barbie doll debuts.

1990 ~ Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Clyde Wells confirmed he will rescind Newfoundland's approval of the Meech Lake Accord, effectively killing the Accord.

1996 ~ Death of George Burns, Actor.

2005 ~ The final broadcast by Dan Rather on CBS Evening News.

[jseal]

241 BC ~ First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands - The Romans sank the Carthaginian fleet; ending the First Punic War.

1804 ~ Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, a formal ceremony was conducted to transfer ownership of Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.

1831 ~ The French Foreign Legion was established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria.

1844 ~ Birthday of Pablo de Sarasate, Violinist.

1893 ~ Côte d'Ivoire became a French colony.

1928 ~ Birthday of James Earl Ray, Assassin.

1951 ~ Henri Queuille became Prime Minister of France.

1957 ~ Birthday of Osama bin Laden, Terrorist.

1977 ~ Astronomers discovered rings around Uranus.

1982 ~ The U.S. placed an embargo on Libyan oil because of Libya’s support of terrorist groups.

[jseal]

1847 ~ Death of Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), Pioneer & Agronomist.

1864 ~ The Great Sheffield Flood: The largest man-made disaster ever to befall England killed more than 250 people.

1903 ~ Birthday of Lawrence Welk, Champagne musicmaker.

1942 ~ World War II: General Douglas MacArthur abandoned Corregidor.

1952 ~ Birthday of Douglas Adams, science fiction/comedy novelist.

1955 ~ Death of Alexander Fleming, Biologist.

1968 ~ Death of John Wyndham, Author.

1978 ~ Nine Palestinian Al Fatah guerillas hijacked a bus in Israel, killing 34 civilians and wounding 70 before being killed by security forces. The Israelis retaliated by invading southern Lebanon three days later, under codename Operation Litani.

1996 ~ John Howard became the twenty-fifth Prime Minister of Australia.

2004 ~ Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid killed 191 people.

[jseal]

1685 ~ Birthday of George (Bishop) Berkeley, Philosopher.

1894 ~ Coca-Cola sold in bottles for the first time

1912 ~ The Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts) were started in the U.S.

1913 ~ Canberra officially named.

1922 ~ Birthday of Jack Kerouac, Writer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Harry Harrison, Science Fiction author.

1938 ~ Anschluss: German troops occupied Austria; annexation declared the following day.

1985 ~ Death of Eugene Ormandy, Hungarian conductor.

1987 ~ Les Misérables opened on Broadway.

1999 ~ Death of Sir Yehudi Menuhin, violinist.

[jseal]

1733 ~ Birthday of Joseph Priestley, Scientist & Minister.

1764 ~ Birthday of Earl Grey, Prime Minister of the U.K., obtainer of a popular bergamot tea recipe.

1781 ~ William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

1855 ~ Birthday of Percival Lowell, Astronomer.

1906 ~ Death of Susan B. Anthony, civil rights and women's suffrage activist.

1925 ~ A law in Tennessee, the Butler Act, was passed, prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

1938 ~ Death of Clarence Darrow, Attorney.

1964 ~ Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of multiple witnesses who all failed to help her, in an incident which shocked the world and prompted investigation into the Bystander effect.

1979 ~ The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousted Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat in Grenada.

1996 ~ The Dunblane Massacre: in Dunblane, Scotland, 16 children and 1 adult teacher were shot dead by a who then committed suicide.

[jseal]

1681 ~ Birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann, German Composer.

1804 ~ Birthday of Johann Strauss Sr.

1835 ~ Birthday of Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian Astronomer.

1879 ~ Birthday of Albert Einstein, physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics 1921

1883 ~ Death of Karl Marx, political theorist.

1900 ~ The Gold Standard Act was ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.

1923 ~ Pete Parker made the first-ever complete radio broadcast of a hockey game in the world, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

1984 ~ Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

1991 ~ After 16 years in prison for allegedly bombing a pub in an Irish Republican Army attack, the "Birmingham Six" were freed when a court determined that the police fabricated evidence.

1996 ~ U.S. President Bill Clinton committed $100 million to an anti-terrorism agreement with Israel to track down and root out terrorists.

[jseal]

44 B.C. ~ Ides of March: Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators.

1827 ~ The University of Toronto (née King's College) was chartered.

1877 ~ The first Test cricket match, between England and Australia.

1898 ~ Death of Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist.

1906 ~ Rolls-Royce Ltd. is registered.

1916 ~ President Woodrow Wilson sent 12,000 U.S. troops over the Mexican border to pursue Pancho Villa.

1937 ~ Death of H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer.

1956 ~ My Fair Lady opens in New York City.

1975 ~ Death of Aristotle Onassis, shipping magnate.

1991 ~ Germany formally regained complete independence after the four post-World War II occupying powers (France, the U.K., the U.S. and the Soviet Union) relinquish all remaining rights.

[jseal]

1521 ~ Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Philippines.

1736 ~ Death of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer.

1789 ~ Birthday of Georg Simon Ohm, German physicist and developer of Ohm's law

1850 ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter was first published.

1898 ~ Death of Aubrey Beardsley, British Artist.

1900 ~ Sir Arthur Evans purchases the land around the ruins of Knossos on Crete.

1926 ~ Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

1978 ~ Aldo Moro was kidnapped by left-wing urban guerrillas in Italy and was later killed by his captors.

1984 ~ William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later died in captivity.

1988 ~ The Kurdish town of Halabjah attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents killing 5000.

[jseal]

180 ~ Death of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor.

461 ~ Death of Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.

1673 ~ Jacques Marquette & Louis Jolliet began their exploration of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river.

1782 ~ Death of Daniel Bernoulli, Mathematician.

1834 ~ Birthday of Gottlieb Daimler, Engineer & Inventor.

1845 ~ The rubber band was patented by Stephen Perry.

1861 ~ The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed.

1919 ~ Birthday of Nat King Cole, Singer. Oh! what a singer!

1959 ~ Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet and travels to India.

1992 ~ A suicide car-bomb killed 29 and injured 242 at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.


Holidays and observances

Catholicism ~ Feast day of St Patrick: a public holiday in Ireland and Montserrat, widely celebrated in North America.

[jseal]

1844 ~ Birthday of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Composer.

1850 ~ American Express was founded by Henry Wells & William Fargo.

1858 ~ Birthday of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the compression ignition engine.

1909 ~ Einar Dessau used a short-wave radio transmitter becoming the first to broadcast as a ham radio operator.

1962 ~ France and Algeria signed an agreement ending the Algerian War.

1965 ~ Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, left his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, and became the first person to walk in space.

1968 ~ Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repealed the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.

1978 ~ Death of Leigh Brackett, Science Fiction author.

1990 ~ 12 paintings, collectively worth $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. This was the largest art theft in U.S. history.

1992 ~ Microsoft shipped Windows 3.1.

[jseal]

1687 ~ Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, was murdered.

1813 ~ Birthday of David Livingstone, Missionary & Explorer.

1848 ~ Birthday of Wyatt Earp, Policeman & Gunfighter.

1861 ~ The First Taranaki War ended in New Zealand.

1906 ~ Birthday of Adolf Eichmann, Nazi official.

1915 ~ Pluto was photographed for the first time but was not recognized as a planet.

1932 ~ Sydney Harbour Bridge opened.

1950 ~ Death of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Author.

1982 ~ Falklands War: Argentines landed on South Georgia Island, precipitating war.

1987 ~ Death of Louis-Victor de Broglie, French noble, Physicist and 1929 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.


Holidays and observances

The swallows return to Mission San Juan Capistrano in California.

[jseal]

1602 ~ The Dutch East India Company was established.

1727 ~ Death of Sir Isaac Newton, Physicist.

1815 ~ Napoleon entered Paris after escaping from Elba with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.

1828 ~ Birthday of Henrik Ibsen, playwright and dramatist.

1852 ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published.

1916 ~ Albert Einstein published his theory of General Relativity.

1928 ~ Birthday of Fred Rogers, children's television host.

1993 ~ A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb exploded in Warrington, northwest England, killing two children.

1995 ~ Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killed 12 and wounded 1300 persons.

2003 ~ 2003 invasion of Iraq: In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq.

[jseal]

1556 ~ In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake.

1685 ~ Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer.

1839 ~ Birthday of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer.

1945 ~ World War II: British troops liberated Mandalay, Burma.

1960 ~ Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police opened fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.

1963 ~ Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, was closed.

1980 ~ President Jimmy Carter announced a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

1980 ~ On the season finale of the soap opera Dallas, the infamous character J.R. Ewing is shot by an unseen assailant, leading to the catchphrase "Who Shot JR?"

1999 ~ Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.

2002 ~ In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh along with three other suspects were charged with murder for their part in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

[jseal]

1599 ~ Birthday of Anthony van Dyck, Painter.

1638 ~ Anne Hutchinson was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.

1687 ~ Death of Jean Baptiste Lully, French Composer.

1765 ~ The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the first direct tax levied from England on the American colonies.

1832 ~ Death of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Writer & Poet.

1923 ~ Birthday of Marcel Marceau, Mime.

1958 ~ Faisal became King of Saudi Arabia

1963 ~ The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denied improper involvelent with the model Christine Keeler.

1993 ~ The Intel Corporation shipped the first Pentium chips.

2004 ~ Death (by Israeli Hellfire missile) of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas.

[jseal]

1749 ~ Birthday of Pierre Simon de Laplace, Mathematician & Astronomer.

1775 ~ American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech - "give me liberty or give me death" in Williamsburg, Virginia.

1882 ~ Birthday of Emmy Noether, Mathematician. Now there's a lady who had a tough row to hoe!

1857 ~ Elisha Otis's first elevator was installed at 488 Broadway, New York City.

1912 ~ Birthday of Wernher von Braun, Engineer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Roger Bannister, athlete, first "Miracle Mile"

1983 ~ S.D.I: President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.

1989 ~ Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced cold fusion at the University of Utah.

1989 ~ A 1,000-foot diameter Near-Earth asteroid missed the Earth by 400,000 miles.

2001 ~ The Russian Mir space station was de-orbited, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

[jseal]

1765 ~ American Revolutionary War: The U.K. Parliament passes the Quartering Act that requires the 13 American colonies to house British troops.

1874 ~ Birthday of Harry Houdini, Magician.

1882 ~ Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.

1882 ~ Death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet.

1893 ~ Birthday of Walter Baade, Astronomer.

1905 ~ Death of Jules Verne, Author.

1980 ~ Archbishop Óscar Romero was killed by gunmen while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.

1989 ~ Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spilled 240,000 barrels of oil after running aground.

1999 ~ Kosovo War: NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia. This marked the first time NATO attacked a sovereign nation.

1999 ~ Death of Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, German Women's leader during Germany's Third Reich.

[jseal]

1634 ~ The first settlers arrived in Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore).

1655 ~ Saturn's largest moon, Titan, was discovered by Christian Huygens.

1807 ~ The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing slavery in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1867 ~ Birthday of Arturo Toscanini, Conductor.

1881 ~ Birthday of Béla Bartók, Composer.

1918 ~ Death of Claude Debussy, Composer.

1935 ~ Birthday of Gloria Steinem, Feminist & Journalist.

1942 ~ Birthday of Aretha Franklin, Singer.

1957 ~ The European Economic Community was established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).

1975 ~ King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.

[jseal]

1707 ~ The Act of Union became law, making England and Scotland one country.

1827 ~ Death of Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer.

1874 ~ Birthday of Robert Frost, Poet.

1892 ~ Death of Walt Whitman, Poet.

1904 ~ Birthday of Joseph Campbell, Author & Mythologist.

1911 ~ Birthday of Tennessee Williams, Dramatist.

1917 ~ World War I: First Battle of Gaza - British troops were halted after 17,000 Turks block their advance.

1953 ~ Jonas Salk announced his polio vaccine.

1979 ~ Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in Washington, DC

1999 ~ The Melissa worm infects e-mail systems around the world.

[jseal]

1836 ~ Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre - Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas.

1845 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, physicist, winner of the first Nobel Prize in physics.

1863 ~ Birthday of Sir Henry Royce, automobile pioneer.

1871 ~ First international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.

1886 ~ Birthday of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect.

1958 ~ Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union.

1968 ~ Death of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

1972 ~ Death of M. C. Escher, Dutch artist.

1977 ~ Tenerife disaster: Two jumbo jets collided on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583.

2002 ~ Passover Massacre: A suicide bomber killed 28 people in Netanya, Israel.

[jseal]

845 ~ Paris was sacked by Vikings, who collect a huge ransom in exchange for leaving.

1854 ~ Crimean War: United Kingdom and France declared war on Russia.

1881 ~ Death of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer.

1903 ~ Birthday of Rudolf Serkin, Austrian pianist.

1939 ~ Spanish Civil War: Generalissimo Franco conquered Madrid, ending the war.

1942 ~ Birthday of Neil Kinnock, British politician.

1943 ~ Death of Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer and pianist.

1947 ~ The last episode of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs on radio.

1979 ~ A pump in the reactor cooling system fails at Three Mile Island, resulting in the evaporation of some contaminated water causing a nuclear meltdown.

1987 ~ Death of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

[jseal]

1638 ~ Swedish colonists established first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.

1799 ~ New York passed a law aimed at gradually abolishing slavery in the state.

1867 ~ Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to the British North America Act which established the Dominion of Canada on July 1.

1899 ~ Birthday of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1912 ~ Death of Robert Falcon Scott, Explorer.

1981 ~ First running of the London Marathon.

1982 ~ The Canada Act 1982 (U.K.) received the Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982.

1984 ~ The Baltimore Colts of the NFL moved to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.

2004 ~ Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.

2004 ~ Death of Alistair Cooke, Television Host.

[jseal]

1746 ~ Birthday of Francisco Goya, Spanish painter and engraver.

1820 ~ Birthday of Anna Sewell, British author.

1842 ~ Anesthesia (ether) was used for the first time in an operation.

1853 ~ Birthday of Vincent van Gogh, Painter.

1870 ~ Texas was readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction.

1912 ~ France established a protectorate over Morocco.

1945 ~ World War II: Soviet Union forces invaded Austria and took Vienna.

1951 ~ Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC I computer to the U.S. Census Bureau.

1977 ~ Death of Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer.

1987 ~ Vincent Van Gogh's painting Sunflowers was bought for $39.85 million.

[jseal]

1596 ~ Birthday of René Descartes, Mathematician.

1621 ~ Birthday of Andrew Marvell, English poet.

1732 ~ Birthday of Joseph Haydn, Composer.

1837 ~ Death of John Constable, Painter.

1855 ~ Death of Charlotte Brontë, Author.

1889 ~ The Eiffel Tower was inaugurated.

1918 ~ Daylight Savings Time went into effect in the United States for the first time.

1959 ~ The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crossed the border into India and was granted political asylum.

1970 ~ Eight terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines Boeing 727 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.

1991 ~ The Warsaw Pact came to an end.

[jseal]

1578 ~ Birthday of William Harvey, Physician (discovered blood circulation)

1815 ~ Birthday of Otto von Bismarck, Politician.

1873 ~ Birthday of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Composer, Pianist & Conductor.

1917 ~ Death of Scott Joplin, Musician & Composer.

1918 ~ The Royal Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.

1924 ~ Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch (he spent only nine months in jail).

1948 ~ Cold War: Berlin Airlift - Military forces, under direction of the Soviet-controlled government in East Germany, set-up a land blockade of West Berlin.

1969 ~ The Hawker Siddeley Harrier entered service with the RAF.

1976 ~ Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

2001 ~ An EP-3E U.S. Navy plane collided with a Chinese PLA fighter jet. The Navy crew made an emergency landing in Hainan, PRC and were detained.

[jseal]

1725 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Casanova, adventurer and writer.

1755 ~ Commodore William James captured the pirate fortress of Severndroog on the west coast of India.

1805 ~ Birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer.

1875 ~ Birthday of Walter Chrysler, automobile pioneer.

1917 ~ The first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin, took her seat as a representative from Montana.

1930 ~ Haile Selassie was proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia.

1966 ~ Death of C.S. Forester, Author.

1982 ~ Falklands War: Argentina invades the British-owned Falkland Islands starting the war.

1986 ~ A grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter were sucked out of a TWA jet to their death when it was bombed by a group calling itself the Ezzedine Kassam Unit of the Arab Revolutionary Cells.

2004 ~ Islamist terrorists involved in the March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks attempted a bombing of the Spanish high-speed train near Madrid.

[jseal]

1783 ~ Birthday of Washington Irving, Author.

1823 ~ Birthday of William Marcy Tweed, political boss.

1882 ~ Outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back and killed for a $5,000 reward.

1885 ~ Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design.

1895 ~ The libel trial instigated by Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensbury began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

1897 ~ Death of Johannes Brahms, Composer.

1901 ~ Death of Richard D'Oyly Carte, Impresario.

1922 ~ Joseph Stalin succeeded Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union.

1934 ~ Birthday of Jane Goodall, Zoologist.

1996 ~ Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was arrested at his Montana cabin.

[jseal]

1866 ~ Alexander II of Russia narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the city of Kiev. A design for a city gate to commemorate his escape was the inspiration for Mussorgsky's The Great Gate of Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition.

1884 ~ Birthday of Isoroku Yamamoto, naval commander.

1885 ~ Birthday of Arthur Murray, dancer.

1949 ~ Twelve nations signed The North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

1964 ~ The Beatles occupied all of the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart in the United States.

1968 ~ Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated.

1969 ~ Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart.

1984 ~ President Ronald Reagan called for an international ban on chemical weapons.

1984 ~ Winston Smith, the main character of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, begins writing in his secret diary.

1994 ~ Netscape Communications Corporation was founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark.

[jseal]

1588 ~ Birthday of Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher.

1614 ~ In Virginia, Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe.

1792 ~ U.S. President George Washington vetoed a bill. This was the first time the presidential veto was used.

1827 ~ Birthday of Joseph Lister, Surgeon.

1908 ~ Birthday of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor.

1930 ~ In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and making salt.

1951 ~ Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union.

1955 ~ Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of the U.K. due to failing health.

1964 ~ Death of General Douglas MacArthur, US Army.

1976 ~ Death of Howard Hughes, aviation pioneer.

[jseal]

1528 ~ Death of Albrecht Dürer, Artist.

1652 ~ Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp at the Cape of Good Hope, which eventually developed into Cape Town.

1804 ~ The first scientifically recorded meteor landed in Possil, in north Glasgow, Scotland.

1866 ~ Birthday of Butch Cassidy, Outlaw.

1890 ~ Birthday of Anthony Fokker, Dutch Aircraft Designer.

1895 ~ Oscar Wilde was arrested after losing a libel case against the John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry.

1928 ~ Birthday of James D. Watson, Geneticist, co-discoverer of structure of DNA, winner 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

1930 ~ Hostess Twinkies were invented.

1992 ~ Death of Isaac Asimov, Author.

1994 ~ The Rwandan Genocide began when the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down.

[jseal]

1614 ~ Death of El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos), artist.

1770 ~ Birthday of William Wordsworth, English poet.

1795 ~ France adopted the metre as the unit of length

1891 ~ Death of P. T. Barnum, circus impresario.

1947 ~ Death of Henry Ford, automobile manufacturer and industrialist.

1953 ~ Dag Hammarskjöld was elected United Nations Secretary General.

1964 ~ IBM announced the System/360.

1968 ~ Death of im Clark, racing driver.

1969 ~ The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1.

2003 ~ U.S. troops captured Baghdad, Saddam Hussein's regime fell two days later.

[jseal]

1848 ~ Death of Gaetano Donizetti, Italian composer.

1889 ~ Birthday of Sir Adrien Boult, English conductor.

1899 ~ Martha Place became the first woman to be executed in an electric chair.

1913 ~ The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified requiring direct election of Senators.

1919 ~ Birthday of Ian Smith, former Prime Minister of Rhodesia.

1950 ~ Death of Vaslav Nijinsky, ballet dancer.

1953 ~ Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta was convicted by Kenya's British rulers.

1973 ~ Death of Pablo Picasso, artist.

1983 ~ Death of Omar Bradley, general.

1992 ~ Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announced to the world that he had AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.

[jseal]

1682 ~ Robert de LaSalle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River, claimed it for France and named it Louisiana.

1865 ~ American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the war.

1906 ~ Birthday of Antal Dorati, Hungarian conductor.

1919 ~ Birthday of J. Presper Eckert, inventor of the ENIAC computer.

1926 ~ Birthday of Hugh Hefner, Editor & Publisher.

1928 ~ Birthday of Tom Lehrer, Musician & Satirist.,

1940 ~ World War II: Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

1959 ~ Death of Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect.

1991 ~ Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

1992 ~ John Major won the UK general election.

[jseal]

1794 ~ Birthday of Matthew Perry, American Commodore who forced the opening of Japan to the West

1847 ~ Birthday of Joseph Pulitzer, Journalist & Publisher

1912 ~ The RMS Titanic left port in Southampton, England.

1919 ~ Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata was ambushed and shot dead by government forces.

1931 ~ Death of Khalil Gibran - Lebanese Poet

1941 ~ World War II: The Axis Powers in Europe established the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia.

1954 ~ Death of Auguste Lumière, Cinema Pioneer.

1966 ~ Death of Evelyn Waugh, Writer.

1970 ~ Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles have broken up.

1998 ~ The Belfast Agreement (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/10/newsid_2450000/2450823.stm) was signed.

[jseal]

1774 ~ Last execution for witchcraft in Germany.

1814 ~ Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to Elba.

1893 ~ Birthday of Dean Acheson, former United States Secretary of State.

1899 ~ Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States.

1906 ~ Death of James Anthony Bailey, co-founder with Phineas Taylor Barnum of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

1945 ~ World War II: United States forces liberated Buchenwald concentration camp.

1951 ~ Korean War: President Harry S. Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of overall command in Korea.

1961 ~ Bob Dylan made his singing début in New York City.

1970 ~ Apollo 13 was launched.

1979 ~ Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was deposed.

[jseal]

65 ~ Death of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Philosopher, Dramatist & Statesman.

1606 ~ The Union Jack was adopted as the national flag of Great Britain.

1861 ~ American Civil War: The war began with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1884 ~ Birthday of Otto Meyerhof, biochemist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1922.

1895 ~ Birthday of Lily Pons, Opera Soprano.

1937 ~ Sir Frank Whittle ground-tested the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at the British Thomson-Houston factory in Rugby, England.

1940 ~ Birthday of Herbie Hancock, Musician.

1944 ~ Birthday of John Kay, of Steppenwolf.

1961 ~ Russians win space race: Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space aboard Vostok 1.

1984 ~ Arthur Scargill, the man who led the destruction of the National Union of Mineworkers ruled out a national ballot of miners on whether to continue their strike.

[jseal]

1570 ~ Birthday of Guy Fawkes, Gunpowder Plot conspirator.

1598 ~ King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots.

1743 ~ Birthday of Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States.

1826 ~ Death of Franz Danzi, German composer.

1829 ~ The British Parliament granted freedom of religion to Roman Catholics.

1861 ~ American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrendered

1892 ~ Birthday of Arthur Travers 'Bomber' Harris, commander of RAF's Bomber Command in World War II.

1943 ~ World War II: The discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners-of-war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre was announced in Germany.

1987 ~ Portugal and China signed an agreement in which the island of Macao would be returned to China in 1999.

1990 ~ The Soviet Union admitted committing the Katyn Massacre.

[osuche]

Information prepared by jseal, who is visiting a college with his son.

1629 ~ Birthday of Christiaan Huygens, Mathematician.

1759 ~ Death of Georg Friedrich Handel, Composer.

1828 ~ Noah Webster copyrighted the first edition of his dictionary.

1865 ~ Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

1904 ~ Birthday of Sir John Gielgud, Actor.

1912 ~ RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg on its maiden voyage.

1935 ~ Death of Amalie Emmy Noether, Mathematician.

1964 ~ Death of Rachel Carson, Writer & Ecologist.

1969 ~ At the Academy Awards, a tie between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand results in the two sharing the Best Actress Oscar.

2003 ~ Jean Charest's Parti libéral du Québec defeated Bernard Landry and the Parti Québécois in Quebec's general elections.

[osuche]

1452 ~ Birthday of Leonardo da Vinci

1707 ~ Birthday of Leonhard Euler, Mathematician.

1802 ~ William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy come across a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring him to write I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.

1920 ~ Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti allegedly murder two security guards while robbing a shoe store.

1924 ~ Birthday of Sir Neville Marriner, Conductor & Violinist.

1924 ~ Rand McNally published its first road atlas.

1947 ~ Jackie Robinson started for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team.

1980 ~ Death of Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher & Writer.

1994 ~ Globalization: Representatives of 124 countries and the European Communities signed the Marrakesh Agreements revising the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and created the World Trade Organization.

1998 ~ Death of Pol Pot, Cambodian Dictator.

[jseal]

1071 ~ Bari fell to Robert Guiscard, ending Byzantine rule in Italy.

1867 ~ Birthday of Wilbur Wright, Pioneer Pilot.

1889 ~ Birthday of Charlie Chaplin, Actor, Writer & Film Producer.

1912 ~ Harriett Quimby became the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.

1918 ~ Birthday of Spike Milligan, Comedian.

1921 ~ Birthday of Peter Ustinov, Writer, Actor & Film Director.

1927 ~ Birthday of Joseph Ratzinger, Cardinal.

1943 ~ Dr. Albert Hofmann discovered the psychedelic effects of LSD.

1947 ~ Bernard Baruch coined the term Cold War to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

2001 ~ First 3G voice call on Vodafone UK's 3G network.

[jseal]

1521 ~ Martin Luther spoke at the Diet of Worms, and refused to recant his teachings.

1790 ~ Death of Benjamin Franklin, Politician, Inventor, Diplomat, & Printer.

1837 ~ Birthday of J.P. Morgan, Financier, Art Collector, & Philanthropist

1861 ~ American Civil War: Virginia seceded from the Union.

1894 ~ Birthday of Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet politician & Premier 1958-1964.

1903 ~ Birthday of Gregor Piatigorsky, Russian cellist.

1924 ~ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios was formed from a merger of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and the Louis B. Mayer Company.

1961 ~ Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of American financed and trained Cuban refugees landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.

1984 ~ Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher was killed by automatic gunfire coming from the Libyan People's Bureau in central London. She had been policing a small demonstration outside the embassy.

2003 ~ Death of Dr. Robert Atkins, noted for the Atkin's Diet.

[jseal]

1480 ~ Birthday of Lucrezia Borgia, Renaissance ruler and daughter of Pope Alexander VI.

1772 ~ Birthday of David Ricardo, Economist.

1775 ~ Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode to warn of impending arrests of Samuel Adams and John Hancock and seizure of weapons.

1819 ~ Birthday of Franz von Suppé, Croatian - Austrian composer.

1946 ~ The League of Nations dissolved itself.

1955 ~ Death of Albert Einstein, Scientist.

1958 ~ A federal court ruled that poet Ezra Pound should be released from an insane asylum.

1978 ~ The U.S. Senate narrowly backed President Carter's controversial Panama Canal treaty.

1983 ~ A suicide bomber destroyed the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

2005 ~ Papal conclave begins in the Sistine Chapel.

[jseal]

1587 ~ Sir Francis Drake sank the Spanish fleet in Cadiz Harbor.

1770 ~ Captain James Cook spotted Australia.

1861 ~ American Civil War: A pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland attacked Federal Army troops marching through the city.

1881 ~ Death of Benjamin Disraeli, former Prime Minister of the U.K.

1882 ~ Death of Charles Darwin, Biologist & Author.

1912 ~ Birthday of Glenn Seaborg, Chemist and Nobel Prize winner.

1956 ~ Actress Grace Kelly married Rainier III of Monaco.

1989 ~ Death of Daphne du Maurier, Author.

1993 ~ The 50-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex outside Waco, Texas ended when a fire broke out. Eighty-one people die.

1995 ~ Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was bombed, killing 168.

[jseal]

1653 ~ Oliver Cromwell disbanded Parliament.

1657 ~ Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City) granted freedom of religion.

1862 ~ The first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard.

1889 ~ Birthday of Adolf Hitler, German (Austrian-born) dictator, "Der Führer".

1912 ~ Death of Bram Stoker, Author.

1918 ~ Manfred von Richthofen (The Red Baron) shot down his 79th and 80th victims - his final victories.

1945 ~ U.S. troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to cede the city to the U.S.S.R.

1968 ~ English politician Enoch Powell made his controversial Rivers of Blood Speech.

1972 ~ Apollo 16 landed on the Moon.

1999 ~ Columbine High School Massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.

[jseal]

1816 ~ Birthday of Charlotte Brontë, Author.

1836 ~ Texas Revolution: Battle of San Jacinto - Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeated troops under Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.

1838 ~ Birthday of John Muir, Environmentalist.

1910 ~ Death of Mark Twain, Author, Humorist.

1912 ~ The New York Giants and New York Yankees played an exhibition game to benefit survivors of the RMS Titanic.

1918 ~ World War I: German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, The Red Baron, was shot down and killed.

1944 ~ Women in France were enfranchised.

1946 ~ Death of John Maynard Keynes, Economist.

1956 ~ Elvis Presley's song Heartbreak Hotel became his first song to reach the top of the music charts.

1994 ~ The first extrasolar planets were announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan.

[jseal]

1724 ~ Birthday of Immanuel Kant, Philosopher.

1870 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary.

1899 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Nabokov, Writer.

1904 ~ Birthday of Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

1943 ~ Albert Hofmann wrote his first report about the hallucinogenic properties of LSD.

1970 ~ First Earth Day celebrated.

1984 ~ Death of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1996 ~ Death of Erma Bombeck, Humorist & Writer.

1997 ~ A 126-day hostage crisis at the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, Peru came to an abrupt conclusion after commandos stormed and captured the building, rescuing 71 hostages. One hostage died of a heart attack, two soldiers were killed, and interestingly, all 14 rebels died.

2000 ~ In a morning raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida, and fly him to his Cuban father in Washington, DC, ending what has to have been one of the most publicized custody battles in US history.

[jseal]

1850 ~ Death of William Wordsworth, Lake Poet.

1858 ~ Birthday of Max Planck, Physicist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1918.

1891 ~ Birthday of Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet Composer.

1954 ~ Hank Aaron hit his first major league home run.

1968 ~ Birthday of Timothy McVeigh, American Terrorist.

1971 ~ The Rolling Stones released the classic album Sticky Fingers.

1994 ~ Physicists discoved the top quark.

1993 ~ Death of César Chávez, Labor Activist.

1998 ~ Death of James Earl Ray, Assassin.

2002 ~ Death of Linda Lovelace, Porn Star.

[jseal]

1731 ~ Death of Daniel Defoe, English Writer

1856 ~ Birthday of Henri Philippe Pétain, Soldier & Statesman

1905 ~ Birthday of Robert Penn Warren, Writer, Pulitzer Prize winner, first American Poet Laureate

1916 ~ Easter Uprising began: The Irish Republican Brotherhood led by nationalist Patrick Pearse started a rebellion in Ireland.

1967 ~ Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in Soyuz 1.

1975 ~ The Baader-Meinhof Gang blew up the West German embassy in Stockholm.

1986 ~ Death of Wallis Simpson, Mistress and Wife of The Duke of Windsor

1990 ~ The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery.

1993 ~ An IRA bomb devastated the Bishopsgate area of City of London.

2004 ~ Death of Estée Lauder, Cosmetics pioneer.

[jseal]

1599 ~ Birthday of Oliver Cromwell, Military Leader & Politician.

1719 ~ Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.

1792 ~ The French national anthem, La Marseillaise was composed.

1840 ~ Birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer.

1900 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Pauli, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1945.

1915 ~ The ANZAC tradition began during World War I with a landing at Gallipoli on the Turkish coast.

1917 ~ Birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz Singer.

1945 ~ The United Nations was organized in San Francisco, California, by 50 nations.

1953 ~ Francis Crick and James Watson published Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA (http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/watsoncrick.pdf).

1989 ~ James Richardson was freed from a Florida prison 21 years after being wrongfully convicted of the murder of his seven children.



Holidays and observances

Australia, New Zealand ~ ANZAC Day

[jseal]

1607 ~ Colonists made landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia, later moving up the James River to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.

1711 ~ Birthday of David Hume, Philosopher & Historian.

1785 ~ Birthday of John Audubon, Naturalist & Illustrator.

1865 ~ Death of John Wilkes Booth, shot while trying to avoid capture for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

1935 ~ Birthday of Carol Burnett, Singer, Actress & Comedienne.

1937 ~ Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain was bombed by German Luftwaffe.

1964 ~ Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.

1986 ~ In Ukraine, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, creating the world's worst nuclear disaster.

1989 ~ Death of Lucille Ball, Actress & Comedienne.

1994 ~ South Africa held its first multiracial elections.

[jseal]

1667 ~ John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.

1737 ~ Birthday of Edward Gibbon, historian.

1773 ~ The British Parliament passed the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade.

1791 ~ Birthday of Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of Morse code.

1813 ~ War of 1812: United States troops captured York, the capital of Ontario (present day Toronto, Ontario).

1904 ~ The Australian Labor Party became the first such party to gain national government, under Chris Watson.

1965 ~ Death of Edward R. Murrow, Journalist.

1972 ~ Death of Kwame Nkrumah, first post-independence leader of Ghana.

1986 ~ Captain Midnight (John R. MacDougall) hijacked HBO's satellite and transmitted his own message to HBO viewers.

1999 ~ Death of Al Hirt, Musician.

[jseal]

1788 ~ Maryland became the 7th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1789 ~ Mutiny on the Bounty. Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors set adrift and rebel crew set sail for Pitcairn Island.

1906 ~ Birthday of Kurt Gödel, mathematician.

1908 ~ Birthday of Oskar Schindler, Businessman.

1937 ~ Birthday of Saddam Hussein, former leader of Iraq.

1945 ~ Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci are killed by members of the Italian resistance movement while trying to flee Italy.

1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl and five crewmates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.

1952 ~ Occupied Japan: The United States occupation of Japan ended.

1969 ~ Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of France.

1990 ~ After 6,237 performances, the Broadway musical A Chorus Line closed.

[jseal]

1770 ~ James Cook arrived at and named Botany Bay, Australia.

1861 ~ American Civil War: Maryland's House of Delegates voted not to secede from the Union.

1863 ~ Birthday of William Randolph Hearst, American publisher.

1893 ~ Birthday of Harold Urey, American chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

1936 ~ Birthday of Zubin Mehta, Indian-born American conductor.

1945 ~ The Dachau concentration camp was liberated by troops of the U.S. Seventh Army.

1958 ~ The Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, opened in London to a rapturous reception.

1980 ~ Death of Alfred Hitchcock, director.

1992 ~ Rioting broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four white police officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King.

1997 ~ The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 came into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons among its signatories.

[jseal]

1777 ~ Birthday of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Mathematician, Astronomer & Physicist.

1789 ~ George Washington took the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States from the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City.

1877 ~ Birthday of Alice B. Toklas, Muse and Brownie Chef.

1883 ~ Death of Édouard Manet, Impressionist Painter.

1916 ~ Birthday of Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory”

1938 ~ Birthday of Larry Niven, Science Fiction author.

1945 ~ Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after being married for one day.

1948 ~ The Land Rover is introduced.

1975 ~ The war in Vietnam same to an end as the South Vietnamese government in Saigon announced its unconditional surrender to the Vietcong.

1993 ~ CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to everyone.

[jseal]

1786 ~ Opening night of W.A.M.’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna.

1840 ~ The Penny Black postage stamp is put on sale in the United Kingdom.

1869 ~ The Folies Bergères opened in Paris.

1904 ~ Death of Antonín Dvořák, Czech composer.

1939 ~ Birthday of Judy Collins, American folk singer.

1941 ~ Orson Welles's Citizen Kane premiered in New York City.

1944 ~ Birthday of Rita Coolidge, American singer.

1960 ~ Cold War: Francis Gary Powers, in a U-2 spyplane, was shot down over the Soviet Union, beginning a crisis.

1978 ~ Death of Aram Khachaturian, Armenian composer.

1982 ~ RAF aircraft attack two airstrips near the Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands in the war to rid the islands of Argentine forces

[jseal]

1519 ~ Death of Leonardo da Vinci, inventor, painter.

1660 ~ Birthday of Alessandro Scarlatti, Italian Composer.

1729 ~ Birthday of Empress Catherine II of Russia.

1892 ~ Birthday of Manfred von Richthofen, "The Red Baron" German World War I pilot.

1933 ~ The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness monster was reported.

1939 ~ Lou Gehrig's streak of 2130 consecutive Major League Baseball games played came to an end. The record would stand for 56 years before Cal Ripken, Jr. broke it.

1952 ~ The world's first ever jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1, launched the jet age with its maiden flight from London to Johannesburg.

1955 ~ Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

1982 ~ Falklands War: The British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.

1997 ~ The Labour Party's Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, ending 18 years of Conservative Party rule. At 44, he was the youngest prime minister for 185 years.

[jseal]

1496 ~ Birthday of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author.

1616 ~ Death of William Shakespeare Playwright & Poet

1810 ~ Lord Byron swam the Hellespont.

1844 ~ Birthday of Richard D'Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario.

1898 ~ Birthday of Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel.

1937 ~ Gone With the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1946 ~ World War II: The International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1982 ~ Falklands War: The Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Exocet missile.

1991 ~ The last episode of the soap opera Dallas aired.

2000 ~ The sport of Geocaching began with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS were posted on Usenet.

[jseal]

1825 ~ Birthday of Thomas Henry Huxley, English scientist.

1852 ~ Birthday of Alice Liddell, for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland.

1928 ~ Birthday of Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt.

1930 ~ British police arrest Mahatma Gandhi and place him in Yeravda Central Prison.

1970 ~ Vietnam War: The Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after the ROTC building was burnt down, opened fire on students protesting at the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

1975 ~ Death of Moe Howard, actor, comedian; member of the Three Stooges.

1979 ~ Election victory for Margaret Thatcher, England’s first woman Prime Minister.

1980 ~ Death of Josip Tito, President of Yugoslavia.

1990 ~ Latvia proclaims independence.

2000 ~ Ken Livingstone elected London mayor

[jseal]

1807 ~ Death of P. D. Q. Bach, fictitious Composer.

1813 ~ Birthday of Søren Kierkegaard, Philosopher.

1818 ~ Birthday of Karl Marx, Political Philosopher.

1821 ~ Death of Napoleon Bonaparte, Ruler of France.

1891 ~ Carnegie Hall had its grand opening and first public performance, with Pyotr Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

1904 ~ Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cy Young of the Boston Americans threw the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball.

1925 ~ Dayton, Tennessee biology teacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

1980 ~ Operation Nimrod: The Special Air Service stormed the Iranian embassy in London after a six day siege.

1992 ~ Wolfenstein 3D was released, the first-ever first-person shooter computer game.

1995 ~ Death of Mikhail Botvinnik, world chess champion.

[jseal]

1758 ~ Birthday of Maximilien Robespierre, Revolutionary.

1856 ~ Birthday of Sigmund Freud, psychiatrist, founder of Psychoanalysis.

1889 ~ The Eiffel Tower was officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris.

1915 ~ Birthday of T.H. White, Writer.

1915 ~ Birthday of Orson Welles, Director.

1937 ~ The German zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed in a minute while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

1940 ~ John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

1953 ~ Birthday of Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1954 ~ Roger Bannister becomes the first man to run the mile in under four minutes.

1994 ~ Queen Elizabeth and French President François Mitterrand inaugurate the opening of the Chunnel.

[jseal]

1824 ~ Premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna.

1825 ~ Death of Antonio Salieri, Composer.

1833 ~ Birthday of Johannes Brahms, Composer.

1840 ~ Birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer.

1915 ~ World War I: a German U-boat sank the RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people.

1919 ~ Birthday of Eva Peron, wife of Argentine President Juan Peron.

1933 ~ Birthday of Johnny Unitas, American football star.

1945 ~ World War II: General Alfred Jodl signed unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war.

1954 ~ Indochina War: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in a French defeat (the battle began on March 13).

1999 ~ Kosovo War: In Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, three Chinese embassy workers were killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft “mistakenly” bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

[jseal]

1541 ~ Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi River, naming it Río de Espíritu Santo.

1794 ~ Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier was tried, convicted, and guillotined all on one day in Paris.

1828 ~ Birthday of Jean Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1873 ~ Death of John Stuart Mill, Empiricist Philosopher.

1895 ~ Birthday of Fulton J. Sheen, bishop and television personality.

1902 ~ Mount Pelée erupted in Martinique, destroying the town of St. Pierre and killing over 30,000 people.

1984 ~ The Soviet Union announced that it would boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics.

1985 ~ Death of Theodore Sturgeon, Science Fiction writer.

1988 ~ Death of Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction writer.

1999 ~ Nancy Mace became the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel (http://www.citadel.edu/) military college.



Holidays and observances

Mother's Day

[jseal]

1429 ~ Joan of Arc defeated the English troops besieging Orléans.

1837 ~ Birthday of Adam Opel, German engineer and industrialist.

1860 ~ Birthday of J. M. Barrie, Author, creator of Peter Pan.

1874 ~ Birthday of Howard Carter, British archaeologist.

1887 ~ Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show opened in London.

1901 ~ Australia opened its first parliament in Melbourne.

1903 ~ Death of Paul Gauguin, French Post-Impressionist painter.

1986 ~ Death of Tenzing Norgay, Mountaineer.

1994 ~ Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

2002 ~ In Kaspiysk, Russia, a remote-controlled bomb exploded during a holiday parade killing 43 and injuring at least 130.

[jseal]

1801 ~ First Barbary War: The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declared war on the United States.

1818 ~ Death of Paul Revere, engraver, American Patriot.

1838 ~ Birthday of John Wilkes Booth, actor, assassin of Abraham Lincoln.

1857 ~ Indian Mutiny: In India, the Sepoys revolted against the British Army.

1872 ~ Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for President of the U.S.

1899 ~ Birthday of Fred Astaire, Singer, Dancer & Actor.

1933 ~ Censorship: In Germany, the Nazis stage massive public book burnings (http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bookburning/bookburning.htm).

1954 ~ Bill Haley and the Comets released Rock Around the Clock, the first rock and roll record to reach number one on the charts.

1960 ~ The nuclear submarine USS Triton completed the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth.

2002 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole for selling American secrets to Russia.

[jseal]

1857 ~ Indian Mutiny: Indian rebels seized Delhi from the British.

1904 ~ Birthday of Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter.

1918 ~ Birthday of Richard Feynman, American Physicist

1930 ~ Birthday of Edsger Dijkstra, Dutch computer scientist.

1960 ~ The first contraceptive pill is put on the market.

1984 ~ A transit of Earth from Mars took place, but no one was there to observe it.

1987 ~ The first heart-lung transplant takes place in Baltimore, Maryland.

1988 ~ Death of Kim Philby, Spy.

1997 ~ IBM's Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer defeated Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player.

2001 ~ Death of Douglas Adams, Science Fiction author.

[jseal]

1820 ~ Birthday of Florence Nightingale, Nurse.

1845 ~ Birthday of Gabriel Fauré, Composer.

1884 ~ Death of Bedřich Smetana, Composer.

1889 ~ Death of John Cadbury, Chocolate Entrepreneur.

1918 ~ Birthday of Julius Rosenberg, Spy.

1926 ~ General Strike 1926: In the United Kingdom, a 9-day general strike by trade unions failed.

1949 ~ Cold War: The Soviet Union lifted its Blockade of Berlin.

1962 ~ Douglas MacArthur delivered his famous "Duty, Honor, Country" valedictory speech at West Point.

1972 ~ The Rolling Stones released Exile On Main Street, considered by some their best album.

2000 ~ The Tate Modern art gallery opened in London.

[jseal]

1787 ~ Captain Arthur Phillip left Portsmouth, England with eleven ships of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.

1842 ~ Birthday of Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan, Composer.

1861 ~ American Civil War: Queen Victoria of Britain issued a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognized the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.

1888 ~ Brazil abolished slavery.

1907 ~ Birthday of Dame Daphne du Maurier, Author.

1912 ~ The Royal Flying Corps (now the Royal Air Force) was established in the U.K..

1937 ~ Birthday of Roger Zelazny, Science Fiction author.

1940 ~ World War II: Winston Churchill maked his "blood, tears, toil and sweat" speech to the House of Commons.

1948 ~ 1948 Arab-Israeli War: The Kfar Etzion massacre was committed by Arab irregulars, the day before the declaration of independence of the state of Israel on May 14.

1981 ~ Mehmet Ali Ağca attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II at St. Peter's Square in Rome.

[wyndhy]

if i may add one....a very sad day in philadelphia...
1985 ~ The violent confrontation between the MOVE organization and Philadelphia's city government, which left 11 MOVE members and one police officer dead and 61 homes destroyed by fire.

[jseal]

1265 ~ Birthday of Dante Alighieri, Italian Poet.

1787 ~ In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates began arriving to write a new Constitution for the United States.

1796 ~ Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccination.

1885 ~ Birthday of Otto Klemperer, Conductor.

1925 ~ Death of H. Rider Haggard, Author.

1944 ~ Birthday of George Lucas, film Director and Producer.

1955 ~ Cold War: Eight communist bloc countries including the Soviet Union signed a mutual defense treaty called the Warsaw Pact.

1973 ~ Skylab, the first American space station, was launched.

1978 ~ Death of Robert Menzies, twelfth Prime Minister of Australia

2004 ~ Piers Morgan was fired as editor of the Daily Mirror, when photographs that had been published in the newspaper of alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers were proved to be fake.

[jseal]

1567 ~ Birthday of Claudio Monteverdi, Italian Composer.

1864 ~ American Civil War: Battle of New Market, Virginia - Students from the Virginia Military Institute (http://www.vmi.edu/) fought alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley.

1869 ~ Woman's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association.

1886 ~ Death of Emily Dickinson, Poet.

1914 ~ Birthday of Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese sherpa and mountaineer.

1919 ~ The Winnipeg General Strike began. By 11 AM, virtually the entire working population of Winnipeg had walked off the job.

1930 ~ Aboard a Boeing tri-motor, Ellen Church became the first airline stewardess, on a flight from Oakland, California to Chicago, Illinois.

1957 ~ Britain tested its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple.

1988 ~ Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: After more than eight years of fighting, the Red Army began its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

2004 ~ The largest prime number to be discovered, 2^24036583 − 1, was found by Josh Findley and the GIMPS collaborative effort.

[osuche]

1620 ~ Death of William Adams, English Navigator and Japanese Samurai. In James Clavell's Shogun, John Blackthorne is loosely based on Adams.

1770 ~ 14-year old Marie Antoinette married 15-year old Louis-Auguste who later became king of France.

1866 ~ Charles Elmer Hires invented root beer.

1912 ~ Birthday of Louis "Studs" Terkel, Author.

1919 ~ Birthday of Liberace, American pianist.

1929 ~ In Hollywood, California the first Academy Awards are handed out.

1955 ~ Birthday of Olga Korbut, gymnast.

1966 ~ Birthday of Janet Jackson, Singer & Super Bowl Half Time Flasher.

1969 ~ Venera 5, a Soviet space probe, lands on Venus.

2002 ~ Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones opened in theaters.

[jseal]

1749 ~ Birthday of Edward Jenner, inventor of vaccination.

1829 ~ Death of John Jay, first Chief Justice of the U.S.

1838 ~ Death of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, French diplomat.

1846 ~ The saxophone patented by Adolphe Sax.

1900 ~ Birthday of Ayatollah Khomeini.

1900 ~ Boer War: British troops relieved Mafeking.

1935 ~ Death of Paul Dukas, French composer.

1954 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court handed down their decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

1974 ~ Thirty-three people were killed by terrorist bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland.

2004 ~ Same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts.

[jseal]

1765 ~ Fire destroyed a large part of Montreal, Quebec.

1783 ~ First United Empire Loyalists reach New Brunswick, Canada after leaving the U.S.

1850 ~ Birthday of Oliver Heaviside, Physicist.

1910 ~ The Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet.

1911 ~ Death of Gustav Mahler, Austrian Composer.

1919 ~ Birthday of Dame Margot Fonteyn, Ballet dancer.

1937 ~ Birthday of Brooks Robinson, Baseball Hall of Famer.

1974 ~ Under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon, becoming the sixth nuclear nation.

1975 ~ Death of Leroy Anderson, American Composer.

1980 ~ Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington state, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

[BIBI]

2005~ BIBI is having a strange day.

[Kaelynn]

When this post was started... it was my Birthday... Little did I know I shared a B-Day so close to DicksBro

[jseal]

1536 ~ Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England was beheaded for adultery.

1795 ~ Birthday of Johns Hopkins, Philanthropist.

1802 ~ The Légion d'Honneur was created by Napoleon Bonaparte.

1864 ~ Death of Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Author.

1890 ~ Birthday of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese leader.

1897 ~ Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Gaol.

1925 ~ Birthday of Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge leader.

1935 ~ Death of T. E. Lawrence, English soldier ("Lawrence of Arabia").

1965 ~ Tui Malila, the longest living animal known, died in Tonga at the age of either 188 or 192.

2001 ~ One child policy: Zhonghua Sun was killed by People's Republic of China government officials because she refused to be sterilized.

[jseal]

1772 ~ Birthday of Sir William Congreve, English inventor.

1806 ~ Birthday of John Stuart Mill, English philosopher.

1873 ~ Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1883 ~ The eruption of Krakatoa began, leading ultimately to the volcano's destruction three months later.

1896 ~ Death of Clara Schumann, German Pianist and Composer.

1901 ~ Birthday of Max Euwe, Dutch world chess champion.

1927 ~ By the Treaty of Jedda, the United Kingdom recognized the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1980 ~ In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejected by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.

2000 ~ Death of Jean Pierre Rampal, French flutist.

2002 ~ East Timor gained independence from Indonesia.

[jseal]

1471 ~ Birthday of Albrecht Dürer, German painter and graphic artist.

1881 ~ Clara Barton established the American Red Cross.

1895 ~ Death of Franz von Suppé, Austrian composer.

1921 ~ Birthday of Andrei Sakharov, physicist and human rights activist, recipient of the Nobel Prize.

1924 ~ Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a "thrill killing".

1933 ~ Birthday of Maurice André, trumpeter.

1956 ~ Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean is nearly obliterated by the first airborne explosion of a hydrogen bomb.

1991 ~ Former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber near Madras.

2000 ~ Death of Sir John Gielgud, British actor.

2004 ~ Stanislav Petrov (http://www.brightstarsound.com/) was awarded the World Citizen Award (http://www.worldcitizens.org/petrov.html) for averting a potential World War III in 1983.

[jseal]

1176 ~ Assassination attempt by the Hashshashin (Assassins) on Saladin near Aleppo.

1455 ~ At the First Battle of St Albans, which opened England’s Wars of the Roses, Richard, Duke of York, defeated and captured King Henry VI.

1813 ~ Birthday of Richard Wagner, Composer.

1840 ~ The transporting of British convicts to the New South Wales colony was abolished.

1859 ~ Birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Physician and Writer.

1885 ~ Death of Victor Hugo, French author.

1907 ~ Birthday of Sir Laurence Olivier, Actor, Director.

1907 ~ Birthday of Hergé, comic book creator.

1972 ~ Ceylon adopts a new constitution, changed its name to Sri Lanka, and joined the British Commonwealth.

1998 ~ A federal judge ruled that U.S. Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the Lewinsky scandal, involving President Bill Clinton.

[jseal]

1568 ~ Netherlands declared independence from Spain.

1701 ~ After being convicted of piracy, Captain William Kidd was hanged in London.

1805 ~ Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Cathedral of Milan.

1848 ~ Birthday of Otto Lilienthal, aviation pioneer.

1906 ~ Death of Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian writer.

1908 ~ Birthday of John Bardeen, the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in Physics.

1934 ~ Death of Bonnie and Clyde, outlaws.

1951 ~ Birthday of Anatoly Karpov, Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion.

1967 ~ Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran and blockaded the port of Eilat at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, laying the foundations for the Six Day War.

1969 ~ Rock band The Who released Tommy, the first rock opera.

[jseal]

1819 ~ Birthday of Queen Victoria.

1844 ~ The first telegram was sent by Samuel Morse, from Baltimore, Maryland to Washington, D.C., saying "What hath God wrought?".

1941 ~ The German battleship Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood in the North Atlantic, killing all but three crewmen.

1941 ~ Birthday of Bob Dylan, Singer and Songwriter.

1959 ~ Death of John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State.

1969 ~ Death of Willy Ley, rocket scientist.

1988 ~ Section 28 was passed as law by Parliament in the U.K.

1991 ~ Israel executed Operation Solomon, which evacuated Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

1995 ~ Death of Harold Wilson, British statesman and P.M.

2000 ~ Israeli troops withdrew from southern Lebanon after 22 years.

[jseal]

1803 ~ Birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and philosopher.

1889 ~ Birthday of Igor Sikorsky developer of the helicopter.

1895 ~ Oscar Wilde was convicted of sodomy and gross indecency and sentenced to serve two years in prison.

1926 ~ Birthday of Miles Davis, jazz musician and composer.

1929 ~ Birthday of Beverly Sills, Soprano.

1934 ~ Death of Gustav Holst, English composer.

1953 ~ At the Nevada Test Site, the U.S. conducted its first and only nuclear artillery test.

1963 ~ In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organisation of African Unity was established.

1973 ~ Mike Oldfield released Tubular Bells.

1979 ~ The movie Alien opened, starring Tom Skerritt and Sigourney Weaver.

[jseal]

1703 ~ Death of Samuel Pepys, English civil servant, famous for his diary (http://www.pepysdiary.com/).

1799 ~ Birthday of Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian author.

1897 ~ Bram Stoker's novel Dracula went on sale in London.

1907 ~ Birthday of Rachel Carson, Environmental writer.

1908 ~ The first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East was made at Masjid-al-Salaman in southwest Persia. The rights to the resource are quickly acquired by the U.K.

19928 ~ Birthday of Jack Kevorkian, Physician.

1940 ~ Battle of Dunkirk - In France, Allied forces begin a massive evacuation from Dunkirk.

1951 ~ Birthday of Sally Ride, Astronaut.

2002 ~ The Mars Odyssey found signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars.

2004 ~ The New York Times published an admission of journalistic failings, claiming that its flawed reporting and lack of skepticism towards sources during the buildup to the 2003 war in Iraq helped promote the belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

[jseal]

1837 ~ Birthday of Wild Bill Hickok, Gunfighter.

1840 ~ Death of Nicolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer.

1877 ~ Birthday of Isadora Duncan, Dancer.

1932 ~ The Sydney Harbour Bridge opened.

1923 ~ Birthday of Henry Kissinger, American diplomat and recipient of the Nobel Prize in peace 1973.

1934 ~ Birthday of Harlan Ellison, Science Fiction author.

1933 ~ The Walt Disney Co. released the cartoon The Three Little Pigs, with its hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

1937 ~ The Golden Gate Bridge opened to pedestrian traffic.

1968 ~ Future U.S. president George W. Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard.

1999 ~ The International War Crimes Tribunal indicted Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.

[jseal]

1588 ~ The Spanish Armada, started out from Lisbon heading for the English Channel.

1892 ~ In San Francisco, California, John Muir organized the Sierra Club.

1908 ~ Birthday of Ian Fleming, author of James Bond books.

1925 ~ Birthday of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, German baritone.

1934 ~ Birthday of The Dionne quintuplets, the world's first surviving quintuplets.

1939 ~ Alan Turing submitted On Computable Numbers for publication.

1964 ~ The Palestine Liberation Organization was formed.

1971 ~ Death of Audie Murphy, American actor and war hero.

1982 ~ Falklands War: British forces defeated the Argentines at the Battle of Goose Green.

1987 ~ 19-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evaded Soviet air defenses and landed a private plane in Red Square in Moscow.

[jseal]

1452 ~ Ottoman armies captured Constantinople after a siege, ending the Byzantine Empire.

1860 ~ Birthday of Isaac Albéniz, Spanish Composer.

1874 ~ Birthday of G. K. Chesterton, English author.

1886 ~ John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in the Atlanta Journal.

1906 ~ Birthday of T.H. White, English author.

1913 ~ Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris.

1917 ~ Birthday of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the U.S.

1919 ~ Observation of shifted star positions during a solar eclipse confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

1953 ~ Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1972 ~ Terrorism: Three Japanese Red Army gunmen opened fire on crowds at Lod International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, killing 26 people and injuring dozens more.

[jseal]

1431 ~ Death of Joan of Arc, French commander and saint (burned at the stake by a pro-English tribunal)

1640 ~ Death of Peter Paul Rubens, German painter.

1778 ~ Death of Voltaire, French philosopher, author.

1814 ~ The first Treaty of Paris returned French borders to their 1792 limits. Napoleon I of France was exiled to Elba on the same day.

1926 ~ Birthday of Christine Jorgensen, transsexual activist.

1942 ~ World War II: 1000 British bombers launched a 90-minute attack on Cologne, Germany.

1964 ~ Death of Leó Szilárd, Hungarian-American nuclear physicist.

1967 ~ The Nigerian state of Biafra seceded, sparking a civil war.

1982 ~ Baseball player Cal Ripken, Jr played the first of 2,632 consecutive games. His streak ended on September 20, 1998.

1989 ~ The 33-foot high "Goddess of Democracy" statue was unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.

[jseal]

1669 ~ Citing poor eyesight, Samuel Pepys made the last entry in his diary.

1809 ~ Death of Joseph Haydn, Composer.

1819 ~ Birthday of Walt Whitman, American poet.

1884 ~ John Harvey Kellogg patented corn flakes.

1916 ~ World War I: The German and British navies fought the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the war.

1923 ~ Birthday of Prince Rainier III of Monaco.

1927 ~ The Ford Model T assembly line shut down after a production run of 15,007,003.

1938 ~ Birthday of Peter Yarrow, American folk singer ("Peter, Paul and Mary").

1961 ~ Creation of the Republic of South Africa.

1996 ~ Death of Timothy Leary, LSD advocate.

[jseal]

1495 ~ Friar John Cor :wingang: recorded the first known batch of scotch whisky.

1660 ~ Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts for defying a law banning Quakers from the colony. She is considered to be the last religious martyr in North America.

1801 ~ Birthday of Brigham Young, Mormon church leader and American western settler.

1804 ~ Birthday of Mikhail Glinka, Russian composer.

1890 ~ The U.S. Census Bureau began using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to count census returns.

1918 ~ World War I: Battle for Belleau Wood began, during which came forth the famous phrase "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?" Heroes indeed!

1926 ~ Birthday of Marilyn Monroe, Actress.

1938 ~ Action Comics issued the first Superman comic.

1965 ~ Birthday of Nigel Short, English chess player.

1967 ~ The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released.

[jseal]

1740 ~ Birthday of Marquis de Sade, French author.

1800 ~ First smallpox vaccination in North America, at Trinity, Newfoundland.

1835 ~ Start of P.T. Barnum’s circus’ first tour of the U.S.

1840 ~ Birthday of Thomas Hardy, Poet & Novelist.

1857 ~ Birthday of Edward Elgar, English composer.

1896 ~ Marconi received a patent for his newest invention: the radio.

1897 ~ Mark Twain, responding to rumors that he was dead, was quoted as saying, "The report of my death was an exaggeration."

1953 ~ Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, the first to be televised.

1987 ~ Death of Andres Segovia, Spanish guitarist.

1990 ~ Death of Rex Harrison, English actor.

[jseal]

1875 ~ Death of Georges Bizet, French composer.

1888 ~ The poem Casey at the Bat, by Ernest Thayer, was published in the San Francisco Examiner.

1889 ~ The coast to coast Canadian Pacific Railway was completed.

1899 ~ Death of Johann Strauss II, Austrian composer.

1924 ~ Death of Franz Kafka, Austrian novelist.

1925 ~ Birthday of Tony Curtis, Actor.

1926 ~ Birthday of Allen Ginsberg, American poet.

1937 ~ The Duke of Windsor married Wallis Simpson.

1969 ~ The science fiction television series Star Trek aired its final new episode after being canceled by NBC.

1989 ~ The PRC government sent troops to force protesters out of Tiananmen Square after seven weeks of occupation.

[jseal]

1798 ~ Death of Giacomo Casanova, Italian lover.

1876 ~ The Transcontinental Express arrived in San Francisco, California via the first American transcontinental railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.

1917 ~ Order of the British Empire introduced.

1919 ~ Birthday of Robert Merrill, American baritone.

1919 ~ The U.S. Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.

1928 ~ Birthday of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, German-American sex therapist, author.

1940 ~ As the last Allied soldier left Dunkirk, British P.M. Churchill vowed his forces "shall never surrender".

1986 ~ Jonathan Pollard pleaded guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.

1989 ~ Several hundred civilians were shot dead by the PRC army during the military operation to crush the democratic uprising in Tiananmen Square.

1998 ~ Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

[jseal]

1723 ~ Birthday of Adam Smith, Scottish economist.

1849 ~ Denmark became a constitutional monarchy.

1883 ~ Birthday of John Maynard Keynes, English economist.

1910 ~ Death of O. Henry, American author.

1933 ~ The U.S. Congress abrogated the United States' use of the gold standard.

1947 ~ At a speech at Harvard University, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall called for economic aid to Europe.

1975 ~ Death of Paul Keres, Estonian chess player.

1977 ~ The Apple II, the first practical personal computer, went on sale.

1995 ~ The first Bose-Einstein condensate was created.

2004 ~ Death of Ronald Reagan.

[Callie691]

we are closing in on your one year anniversary... or rather this therad's one year anniversary. lol. congrats i will be back on my bday topost it here for all of you.

[jseal]

1683 ~ Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum opened as the world's first university museum.

1844 ~ The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London.

1859 ~ Queen Victoria made Queensland into a separate colony.

1868 ~ Birthday of Robert Falcon Scott, English explorer.

1901 ~ Birthday of Sukarno, first President of Indonesia.

1903 ~ Birthday of Aram Khachaturian, Armenian composer.

1944 ~ D-Day (Operation Overlord) began with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France.

1961 ~ Death of Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist.

1972 ~ David Bowie released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

1985 ~ The grave of "Wolfgang Gerhard" was exhumed; the remains found were later shown to be those of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz' "Angel of Death".

[jseal]

1099 ~ Beginning of Siege of Jerusalem.

1329 ~ Death of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland.

1848 ~ Birthday of Paul Gauguin, French impressionist painter.

1862 ~ The U.S. and U.K. agreed to suppress the slave trade.

1897 ~ Birthday of George Szell, Hungarian conductor.

1914 ~ The first vessel passed through the locks of the Panama Canal.

1917 ~ Birthday of Dean Martin, Singer & Actor.

1929 ~ Vatican City became a sovereign state.

1954 ~ Death of Alan Turing, mathematician, computer scientist.

1981 ~ The Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor.

[jseal]

632 ~ Death of Muhammad, founder of Islam.

1810 ~ Birthday of Robert Schumann, Composer.

1866 ~ The Canadian Parliament met for the first time in Ottawa.

1876 ~ Death of George Sand, Author.

1887 ~ Herman Hollerith received a patent for his punch card calculator.

1910 ~ Birthday of John W. Campbell Jr., Science Fiction Writer, Publisher, & Editor.

1916 ~ Birthday of Professor Francis Harry Compton Crick, OM FRS, most noted for being one of the discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule.

1949 ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell was published.

1950 ~ Sir Thomas Blamey became the only Field Marshal in Australian history.

998 ~ Charlton Heston assumed the presidency of the National Rifle Association.

[jseal]

68 ~ Suicide of Nero, Roman Emperor.

1810 ~ Birthday of Otto Nicolai, Composer.

1815 ~ End of the Congress of Vienna: a new European political situation was set.

1860 ~ Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter was the first dime novel to be published.

1870 ~ Death of Charles Dickens, English author.

1916 ~ Birthday of Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense, former president of the World Bank.

1934 ~ Donald Duck debuted in The Wise Little Hen.

1959 ~ The USS George Washington launched as the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles.

1973 ~ Secretariat won the Triple Crown.

1999 ~ Kosovo War: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and NATO signed a peace treaty.

[jseal]

323 BC ~ Death of Alexander the Great.

1829 ~ First Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge.

1836 ~ Death of André-Marie Ampère, French physicist.

1846 ~ The California Republic declared independence from Mexico.

1915 ~ Birthday of Saul Bellow, Canadian-born American author, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1921 ~ Birthday of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

1977 ~ Apple Computer began shipping the Apple II personal computer.

1991 ~ New York City hosted “The Mother of All Parades", welcoming back troops from Operation Desert Storm.

1997 ~ Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot ordered the killing of his defense chief Son Sen. Paranoia seems to be a common ailment among losing dictators.

2004 ~ Death of Ray Charles, Singer & Musician.

[jseal]

1770 ~ Captain James Cook ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef.

1776 ~ Birthday of John Constable, English painter.

1864 ~ Birthday of Richard Strauss, Composer & Conductor.

1892 ~ The Limelight Department, one of the world's first film studios, opened in Melbourne.

1918 ~ Birthday of Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, Nobel Peace prize winner.

1937 ~ Death of R. J. Mitchell, British aircraft designer, developer of the Spitfire.

1963 ~ Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself with gasoline in a Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam.

1998 ~ Compaq Computer purchased Digital Equipment Corporation.

2001 ~ Death of Timothy McVeigh, terrorist (executed).

2004 ~ Cassini-Huygens made its closest flyby of Phoebe.

[jseal]

1665 ~ England installed a government in New York City. This was the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam.

1897 ~ Birthday of Anthony Eden, U.K. Prime Minister.

1942 ~ Anne Frank received a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

1963 ~ Death of Medgar Evers, American civil rights activist.

1967 ~ The U.S.Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html) declared all state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1979 ~ Bryan Allen flew the man powered Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel.

1987 ~ Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

1990 ~ The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declared its sovereignty.

1994 ~ Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside her home in Los Angeles. O. J. Simpson was acquitted of the killings, but held liable in a civil suit.

2003 ~ Death of Gregory Peck, Actor.

[jseal]

1777 ~ Marquis de Lafayette arrived to help America train its army.

1865 ~ Birthday of William Butler Yeats, Poet, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1923.

1886 ~ A fire razed much of Vancouver, British Columbia.

1892 ~ Birthday of Basil Rathbone, Actor.

1944 ~ Germany launched the first V1 “Buzz Bomb” attack on England.

1966 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=384&page=436) that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

1967 ~ Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall (http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs_timeline/images_associates/082.html) was nominated as the first Black Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1970 ~ "The Long and Winding Road" became the Beatles' last #1 song.

1982 ~ Fahd became King of Saudi Arabia upon the death of his brother, Khalid.

1995 ~ French president Jacques Chirac announced the resumption of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.

[jseal]

1671 ~ Birthday of Tomaso Albinoni, Italian composer.

1736 ~ Birthday of Charles Augustin de Coulomb, French mathematician. The unit of electrical charge, the coulomb, and Coulomb's law are named after him.

1872 ~ Trade unions legalized in Canada.

1903 ~ Birthday of Alonzo Church, Mathematician & Logician.

1909 ~ Birthday of Burl Ives, American Folk Singer, Author & Actor.

1919 ~ John Alcock and Arthur Brown depart St. John's, Newfoundland on the first nonstop transatlantic flight (http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/alcock.htm).

1952 ~ The keel was laid for the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus.

1982 ~ Argentine forces in the capital Port Stanley unconditionally surrender to British forces, bringing the Falklands War to an end.

1985 ~ TWA Flight 847 was hijacked by Hezbollah.

1995 ~ Death of Roger Zelazny, science fiction author.

[jseal]

1215 ~ King John of England put his seal to the Magna Carta.

1330 ~ Birthday of Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales.

1752 ~ Benjamin Franklin showed that lightning is electricity.

1844 ~ Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.

1843 ~ Birthday of Edvard Grieg, Norwegian Composer.

1914 ~ Birthday of Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1916 ~ U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America.

1995 ~ Death of John Vincent Atanasoff, computer pioneer.

1996 ~ In Manchester, U.K., a terrorist bomb injured over 200 people.

1996 ~ Death of Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz singer.

[jseal]

1829 ~ Birthday of Geronimo, Apache warrior and leader.

1890 ~ Birthday of Stan Laurel, Comedian.

1912 ~ Birthday of Enoch Powell, British politician.

1938 ~ Birthday of Joyce Carol Oates, novelist.

1948 ~ The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by the Cathay Pacific airline, marked the first skyjacking of a commercial plane.

1961 ~ Rudolf Nureyev defected at Le Bourget airport in Paris.

1963 ~ Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

1977 ~ Death of Wernher von Braun, rocket scientist.

1977 ~ Leonid Brezhnev became president of the USSR.

1983 ~ Yuri Andropov became president of the USSR.

[jseal]

1631 ~ Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, then spent more than 20 years to build her tomb, the Taj Mahal.

1775 ~ Battle of Bunker Hill - The British forces took Bunker Hill outside of Boston.

1818 ~ Birthday of Charles Gounod, French Composer.

1882 ~ Birthday of Igor Stravinsky, Russian Composer.

1885 ~ The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor.

1898 ~ Birthday of M. C. Escher, Dutch Artist.

1942 ~ Birthday of Mohamed El Baradei, IAEA Director.

1945 ~ Birthday of Eddy Merckx, Belgian Cycling Champion.

1972 ~ Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives were arrested while burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

1974 ~ The Irish Republican Army bombed the U.K.’s House of Parliament.

[jseal]

1178 ~ Five Canterbury monks saw what was possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed.

1815 ~ Battle of Waterloo lead to Napoleon Bonaparte abdicating the throne of France for a second, final time.

1873 ~ Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.

1915 ~ Birthday of Red Adair, Firefighter.

1928 ~ Death of Roald Amundsen, Explorer, first to the South Pole.

1942 ~ Birthday of Paul McCartney, Singer & Songwriter.

1945 ~ William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was charged with treason.

1967 ~ Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival.

1979 ~ U.S. President Jimmy Carter and U.S.S.R. leader Leonid Brezhnev signed Salt II.

1983 ~ Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.

[jseal]

1623 ~ Birthday of Blaise Pascal, Mathematician.

1865 ~ Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas were finally informed of their freedom.

1896 ~ Birthday of Wallis Warfield, Duchess of Windsor.

1912 ~ Establishment of the 8-hour work day in the U.S.

1934 ~ The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was established in the United States.

1937 ~ Death of J. M. Barrie, Author, creator of the character Peter Pan.

1945 ~ Birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi, Politician & recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1953 ~ Death of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, convicted spies.

1978 ~ First appearance of the comic strip Garfield.

2005 ~ Father’s Day (U.S.)

[PalaceGuard]

Garfield rules!

[jseal]

1819 ~ Birthday of Jacques Offenbach, Composer.

1837 ~ Queen Victoria ascended to the British throne.

1877 ~ Alexander Graham Bell installed the first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario.

1899 ~ Birthday of Jean Moulin, leader of the French Resistance in WW II.

1909 ~ Birthday of Errol Flynn, Actor.

1948 ~ The Ed Sullivan Show, (née Toast of the Town) debuted.

1953 ~ Birthday of Cyndi Lauper, singer.

1966 ~ Canada sold 336 million bushels of wheat to the U.S.S.R.

1977 ~ Oil began to flow through the Trans-Alaska pipeline.

2002 ~ Death of Erwin Chargaff, biochemist.

[jseal]

1527 ~ Death of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian Historian & Political Author.

1749 ~ Halifax, Nova Scotia founded.

1781 ~ Birthday of Siméon-Denis Poisson, Mathematician & Physicist.

1905 ~ Birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher & Playwright, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1964.

1908 ~ Death of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Composer.

1940 ~ World War II: France surrendered to Germany.

1965 ~ Folk rock band The Byrds released their debut album Mr. Tambourine Man.

1989 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that flag burning is protected speech under the United States Constitution.

2001 ~ Death of Carroll O'Connor, American Actor.

2004 ~ SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded space plane to achieve spaceflight.

[jseal]

1825 ~ British Parliament abolished feudalism in British North America.

1837 ~ Birthday of Paul Morphy, Chess phenomenon.

1856 ~ Birthday of H. Rider Haggard, Author.

1936 ~ Birthday of Kris Kristofferson, Singer, Songwriter, Actor, & Rhodes scholar.

1941 ~ Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

1969 ~ Death of Judy Garland, Singer & Actress.

1976 ~ Canadian House of Commons voted to abolish capital punishment.

1987 ~ Death of Fred Astaire, Dancer & Actor.

1996 ~ The Quake computer game was released.

2002 ~ Death of Ann Landers, Columnist.

[jseal]

1894 ~ International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) was founded at the Sorbonne, Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

1894 ~ Birthday of Alfred Kinsey, Sexologist.

1912 ~ Birthday of Alan Turing, Mathematician.

1927 ~ Birthday of Bob Fosse, Choreographer.

1940 ~ German leader Adolf Hitler toured Paris in now occupied France.

1943 ~ Birthday of Vint Cerf, co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and one of the Fathers of the Internet.

1944 ~ Thomas Mann became a US citizen.

1956 ~ Gamal Abdel Nasser elected president of Egypt.

1958 ~ The Dutch Reformed Church accepted women ministers.

1995 ~ Death of Jonas Salk, developer of the Salk polio vaccine.

[jseal]

1314 ~ Scotland regained its independence in the Battle of Bannockburn, where Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce defeat Edward II of England.

1497 ~ John Cabot landed in Newfoundland, the first European discovery of the region since the Vikings.

1519 ~ Death of Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara.

1692 ~ Kingston, Jamaica founded.

1901 ~ First exhibition of Pablo Picasso's work.

1910 ~ Japan invades Korea.

1915 ~ Birthday of Fred Hoyle, cosmologist and science fiction author.

1948 ~ Start of the Berlin Blockade. The Soviet Union made land travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible.

1995 ~ The New Jersey Devils swept the Detroit Red Wings in four games in the NHL Stanley Cup finals.

2003 ~ Death of Leon Uris, Author.

[jseal]

1822 ~ Death of E.T.A. Hoffmann, German Writer, Composer & Painter

1876 ~ Battle of the Little Big Horn & death of Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

1894 ~ Birthday of Hermann Oberth, Physicist & one of the founding fathers of Rocketry and Astronautics.

1903 ~ Birthday of George Orwell, Writer.

1950 ~ The start of the Korean War.

1991 ~ Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.

1993 ~ Kim Campbell became the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

1995 ~ Death of Warren Burger, United States Supreme Court justice.

1997 ~ Death of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, French Explorer, Scientist & Inventor.

1998 ~ In Clinton v. City of New York, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 unconstitutional.

[BIBI]

Today 2005

Everyone seems to have too many hormones cursing through their system and need to go and have a good romp. ;)

[jseal]

1541 ~ Death of Francisco Pizarro, Spanish Conqueror of Peru.

1824 ~ Birthday of Lord Kelvin, Physicist.

1898 ~ Birthday of Willy Messerschmitt, Aircraft Designer.

1933 ~ Birthday of Claudio Abbado, Conductor.

1934 ~ Initial flight of the first practical helicopter, the Focke-Wulf Fw 61.

1975 ~ Death of St. Josemaría Escrivá, creator of Opus Dei.

1948 ~ The Western allies began the Berlin Airlift, after the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin.

1964 ~ The Beatles released the album A Hard Day's Night.

1997 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment, and thus unconstitutional.

2003 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court rules that sodomy laws are unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas.

[jseal]

1759 ~ General James Wolfe began the siege of Quebec.

1838 ~ Birthday of Paul von Mauser, Weapon Designer.

1880 ~ Birthday of Helen Keller, spokeswoman for the Deaf and Blind.

1893 ~ Crash of the New York Stock Exchange.

1905 ~ Mutiny on the battleship Potemkin.

1931 ~ Birthday of Charles Bronfman, Industrialist & Philanthropist

1954 ~ World's first nuclear power station went on line in Obninsk, near Moscow.

1967 ~ World's first ATM installed in Enfield, London.

1979 ~ Muhammad Ali announced his retirement from boxing.

2001 ~ Death of Jack Lemmon, Actor & Film Director.

[jseal]

1577 ~ Birthday of Peter Paul Rubens, German Painter.

1712 ~ Birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Franco-Swiss Philosopher.

1880 ~ Ned Kelly the Australian bushranger captured at Glenrowan.

1906 ~ Birthday of Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics.

1914 ~ Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophia were killed by a Serbian nationalist, the casus belli of World War I.

1919 ~ The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I with Germany.

1926 ~ Birthday of Mel Brooks, Filmmaker.

1969 ~ Stonewall riots in New York city marked the beginning of the modern gay rights era.

1992 ~ Death of Mikhail Tal, eighth World Chess Champion.

2004 ~ Sovereign power was handed to the interim government of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority, ending the U.S.-led rule.

[jseal]

1861 ~ Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poet. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”

1868 ~ Birthday of George Ellery Hale, Astronomer.

1880 ~ France annexed Tahiti .

1895 ~ Death of Thomas Henry Huxley, Scientist. "Darwin's Bulldog"

1914 ~ Birthday of Rafael Kubelik, Czech Conductor.

1922 ~ France granted 1 km² at Vimy Ridge "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada, the free use of the land exempt from all taxes".

1925 ~ Canada House opened in London.

1963 ~ Birthday of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Violinist.

1995 ~ Death of Lana Turner, Actress.

2003 ~ Death of Katharine Hepburn, Actress.

[jseal]

1817 ~ Birthday of Joseph Dalton Hooker, Botanist & Champion of Charles Darwin.

1905 ~ During his annus mirabilis, Albert Einstein published the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies in which he introduced special relativity. OMG! That must have been an exciting period to be a physicist!

1908 ~ Tunguska impact event occurred in Siberia.

1934 ~ Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany took place.

1936 ~ Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell published.

1943 ~ Birthday of Florence Ballard, American Singer (The Supremes).

1960 ~ Congo gained independence from Belgium.

1971 ~ The crew of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft died when a faulty valve allowed their air supply to escape.

1985 ~ Birthday of Michael Phelps, American Swimmer.

1997 ~ China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule.

[jseal]

1646 ~ Birthday of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German Mathematician & Philosopher.

1858 ~ The joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution.

1872 ~ Birthday of Louis Blériot, French aviation pioneer.

1873 ~ Prince Edward Island joined the Canadian Confederation.

1906 ~ Birthday of Estée Lauder, Cosmetics Pioneer.

1916 ~ On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 20,000 British soldiers were killed, and 40,000 wounded.

1925 ~ Death of Erik Satie, French Composer.

1963 ~ The British Government admitted that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent.

2000 ~ Death of Walter Matthau, Actor.

2000 ~ Vermont's civil unions law went into effect.

[jseal]

1714 ~ Birthday of Christoph Willibald Gluck, German Composer.

1777 ~ Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery.

1808 ~ Simon Fraser reached the Pacific near New Westminster.

1906 ~ Birthday of Hans Bethe, Nobel Prize-winning German-born nuclear physicist.

1908 ~ Birthday of Thurgood Marshall, U. S. Supreme Court justice.

1937 ~ Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.

1961 ~ Death of Ernest Hemingway, American author, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1976 ~ North and South Vietnam, divided since 1954, reunited to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

1977 ~ Death of Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born writer.

1982 ~ Larry Walters (http://www.markbarry.com/lawnchairman.html) attached 45 helium balloons to a lawn chair and ascended to a height of 16,000 feet. (http://www.darwinawards.com/stupid/stupid1998-11.html)

[jseal]

1608 ~ Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain.

1844 ~ The last pair of Great Auks was killed.

1854 ~ Birthday of Leoš Janáček, Czech Composer.

1863 ~ The final and bloodiest day of the battle of Gettysburg.

1883 ~ Birthday of Franz Kafka, Austrian Writer.

1935 ~ Death of André Citroën, Automobile Pioneer.

1938 ~ World speed record set for a steam railway locomotive, by the Mallard, which reached 126 mph.

1986 ~ Death of Rudy Vallee, Singer, Actor, Bandleader, & Entertainer.

1988 ~ USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf.

1995 ~ Death of Pancho Gonzales, Tennis Player.

[jseal]

1054 ~ A supernova was recorded by the Chinese near the star ζ Tauri. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

1776 ~ The Continental Congress approves a Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, forming the United States of America.

1807 ~ Birthday of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian Patriot.

1826 ~ Death of John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, 2nd & 3rd Presidents of the U.S.

1855 ~ The first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems Leaves of Grass is published.

1883 ~ Birthday of Rube Goldberg, Cartoonist.

1934 ~ Death of Maria Curie, Polish-born scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry & Physics.

1976 ~ Israeli commandos rescued 105 hostages at Entebbe Airport, Uganda.

1997 ~ NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on Mars.

1997 ~ Death of Charles Kuralt, Television Reporter.

[jseal]

1810 ~ Birthday of Phineas Taylor "P. T." Barnum, Circus Owner.

1853 ~ Birthday of Cecil Rhodes, South African Politician.

1911 ~ Birthday of Georges Pompidou, President of France.

1948 ~ British National Health Service Act enacted.

1951 ~ William Shockley invented the junction transistor.

1962 ~ Algeria became independent from France.

1969 ~ Death of Walter Gropius, German architect.

1971 ~ The voting age in the U.S. was reduced to 18 from 21.

1975 ~ Cape Verde gained its independence from Portugal.

1996 ~ Birthday of Dolly the sheep, first cloned mammal.

[jseal]

1885 ~ Louis Pasteur successfully tested his vaccine against rabies. The patient was Joseph Meister, a boy bitten by a rabid dog.

1917 ~ Arabian troops led by T.E. Lawrence captured Aqaba from the Turks.

1946 ~ Birthday of George W. Bush, 43rd President of the U.S.

1962 ~ Death of William Faulkner, American Novelist.

1964 ~ A Hard Day's Night, the first Beatles film, premiered.

1971 ~ Death of Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician.

1973 ~ Death of Otto Klemperer, German Conductor.

1974 ~ The radio program A Prairie Home Companion first broadcast.

1989 ~ The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea was destroyed by explosions and fires killing 167 oil workers.

1998 ~ Death of Roy Rogers, Cowboy Actor & Singer.

[jseal]

1846 ~ Commodore Sloat ordered his troops to occupy Monterey and Yerba Buena, beginning the U.S. annexation of California.

1860 ~ Birthday of Gustav Mahler, Austrian Composer.

1887 ~ Birthday of Marc Chagall, Russian-born Painter.

1898 ~ U.S. President William McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution which annexed Hawaii as a territory.

1907 ~ Birthday of Robert Heinlein, Science Fiction Writer.

1930 ~ Death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish Writer.

1940 ~ Birthday of Ringo Starr, Beatle.

1958 ~ U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act.

1978 ~ The Solomon Islands gains independence from the U.K.

1994 ~ Aden was occupied by troops from North Yemen, completing the reunification of Yemen.

[jseal]

1497 ~ Vasco da Gama set sail on his first direct voyage to India.

1663 ~ Charles II of England grants John Clarke a Charter to Rhode Island.

1695 ~ Death of Christiaan Huygens, Dutch Scientist.

1822 ~ Death of Percy Shelley, English poet.

1838 ~ Birthday of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, German Inventor.

1882 ~ Birthday of Percy Grainger, Australian Composer.

1889 ~ In the last championship bare-knuckle boxing match, John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain.

1889 ~ The first issue of the Wall Street Journal published.

1969 ~ CICS was made available for the IBM 360 mainframe computer.

1997 ~ Mayo Clinic researchers warned that the dieting-drug "fen-phen" could cause severe heart and lung damage.

[jseal]

1793 ~ Act Against Slavery passes in Upper Canada and importation of slaves into Lower Canada prohibited.

1816 ~ Argentina declared independence from Spain.

1900 ~ Queen Victoria gave royal assent to an act creating the Commonwealth of Australia, uniting separate colonies under one federal government.

1916 ~ Birthday of Edward Heath, P.M. of the U.K.

1943 ~ Operation Husky - Allied forces performed an amphibious invasion of Sicily.

1955 ~ The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (http://www.pugwash.org/publication/phs/phslist.htm) was released by Bertrand Russell in London.

1974 ~ Death of Earl Warren, Governor of California, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1989 ~ Two bombs exploded in Mecca, killing one pilgrim and wounding 16 others.

1991 ~ South Africa returned to the Olympic movement after 30 years.

1997 ~ Mike Tyson's boxing license was suspended and he was fined $3 million for biting Evander Holyfield's ear in a televised match.

[jseal]

1842 ~ Birthday of :wingang: Adolphus Busch, German-born Brewer.

1856 ~ Birthday of Nikola Tesla, Croatian physicist.

1895 ~ Birthday of Carl Orff, German Composer.

1925 ~ In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called Monkey Trial (http://www3.mistral.co.uk/bradburyac/tennesse.html) began with John T. Scopes, a high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of Tennessee state law.

1962 ~ The world's first communications satellite, Telstar, was launched.

1979 ~ Death of Arthur Fiedler, American Conductor.

1985 ~ The Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior was sunk in Auckland Harbor by French agents.

1997 ~ Scientists report their DNA analysis findings from a Neandertal skeleton which support the Out of Africa hypothesis of human evolution.

2002 ~ At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents was sold for $76.2 million.

2003 ~ Death of Lord Shawcross, U.K. chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

[jseal]

1798 ~ The U.S. Marine Corps was re-established after having been disbanded at the end of the American Revolutionary War.

1857 ~ Birthday of Alfred Binet, French Psychologist.

1859 ~ Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities was published.

1899 ~ Birthday of E. B. White, American Writer. (Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan.)

1921 ~ Former U.S. President Taft was sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, becoming the only man to be both President and Chief Justice.

1937 ~ Death of George Gershwin, American Composer.

1962 ~ First transatlantic satellite television transmission.

1971 ~ Death of John W. Campbell, Writer & Editor.

1989 ~ Death of Sir Laurence Olivier, Actor.

1995 ~ Bosnian Serbs capture the city of Srebrenica.

[jseal]

1536 ~ Death of Erasmus, Dutch Writer & Philosopher.

1690 ~ William of Orange's army won the Battle of the Boyne.

1730 ~ Birthday of Josiah Wedgwood, English Potter.

1773 ~ Death of Johann Joachim Quantz, German Flutist & Composer.

1817 ~ Birthday of Henry David Thoreau, American Writer & Philosopher.

1862 ~ Medal of Honor authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1904 ~ Birthday of Deng Xiaoping, Chinese politician.

1933 ~ U.S. Congress passes the first federal minimum wage law in the U.S.

1943 ~ The largest tank engagement of WWII took place, part of the Battle of Kursk

1979 ~ The island nation of Kiribati became independent.

[jseal]

100 BC ~ Birthday of Julius Caesar, Soldier & Politician.

40 ~ Birthday of Gnaeus Agricola, Roman Governor of Britain.

1793 ~ Jean Paul Marat, one of the leaders of the French revolution, was murdered by Charlotte Corday.

1837 ~ Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace – the first monarch to live there.

1908 ~ Women first included in modern Olympic competition.

1930 ~ The first FIFA World Cup began in Uruguay.

1951 ~ Death of Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian Composer.

1972 ~ The U.S. Democratic Party nominated George McGovern for president.

1982 ~ Montreal was host to the first baseball All-Star Game outside the U.S.

1985 ~ The Live Aid benefit concerts took place in London, Philadelphia, Sydney, and Moscow.

[jseal]

1789 ~ Citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille. Generally recognized as the beginning of the French Revolution.

1798 ~ The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S. government.

1827 ~ The first Roman Catholic Mass was celebrated in the Hawaiian Islands by members of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. It was the foundation of the present-day Diocese of Honolulu.

1862 ~ Birthday of Gustav Klimt, Austrian Painter & Graphic Artist.

1881 ~ Death of Billy the Kid, American Outlaw.

1887 ~ Death of Alfred Krupp, German Munitions Manufacturer.

1912 ~ Birthday of Northrop Frye, Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye, Canadian Literary Critic.

1913 ~ Birthday of Gerald Ford, U.S. President.

1933 ~ Gleichschaltung: In Germany, all political parties are outlawed except the Nazi Party.

1965 ~ Mariner 4 flyby of Mars took the first close-up photos of another planet.

[jseal]

1099 ~ Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders.

1606 ~ Birthday of Rembrandt, Dutch artist.

1796 ~ Birthday of Thomas Bulfinch, American Mythologist.

1799 ~ French Captain Pierre Bouchard found the Rosetta Stone.

1870 ~ Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory were transferred to Canada, from which the province of Manitoba and the North-West Territories were established.

1916 ~ In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing incorporated Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).

1926 ~ Birthday of Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine Dictator.

1954 ~ First flight of the Boeing 707, the first American jet passenger airliner.

2002 ~ Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three other suspects convicted of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

2002 ~ The "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleaded guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

[jseal]

622 ~ Start of the Islamic calendar.

1769 ~ Father Junipero Serra founded the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first mission in California. The mission later evolved into the city of San Diego.

1782 ~ First performance of Mozart's opera The Abduction from the Seraglio.

1872 ~ Birthday of Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer who led the expedition which was the first to reach the South Pole.

1918 ~ At Ekaterinburg, Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family.

1945 ~ The U.S. successfully detonated the first test nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1948 ~ Birthday of Pinchas Zukerman, Israeli Violinist.

1969 ~ Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida to become the first manned mission to land on the moon.

1981 ~ Death of Harry Chapin, American Singer & Songwriter.

1989 ~ Death of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian Conductor.

[jseal]

1790 ~ Death of Adam Smith, Scottish Economist.

1897 ~ Klondike gold rush began when the first successful prospectors arrived in Seattle, Washington.

1899 ~ Birthday of James Cagney, Actor.

1917 ~ King George V issued a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British royal family would bear the surname Windsor.

1935 ~ Birthday of Donald Sutherland, Actor.

1936 ~ An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently-elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain started the Spanish civil war.

1947 ~ Birthday of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (formerly Parker Bowles), former British royal mistress and now wife of Prince Charles.

1961 ~ Death of Ty Cobb, Baseball Hall of Famer.

1962 ~ Nuclear testing: The Small Boy test shot Little Feller I became the last atmospheric detonation at the Nevada Test Site.

2003 ~ Death of Dr. David Kelly, U.N. Weapons Inspector.

[jseal]

1817 ~ Death of Jane Austen, English Novelist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian Politician & Traitor.

1909 ~ Birthday of Andrei Gromyko, Soviet Diplomat & President.

1922 ~ Birthday of Thomas Kuhn (http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/kuhnsyn.html) , Philosopher of Science.

1925 ~ Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf.

1927 ~ Birthday of Kurt Masur, Conductor.

1942 ~ The Messerschmitt Me-262 test flown using only its jets for the first time.

1969 ~ After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts drove his car off a wooden bridge into a pond and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, died.

1986 ~ The motion picture Aliens opened in theaters.

2001 ~ In Baltimore, Maryland, a 60-car train derailment occurred in a tunnel, sparking a fire that lasted days and virtually shut down downtown Baltimore.

[jseal]

1374 ~ Death of Petrarch, Italian Poet & early Humanist.

1834 ~ Birthday of Edgar Degas, Impressionist Painter.

1848 ~ The two day Women's Rights Convention opened in Seneca Falls, New York and the "Bloomers" were introduced at the feminist convention.

1870 ~ Franco-Prussian War: France declared war on Prussia.

1898 ~ Birthday of Herbert Marcuse, Communist Philosopher.

1940 ~ Battle of Cape Spada between the Royal Navy and the Regia Marina; the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni sunk, with 121 casualties.

1945 ~ Montgomery Ward was seized by U.S. Army troops at the direction of Attorney General Francis Biddle because of its refusal to obey National War Labor Board orders.

1947 ~ Death of Aung San, Burmese nationalist. Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, is now the leader of the Burmese opposition to the current military regime.

1948 ~ Games of the XIV Olympiad opened in London. In 2012 that will happen again for the XXX Olypiad.

2003 ~ Death of Bill Bright, evangelist, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.

[wyndhy]

:line: for "bloomers" :D

[jseal]

1923 ~ New York City Mayor Mike Hylan, in a speech in Ogdensburg, says both the Republican and Democratic Parties were "corrupt manipulators" and urged the public to abandon both of them.

1933 ~ In London, 500,000 marched against anti-Semitism.

1938 ~ Birthday of Dame Diana Rigg, Actress (The Avengers, In This House of Brede)

1938 ~ Birthday of Natalie Wood, Actress (From Here to Eternity, Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story).

1946 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives voted 265-79 to put control of atomic energy in the hands of a civilian body, the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than leave the military in control.

1960 ~ Ceylon elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first female head of government.

1969 ~ Apollo 11 landed on the Moon (http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html) . Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on its surface.

1982 ~ The Provisional IRA detonated two bombs in Hyde Park and Regents Park in central London, killing eight soldiers, and wounding forty-seven people.

1998 ~ 200 aid workers from CARE International, Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups left the country on orders of the Taliban.

2004 ~ Human Rights Watch released a report stating that Sudanese government documents confirmed support for the Arab Janjaweed militia in their campaign of ethnic cleansing against African Muslims in Darfur.

[jseal]

1796 ~ Death of Robert Burns, Scottish Poet.

1899 ~ Birthday of Ernest Hemingway, American Author.

1861 ~ First Battle of Bull Run - At Manassas Junction, Virginia, the first major battle of the American Civil War began.

1911 ~ Birthday of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian Communications Theorist.

1920 ~ Birthday of Isaac Stern, Ukrainian born Violinist.

1925 ~ In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John Scopes was found guilty (http://www3.mistral.co.uk/bradburyac/tennesse.html) of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

1948 ~ Birthday of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), English Singer.

1954 ~ The Geneva Conference partitioned Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

1970 ~ The Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed at the end of eleven years of construction.

1976 ~ Christopher Ewart-Biggs, British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland, was assassinated by the Provisional IRA.

[jseal]

1812 ~ British forces under the command of Arthur Wellesley (Duke of Wellington) defeated the French near Salamanca, Spain.

1822 ~ Birthday of Br. Gregor Mendel, Austrian Geneticist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Gustav Hertz, German Physicist, Nobel Prize laureate.

1898 ~ Birthday of Alexander Calder, American Artist.

1916 ~ In San Francisco, a bomb exploded on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade, killing ten.

1937 ~ The U.S. Senate voted down President Franklin Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court.

1946 ~ The Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British administration, killing ninety.

1967 ~ Death of Carl Sandburg, Poet.

1992 ~ Pablo Escobar, fearing extradition to the U.S., escaped from his luxury prison.

1998 ~ Death of Alan Shepard, Astronaut.

[jseal]

1757 ~ Death of Domenico Scarlatti, Italian Composer.

1829 ~ In the U.S., William Austin Burt patented the first typewriter.

1892 ~ Birthday of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia.

1940 ~ U.S. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles`s declaration on the US non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexation and incorporation of three Baltic States - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

1942 ~ The Treblinka extermination camp opened.

1962 ~ Telstar relayed the first live trans-Atlantic television signal.

1972 ~ The U.S. launched Landsat 1, first Earth-resources satellite.

1982 ~ The International Whaling Commission voted a moratorium on commercial whaling by 1985-86.

1984 ~ Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign when she surrendered her crown after nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.

1986 ~ Prince Andrew, Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

[jseal]

1783 ~ Birthday of Simón Bolívar, South American liberator.

1802 ~ Birthday of Alexandre Dumas, French writer. (The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers)

1847 ~ After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young led 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City.

1898 ~ Birthday of Amelia Earhart, American Aviatrix.

1911 ~ Hiram Bingham re-discovered the Lost City of the Incas, Machu Picchu.

1929 ~ The Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy, went into effect. It was signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers.

1943 ~ Operation Gomorrah: The RAF Bomber Command bombed Hamburg by night, USAAF 8th Air Force Bomber Command by day. By the end of the operation, 9,000 tons of explosive & incendiary bombs created a firestorm which killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

1967 ~ During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declared in Montreal "Vive le Québec libre!" (Long live free Quebec!). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

1974 ~ Death of James Chadwick, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate.

1980 ~ Death of Peter Sellers, Actor.

[jseal]

1797 ~ Horatio Nelson lost more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife Island.

1814 ~ Battle of Lundy's Lane - Reinforcements arrived near Niagara for General Riall's British and Canadian force. A bloody, all-night battle with American invaders began at 18.00; Americans retreated to Fort Erie.

1834 ~ Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet. (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Rime_Ancient_Mariner.html) & Kubla Khan (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Kubla_Khan.html) )

1897 ~ Writer Jack London sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he wrote his first successful stories.

1907 ~ Korea became a protectorate of Japan.

1909 ~ Louis Bleriot made the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine. Calais to Dover in 37 minutes.

1917 ~ Sir Thomas Whyte introduced the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

1952 ~ Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.

1978 ~ The first so-called test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born.

2000 ~ An Air France Concorde crashed just after takeoff from Paris, killing 114.

[jseal]

1822 ~ Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín met in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

1856 ~ Birthday of George Bernard Shaw, Author, Playwright & recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1925.

1875 ~ Birthday of Carl Jung, Swiss Psychiatrist.

1928 ~ Birthday of Stanley Kubrick, Movie Director.

1940 ~ Birthday of Mary Jo Kopechne, aide to Robert F. Kennedy.

1941 ~ In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the seizure of all Japanese assets in the U.S.

1943 ~ Birthday of Mick Jagger, English Musician. (Rolling Stones)

1947 ~ U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

1956 ~ Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.

1991 ~ Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, was arrested for allegedly masturbating at a Sarasota, Florida adult theatre.

[jseal]

1844 ~ Death of John Dalton, English Chemist.

1882 ~ Birthday of Geoffrey de Havilland, British Aircraft Designer.

1904 ~ Birthday of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1921 ~ Researchers at the University of Toronto led by biochemist Frederick Banting announced the discovery of the hormone insulin.

1946 ~ Death of Gertrude Stein, American Writer & Cult Figure.

1949 ~ Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner.

1953 ~ The Korean War ended. The United States, People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea signed an armistice agreement.

1974 ~ The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to recommend the first article of impeachment against President Nixon: Obstruction of Justice.

1990 ~ Belarus declared independence from the Soviet Union.

2003 ~ Death of Bob Hope, English-born Entertainer.

[jseal]

1540 ~ Thomas Cromwell was executed on order of Henry VIII on charges of treason. Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.

1741 ~ Death of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Composer.

1750 ~ Death of Johann Sebastian Bach, German Composer.

1794 ~ Maximilien Robespierre was guillotined in front of a cheering crowd.

1866 ~ Birthday of Beatrix Potter, English Author. (The Tale of Peter Rabbit)

1904 ~ Birthday of Pavel Cherenkov, Russian Physicist, Nobel Prize laureate.

1945 ~ A US Army bomber accidentally crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 injuring 26.

1973 ~ Watkins Glen, NY concert attended by 600,000 to see The Band, The Allman Brothers Band, and the Grateful Dead.

1996 ~ The remains of a prehistoric man, Kennewick Man, was discovered near Kennewick, Washington.

2004 ~ Death of Professor Francis Harry Compton Crick (http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1962/crick-bio.html), OM FRS, Nobel Prize laureate.

[Neige]

On July 28, 1755, the British announced that my ancestors, the Acadians, were to be deported from Nova Scotia. Maudits Anglais... ;)

Vive l'Acadie! J'sont r'venus!

[jseal]

1588 ~ The Spanish Armada was defeated by the English navy off the coast of Gravelines, France.

1856 ~ Death of Robert Schumann, Composer.

1890 ~ Death of Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter.

1905 ~ Birthday of Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary-General.

1907 ~ Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts movement with the first scout camp at Brownsea Island.

1958 ~ The U.S. Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1974 ~ Death of Mama Cass Elliot, Musician.

1975 ~ Death of James Blish, Science Fiction Writer.

1993 ~ The Israeli Supreme Court acquitted accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges.

1996 ~ The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act was struck down as too broad in U.S. federal court.

[jseal]

1718 ~ Birthday of William Penn, English founder of the Province of Pennsylvania.

1729 ~ Baltimore, Maryland was founded.

1818 ~ Birthday of Birthday of Emily Brontë, English Novelist.

1898 ~ Birthday of Henry Moore, Sculptor.

1930 ~ In Montevideo, Uruguay won the first Football World Cup.

1941 ~ Birthday of Paul Anka, Singer and Composer.

1966 ~ At Wembley Stadium, host England won the first televised Football World Cup, beating Germany 4 to 2.

1974 ~ Cyprus Crisis: Greek, Turkish and U.K. foreign ministers signed a peace agreement for Cyprus.

1974 ~ Watergate Scandal: US President Richard Nixon released subpoenaed tape recordings after being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.

2003 ~ The last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle manufactured in Mexico.

[jseal]

1099 ~ Death of El Cid (http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Cid/) , Spanish warrior.

1498 ~ Discovery of Trinidad by Christopher Columbus.

1556 ~ Death of Ignatius Loyola, Spanish priest, founder of the Jesuits.

1856 ~ Christchurch, New Zealand chartered as a city.

1886 ~ Death of Franz Liszt, Hungarian Composer.

1912 ~ Birthday of Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in economics.

1917 ~ The Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) started in Flanders. With casualties from both sides exceeding 550,000, the name Passcheddaele has come to be used as a synonym for pointless slaughter.

"...I died in Hell
(they called it Passchendaele) my wound was slight
and I was hobbling back; and then a shell
burst slick upon the duckboards; so I fell
into the bottomless mud, and lost the light"

Siegfried Sassoon


1941 ~ Hermann Göring ordered SS general Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question."

1964 ~ Ranger program: Ranger 7 sent back the first close-up photographs of the moon.

1999 ~ NASA intentionally crashed the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.

[jseal]

10 B.C. ~ Birthday of Claudius, Roman Emperor.

1774 ~ The element oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley.

1779 ~ Birthday of Birthday of Francis Scott Key, Composer of The Star-Spangled Banner

1819 ~ Birthday of Herman Melville, Writer.

1834 ~ Slavery was abolished in the British Empire.

1894 ~ The First Sino-Japanese War began between Japan and China over Korea.

1932 ~ Birthday of Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League.

1944 ~ Anne Frank made the last entry in her diary.

1957 ~ The United States and Canada formed the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

1977 ~ Death of Gary Powers, American Spy Plane Pilot.

[jseal]

216 B.C. ~ In the Battle of Cannae (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Cannae/cannae.asp#cannae
) , Hannibal destroyed the Roman army of Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Publius Terentius Varro in a masterpiece of tactical warfare.

1776 ~ Delegates to the Continental Congress began to sign the Declaration of Independence.

1876 ~ Death of James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, Gunfighter.

1921 ~ Death of Enrico Caruso, Italian Tenor.

1922 ~ Death of Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor.

1932 ~ Birthday of Peter O'Toole, Actor. (Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter).

1934 ~ Adolf Hitler became Führer of Germany.

1943 ~ PT-109 (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/07/0709_020710_kennedyPT109.html) , commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy rammed and sunk.

1976 ~ Death of Fritz Lang, Film Director.( Metropolis, M, Frau im Mond)

1990 ~ Iraq invaded Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War.

[jseal]

August 3rd

1492 ~ Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.

1900 ~ Birthday of John T. Scopes, defendant in the Monkey Trial (http://www3.mistral.co.uk/bradburyac/tennesse.html) .

1904 ~ Birthday of Clifford D. Simak, Science Fiction Author.

1914 ~ First World War: Germany declared war against France.

1924 ~ Death of Joseph Conrad, Polish-born Writer. (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim)

1924 ~ Birthday of Leon Uris, American Writer. (Exodus, QB VII)

1958 ~ Nuclear submarine USS Nautilus traveled beneath the Arctic ice cap.

1972 ~ U.S. Senate ratified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

1977 ~ Death of Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus.

1983 ~ New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield accidentally killed a seagull during a baseball game and was charged by police for his "act of cruelty to animals".

[jseal]

1704 ~ An Anglo-Dutch force seized the rock of Gibraltar.

1753 ~ A young Virginia planter named George Washington became a Master Mason, the highest basic rank in the secret fraternity of Freemasonry (http://www.freemasonry.org/) .

1789 ~ The feudal system was abolished in France.

1792 ~ Birthday of Percy Shelley, Poet.

1840 ~ Birthday of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sexologist.

1875 ~ Death of Hans Christian Andersen, Writer.

1901 ~ Birthday of Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician.

1902 ~ The Greenwich foot tunnel (http://london.openguides.org/index.cgi?Greenwich_Foot_Tunnel) under the River Thames opened.

1944 ~ Anne Frank & her family betrayed to the Gestapo.

1984 ~ The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso (http://www.helge.at/photos/burkina2003/) .

[wyndhy]

also the birthday of the us coast guard. started in 1790, the coast guard is one of the oldest organizations of the federal government and was the nation's only armed force on the sea until the navy department was established in 1798.

(hope you don't mind, jseal, that i occasionally add a tidbit to this thread)

[jseal]

...hope you don't mind...

wyndhy,

Not at all. Doing so makes for a more interesting thread. :thumb:

[wyndhy]

cool. :)

[jseal]

1305 ~ William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance to England, was captured near Glasgow and transported to London for trial and execution.

1583 ~ Sir Humphrey Gilbert established the first English colony in North America, at what is now St John's, Newfoundland.

1884 ~ The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty was laid.

1895 ~ Death of Friedrich Engels, Socialist Philosopher.

1930 ~ Birthday of Neil Armstrong, Astronaut.

1962 ~ Death of Marilyn Monroe, Actress.

1963 ~ The U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R. signed a nuclear test ban treaty.

1981 ~ Ronald Reagan fired striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his order to return to work.

1984 ~ Death of Sir Richard Burton, Actor.

2000 ~ Death of Sir Alec Guinness, Actor.

[jseal]

1637 ~ Death of Ben Jonson, English Writer.

1809 ~ Birthday of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet (http://eserver.org/poetry/light-brigade.html).

1881 ~ Birthday of Alexander Fleming (http://defwsax.tripod.com/okil/fleming-speech.html), scientist.

1911 ~ Birthday of Lucille Ball, Actress, Comedienne.

1943 ~ Birthday of Jon Postel, creator of DNS (http://www.brainbliss.com/cat02/art05.html).

1945 ~ World War II: A nuclear bomb codenamed Little Boy was dropped on the city of Hiroshima in Japan at 8:15 a.m., killing 80,000.

1962 ~ Jamaica became independent.

1990 ~ Gulf War: The UN Security Council ordered a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee released his idea for the "World Wide Web".

1991 ~ Death of Harry Reasoner, Reporter

[jseal]

1560 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Bathory (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_131.html), serial killer.

1876 ~ Birthday of Mata Hari (Margaretha Zelle), spy.

1927 ~ Peace Bridge opened between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.

1942 ~ Birthday of Garrison Keillor, radio host.

1945 ~ President Harry Truman announced the successful nuclear bombing of Hiroshima while returning from the Potsdam Conference.

1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, arrived at the Tuamotu Islands after a 101 day 4,300 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean, proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

1957 ~ Death of Oliver Hardy, Comedian, & Actor.

1960 ~ Côte d'Ivoire becomes independent.

1998 ~ Bombing of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya that killed 224 people and injured over 4,500.

2004 ~ Death of Red Adair, American oil well firefighter.

[jseal]

1579 ~ The cornerstone was laid for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory.

1879 ~ Birthday of Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolutionary.

1902 ~ Birthday of P.A.M. Dirac, Physicist, Father of Quantum Mechanics, Nobel Prize 1933.

1918 ~ World War I: Battle of Amiens - Canadian troops, backed by Australians, began a string of victories with a push through the German front lines.

1937 ~ Birthday of Dustin Hoffman, Actor (The Graduate, Tootsie, Kramer vs. Kramer).

1945 ~ The United Nations Charter is ratified by the United States.

1963 ~ Great Train Robbery: In England, a gang of 15 train robbers stole 2.6 million pounds.

1966 ~ The Beatles' released Revolver

1974 ~ U.S. President Richard Nixon announced his resignation effective August 9.

1996 ~ Death of Frank A Whittle, inventor of the Jet engine.

[jseal]

48 BC ~ Roman Civil War: Battle of Pharsalus - Julius Caesar defeated Pompey decisively at Pharsalus. Pompey fled to Egypt.

1173 ~ Construction of the (Leaning) Tower of Pisa (http://torre.duomo.pisa.it/index_eng.html) began. It took two centuries to complete.

1483 ~ Opening of the Sistine Chapel (http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/CSN/CSN_Main.html).

1842 ~ Webster-Ashburton Treaty was signed, establishing the United States-Canada border east of the Rocky Mountains.

1896 ~ Birthday of Jean Piaget, Child Psychologist.

1945 ~ World War II: An atomic bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" was detonated over the city of Nagasaki, Japan, killing about 75,000.

1969 ~ Members of a cult led by Charles Manson murdered five people including Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring and, Abigail Folger.

1975 ~ Death of Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer.

1986 ~ The Headington Shark (http://www.headington.org.uk/history/misc/shark.htm) is erected in Oxford.

1995 ~ Death of Jerry Garcia, guitarist: Grateful Dead.

[jseal]

1519 ~ Ferdinand Magellan (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1519magellan.html)'s 5 ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe.

1675 ~ Foundation stone set of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich

1792 ~ French Revolution: Storming of the Tuileries Palace. Louis XVI was arrested and taken into custody.

1809 ~ Ecuador declared independence from Spain.

1846 ~ The Smithsonian Institution was chartered following a $500,000 donation by scientist Joseph Smithson.

1896 ~ Death of Otto Lilienthal, Aviation Pioneer.

1945 ~ Death of Robert Goddard, Rocket Scientist.

1985 ~ Michael Jackson purchased ATV Music (all the Beatle songs) for $47 million.

1990 ~ The Magellan space probe (http://www.solarviews.com/eng/magellan.htm) arrived at Venus.

2003 ~ The highest temperature ever recorded in England (http://www.metoffice.com/climate/uk/location/england/) , 38.5°C, recorded in Kent.

[jseal]

3114 BC ~ beginning of our current era in the Maya Long Count Calendar (http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/sapienti/maya/maya.htm).

480 BC ~ Persians under Xerxes defeated Spartans under King Leonidas in the Battle of Thermopylae. The Spartans fight to the last man.

The Battle of Thermopylae has served as an example to officers and soldiers alike of what courage and self-sacrifice could achieve. It is still remembered, almost 2,500 years later, as a classic example of virtue.

1253 ~ Death of Saint Clare of Assisi, Patron Saint of television.

1905 ~ Birthday of Erwin Chargaff, biochemist.

1919 ~ Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist & Philanthropist.

1929 ~ Babe Ruth became the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs.

1943 ~ Birthday of Pervez Musharraf, General & President.

1950 ~ Birthday of Steve Wozniak, Computer Pioneer.

1966 ~ John Lennon held a press conference excusing himself from the Jesus affair (http://www.answers.com/topic/john-lennon).

2003 ~ NATO took over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe.

[jseal]

1851 ~ Isaac Singer was granted a patent for his sewing machine.

1859 ~ Birthday of Katherine Lee Bates, Poet (America the Beautiful (http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/symbols/americathebeautiful.html) ).

1887 ~ Birthday of Erwin Schrödinger, Physicist, Nobel Laureate.

1927 ~ Birthday of Mstislav Rostropovich, Cellist.

1928 ~ Death of Leos Janacek, Czech Composer.

1953 ~ The Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

1960 ~ The first communications satellite, “Echo I (http://roland.lerc.nasa.gov/~dglover/sat/echo.html)”, launched.

1964 ~ Death of Ian Fleming, Novelist.

1981 ~ The IBM PC (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A//inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa031599.htm&ei=TwL1Qr-tNaKMaJmirZMO) was introduced.

2002 ~ Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea.

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1521 ~ Tenochtitlán (present day Mexico City) fell to conquistador Hernán Cortés.

1860 ~ Birthday of Annie Oakley, Sharpshooter.

1899 ~ Birthday of Alfred Hitchcock, Director.

1940 ~ World War II: Battle of Britain began (German sources) - The Luftwaffe launched a series of attacks on British fighter bases and radar installations.

1942 ~ Walt Disney's animated cartoon Bambi premiered.

1946 ~ Death of H. G. Wells, Writer.

1948 ~ Birthday of Kathleen Battle, Opera Singer.

1961 ~ The Berlin Wall began to be built.

1997 ~ The popular, controversial animated series South Park debuted.

2004 ~ Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm, struck the Fort Myers area in Florida.

[jseal]

1842 ~ Indian Wars: Second Seminole War ends, with the Seminoles forced from Florida to Oklahoma

1862 ~ Birthday of Ernest Thayer, Poet (Casey at the Bat (http://www.onenet.net/~njtdb/casey.html)).

1880 ~ After 632 years, Cologne Cathedral completed.

1945 ~ World War II: Japan surrenders (http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/Dip/JapSurr.html), ending the war.

1947 ~ Pakistan & India (http://www.enotes.com/india-pakistan-article/) gained independence from Britain at midnight, Pakistan commemorating the event on August 14 and India on August 15.

1951 ~ Death of William Randolph Hearst, newspaper magnate.

1971 ~ Rod Stewart released Maggie May (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/r/rod-stewart/117602.html).

1980 ~ Lech Walesa lead strikes at Gdansk, Poland shipyards.

1988 ~ Death of Enzo Ferrari, Automobile Designer.

1994 ~ Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, was captured.

[jseal]

778 ~ The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, in which Roland (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/roland-ohag.html) was killed.

1057 ~ King MacBeth of Scotland WAs killed during the Battle of Lumphanan by the forces of King Malcolm III.

1309 ~ The city of Rhodes surrendered to the forces of the Knights of St. John, completing their conquest of Rhodes. The knights established their headquarters on the island, and renamed themselves as the Knights of Rhodes.

1769 ~ Birthday of Napoleon Bonaparte, general and politician.

1877 ~ Thomas Edison made the first-ever recording - "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

1890 ~ Birthday of Jacques Ibert, French Composer.

1948 ~ Republic of Korea established south of 38th Parallel.

1951 ~ Death of Artur Schnabel, Pianist.

1967 ~ Death of René Magritte, Surrealist painter.

1969 ~ First day of Woodstock Music and Art Festival (http://www.woodstock69.com/) .

I was able to talk my cousin out of going to this. :hippy: She had called me a month or so earlier and said she could get a couple of tickets if we wanted to go. It was inconvenient to get to, and when I said so, she agreed, and so….

[jseal]

August16th

1858 ~ U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurated the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria.

1888 ~ Birthday of Lawrence of Arabia (http://www.lawrenceofarabia.info/).

1896 ~ Gold discovered in the Klondike.

1899 ~ Death of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, chemist.

1930 ~ First color sound cartoon, called Fiddlesticks, was made by Ub Iwerks.

1948 ~ Death of Babe Ruth, baseball player.

1960 ~ Cyprus gained its independence from the United Kingdom.

1962 ~ The Beatles fired Pete Best (http://www.petebest.com/) and replaced him with Ringo Starr (http://www.ringostarr.com/) .

1977 ~ Death of Elvis Presley (http://www.elvis.com/), Singer, Actor.

2003 ~ Death of Idi Amin, Ugandan dictator.

[jseal]

1601 ~ Birthday of Pierre de Fermat, Mathematician.

1786 ~ Birthday of Davy Crockett, Frontiersman, Soldier.

1807 ~ Robert Fulton's steamboat left New York City for Albany, New York, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.

1863 ~ American Civil War: In Charleston, South Carolina, Union batteries and ships bombard Confederate-held Fort Sumter.

1882 ~ Birthday of Samuel Goldwyn, Hollywood producer.

1911 ~ Birthday of Mikhail Botvinnik, World Chess Champion.

1962 ~ East German border guards killed 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempted to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin. Mr. Fecher was the first and the most famous of the victims of the Berlin Wall.

1970 ~ Venera program: Venera 7 (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1970-060A) was launched. It became the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet, Venus.

1980 ~ Azaria Chamberlain disappeared, likely taken by a dingo, leading to what was then the most publicised trial in Australian history and the most famous wrongful conviction (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/nt/NTSC/1988/64.html) when her parents were found guilty of murder.

1998 ~ Monica Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admitted in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the same day he admitted before the nation that he "misled people" about his relationship.

[jseal]

1227 ~ Death of Genghis Khan, Mongol leader.

1587 ~ Birthday of Virginia Dare; the first English child born in the Americas.

1750 ~ Birthday of Antonio Salieri, Composer.

1774 ~ Birthday of Meriwether Lewis, Explorer.

1877 ~ Asaph Hall discovered Phobos, the moon of Pluto.

1920 ~ 19th Amendment to US constitution was passed, guaranteeing women's suffrage.

1925 ~ Birthday of Brian Aldiss, Writer.

1958 ~ Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita was published in the U.S.

1969 ~ Jimi Hendrix played the unofficial last day of Woodstock.

1991 ~ Downfall of the Soviet Union: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was put under house arrest while he was vacationing in the Crimea.

[jseal]

1819 ~ Death of James Watt, Scottish inventor

1871 ~ Birthday of Orville Wright, Aviator.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ogden Nash, Poet.

1921 ~ Birthday of Gene Roddenberry, Producer.

1947 ~ Birthday of William Jefferson Clinton, U.S. President.

1960 ~ Cold War: In Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.

1977 ~ Death of Groucho Marx, Comedian & Actor.

1981 ~ Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi sent two Sukoi Su-22 fighter jets to intercept two U.S. F-14 Tomcats over the Gulf of Sidra. The American jets shot down the Libyan fighters.

1990 ~ Leonard Bernstein conducted his final concert, ending with Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony # 7.

1994 ~ Death of Linus Pauling, Chemist.

He was a physical chemist, among the most influential chemists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important scientists of all time. He was one of the first quantum chemists, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 for his work describing the nature of chemical bonds. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his campaign against above-ground nuclear testing, becoming one of only two people to receive the Nobel Prize in more than one field, the other being Marie Curie.

[jseal]

1882 ~ Piotr Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuted in Moscow.

1890 ~ Birthday of H. P. Lovecraft (http://www.hplovecraft.com/) , Horror Writer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Jim Reeves, country and western singer.

1940 ~ Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded in Mexico City and died the next day.

1941 ~ Birthday of Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia.

1991 ~ Downfall of the Soviet Union: Estonia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

1993 ~ The Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles (DOP), were finalized in Oslo, Norway.

1998 ~ The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec could not legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.

1998 ~ The U.S. launched cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2001 ~ Death of Sir Fred Hoyle (http://www.coseti.org/hoyle.htm) , Astronomer, Science Fiction Writer.

[jseal]

1872 ~ Birthday of Aubrey Beardsley, Illustrator.

1904 ~ Birthday of Count Basie, Bandleader.

1923 ~ Birthday of Shimon Peres, Prime Minister of Israel.

1936 ~ Birthday of Wilt Chamberlain, Basketball Hall of Famer.

1940 ~ Death of Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary.

1944 ~ Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations.

1959 ~ Hawaii was admitted as the 50th U.S. state.

1968 ~ 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invaded Czechoslovakia to end the Prague Spring (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/155500.stm) of political liberalization.

1983 ~ Assassination of Benigno S. Aquino Jr., Philippine opposition leader.

1986 ~ Toxic gas erupted from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing more than 1,700.

[jseal]

1485 ~ The Battle of Bosworth Field (http://www.pomian.demon.co.uk/bosworth.htm) ends the Wars of the Roses (http://www.warsoftheroses.com/).

1770 ~ James Cook (http://www.captaincooksociety.com/ccsu1.htm) 's expedition arrived on the east coast of Australia.

1775 ~ King George III declared the American colonies to be in open rebellion.

1862 ~ Birthday of Claude Debussy, Composer.

1893 ~ Birthday of Dorothy Parker, Writer & Wit (http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Dorothy_Parker/) .

1910 ~ Japan annexed Korea.

1920 ~ Birthday of Ray Bradbury, science fiction author and fantasy author (Fahrenheit 451).

1962 ~ The Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered ship, completed its maiden voyage.

1978 ~ Death of Kenya's founding father, Jomo Kenyatta (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/22/newsid_2500000/2500553.stm).

2001 ~ For the Geeks among us, a sad day. The Trojan room coffee pot (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html) is switched off for the last time.

[jseal]

1305 ~ Execution of William Wallace (http://www.highlanderweb.co.uk/wallace/).

1540 ~ French explorer Jacques Cartier landed near Quebec in his third voyage to Canada.

1754 ~ Birthday of King Louis XVI of France.

1829 ~ Birthday of Moritz Cantor, Mathematician.

1912 ~ Birthday of Gene Kelly, Dancer & Actor.

1940 ~ The Luftwaffe began bombing London.

1951 ~ Birthday of Queen Noor of Jordan.

1962 ~ First live television connection between the United States and Europe, via the Telstar (http://roland.lerc.nasa.gov/~dglover/sat/telstar.html) satellite.

1990 ~ Saddam Hussein appeared on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests”.

1990 ~ West Germany and East Germany announced that they would unite.

[jseal]

79 ~ Mount Vesuvius (http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_vesuvius.html) erupted. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae were buried in volcanic ash.

1456 ~ The printing of the Gutenberg Bible (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/story040.htm) was completed.

1814 ~ British troops invaded Washington, D.C. and burnt down the White House and several other buildings.

1880 ~ Birthday of Joshua Lionel Cowen, inventor of the toy electric train (http://www.lionel.com/).

1929 ~ Birthday of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader.

1932 ~ Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).

1951 ~ Birthday of Orson Scott Card, novelist.

1960 ~ Birthday of Cal Ripken, Jr. (http://www.thebaseballpage.com/past/pp/ripkencal/), baseball player.

1989 ~ Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose was banned from baseball for gambling.

1992 ~ Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida.

[jseal]

1609 ~ Galileo (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Galileo.html) demonstrated his first telescope to the Venetian Senate.

1835 ~ The New York Sun printed The Great Moon Hoax (http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/moonhoax.html).

1867 ~ Death of Michael Faraday, Scientist.

1875 ~ Matthew Webb became the first man to swim the English Channel.

1894 ~ Shibasaburo Kitasato discovered the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and published his findings in The Lancet.

1900 ~ Birthday of Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, Scientist. Nobel Prize in Medicine 1953.

1900 ~ Death of Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher.

1918 ~ Birthday of Leonard Bernstein, Conductor & Composer.

1944 ~ World War II: Paris was liberated by the Allies.

1989 ~ Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Neptune.

[jseal]

55 BC ~ Julius Caesar invaded Britain.

1071 ~ The Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine Empire at Manzikert.

1429 ~ Joan of Arc entered Paris.

1498 ~ Michelangelo commissioned to carve the Pieta (http://www.christusrex.org/www1/citta/B1-Pieta.html).

1743 ~ Birthday of Antoine Lavoisier, Chemist.

1839 ~ The ship Amistad was captured off Long Island.

1920 ~ The 19th amendment (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment19/) to U.S. Constitution extended suffrage to women.

1944 ~ Charles de Gaulle entered Paris.

1968 ~ The Beatles' Hey Jude (http://www.iamthebeatles.com/article1172.html) was released as a single in the U.S.

1975 ~ Death of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia.

[jseal]

410 ~ The Visigoth sack of Rome ended after three days.

1776 ~ Battle of Long Island: British forces under General William Howe defeated the Americans under General George Washington.

1813 ~ Napoleon defeated the Austrians, Russians and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden.

1828 ~ The Russians defeat the Turks at Akhaltzikke.

1861 ~ Union forces attack Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

1896 ~ Anglo-Zanzibar War (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=46235). With a duration of only 45 minutes, it holds the record of being the shortest war in recorded history.

1900 ~ British defeat Boer commandos at Bergendal.

1928 ~ Kellogg-Briand Pact (http://www.bartleby.com/65/ke/KelloggB.html), outlawing war, signed by sixty nations.

1939 ~ First jet aircraft flight; a Heinkel He 178, piloted by Erich Warsitz.

1979 ~ An IRA bomb killed Lord Mountbatten and 3 others on holiday.

[jseal]

430 ~ Death of Augustine of Hippo (http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine/), Philosopher, Theologian.

1749 ~ Birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Philosopher, Scientist.

1828 ~ Birthday of Leo Tolstoy, Author. His “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence” influenced Martin Luther King, Jr (http://students.washington.edu/ruckus/vol-3/issue-4/10mlk.html).

1845 ~ First issue of Scientific American (http://www.sciam.com/) magazine published.

1850 ~ Richard Wagner's opera “Lohengrin” premiered, from which comes the Bridal Chorus, traditionally played at Western weddings, and commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride".

1897 ~ Birthday of Charles Boyer, Actor.

1963 ~ During a civil rights rally in at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/Ihaveadream.htm)” speech. Do yourself a favor; take a quarter of an hour out of your busy day and listen to it.

1972 ~ During the Olympic Games of Munich, Mark Spitz (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/mm-spitz.html) won his first of seven gold medals in swimming events.

1990 ~ Iraq declared Kuwait to be a province of Iraq.

1996 ~ Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales were divorced.

[jseal]

1261 ~ Urban IV became Pope, the last man to do so without first being a Cardinal.

1632 ~ Birthday of John Locke, Philosopher.

1885 ~ Gottlieb Daimler patented the world's first motorcycle.

1896 ~ Chop suey (http://www.snopes.com/food/origins/chopsuey.htm) was invented in New York City.

1907 ~ The Quebec Bridge collapsed during construction, killing 75 workers.

1949 ~ The Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1952 ~ Premiere of John Cage's 4'33" (http://interglacial.com/~sburke/stuff/cage_433.html) in Woodstock, New York.

1966 ~ Last Beatles concert, in San Francisco.

1982 ~ The element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, was first synthesized in Darmstadt, Germany.

1991 ~ The Downfall of the Soviet Union: Supreme Soviet suspended all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.

[jseal]

1797 ~ Birthday of Mary Shelley, Author (Frankenstein (http://www.sangfroid.com/frank/)).

1850 ~ Honolulu, Hawaii became a city.

1871 ~ Birthday of Ernest Rutherford (http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1908/rutherford-bio.html), Physicist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908.

1935 ~ Birthday of John Phillips, American singer (The Mamas and the Papas (http://www.classicbands.com/mamas.html)).

1940 ~ Death of J.J. Thomson (http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1906/thomson-bio.html), English physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1906. Prof. Thomson identified the electron as a subatomic particle, the first one to be discovered. In one of the greatest ironies of modern physics his son, G.P. Thomson (http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1937/thomson-bio.html) later received the prize for proving that the electron was also, in fact, a wave (http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~zgap118/).

1941 ~ Siege of Leningrad began.

1963 ~ Hotline between U.S. and Soviet leaders went into operation.

1987 ~ Thurgood Marshall (http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/marshall.htm) confirmed as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1999 ~ East Timorese voted for independence in a referendum.

2003 ~ Death of Charles Bronson, Actor.

[jseal]

1834 ~ Birthday of Amilcare Ponchielli, Italian composer (La Gioconda - It contains "The Dance of the Hours").

1879 ~ Birthday of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel (http://www.thefab.net/nakidgrrrlz/gw27_alma_mahler.htm). This woman knew how to live!

1888 ~ Mary Ann Nichols murdered. She was perhaps the first of Jack the Ripper's (http://www.casebook.org/) victims.

1918 ~ Birthday of Alan Jay Lerner, American composer ( Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady (http://www.foxhome.com/myfairlady/index_frames.html)).

1935 ~ Birthday of Frank Robinson, Baseball Player, Manager.

1945 ~ Birthday of Itzhak Perlman, Violinist.

1945 ~ Birthday of Van Morrison, Irish musician (“Brown-Eyed Girl", "Moondance" and "Domino").

1962 ~ Trinidad and Tobago became independent.

1980 ~ Solidarity (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4194204.stm) labor union formed in Poland.

1997 ~ Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris.