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Getbig Main Boards => General Topics => Topic started by: King Shizzo on July 22, 2013, 04:54:19 AM
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All info courtesy of History.com
July 22nd - 1991
Cannibal and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is caught.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, police officers spot Tracy Edwards running down the street in handcuffs, and upon investigation, they find one of the grisliest scenes in modern history-Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment.
Edwards told the police that Dahmer had held him at his apartment and threatened to kill him. Although they initially thought the story was dubious, the officers took Edwards back to Dahmer's apartment. Dahmer calmly explained that the whole matter was simply a misunderstanding and the officers almost believed him. However, they spotted a few Polaroid photos of dismembered bodies, and Dahmer was arrested.
When Dahmer's apartment was fully searched, a house of horrors was revealed. In addition to photo albums full of pictures of body parts, the apartment was littered with human remains: Several heads were in the refrigerator and freezer; two skulls were on top of the computer; and a 57-gallon drum containing several bodies decomposing in chemicals was found in a corner of the bedroom. There was also evidence to suggest that Dahmer had been eating some of his victims.
Neighbors told both detectives and the press that they had noticed an awful smell emanating from the apartment but that Dahmer had explained it away as expired meat. However, the most shocking revelation about how Dahmer had managed to conceal his awful crimes in the middle of a city apartment building would come a few days later.
Apparently, police had been called two months earlier about a naked and bleeding 14-year-old boy being chased down an alley by Dahmer. The responding officers actually returned the boy, who had been drugged, to Dahmer's apartment–where he was promptly killed. The officers, who said that they believed it to be a domestic dispute, were later fired.
A forensic examination of the apartment turned up 11 victims–the first of whom disappeared in March 1989, just two months before Dahmer successfully escaped a prison sentence for child molestation by telling the judge that he was desperately seeking to change his conduct. Dahmer later confessed to 17 murders in all, dating back to his first victim in 1978.
The jury rejected Dahmer's insanity defense, and he was sentenced to 15 life terms. He survived one attempt on his life in July 1994, but was killed by another inmate on November 28, 1994.
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I will make this a daily post for people who are interested in little snippets of history.
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Thank you the king of all dicks.
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I'd like to know how police officers thought it was ok to return a bleeding, naked 14yr old boy to dahmer
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Another one just got caught.
http://news.yahoo.com/charges-expected-grisly-ohio-bodies-discovery-062744608.html
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I'd like to know how police officers thought it was ok to return a bleeding, naked 14yr old boy to dahmer
They claimed it was "only a domestic dispute". ::) Shitty cops those were.
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They claimed it was "only a domestic dispute". ::) Shitty cops those were.
gimmick
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gimmick
Can you kindly keep the subject on topic.
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gimmick
Stay positive!!!
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I'd like to know how police officers thought it was ok to return a bleeding, naked 14yr old boy to dahmer
No shit, they should've been jailed or fined as well.
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July 23, 1988
Guns N Roses make popular breakthrough with "Sweet Child O' Mine"
In the 1980s, Los Angeles was a mecca for so-called "glam rock" bands and the "sex, drugs and rock and roll" lifestyle with which they came to be associated. On any given night inside clubs like the Troubadour and the Whisky a Go Go, you could not only hear bands like Hanoi Rocks and Mötley Crüe or, later, Winger and Warrant, but you could also witness an expression of that lifestyle as decadent as any the music world had seen. The rise of "grunge" bands like Nirvana and alternative rock effectively put an end to that scene in the early 1990s, but the first blow was struck by one of their own: Guns N' Roses, the band that made its big popular breakthrough on July 23, 1988, when their first hit single, "Sweet Child O' Mine" entered the Billboard Top 40.
To the guys in pop-metal groups like Poison, Guns N' Roses might have seemed at first to be just another fellow hair band, but Axl Rose and the rest of the classic GN'R lineup—Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler—were interested in rock and roll that was much more raw, angry and honest than what the pop-metal bands were playing. Originally formed out of the ashes of two other groups—L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose—Guns N' Roses played in a style that owed much more to the pure hard rock of the 1970s than to the showy heavy metal of the 1980s. Signed to Geffen in 1986, GN'R released their first full-length album, Appetite For Destruction, the following summer, and with it their debut single, "Welcome To The Jungle." Appetite For Destruction would eventually be certified 15-times Platinum, and "Welcome To The Jungle" would become a massively popular Top 10 hit, but neither the album nor its first single was an immediate success. It took nearly a year of touring and the release of a second single, "Sweet Child O' Mine," to earn Guns N' Roses a place in music history.
Built around an opening riff that GN'R guitarist Slash considered a silly throwaway, "Sweet Child O' Mine" went on to become not just a #1 hit on this day in 1988, but also a true rock classic. Voted onto "greatest" lists by Rolling Stone, Blender, the RIAA, BBC and the like, "Sweet Child O' Mine" made stars out of Guns N' Roses, and it made so-called "power ballads" like Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" seem weak by comparison.
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July 24, 1911
Machu Picchu is discovered
On July 24, 1911, American archeologist Hiram Bingham gets his first look at Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca settlement in Peru that is now one of the world's top tourist destinations.
Tucked away in the rocky countryside northwest of Cuzco, Machu Picchu is believed to have been a summer retreat for Inca leaders, whose civilization was virtually wiped out by Spanish invaders in the 16th century. For hundreds of years afterwards, its existence was a secret known only to the peasants living in the region. That all changed in the summer of 1911, when Bingham arrived with a small team of explorers to search for the famous "lost" cities of the Incas.
Traveling on foot and by mule, Bingham and his team made their way from Cuzco into the Urubamba Valley, where a local farmer told them of some ruins located at the top of a nearby mountain. The farmer called the mountain Machu Picchu, which meant "Old Peak" in the native Quechua language. The next day--July 24--after a tough climb to the mountain's ridge in cold and drizzly weather, Bingham met a small group of peasants who showed him the rest of the way. Led by an 11-year-old boy, Bingham got his first glimpse of the intricate network of stone terraces marking the entrance to Machu Picchu.
The excited Bingham spread the word about his discovery in a best-selling book, sending hordes of eager tourists flocking to Peru to follow in his footsteps up the Inca trail. The site itself stretches an impressive five miles, with over 3,000 stone steps linking its many different levels. Today, more than 300,000 people tramp through Machu Picchu every year, braving crowds and landslides to see the sun set over the towering stone monuments of the "Sacred City" and marvel at the mysterious splendor of one of the world's most famous man-made wonders.
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July 25, 1943
Mussolini falls from power.
On this day in 1943, Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy, is voted out of power by his own Grand Council and arrested upon leaving a meeting with King Vittorio Emanuele, who tells Il Duce that the war is lost. Mussolini responded to it all with an uncharacteristic meekness.
During the evening of July 24 and the early hours of the 25th, the Grand Council of the fascist government met to discuss the immediate future of Italy. While all in attendance were jittery about countermanding their leader, Mussolini was sick, tired, and overwhelmed by the military reverses suffered by the Italian military. He seemed to be looking for a way out of power. One of the more reasonable within the Council, Dino Grandi, argued that the dictatorship had brought Italy to the brink of military disaster, elevated incompetents to levels of power, and alienated large portions of the population. He proposed a vote to transfer some of the leader's power to the king. The motion was passed, with Mussolini barely reacting. While some extremists balked, and would later try to convince Mussolini to have those who voted with Grandi arrested, Il Duce was simply paralyzed, unable to choose any course of action.
Shortly after the Grand Council vote, Mussolini, groggy and unshaven, kept his routine 20-minute meeting with the king, during which he normally updated Victor Emanuele on the current state of affairs. This morning, the king informed Mussolini that General Pietro Badoglio would assume the powers of prime minister and that the war was all but lost for the Italians. Mussolini offered no objection. Upon leaving the meeting, he was arrested by the police, who had been secretly planning a pretext to remove the leader for quite some time. They now had the Council vote of "no confidence" as their formal rationale. Assured of his personal safety, Mussolini acquiesced to this too, as he had to everything else leading up to this pitiful denouement. When news of Mussolini's arrest was made public, relief seemed to be the prevailing mood. There was no attempt by fellow fascists to rescue him from the penal settlement on the island of Ponza to which he was committed. The only remaining question was whether Italy would continue to fight alongside its German allies or surrender to the Allies.
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Lakers.
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I believe Ed Gein died on this day in 1977. Or it was tomorrow.
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I believe Ed Gein died on this day in 1977. Or it was tomorrow.
Doesn't matter. Anyone should feel free to add to this thread. Please make sure it corresponds to the correct date. ;)
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A black guy killed dhamer in jail. Dhamer was crazy I believe. Yet, was found sane hmmm... And to think in Canada Dhamer could be found insane and put into a minimum security communal living set up lol and be out after a few years :(
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I believe Ed Gein died on this day in 1977. Or it was tomorrow.
Very interesting you say that.
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July 26, 1775
U.S. postal system established.
On this day in 1775, the U.S. postal system is established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general. Franklin (1706-1790) put in place the foundation for many aspects of today's mail system. During early colonial times in the 1600s, few American colonists needed to send mail to each other; it was more likely that their correspondence was with letter writers in Britain. Mail deliveries from across the Atlantic were sporadic and could take many months to arrive. There were no post offices in the colonies, so mail was typically left at inns and taverns. In 1753, Benjamin Franklin, who had been postmaster of Philadelphia, became one of two joint postmasters general for the colonies. He made numerous improvements to the mail system, including setting up new, more efficient colonial routes and cutting delivery time in half between Philadelphia and New York by having the weekly mail wagon travel both day and night via relay teams. Franklin also debuted the first rate chart, which standardized delivery costs based on distance and weight. In 1774, the British fired Franklin from his postmaster job because of his revolutionary activities. However, the following year, he was appointed postmaster general of the United Colonies by the Continental Congress. Franklin held the job until late in 1776, when he was sent to France as a diplomat. He left a vastly improved mail system, with routes from Florida to Maine and regular service between the colonies and Britain. President George Washington appointed Samuel Osgood, a former Massachusetts congressman, as the first postmaster general of the American nation under the new U.S. constitution in 1789. At the time, there were approximately 75 post offices in the country.
Today, the United States has over 40,000 post offices and the postal service delivers 212 billion pieces of mail each year to over 144 million homes and businesses in the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, the American Virgin Islands and American Samoa. The postal service is the nation's largest civilian employer, with over 700,000 career workers, who handle more than 44 percent of the world's cards and letters. The postal service is a not-for-profit, self-supporting agency that covers its expenses through postage (stamp use in the United States started in 1847) and related products. The postal service gets the mail delivered, rain or shine, using everything from planes to mules. However, it's not cheap: The U.S. Postal Service says that when fuel costs go up by just one penny, its own costs rise by $8 million.
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July 27, 1943
Stalin issues Order No. 227- outlawing cowards.
On this day in 1943, Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the Soviet Union, issues Order No. 227, what came to be known as the "Not one step backward" order, in light of German advances into Russian territory. The order declared, "Panic makers and cowards must be liquidated on the spot. Not one step backward without orders from higher headquarters! Commanders...who abandon a position without an order from higher headquarters are traitors to the Fatherland."
Early German successes against Russia had emboldened Hitler in his goal of taking Leningrad and Stalingrad. But the German attack on Stalingrad, thought foolhardy by Hitler's generals, because of Russia's superior manpower and the enormous drain on German resources and troop strength, was repulsed by a fierce Soviet fighting force, which had been reinforced with greater numbers of men and materials. The Germans then turned their sights on Leningrad. Stalin needed to "motivate" both officers and civilians alike in their defense of Leningrad—hence, Order No. 227. But it was hardly necessary. On the same day the order was given, Russian peasants and partisans in the Leningrad region killed a German official, Adolf Beck, whose job was to send agricultural products from occupied Russia to Germany or German troops. The Russian patriots also set fire to the granaries and barns in which the stash of agricultural products was stored before transport. A partisan pamphlet issued an order of its own: "Russians! Destroy the German landowners. Drive the Germans from the land of the Soviets!"
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Jul 28, 1868
14th Amendment adopted
Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.
Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established. Thus began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868. The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside." The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the "equal protection of the laws."
In the decades after its adoption, the equal protection clause was cited by a number of African American activists who argued that racial segregation denied them the equal protection of law. However, in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that states could constitutionally provide segregated facilities for African Americans, so long as they were equal to those afforded white persons. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which announced federal toleration of the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine, was eventually used to justify segregating all public facilities, including railroad cars, restaurants, hospitals, and schools. However, "colored" facilities were never equal to their white counterparts, and African Americans suffered through decades of debilitating discrimination in the South and elsewhere. In 1954, Plessy v. Ferguson was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
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July 29, 1958
NASA created.
On this day in 1958, the U.S. Congress passes legislation establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a civilian agency responsible for coordinating America's activities in space. NASA has since sponsored space expeditions, both human and mechanical, that have yielded vital information about the solar system and universe. It has also launched numerous earth-orbiting satellites that have been instrumental in everything from weather forecasting to navigation to global communications.
NASA was created in response to the Soviet Union's October 4, 1957 launch of its first satellite, Sputnik I. The 183-pound, basketball-sized satellite orbited the earth in 98 minutes. The Sputnik launch caught Americans by surprise and sparked fears that the Soviets might also be capable of sending missiles with nuclear weapons from Europe to America. The United States prided itself on being at the forefront of technology, and, embarrassed, immediately began developing a response, signaling the start of the U.S.-Soviet space race.
On November 3, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik II, which carried a dog named Laika. In December, America attempted to launch a satellite of its own, called Vanguard, but it exploded shortly after takeoff. On January 31, 1958, things went better with Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite to successfully orbit the earth. In July of that year, Congress passed legislation officially establishing NASA from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and other government agencies, and confirming the country's commitment to winning the space race. In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared that America should put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969, NASA's Apollo 11 mission achieved that goal and made history when astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, saying "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
NASA has continued to make great advances in space exploration since the first moonwalk, including playing a major part in the construction of the International Space Station. The agency has also suffered tragic setbacks, however, such as the disasters that killed the crews of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986 and the Columbia space shuttle in 2003. In 2004, President George Bush challenged NASA to return to the moon by 2020 and establish "an extended human presence" there that could serve as a launching point for "human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond."
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Jul 30, 1956
President Eisenhower signs "In God We Trust" into law
On this day in 1956, two years after pushing to have the phrase "under God" inserted into the pledge of allegiance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a law officially declaring "In God We Trust" to be the nation's official motto. The law, P.L. 84-140, also mandated that the phrase be printed on all American paper currency. The phrase had been placed on U.S. coins since the Civil War when, according to the historical association of the United States Treasury, religious sentiment reached a peak. Eisenhower's treasury secretary, George Humphrey, had suggested adding the phrase to paper currency as well.
Although some historical accounts claim Eisenhower was raised a Jehovah's Witness, most presidential scholars now believe his family was Mennonite. Either way, Eisenhower abandoned his family's religion before entering the Army, and took the unusual step of being baptized relatively late in his adult life as a Presbyterian. The baptism took place in 1953, barely a year into his first term as president.
Although Eisenhower embraced religion, biographers insist he never intended to force his beliefs on anyone. In fact, the chapel-like structure near where he and his wife Mamie are buried on the grounds of his presidential library is called the "Place of Meditation" and is intentionally inter-denominational. At a Flag Day speech in 1954, he elaborated on his feelings about the place of religion in public life when he discussed why he had wanted to include "under God" in the pledge of allegiance: "In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war."
The first paper money with the phrase "In God We Trust" was not printed until 1957. Since then, religious and secular groups have argued over the appropriateness and constitutionality of a motto that mentions "God," considering the founding fathers dedication to maintaining the separation of church and state.
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Jul 31, 1715
Hurricane sinks Spanish treasure ships
A hurricane strikes the east coast of Florida, sinking 10 Spanish treasure ships and killing nearly 1,000 people, on this day in 1715. All of the gold and silver onboard at the time would not be recovered until 250 years later.
From 1701, Spain sent fleets of ships to the Western Hemisphere to bring back natural resources, including gold and silver. These groups of ships were heavily fortified against pirates, but there was little that could be done to protect them from bad weather.
On July 24, 10 Spanish ships and one French ship left Havana, Cuba, on their way to Europe, carrying tons of gold and silver coins, about 14 million pesos worth. The Spanish ships stayed very close to the Florida coast, as was the custom, while the French ship, the Grifon, ventured further out from the shore. A week later, as the ships were between Cape Canaveral and Fort Pierce, in modern-day Florida, the winds picked up dramatically.
The hurricane advanced quickly and, one by one, the ships were wrecked. The Nuestra Senora de la Regla sank, sending 200 people and 120 tons of coins to a watery grave. The Santa Cristo de San Ramon went down with 120 sailors aboard. In all, somewhere between 700 and 1,000 people lost their lives in the wrecks. Meanwhile, the Grifon was able to ride out the storm; most of its crew survived.
In the following months, Spanish officials in Havana sent ships to salvage the treasure. About 80 percent had been recovered by April 1716, but the rest remained lost until the 1960s.
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this thread makes me feel old. I remember Dahmer all over the news, reading the Akron Beacon Journal as a 9th grader, in total disbelief.
For some getbiggers, Dahmer is like jack the ripper, a name in history books long before their time.
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Aug 1, 1914
First World War erupts in Europe
On August 1, 1914, four days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, two more great European powers—Russia and Germany—declare war on each other; the same day, France orders a general mobilization. The so-called "Great War" that ensued would be one of unprecedented destruction and loss of life, resulting in the deaths of some 20 million soldiers and civilians and the physical devastation of much of the European continent.
The event that was widely acknowledged to have sparked the outbreak of World War I occurred on July 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was shot to death with his wife by the Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. Over the weeks that followed, Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack, hoping to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism in the tumultuous Balkans region once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austria-Hungary declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention. This assurance came on July 5; Austria-Hungary subsequently sent an ultimatum to the Serbian government on July 23 and demanded its acceptance within two days at the risk of war. Though Serbia accepted all but two of the ultimatum’s terms, and Russia declared its intention to back Serbia in the case of such a conflict, Austria-Hungary went ahead with its war declaration against Serbia on July 28, one month after the assassinations.
With that declaration, the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers was shattered: Germany warned Russia, still only partially mobilized, that to continue to full mobilization against Austria-Hungary would mean war with Germany. While insisting that Russia immediately halt mobilization, Germany began its own mobilization; when the Russians refused the German demands, Germany declared war on the czarist empire on August 1. That same day, Russia’s ally, France, long suspicious of German aggression, began its own mobilization, urging Great Britain—the third member, along with France and Russia, of the Triple Entente alliance—to declare its support. A divided British government declined to do so initially, but events soon precipitated Britain’s move towards war as well. On August 2, the first German army units crossed into Luxembourg as part of a long-planned German strategy to invade France through neutral Belgium. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3; that night, Germany invaded Belgium, prompting Great Britain to declare war on Germany.
For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. The great majority of people—within government and without—assumed that their country would be victorious within months, and could not envision the possibility of a longer conflict. By the end of 1914, however, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and there was no final victory in sight for either the Allies or the Central Powers. On the Western Front—the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium—the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition, which would continue, in Europe and other corners of the world, for the next four years.
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Aug 2, 1876
Wild Bill Hickok is murdered
"Wild Bill" Hickok, one of the greatest gunfighters of the American West, is murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota.
Born in Illinois in 1837, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok first gained notoriety as a gunfighter in 1861 when he coolly shot three men who were trying to kill him. A highly sensationalized account of the gunfight appeared six years later in the popular periodical Harper's New Monthly Magazine, sparking Hickok's rise to national fame. Other articles and books followed, and though his prowess was often exaggerated, Hickok did earn his reputation with a string of impressive gunfights.
After accidentally killing his deputy during an 1871 shootout in Abilene, Texas, Hickok never fought another gun battle. For the next several years he lived off his famous reputation, appearing as himself in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Occasionally, he worked as guide for wealthy hunters. His renowned eyesight began to fail, and for a time he was reduced to wandering the West trying to make a living as a gambler. Several times he was arrested for vagrancy.
In the spring of 1876, Hickok arrived in the Black Hills mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota. There he became a regular at the poker tables of the No. 10 Saloon, eking out a meager existence as a card player. On this day in 1876, Hickok was playing cards with his back to the saloon door. At 4:15 in the afternoon, a young gunslinger named Jack McCall walked into the saloon, approached Hickok from behind, and shot him in the back of the head. Hickok died immediately. McCall tried to shoot others in the crowd, but amazingly, all of the remaining cartridges in his pistol were duds. McCall was later tried, convicted, and hanged.
Hickok was only 39 years old when he died. The most famous gunfighter in the history of the West died with his Smith & Wesson revolver in his holster, never having seen his murderer. According to legend, Hickok held a pair of black aces and black eights when he died, a combination that has since been known as the Dead Man's Hand.
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Great thread.
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Great thread.
glad you enjoy it.
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Aug 3, 1492
Columbus sets sail
From the Spanish port of Palos, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sets sail in command of three ships—the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina—on a journey to find a western sea route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.
On October 12, the expedition sighted land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, and went ashore the same day, claiming it for Spain. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and "Indian" captives in March 1493 and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century.
During his lifetime, Columbus led a total of four expeditions to the New World, discovering various Caribbean islands, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South and Central American mainland, but never accomplished his original goal—a western ocean route to the great cities of Asia. Columbus died in Spain in 1506 without realizing the great scope of what he did achieve: He had discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
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Aug 4, 1753
Washington becomes Master Mason
George Washington, a young Virginia planter, becomes a Master Mason, the highest basic rank in the secret fraternity of Freemasonry. The ceremony was held at the Masonic Lodge No. 4 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Washington was 21 years old and would soon command his first military operation as a major in the Virginia colonial militia.
Freemasonry evolved from the practices and rituals of the stonemasons' guilds in the Middle Ages. With the decline of European cathedral building, "lodges" decided to admit non-stonemasons to maintain membership, and the secret fraternal order grew in popularity in Europe. In 1717, the first Grand Lodge, an association of lodges, was founded in England, and Freemasonry was soon disseminated throughout the British Empire. The first American Mason lodge was established in Philadelphia in 1730, and future revolutionary leader Benjamin Franklin was a founding member.
There is no central Masonic authority, and Freemasons are governed locally by the order's many customs and rites. Members trace the origins of Masonry back to the erecting of King Solomon's Temple in biblical times and are expected to believe in the "Supreme Being," follow specific religious rites, and maintain a vow of secrecy concerning the order's ceremonies. The Masons of the 18th century adhered to liberal democratic principles that included religious toleration, loyalty to local government, and the importance of charity. From its inception, Freemasonry encountered considerable opposition from organized religion, especially from the Roman Catholic Church.
For George Washington, joining the Masons was a rite of passage and an expression of his civic responsibility. After becoming a Master Mason, Washington had the option of passing through a series of additional rites that would take him to higher "degrees." In 1788, shortly before becoming the first president of the United States, Washington was elected the first Worshipful Master of Alexandria Lodge No. 22.
Many other leaders of the American Revolution, including Paul Revere, John Hancock, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Boston Tea Party saboteurs, were also Freemasons, and Masonic rites were witnessed at such events as Washington's presidential inauguration and the laying of the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.--a city supposedly designed with Masonic symbols in mind. Masonic symbols, approved by Washington in the design of the Great Seal of the United States, can be seen on the one-dollar bill. The All-Seeing Eye above an unfinished pyramid is unmistakably Masonic, and the scroll beneath, which proclaims the advent of a "New Secular Order" in Latin, is one of Freemasonry's long-standing goals. The Great Seal appeared on the dollar bill during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, also a Mason.
Freemasonry has continued to be important in U.S. politics, and at least 15 presidents, five Supreme Court chief justices, and numerous members of Congress have been Masons. Presidents known to be Masons include Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford. Today there are an estimated two million Masons in the United States, but the exact membership figure is one of the society's many secrets.
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Aug 5, 1962
Marilyn Monroe is found dead
On August 5, 1962, movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles. She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand. Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was "caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide."
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926. Her mother was emotionally unstable and frequently confined to an asylum, so Norma Jean was reared by a succession of foster parents and in an orphanage. At the age of 16, she married a fellow worker in an aircraft factory, but they divorced a few years later. She took up modeling in 1944 and in 1946 signed a short-term contract with 20th Century Fox, taking as her screen name Marilyn Monroe. She had a few bit parts and then returned to modeling, famously posing nude for a calendar in 1949.
She began to attract attention as an actress in 1950 after appearing in minor roles in the The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve. Although she was onscreen only briefly playing a mistress in both films, audiences took note of the blonde bombshell, and she won a new contract from Fox. Her acting career took off in the early 1950s with performances in Love Nest (1951), Monkey Business (1952), and Niagara (1953). Celebrated for her voluptuousness and wide-eyed charm, she won international fame for her sex-symbol roles in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). The Seven-Year Itch (1955) showcased her comedic talents and features the classic scene where she stands over a subway grating and has her white skirt billowed up by the wind from a passing train. In 1954, she married baseball great Joe DiMaggio, attracting further publicity, but they divorced eight months later.
In 1955, she studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City and subsequently gave a strong performance as a hapless entertainer in Bus Stop (1956). In 1956, she married playwright Arthur Miller. She made The Prince and the Showgirl--a critical and commercial failure--with Laurence Olivier in 1957 but in 1959 gave an acclaimed performance in the hit comedy Some Like It Hot. Her last role, in The Misfits (1961), was directed by John Huston and written by Miller, whom she divorced just one week before the film's opening.
By 1961, Monroe, beset by depression, was under the constant care of a psychiatrist. Increasingly erratic in the last months of her life, she lived as a virtual recluse in her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home. After midnight on August 5, 1962, her maid, Eunice Murray, noticed Monroe's bedroom light on. When Murray found the door locked and Marilyn unresponsive to her calls, she called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who gained access to the room by breaking a window. Entering, he found Marilyn dead, and the police were called sometime after. An autopsy found a fatal amount of sedatives in her system, and her death was ruled probable suicide.
In recent decades, there have been a number of conspiracy theories about her death, most of which contend that she was murdered by John and/or Robert Kennedy, with whom she allegedly had love affairs. These theories claim that the Kennedys killed her (or had her killed) because they feared she would make public their love affairs and other government secrets she was gathering. On August 4, 1962, Robert Kennedy, then attorney general in his older brother's cabinet, was in fact in Los Angeles. Two decades after the fact, Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, announced for the first time that the attorney general had visited Marilyn on the night of her death and quarreled with her, but the reliability of these and other statements made by Murray are questionable.
Four decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains a major cultural icon. The unknown details of her final performance only add to her mystique.
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http://www.history.com/news/bertha-benz-hits-the-road-125-years-ago?cmpid=Social_Facebook_Hith_08052013_1
Bertha Benz Hits the Road, 125 Years Ago
In August 1888, Bertha Benz, the 39-year-old wife of German engineer Karl Benz, made history when she became the first person to complete a long-distance trip by automobile. The trip helped popularize Karl Benz’s latest invention—and likely saved him from professional and financial ruin. One hundred and twenty five years after Bertha’s big journey, get the facts about the world’s first road trip.
Bertha Ringer Benz, the daughter of a wealthy family from the southwestern German town of Pforzheim, had come to her husband’s aid before. Two years before the couple’s 1872 wedding she had used part of her dowry to help prop up the failing iron construction company Karl Benz had launched with an irresponsible business partner. When he lost control of the company shortly thereafter, Benz moved on, using Bertha’s continued financial support (and business acumen) to form a new manufacturing venture known as Benz & Cie. When the company proved successful, Karl was able to turn his attention to a lifelong dream—the creation of the first true automobile. After several years of failed attempts, Karl finally finished work on his first horseless carriage in December 1885 (he received a patent for it the following year). The single-cylinder, 2.5-horsepower car had three wheels—one in front and two in the back—and could reach a maximum speed of 25 mph.
Karl may have been a supremely talented engineer, but he was a terrible marketer. The first few public displays of his new invention didn’t go well, including one demonstration that quickly ended when a driver lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a nearby wall, terrifying onlookers. Ever the perfectionist, Benz retreated to his factory, where he continually tinkered with his automobile in private. However, Bertha, whose inheritance had helped keep the family afloat in the lean years, was well aware of the need to publicize the automobile as much as possible. And there was added pressure from the competition just a few miles away; another German engineer, Gottlieb Daimler, had invented a horseless carriage of his own— the world’s first four-wheeled, high-speed automobile.
Frustrated by her husband’s apparent unwillingness to act on his own, Bertha took matters into her own hands. In early August 1888 (the date has been variously given as either August 5 or 12), Bertha packed up one of her husband’s cars, the recently completed Patent-Motorwagen No. 3, and with her two teenage sons in tow set out to visit her mother in Pforzheim. She didn’t tell Karl beforehand, but instead left him a letter informing him of her plans.
The Benzes hit the road— which in many places turned out to be rocky, dusty and unpaved—with Bertha acting as both driver and automobile mechanic along the way. When she ran low on fuel, she sought out a local pharmacy that sold ligroin, the petroleum solvent used to run Karl Benz’s cars. She made an emergency repair to the car’s ignition with her garter. When the fuel line became clogged part of the way through their journey, Bertha was able to clear it using nothing more than her hairpin. Bertha is even credited with devising the world’s first pair of brake pads: when the car’s worn-down, wooden brakes began to fail, she asked a local shoemaker to install leather soles instead.
The three travelers finally reached the home of Bertha’s mother around dusk, having covered 65 miles in less than 12 hours. Bertha sent Karl a telegram informing him of the family’s safe arrival but news of her exploit had already reached the press, thanks to eyewitness reports from residents of the towns and villages Bertha and the boys had passed along the way. Most expressed amazement at Karl Benz’s achievement and how safe it seemed to be, although others were reportedly terrified of the sudden appearance of the automobile in their midst—one driven by a women, no less. While the publicity was certainly nice, there was a more practical upshot to Bertha Benz’s road trip. The difficulties she and her sons faced getting Karl’s 2.5-horse-powered car up neighboring hills (often manually pushing the car uphill) convinced the inventor to make a crucial modification – the introduction of the world’s first gear system.
After visiting with her mother for several days, Bertha set out for her return trip, following a different route and introducing her husband’s automobile to even more people before arriving home safely. In all, she had driven over 120 miles at a time when no other automobile had traveled more than a few dozen feet. Her trip unleashed an avalanche of publicity and the couple began receiving orders for their newfangled contraption almost immediately. Within a decade Karl’s company, Benz & Cie., became the world’s largest automobile company with a full-time staff of more than 400 and annual sales of nearly 600 vehicles.
Karl remained with the company he had founded in an advisory position until his death in 1929. Benz & Cie. had merged three years earlier with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach’s company to form Daimler-Benz, home to the Mercedes-Benz. While the Benz family remained on the company’s board, they also started another automobile business, Benz Sonz, in 1906. Karl and Bertha, along with sons Eugen and Richard, who had accompanied their mother on her history-making 1888 trip, formed the new company, which remained family-owned until it closed its doors in 1924. Bertha Benz died 20 years later at the age of 95. Her 1888 triumph has been memorialized in books and on film, and today motorists can travel the 120-mile long Bertha Benz Memorial Route, which follows the path of her historic trip.
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Aug 6, 1945
American bomber drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima
On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world's first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland. And so on August 5, while a "conventional" bombing of Japan was underway, "Little Boy," (the nickname for one of two atom bombs available for use against Japan), was loaded onto Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets' plane on Tinian Island in the Marianas. Tibbets' B-29, named the Enola Gay after his mother, left the island at 2:45 a.m. on August 6. Five and a half hours later, "Little Boy" was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. The bomb had several inscriptions scribbled on its shell, one of which read "Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis" (the ship that transported the bomb to the Marianas).
There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city's 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before-only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying.
According to John Hersey's classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load.
There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them. Another crewman remarked, "It's pretty terrific. What a relief it worked."
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Aug 7, 1782
Washington creates the Purple Heart
On this day in 1782, in Newburgh, New York, General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, creates the "Badge for Military Merit," a decoration consisting of a purple, heart-shaped piece of silk, edged with a narrow binding of silver, with the word Merit stitched across the face in silver. The badge was to be presented to soldiers for "any singularly meritorious action" and permitted its wearer to pass guards and sentinels without challenge. The honoree's name and regiment were also to be inscribed in a "Book of Merit."
Washington's "Purple Heart" was awarded to only three known soldiers during the Revolutionary War: Elijah Churchill, William Brown and Daniel Bissell, Jr. The "Book of Merit" was lost, and the decoration was largely forgotten until 1927, when General Charles P. Summerall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, sent an unsuccessful draft bill to Congress to "revive the Badge of Military Merit." In 1931, Summerall's successor, General Douglas MacArthur, took up the cause, hoping to reinstate the medal in time for the bicentennial of George Washington's birth. On February 22, 1932, Washington's 200th birthday, the U.S. War Department announced the creation of the "Order of the Purple Heart."
In addition to aspects of Washington's original design, the new Purple Heart also displays a bust of Washington and his coat of arms. The Order of the Purple Heart, the oldest American military decoration for military merit, is awarded to members of the U.S. armed forces who have been killed or wounded in action against an enemy. It is also awarded to soldiers who have suffered maltreatment as prisoners of war.
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Aug 8, 1863
Lee offers resignation
In the aftermath of his defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Confederate General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
The letter came more than a month after Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania. At first, many people in the South wondered if in fact Lee had lost the battle. Lee's intent had been to drive the Union army from Virginia, which he did. The Army of the Potomac suffered over 28,000 casualties, and the Union army's offensive capabilities were temporarily disabled. But the Army of Northern Virginia absorbed 23,000 casualties, nearly one-third of its total. As the weeks rolled by and the Union army reentered Virginia, it became clear that the Confederacy had suffered a serious defeat at Gettysburg. As the press began to openly speculate about Lee's leadership, the great general reflected on the campaign at his headquarters in Orange Courthouse, Virginia.
The modest Lee took the failure at Gettysburg very personally. In his letter to Davis, he wrote, "I have been prompted by these reflections more than once since my return from Pennsylvania to propose to Your Excellency the propriety of selecting another commander for this army... No one is more aware than myself of my inability for the duties of my position. I cannot even accomplish what I myself desire... I, therefore, in all sincerity, request your Excellency to take measure to supply my place."
Lee not only seriously questioned his ability to lead his army, he was also experiencing significant physical fatigue. He might also have sensed that Gettysburg was his last chance to win the war. Regardless, President Davis refused the request. He wrote, "To ask me to substitute you by someone... more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army... is to demand an impossibility."
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Aug 9, 1969
Manson cult kills five people
On this day in 1969, members of Charles Manson's cult kill five people in movie director Roman Polanski's Beverly Hills, California, home, including Polanski's pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate. Less than two days later, the group killed again, murdering supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in their home. The savage crimes shocked the nation and, strangely, turned Charles Manson into a criminal icon.
Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1934 to an unwed 16-year-old mother. He spent much of his childhood in juvenile reformatories and his early adulthood in prison. After his release in 1967, Manson moved to California and used his unlikely magnetism to attract a group of hippies and set up a commune, where drugs and orgies were common, on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Manson preached his own blend of eccentric religious teachings to his acolytes, who called themselves his "Family." He told them a race war between blacks and whites was imminent and would result in great power for the Family. Manson said they should instigate the war by killing rich white people and trying to make it look like the work of blacks.
Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist), was not the cult leader's intended target. Manson, an aspiring musician, chose the Polanski house because he had once unsuccessfully tried to get a recording deal from a producer who used to live there. Polanski was out of town at the time of the murders, but his wife and her friends, including coffee heiress Abigail Folger, were shot or stabbed to death. Manson stayed out of the Polanski house on the night of the crime and didn't take part in the LaBianca killings either. However, he would later be charged with murder on the grounds he had influenced his followers and masterminded the crimes.
After initially eluding police suspicion, Manson was arrested only after one of his followers, already in jail on a different charge, started bragging about what had happened. Manson's subsequent trial became a national spectacle, in which he exhibited bizarre and violent behavior. In 1971, he was convicted and given the death penalty; however, that sentence became life behind bars when the California Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972.
Manson has been the subject of numerous movies and books, including the best-seller Helter Skelter (the title is a reference to a Beatles' song of the same name, through which Manson believed the group was sending secret messages to start a race war). Manson remains in a California prison.
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Aug 8, 1863
Lee offers resignation
In the aftermath of his defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Confederate General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
The letter came more than a month after Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania. At first, many people in the South wondered if in fact Lee had lost the battle. Lee's intent had been to drive the Union army from Virginia, which he did. The Army of the Potomac suffered over 28,000 casualties, and the Union army's offensive capabilities were temporarily disabled. But the Army of Northern Virginia absorbed 23,000 casualties, nearly one-third of its total. As the weeks rolled by and the Union army reentered Virginia, it became clear that the Confederacy had suffered a serious defeat at Gettysburg. As the press began to openly speculate about Lee's leadership, the great general reflected on the campaign at his headquarters in Orange Courthouse, Virginia.
The modest Lee took the failure at Gettysburg very personally. In his letter to Davis, he wrote, "I have been prompted by these reflections more than once since my return from Pennsylvania to propose to Your Excellency the propriety of selecting another commander for this army... No one is more aware than myself of my inability for the duties of my position. I cannot even accomplish what I myself desire... I, therefore, in all sincerity, request your Excellency to take measure to supply my place."
Lee not only seriously questioned his ability to lead his army, he was also experiencing significant physical fatigue. He might also have sensed that Gettysburg was his last chance to win the war. Regardless, President Davis refused the request. He wrote, "To ask me to substitute you by someone... more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army... is to demand an impossibility."
I like how he referred to him as "your excellency"
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Aug 10, 1793
Louvre Museum opens
After more than two centuries as a royal palace, the Louvre is opened as a public museum in Paris by the French revolutionary government. Today, the Louvre's collection is one of the richest in the world, with artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and culture.
The Louvre palace was begun by King Francis I in 1546 on the site of a 12th-century fortress built by King Philip II. Francis was a great art collector, and the Louvre was to serve as his royal residence. The work, which was supervised by the architect Pierre Lescot, continued after Francis' death and into the reigns of kings Henry II and Charles IX. Almost every subsequent French monarch extended the Louvre and its grounds, and major additions were made by Louis XIII and Louis XIV in the 17th century. Both of these kings also greatly expanded the crown's art holdings, and Louis XIV acquired the art collection of Charles I of England after his execution in the English Civil War. In 1682, Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles, and the Louvre ceased to be the main royal residence.
In the spirit of the Enlightenment, many in France began calling for the public display of the royal collections. Denis Diderot, the French writer and philosopher, was among the first to propose a national art museum for the public. Although King Louis XV temporarily displayed a selection of paintings at the Luxembourg Palace in 1750, it was not until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 that real progress was made in establishing a permanent museum. On August 10, 1793, the revolutionary government opened the Musée Central des Arts in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre.
The collection at the Louvre grew rapidly, and the French army seized art and archaeological items from territory and nations conquered in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Much of this plundered art was returned after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, but the Louvre's current Egyptian antiquities collections and other departments owe much to Napoleon's conquests. Two new wings were added in the 19th century, and the multi-building Louvre complex was completed in 1857, during the reign of Napoleon III.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Grand Louvre, as the museum is officially known, underwent major remodeling. Modern museum amenities were added and thousands of square meters of new exhibition space were opened. The Chinese American architect I.M. Pei built a steel-and-glass pyramid in the center of the Napoleon courtyard. Traditionalists called it an outrage. In 1993, on the 200th anniversary of the museum, a rebuilt wing formerly occupied by the French ministry of finance was opened to the public. It was the first time that the entire Louvre was devoted to museum purposes.
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Aug 11, 1934
Federal prisoners land on Alcatraz
A group of federal prisoners classified as "most dangerous" arrives at Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre rocky outcrop situated 1.5 miles offshore in San Francisco Bay. The convicts--the first civilian prisoners to be housed in the new high-security penitentiary--joined a few dozen military prisoners left over from the island's days as a U.S. military prison.
Alcatraz was an uninhabited seabird haven when it was explored by Spanish Lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775. He named it Isla de los Alcatraces, or "Island of the Pelicans." Fortified by the Spanish, Alcatraz was sold to the United States in 1849. In 1854, it had the distinction of housing the first lighthouse on the coast of California. Beginning in 1859, a U.S. Army detachment was garrisoned there, and from 1868 Alcatraz was used to house military criminals. In addition to recalcitrant U.S. soldiers, prisoners included rebellious Indian scouts, American soldiers fighting in the Philippines who had deserted to the Filipino cause, and Chinese civilians who resisted the U.S. Army during the Boxer Rebellion. In 1907, Alcatraz was designated the Pacific Branch of the United States Military Prison.
In 1934, Alcatraz was fortified into a high-security federal penitentiary designed to hold the most dangerous prisoners in the U.S. penal system, especially those with a penchant for escape attempts. The first shipment of civilian prisoners arrived on August 11, 1934. Later that month, more shiploads arrived, featuring, among other convicts, infamous mobster Al Capone. In September, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, another luminary of organized crime, landed on Alcatraz.
In the 1940s, a famous Alcatraz prisoner was Richard Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz." A convicted murderer, Stroud wrote an important study on birds while being held in solitary confinement in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Regarded as extremely dangerous because of his 1916 murder of a guard at Leavenworth, he was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. Stroud was not allowed to continue his avian research at Alcatraz.
Although some three dozen attempted, no prisoner was known to have successfully escaped "The Rock." However, the bodies of several escapees believed drowned in the treacherous waters of San Francisco Bay were never found. The story of the 1962 escape of three of these men, Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, inspired the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz. Another prisoner, John Giles, caught a boat ride to the shore in 1945 dressed in an army uniform he had stolen piece by piece, but he was questioned by a suspicious officer after disembarking and sent back to Alcatraz. Only one man, John Paul Scott, was recorded to have reached the mainland by swimming, but he came ashore exhausted and hypothermic at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Police found him lying unconscious and in a state of shock.
In 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered Alcatraz closed, citing the high expense of its maintenance. In its 29-year run, Alcatraz housed more than 1,500 convicts. In March 1964 a group of Sioux Indians briefly occupied the island, citing an 1868 treaty with the Sioux allowing Indians to claim any "unoccupied government land." In November 1969, a group of nearly 100 Indian students and activists began a more prolonged occupation of the island, remaining there until they were forced off by federal marshals in June 1971.
In 1972, Alcatraz was opened to the public as part of the newly created Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is maintained by the National Park Service. More than one million tourists visit Alcatraz Island and the former prison annually.
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Aug 12, 1676
King Philip's War ends
In colonial New England, King Philip's War effectively comes to an end when Philip, chief of the Wampanoag Indians, is assassinated by a Native American in the service of the English.
In the early 1670s, 50 years of peace between the Plymouth colony and the local Wampanoag Indians began to deteriorate when the rapidly expanding settlements forced land sales on the tribe. Reacting to increasing Native American hostility, the English met with King Philip, chief of the Wampanoag, and demanded that his forces surrender their arms. The Wampanoag did so, but in 1675 a Christian Native American who had been acting as an informer to the English was murdered, and three Wampanoag were tried and executed for the crime.
On June 24, King Philip responded by ordering a raid on the border settlement of Swansee, Massachusetts. His warriors massacred the English colonists there, and the attack set off a series of Wampanoag raids in which several settlements were destroyed and scores of colonists massacred. The colonists retaliated by destroying a number of Indian villages. The destruction of a Narragansett village by the English brought the Narragansett into the conflict on the side of King Philip, and within a few months several other tribes and all the New England colonies were involved.
In early 1676, the Narragansett were defeated and their chief killed, while the Wampanoag and their other allies were gradually subdued. King Philip's wife and son were captured, and his secret headquarters in Mount Hope, Rhode Island, were discovered. On August 12, 1676, Philip was assassinated at Mount Hope by a Native American in the service of the English. The English drew and quartered Philip's body and publicly displayed his head on a stake in Plymouth.
King Philip's War, which was extremely costly to the colonists of southern New England, ended the Native American presence in the region and inaugurated a period of unimpeded colonial expansion.
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Aug 13, 1521
Aztec capital falls to Cortés
After a three-month siege, Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés capture Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire. Cortés' men leveled the city and captured Cuauhtemoc, the Aztec emperor.
Tenochtitlán was founded in 1325 A.D. by a wandering tribe of hunters and gatherers on islands in Lake Texcoco, near the present site of Mexico City. In only one century, this civilization grew into the Aztec empire, largely because of its advanced system of agriculture. The empire came to dominate central Mexico and by the ascendance of Montezuma II in 1502 had reached its greatest extent, extending as far south as perhaps modern-day Nicaragua. At the time, the empire was held together primarily by Aztec military strength, and Montezuma II set about establishing a bureaucracy, creating provinces that would pay tribute to the imperial capital of Tenochtitlán. The conquered peoples resented the Aztec demands for tribute and victims for the religious sacrifices, but the Aztec military kept rebellion at bay.
Meanwhile, Hernán Cortés, a young Spanish-born noble, came to Hispaniola in the West Indies in 1504. In 1511, he sailed with Diego Velázquez to conquer Cuba and twice was elected mayor of Santiago, the capital of Hispaniola. In 1518, he was appointed captain general of a new Spanish expedition to the American mainland. Velázquez, the governor of Cuba, later rescinded the order, and Cortés sailed without permission. He visited the coast of Yucatán and in March 1519 landed at Tabasco in Mexico's Bay of Campeche with 500 soldiers, 100 sailors, and 16 horses. There, he won over the local Indians and was given a female slave, Malinche–baptized Marina–who became his mistress and later bore him a son. She knew both Maya and Aztec and served as an interpreter. The expedition then proceeded up the Mexican coast, where Cortés founded Veracruz, mainly for the purpose of having himself elected captain general by the colony, thus shaking off the authority of Velázquez and making him responsible only to King Charles V of Spain.
At Veracruz, Cortés trained his army and then burned his ships to ensure loyalty to his plans for conquest. Having learned of political strife in the Aztec empire, Cortés led his force into the Mexican interior. On the way to Tenochtitlán, he clashed with local Indians, but many of these people, including the nation of Tlaxcala, became his allies after learning of his plan to conquer their hated Aztec rulers. Hearing of the approach of Cortés, with his frightful horses and sophisticated weapons, Montezuma II tried to buy him off, but Cortés would not be dissuaded. On November 8, 1519, the Spaniards and their 1,000 Tlaxcaltec warriors were allowed to enter Tenochtitlán unopposed.
Montezuma suspected them to be divine envoys of the god Quetzalcatl, who was prophesied to return from the east in a "One Reed" year, which was 1519 on the Aztec calendar. The Spaniards were greeted with great honor, and Cortés seized the opportunity, taking Montezuma hostage so that he might govern the empire through him. His mistress, Marina, was a great help in this endeavor and succeeded in convincing Montezuma to cooperate fully.
In the spring of 1520, Cortés learned of the arrival of a Spanish force from Cuba, led by Pánfilo Narvez and sent by Velázquez to deprive Cortés of his command. Cortés led his army out of Tenochtitlán to meet them, leaving behind a garrison of 80 Spaniards and a few hundred Tlaxcaltecs to govern the city. Cortés defeated Narvez and enlisted Narvez' army into his own. When he returned to Tenochtitlán in June, he found the garrison under siege from the Aztecs, who had rebelled after the subordinate whom Cortés left in command of the city massacred several Aztec chiefs, and the population on the brink of revolt. On June 30, under pressure and lacking food, Cortés and his men fought their way out of the capital at heavy cost. Known to the Spanish as La Noche Triste, or "the Night of Sadness," many soldiers drowned in Lake Texcoco when the vessel carrying them and Aztec treasures hoarded by Cortés sank. Montezuma was killed in the fighting–in Aztec reports by the Spaniards, and in Spanish reports by an Aztec mob bitter at Montezuma's subservience to Spanish rule. He was succeeded as emperor by his brother, Cuitláhuac.
During the Spaniards' retreat, they defeated a large Aztec army at Otumba and then rejoined their Tlaxcaltec allies. In May 1521, Cortés returned to Tenochtitlán, and after a three-month siege the city fell. This victory marked the fall of the Aztec empire. Cuauhtámoc, Cuitláhuac's successor as emperor, was taken prisoner and later executed, and Cortés became the ruler of a vast Mexican empire.
The Spanish conquistador led an expedition to Honduras in 1524 and in 1528 returned to Spain to see the king. Charles made him Marqués del Valle but refused to name him governor because of his quarrels with Velázquez and others. In 1530, he returned to Mexico, now known as New Spain, and found the country in disarray. After restoring some order, he retired to his estate south of Mexico City and sent out maritime expeditions from the Pacific coast. In 1540, he returned to Spain and was neglected by the court. He died in 1547.
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Aug 14, 1935
FDR signs Social Security Act
On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Social Security Act. Press photographers snapped pictures as FDR, flanked by ranking members of Congress, signed into law the historic act, which guaranteed an income for the unemployed and retirees. FDR commended Congress for what he considered to be a "patriotic" act.
Roosevelt had taken the helm of the country in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, the nation's worst economic crisis. The Social Security Act (SSA) was in keeping with his other "New Deal" programs, including the establishment of the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which attempted to hoist America out of the Great Depression by putting Americans back to work.
In his public statement that day, FDR expressed concern for "young people [who] have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age" as well as those who had employment but no job security. Although he acknowledged that "we can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life," he hoped the act would prevent senior citizens from ending up impoverished.
Although it was initially created to combat unemployment, Social Security now functions primarily as a safety net for retirees and the disabled, and provides death benefits to taxpayer dependents. The Social Security system has remained relatively unchanged since 1935.
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Aug 15, 1899
Henry Ford leaves Edison to start automobile company
On this day in 1899, in Detroit, Michigan, Henry Ford resigns his position as chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company's main plant in order to concentrate on automobile production.
Henry Ford left his family's farm in Dearborn, Michigan, at age 16 to work in the machine shops of Detroit. In 1888, he married Clara Bryant, and they had a son, Edsel, in 1893. That same year, Ford was made chief engineer at Edison. Charged with keeping the city's electricity flowing, Ford was on call 24 hours a day, with no regular working hours, and when not working could tinker away at his real goal of building a gasoline-powered vehicle. He completed his first functioning gasoline engine at the end of 1893, his first horseless carriage, called the Quadricycle, by 1896.
In the summer of 1898, Ford was awarded his first patent, in the name of his investor and Detroit's mayor, William C. Maybury, for a carburetor he built the previous year. By the middle of the following summer Ford had produced his third car. A much more advanced model than his two previous efforts, it had a water tank and brakes, among other new features. Maybury's support, combined with Ford's bold ideas and charisma, helped assemble a group of investors who contributed some $150,000 to establish the Detroit Automobile Company in early August 1899. Ten days later, Ford left Edison, where he had worked for the previous eight years. He turned down a considerable salary offer of $1,900 per year and the title of general superintendent to become mechanical superintendent of the new auto company, with a salary of $150 per month.
The Detroit Automobile Company was one of some 60 aspiring automakers in America at the time, and it struggled to keep up with the stiff competition provided by the likes of Packard of Ohio and Olds Motor Works of Lansing, Michigan. The company began to collapse in the middle of its second year of operation and ceased doing business in November 1900. Maybury and others retained their faith in Ford, however, and in late 1901 they backed him as chief engineer of the Henry Ford Company. This effort failed as well, and Ford put all of his hopes into a make-or-break third effort. The Ford Motor Company, founded in mid-June 1903, rolled out its first car--a Model A--that July and continued to grow steadily over the next several years. The release of the now-legendary Model T or "Tin Lizzie" in 1908 catapulted Ford Motor Company into the leading ranks of American automakers and turned its founder, a farm boy from Dearborn, into one of the world's richest men.
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Aug 16, 1948
Babe Ruth dies
On August 16, 1948, baseball legend George Herman "Babe" Ruth dies from cancer in New York City. For two days following, his body lay in state at the main entrance to Yankee Stadium, and tens of thousands of people stood in line to pay their last respects. He was buried in Hawthorne, New York.
Ruth, who had a colorful personality and an unmistakable physical presence, began his major league career in Baltimore in 1914. That same year, he was traded to the Boston Red Sox and during the next five years proved himself to be a formidable left-handed pitcher and batter. In 1919, he was sold to the New York Yankees, where he played outfield to better exploit his phenomenal hitting talents. At a time when baseball was suffering through the disgrace of the Black Sox scandal, Ruth almost single-handedly salvaged the sport's popularity, hitting a record 60 home runs in the 1927 season and leading the Yankees to seven pennants. Yankee Stadium, opened in 1923, came to be known as "the House that Ruth Built."
However, the Babe also made headlines by his charitable actions, such as visiting sick children in hospitals. In 1935, he retired from baseball, having hit a record 714 home runs in his career. In 1946, Ruth was diagnosed with throat cancer, but doctors could do little. Early the next year, treatment ended. On June 13, 1948, a uniformed Ruth appeared at Yankee Stadium one last time to retire his number. On August 16, he died of cancer at the age of 53.
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History announced today:
http://www.history.com/news/new-mammal-discovered-in-the-americas?cmpid=Social_Facebook_Hith_08162013_1
New Mammal Discovered in the Americas
With its long, bushy tail, big eyes and rust-colored fur, the olinguito is being described as a cute-as-a-button combination of house cat and teddy bear. It’s actually the smallest member of the raccoon family, and more importantly, the first new species of carnivore to be identified in the Western Hemisphere since 1978. After nearly a decade of research and exploration, a team of scientists has identified thousands of the cute creatures living in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador, among the peaks of the Andes Mountains. This week, they unveiled their findings in a news conference held at the Smithsonian Institution.
The identification of the newest species of mammal, the olinguito, solves a long-running mystery in the scientific and zoological community. Over the years, the animal has been misidentified as the olingo, a related member of the raccoon family, when spotted in the wild, included in museum collections or even displayed in zoos. During the 1960s, one captured “olingo” confounded zookeepers when it refused to breed or mingle with its peers. The mystery began to unravel a decade ago, when Kristofer M. Helgen, a mammal expert from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, examined olongo specimens in the collections of the Field Museum of Chicago. He noticed that a number of the preserved specimens appeared quite different from the known species of olingo, with smaller skulls and pelts of a reddish-brown color (the olingo has short, brownish-gray fur).
Helgen, who had previously identified two new species of hog badger, was certain he had discovered a new species, and began working to confirm it. In addition to a thorough investigation and DNA testing, he turned to zoologist Roland Kays of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, the world’s top expert on olingos, to help track down an actual olinguito in its natural habitat. In 2006, the researchers set off with Ecuadorian zoologist Miguel Pinto on a weeks-long field expedition to the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. They confirmed the existence of four distinct subspecies of olinguito living among the misty treetops of the cloud forest, at elevations of some 5,000-9,000 feet above sea level.
The researchers used their findings to map out predictions for the geographic distribution of the animal, which they believe may also be found elsewhere in Central and South America. Adding the Spanish diminutive suffix “ito” to indicate its smaller size, they named the species “olinguito.” Its scientific name is Bassaricyon neblina, from the Spanish word for mist, and it belongs to the taxonomic order Carnivora, which includes civets, hyena and bears, along with cats and dogs. The olinguito’s primary food source is not meat, however: It mostly eats tree fruit, such as figs, and occasionally eats insects. The smallest member of the raccoon family, it weighs in at only two pounds and measures some 14 inches long, compared to 16 inches and 2.4 pounds for other known olingo species.
In contrast to other newly identified species, many of which have often been known to indigenous peoples for centuries, the olinguito seems to have escaped notice until now. Helgen found no one among the local population who knew anything about the olinguito, and no native names exist. While scientists discover new species all the time, most of them tend to be insects or other invertebrates, only a fraction of which have been catalogued. The discovery of a new mammal belonging to the carnivore order is much more unusual. The last new carnivorous mammal, a mongoose-like creature native to Madagascar, was discovered in 2010, while the most recent such find in the Western Hemisphere was the Colombian weasel, in 1978.
Helgen, Kays and their colleagues announced their discovery of the olinguito in a news conference at the Smithsonian this week; they also published their complete findings online in the journal ZooKeys. They estimate that the olinguito population numbers in the tens of thousands, which means it’s not an endangered species, or at least not yet. More than 40 percent of its potential habitat range has been converted to agricultural or urban areas, however, and the researchers hope their work with the olinguito will help reverse this process by bringing attention to the conservation of such a unique habitat. According to Kays, the Andean cloud forest is “a magical place” and “a crucible of evolution,” and its isolation has promoted a vast diversification of animals, many of which may not yet have been identified.
(http://www.history.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/olinguito.jpg)
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Also on Aug 16th..........
Aug 16, 1977
Elvis Presley dies
Popular music icon Elvis Presley dies in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 42. The death of the "King of Rock and Roll" brought legions of mourning fans to Graceland, his mansion in Memphis. Doctors said he died of a heart attack, likely brought on by his addiction to prescription barbiturates.
Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jesse, died during the birth. Elvis grew up dirt-poor in Tupelo and Memphis and found work as a truck driver after high school. When he was 19, he walked into a Memphis recording studio and paid $4 to record a few songs as a present to his mother. Sam Philips, the owner of the studio, was intrigued by the rough, soulful quality of his voice and invited Presley back to practice with some local musicians. After Philips heard Elvis sing the rhythm-and-blues song "That's All Right," which Presley imbued with an accessible country-and-western flavor, he agreed to release the rendition as a single on his Sun Records label. The recording went to the top of the local charts, and Presley's career was launched.
During the next year, Elvis attracted a growing following in the South, and in 1955 Sun Records sold his contract to a major record label, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), for a record $40,000. His first record for RCA was "Heartbreak Hotel," which made him a national sensation in early 1956. He followed this up with the double-sided hit record "Hound Dog"/"Don't Be Cruel." In September 1956, Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, a national variety television show, and teenagers went into hysterics over his dynamic stage presence, good looks, and simple but catchy songs. Many parents, however, were appalled by his sexually suggestive pelvic gyrations, and by his third appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Elvis was filmed from only the waist up.
From 1956 through 1958, Elvis dominated the music charts and ushered in the age of rock and roll, opening doors for both white and black rock artists. During this period, he starred in four successful motion pictures, all of which featured his soundtracks: Love Me Tender (1956), Jailhouse Rock (1957), Loving You (1957), and King Creole (1958).
In 1958, Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army and served an 18-month tour of duty in West Germany as a Jeep driver. Teenage girls were overcome with grief, but Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, kept American youth satiated with stockpiled recordings that Presley made before his departure. All five singles released during this period eventually became million-sellers.
After being discharged as a sergeant in 1960, Elvis underwent a style change, eschewing edgy, rhythm-and-blues-inspired material in favor of romantic, dramatic ballads such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" He retired from concerts to concentrate on his musical films, and he made 27 in the 1960s, including G.I. Blues (1960), Blue Hawaii (1961), Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), Viva Las Vegas (1964), and Frankie and Johnny (1966). In 1967, he married Priscilla Beaulieu, and the couple had a daughter, Lisa Marie, in 1968.
By the end of the 1960s, rock and roll had undergone dramatic changes, and Elvis was no longer seen as relevant by American youth. A 1968 television special won back many of his fans, but hits were harder to come by. His final Top 10 entry, "Burning Love," was in 1972. Still, he maintained his sizable fortune through lucrative concert and television appearances.
By the mid 1970s, Elvis was in declining physical and mental health. He divorced his wife in 1973 and developed a dangerous dependence on prescription drugs. He was also addicted to junk food and gained considerable weight. In the last two years of his life, he made erratic stage appearances and lived nearly as a recluse. On the afternoon of August 16, 1977, he was found unconscious in his Graceland mansion and rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was buried on the grounds of Graceland, which continues to attract fans and has been turned into a highly successful tourist attraction.
Interesting I knew Elvis died on this day, but did not know Babe Ruth did on this day. So being today was my birthday, kinda strange I have always thought of Elvis on this day now Babe Ruth there is some meaning to that for me trying to figure it out.
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Aug 17, 1877
Billy the Kid kills his first man
Though only a teenager at the time, Billy the Kid wounds an Arizona blacksmith who dies the next day. He was the famous outlaw's first victim.
Just how many men Billy the Kid killed is uncertain. Billy himself reportedly once claimed he had killed 21 men-"one for every year of my life." A reliable contemporary authority estimated the actual total was more like nine-four on his own and five with the aid of others. Other western outlaws of the day were far more deadly. John Wesley Hardin, for example, killed well over 20 men and perhaps as many as 40.
Yet, William Bonney (at various times he also used the surnames Antrim and McCarty) is better remembered today than Hardin and other killers, perhaps because he appeared to be such an unlikely killer. Blue-eyed, smooth-cheeked, and unusually friendly, Billy seems to have been a decent young man who was dragged into a life of crime by circumstances beyond his control.
Such seems to have been the case for his first murder. Having fled from his home in New Mexico after being jailed for a theft he may not have committed, Billy became an itinerant ranch hand and sheepherder in Arizona. In 1877, he was hired on as a teamster at the Camp Grant Army Post, where he attracted the enmity of a burly civilian blacksmith named Frank "Windy" Cahill. Perhaps because Billy was well liked by others in the camp, Cahill enjoyed demeaning the scrawny youngster.
On this day in 1877, Cahill apparently went too far when he called Billy a "pimp." Billy responded by calling Cahill a "son of a bitch," and the big blacksmith jumped him and easily threw him to the ground. Pinned to the floor by the stronger man, Billy apparently panicked. He pulled his pistol and shot Cahill, who died the next day. According to one witness, "[Billy] had no choice; he had to use his equalizer." However, the rough laws of the West might have found Billy guilty of unjustified murder because Cahill had not pulled his own gun.
Fearing imprisonment, Billy returned to New Mexico where he soon became involved in the bloody Lincoln County War. In the next four years, he became a practiced and cold-blooded killer, increasingly infatuated with his own public image as an unstoppable outlaw. Sheriff Pat Garrett finally ended Billy's bloody career by killing him on July 14, 1881.
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Aug 18, 1227
Genghis Khan dies
Genghis Khan, the Mongol leader who forged an empire stretching from the east coast of China west to the Aral Sea, dies in camp during a campaign against the Chinese kingdom of Xi Xia. The great Khan, who was over 60 and in failing health, may have succumbed to injuries incurred during a fall from a horse in the previous year.
Genghis Khan was born as Temujin around 1162. His father, a minor Mongol chieftain, died when Temujin was in his early teens. Temujin succeeded him, but the tribe would not obey so young a chief. Temporarily abandoned, Temujin's family was left to fend for themselves in the wilderness of the Steppes.
By his late teens, Temujin had grown into a feared warrior and charismatic figure who began gathering followers and forging alliances with other Mongol leaders. After his wife was kidnapped by a rival tribe, Temujin organized a military force to defeat the tribe. Successful, he then turned against other clans and tribes and set out to unite the Mongols by force. Many warriors voluntarily came to his side, but those who did not were defeated and then offered the choice of obedience or death. The nobility of conquered tribes were generally executed. By 1206, Temujin was the leader of a great Mongol confederation and was granted the title Genghis Khan, translated as "Oceanic Ruler" or "Universal Ruler."
Khan promulgated a code of conduct and organized his armies on a system of 10: 10 men to a squad, 10 squads to a company, 10 companies to a regiment, and 10 regiments to a "Tumen," a fearful military unit made up of 10,000 cavalrymen. Because of their nomadic nature, the Mongols were able to breed far more horses than sedentary civilizations, which could not afford to sacrifice farmland for large breeding pastures. All of Khan's warriors were mounted, and half of any given army was made up of armored soldiers wielding swords and lances. Light cavalry archers filled most of the remaining ranks. Khan's family and other trusted clan members led these highly mobile armies, and by 1209 the Mongols were on the move against China.
Using an extensive network of spies and scouts, Khan detected a weakness in his enemies' defenses and then attacked the point with as many as 250,000 cavalrymen at once. When attacking large cities, the Mongols used sophisticated sieging equipment such as catapults and mangonels and even diverted rivers to flood out the enemy. Most armies and cities crumbled under the overwhelming show of force, and the massacres that followed a Mongol victory eliminated thoughts of further resistance. Those who survived--and millions did not--were granted religious freedom and protection within the rapidly growing Mongol empire. By 1227, Khan had conquered much of Central Asia and made incursions into Eastern Europe, Persia, and India. His great empire stretched from central Russia down to the Aral Sea in the west, and from northern China down to Beijing in the east.
On August 18, 1227, while putting down a revolt in the kingdom of Xi Xia, Genghis Khan died. On his deathbed, he ordered that Xi Xia be wiped from the face of the earth. Obedient as always, Khan's successors leveled whole cities and towns, killing or enslaving all their inhabitants. Obeying his order to keep his death secret, Genghis' heirs slaughtered anyone who set eyes on his funeral procession making its way back to Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol empire. Still bringing death as he had in life, many were killed before his corpse was buried in an unmarked grave. His final resting place remains a mystery.
The Mongol empire continued to grow after Genghis Khan's death, eventually encompassing most of inhabitable Eurasia. The empire disintegrated in the 14th century, but the rulers of many Asian states claimed descendant from Genghis Khan and his captains.
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Aug 19, 1812
Old Ironsides earns its name
During the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution defeats the British frigate Guerrière in a furious engagement off the coast of Nova Scotia. Witnesses claimed that the British shot merely bounced off the Constitution's sides, as if the ship were made of iron rather than wood. By the war's end, "Old Ironsides" destroyed or captured seven more British ships. The success of the USS Constitution against the supposedly invincible Royal Navy provided a tremendous boost in morale for the young American republic.
The Constitution was one of six frigates that Congress requested be built in 1794 to help protect American merchant fleets from attacks by Barbary pirates and harassment by British and French forces. It was constructed in Boston, and the bolts fastening its timbers and copper sheathing were provided by the industrialist and patriot Paul Revere. Launched on October 21, 1797, the Constitution was 204 feet long, displaced 2,200 tons, and was rated as a 44-gun frigate (although it often carried as many as 50 guns).
In July 1798 it was put to sea with a crew of 450 and cruised the West Indies, protecting U.S. shipping from French privateers. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson ordered the American warship to the Mediterranean to fight Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli. The vessel performed commendably during the conflict, and in 1805 a peace treaty with Tripoli was signed on the Constitution's deck.
When war broke out with Britain in June 1812, the Constitution was commanded by Isaac Hull, who served as lieutenant on the ship during the Tripolitan War. Scarcely a month later, on July 16, the Constitution encountered a squadron of five British ships off Egg Harbor, New Jersey. Finding itself surrounded, the Constitution was preparing to escape when suddenly the wind died. With both sides dead in the water and just out of gunnery range, a legendary slow-speed chase ensued. For 36 hours, the Constitution's crew kept their ship just ahead of the British by towing the frigate with rowboats and by tossing the ship's anchor ahead of the ship and then reeling it in. At dawn on July 18, a breeze sprang, and the Constitution was far enough ahead of its pursuers to escape by sail.
One month later, on August 19, the Constitution caught the British warship Guerrière alone about 600 miles east of Boston. After considerable maneuvering, the Constitution delivered its first broadside, and for 20 minutes the American and British vessels bombarded each other in close and violent action. The British man-of-war was de-masted and rendered a wreck while the Constitution escaped with only minimal damage. The unexpected victory of Old Ironsides against a British frigate helped unite America behind the war effort and made Commander Hull a national hero. The Constitution went on to defeat or capture seven more British ships in the War of 1812 and ran the British blockade of Boston twice.
After the war, Old Ironsides served as the flagship of the navy's Mediterranean squadron and in 1828 was laid up in Boston. Two years later, the navy considered scrapping the Constitution, which had become unseaworthy, leading to an outcry of public support for preserving the famous warship. The navy refurbished the Constitution, and it went on to serve as the flagship of the Mediterranean, Pacific, and Home squadrons. In 1844, the frigate left New York City on a global journey that included visits to numerous international ports as a goodwill agent of the United States. In the early 1850s, it served as flagship of the African Squadron and patrolled the West African coast looking for slave traders.
In 1855, the Constitution retired from active military service, but the famous vessel continued to serve the United States, first as a training ship and later as a touring national landmark. Since 1934, it has been based at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. Over the years, Old Ironsides has enjoyed a number of restorations, the most recent of which was completed in 1997, allowing it to sail for the first time in 116 years. Today, the Constitution is the world's oldest commissioned warship afloat.
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Aug 20, 1911
First around-the-world telegram sent, 66 years before Voyager II launch
On this day in 1911, a dispatcher in the New York Times office sends the first telegram around the world via commercial service. Exactly 66 years later, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sends a different kind of message--a phonograph record containing information about Earth for extraterrestrial beings--shooting into space aboard the unmanned spacecraft Voyager II.
The Times decided to send its 1911 telegram in order to determine how fast a commercial message could be sent around the world by telegraph cable. The message, reading simply "This message sent around the world," left the dispatch room on the 17th floor of the Times building in New York at 7 p.m. on August 20. After it traveled more than 28,000 miles, being relayed by 16 different operators, through San Francisco, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Bombay, Malta, Lisbon and the Azores--among other locations--the reply was received by the same operator 16.5 minutes later. It was the fastest time achieved by a commercial cablegram since the opening of the Pacific cable in 1900 by the Commercial Cable Company.
On August 20, 1977, a NASA rocket launched Voyager II, an unmanned 1,820-pound spacecraft, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the first of two such crafts to be launched that year on a "Grand Tour" of the outer planets, organized to coincide with a rare alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Aboard Voyager II was a 12-inch copper phonograph record called "Sounds of Earth." Intended as a kind of introductory time capsule, the record included greetings in 60 languages and scientific information about Earth and the human race, along with classical, jazz and rock 'n' roll music, nature sounds like thunder and surf, and recorded messages from President Jimmy Carter and other world leaders.
The brainchild of astronomer Carl Sagan, the record was sent with Voyager II and its twin craft, Voyager I--launched just two weeks later--in the faint hope that it might one day be discovered by extraterrestrial creatures. The record was sealed in an aluminum jacket that would keep it intact for 1 billion years, along with instructions on how to play the record, with a cartridge and needle provided.
More importantly, the two Voyager crafts were designed to explore the outer solar system and send information and photographs of the distant planets to Earth. Over the next 12 years, the mission proved a smashing success. After both crafts flew by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager I went flying off towards the solar system's edge while Voyager II visited Uranus, Neptune and finally Pluto in 1990 before sailing off to join its twin in the outer solar system.
Thanks to the Voyager program, NASA scientists gained a wealth of information about the outer planets, including close-up photographs of Saturn's seven rings; evidence of active geysers and volcanoes exploding on some of the four planets' 22 moons; winds of more than 1,500 mph on Neptune; and measurements of the magnetic fields on Uranus and Neptune. The two crafts are expected to continue sending data until 2020, or until their plutonium-based power sources run out. After that, they will continue to sail on through the galaxy for millions of years to come, barring some unexpected collision.
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Aug 21, 1959
Hawaii becomes 50th state
The modern United States receives its crowning star when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a proclamation admitting Hawaii into the Union as the 50th state. The president also issued an order for an American flag featuring 50 stars arranged in staggered rows: five six-star rows and four five-star rows. The new flag became official July 4, 1960.
The first known settlers of the Hawaiian Islands were Polynesian voyagers who arrived sometime in the eighth century. In the early 18th century, American traders came to Hawaii to exploit the islands' sandalwood, which was much valued in China at the time. In the 1830s, the sugar industry was introduced to Hawaii and by the mid 19th century had become well established. American missionaries and planters brought about great changes in Hawaiian political, cultural, economic, and religious life. In 1840, a constitutional monarchy was established, stripping the Hawaiian monarch of much of his authority.
In 1893, a group of American expatriates and sugar planters supported by a division of U.S. Marines deposed Queen Liliuokalani, the last reigning monarch of Hawaii. One year later, the Republic of Hawaii was established as a U.S. protectorate with Hawaiian-born Sanford B. Dole as president. Many in Congress opposed the formal annexation of Hawaii, and it was not until 1898, following the use of the naval base at Pearl Harbor during the Spanish-American War, that Hawaii's strategic importance became evident and formal annexation was approved. Two years later, Hawaii was organized into a formal U.S. territory. During World War II, Hawaii became firmly ensconced in the American national identity following the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
In March 1959, the U.S. government approved statehood for Hawaii, and in June the Hawaiian people voted by a wide majority to accept admittance into the United States. Two months later, Hawaii officially became the 50th state.
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Aug 22, 1992
Hurricane Andrew pounds Bahamas
Hurricane Andrew hits the Bahamas on this day in 1992. There and in South Florida, where it arrived two days later, the storm was responsible for the deaths of 26 people and an estimated $35 billion in property damage. Hurricane Andrew was so concentrated that it resembled a tornado in its effects.
On August 15, Andrew formed near Cape Verde in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. It then moved west, attaining hurricane status about 800 miles east of Miami. It was a Category 4 storm when it hit Eleutherea Island in the Bahamas, causing a 23-foot storm surge that devastated nearby Current Island. Andrew then moved due west toward Florida. With a very small diameter, it covered distances faster than most hurricanes. South Florida is vulnerable to hurricanes--as well as being in the likely path of many storms, it is only about 20 feet above sea level.
In the early morning of August 24, Andrew came ashore at Florida City, about 20 miles south of Miami. It had winds of 140 mph with gusts up to 212 mph. Rain was not a big factor in the storm, since it was moving very quickly and had a relatively compact punch, but it was still incredibly destructive. In Kendall and Homestead, Andrew uprooted every tree and destroyed 90 percent of the towns' homes. The Homestead Air Base was also demolished and all of Dade County lost its electricity. There were reports of trucks being thrown through the air and steel beams flying 150 feet. The 210-ton freighter Seaward Explorer lost its anchor and was carried over the entire landmass of Elliot Key.
In all, 25,000 homes, 8,000 businesses and 15,000 boats were lost to Hurricane Andrew. Even zoo animals were killed or pushed out of their homes. There was extensive reef damage and approximately $1 billion worth of crop losses. It took only 4 hours for Andrew to clear Florida and reach the Gulf of Mexico. Once there, it continued on to Louisiana, but, by that time, had lost considerable strength. Still, it spawned several tornadoes and retained hurricane status until August 26, when it was downgraded to a tropical storm.
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Aug 23, 1989
Pete Rose gets booted from baseball
On this day in 1989, as punishment for betting on baseball, Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose accepts a settlement that includes a lifetime ban from the game. A heated debate continues to rage as to whether Rose, a former player who remains the game’s all-time hits leader, should be given a second chance.
Although gambling on a sport you play or coach is now considered unacceptable in nearly all levels of sport, it was relatively common among those connected with baseball in the early 20th century. Some of baseball’s most talented and well-known players, such as "Turkey" Mike Donlin and Hal Chase, as well as manager John McGraw, who publicly won $400 dollars when his New York Giants won the World Series in 1905, were often suspected of gambling on their own games. Chase was considered a dangerous man to have on a team because of his willingness to make extra money by dropping fly balls or misplaying first base. This all changed, however, after the White Sox purposefully lost the World Series in 1919 for a payoff from gambler Arnold Rothstein. Outraged, a group of baseball’s faithful--including American League Commissioner Ban Johnson, former player and manager Christy Matthewson and White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, among others--made it a priority to clean up the game and repair its reputation. Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a former federal judge, was hired as Major League Baseball’s first commissioner to crack down on corruption.
One of Landis’ first moves was to ban eight White Sox players found to be involved in the World Series betting scandal from the game for life, including Chase and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, one of the greatest players in baseball history. Major League Baseball Rule 21(d) now states that a player faces a ban of one year for betting on any baseball game, and a lifetime ban for betting on his own team. In addition, signs posted prominently in every clubhouse remind players that gambling is not permitted.
It was known in baseball circles since the 1970s that Pete Rose had a gambling problem. Although at first he bet only on horse races and football games, allegations surfaced in early 1989 that Rose was not only betting on baseball, but on his own team. Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti began an inquiry, and hired Washington lawyer John Dowd to head the investigation. Dowd compiled hundreds of hours of testimony from numerous sources that detailed Rose’s history of gambling on baseball while serving as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, including betting on his own team.
Although Rose continued to proclaim his innocence, he was eventually persuaded to accept a settlement that included a lifetime ban from the game. At a subsequent press conference, Giamatti characterized Rose’s acceptance of the ban as a no-contest plea to the charges against him.
In 2004, after years of repeated denials, Rose published My Prison Without Bars, in which he finally confessed to gambling on the Reds, though he added that had always bet on the Reds to win. Because of the lifetime ban, Rose cannot work in Major League Baseball and, despite his stellar playing career, he is not eligible for the Hall of Fame.
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Aug 24, 79
Vesuvius erupts
After centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy, devastating the prosperous Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing thousands. The cities, buried under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud, were never rebuilt and largely forgotten in the course of history. In the 18th century, Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered and excavated, providing an unprecedented archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization, startlingly preserved in sudden death.
The ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum thrived near the base of Mount Vesuvius at the Bay of Naples. In the time of the early Roman Empire, 20,000 people lived in Pompeii, including merchants, manufacturers, and farmers who exploited the rich soil of the region with numerous vineyards and orchards. None suspected that the black fertile earth was the legacy of earlier eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. Herculaneum was a city of 5,000 and a favorite summer destination for rich Romans. Named for the mythic hero Hercules, Herculaneum housed opulent villas and grand Roman baths. Gambling artifacts found in Herculaneum and a brothel unearthed in Pompeii attest to the decadent nature of the cities. There were smaller resort communities in the area as well, such as the quiet little town of Stabiae.
At noon on August 24, 79 A.D., this pleasure and prosperity came to an end when the peak of Mount Vesuvius exploded, propelling a 10-mile mushroom cloud of ash and pumice into the stratosphere. For the next 12 hours, volcanic ash and a hail of pumice stones up to 3 inches in diameter showered Pompeii, forcing the city's occupants to flee in terror. Some 2,000 people stayed in Pompeii, holed up in cellars or stone structures, hoping to wait out the eruption.
A westerly wind protected Herculaneum from the initial stage of the eruption, but then a giant cloud of hot ash and gas surged down the western flank of Vesuvius, engulfing the city and burning or asphyxiating all who remained. This lethal cloud was followed by a flood of volcanic mud and rock, burying the city.
The people who remained in Pompeii were killed on the morning of August 25 when a cloud of toxic gas poured into the city, suffocating all that remained. A flow of rock and ash followed, collapsing roofs and walls and burying the dead.
Much of what we know about the eruption comes from an account by Pliny the Younger, who was staying west along the Bay of Naples when Vesuvius exploded. In two letters to the historian Tacitus, he told of how "people covered their heads with pillows, the only defense against a shower of stones," and of how "a dark and horrible cloud charged with combustible matter suddenly broke and set forth. Some bewailed their own fate. Others prayed to die." Pliny, only 17 at the time, escaped the catastrophe and later became a noted Roman writer and administrator. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, was less lucky. Pliny the Elder, a celebrated naturalist, at the time of the eruption was the commander of the Roman fleet in the Bay of Naples. After Vesuvius exploded, he took his boats across the bay to Stabiae, to investigate the eruption and reassure terrified citizens. After going ashore, he was overcome by toxic gas and died.
According to Pliny the Younger's account, the eruption lasted 18 hours. Pompeii was buried under 14 to 17 feet of ash and pumice, and the nearby seacoast was drastically changed. Herculaneum was buried under more than 60 feet of mud and volcanic material. Some residents of Pompeii later returned to dig out their destroyed homes and salvage their valuables, but many treasures were left and then forgotten.
In the 18th century, a well digger unearthed a marble statue on the site of Herculaneum. The local government excavated some other valuable art objects, but the project was abandoned. In 1748, a farmer found traces of Pompeii beneath his vineyard. Since then, excavations have gone on nearly without interruption until the present. In 1927, the Italian government resumed the excavation of Herculaneum, retrieving numerous art treasures, including bronze and marble statues and paintings.
The remains of 2,000 men, women, and children were found at Pompeii. After perishing from asphyxiation, their bodies were covered with ash that hardened and preserved the outline of their bodies. Later, their bodies decomposed to skeletal remains, leaving a kind of plaster mold behind. Archaeologists who found these molds filled the hollows with plaster, revealing in grim detail the death pose of the victims of Vesuvius. The rest of the city is likewise frozen in time, and ordinary objects that tell the story of everyday life in Pompeii are as valuable to archaeologists as the great unearthed statues and frescoes. It was not until 1982 that the first human remains were found at Herculaneum, and these hundreds of skeletons bear ghastly burn marks that testifies to horrifying deaths.
Today, Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland. Its last eruption was in 1944 and its last major eruption was in 1631. Another eruption is expected in the near future, would could be devastating for the 700,000 people who live in the "death zones" around Vesuvius.
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Aug 25, 325
Council of Nicaea concludes
The Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical debate held by the early Christian church, concludes with the establishment of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Convened by Roman Emperor Constantine I in May, the council also deemed the Arian belief of Christ as inferior to God as heretical, thus resolving an early church crisis.
The controversy began when Arius, an Alexandrian priest, questioned the full divinity of Christ because, unlike God, Christ was born and had a beginning. What began as an academic theological debate spread to Christian congregations throughout the empire, threatening a schism in the early Christian church. Roman Emperor Constantine I, who converted to Christianity in 312, called bishops from all over his empire to resolve the crisis and urged the adoption of a new creed that would resolve the ambiguities between Christ and God.
Meeting at Nicaea in present-day Turkey, the council established the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the Holy Trinity and asserted that only the Son became incarnate as Jesus Christ. The Arian leaders were subsequently banished from their churches for heresy. The Emperor Constantine presided over the opening of the council and contributed to the discussion.
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Aug 26, 1939
First televised Major League baseball game
On this day in 1939, the first televised Major League baseball game is broadcast on station W2XBS, the station that was to become WNBC-TV. Announcer Red Barber called the game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York.
At the time, television was still in its infancy. Regular programming did not yet exist, and very few people owned television sets--there were only about 400 in the New York area. Not until 1946 did regular network broadcasting catch on in the United States, and only in the mid-1950s did television sets become more common in the American household.
In 1939, the World's Fair--which was being held in New York--became the catalyst for the historic broadcast. The television was one of fair’s prize exhibits, and organizers believed that the Dodgers-Reds doubleheader on August 26 was the perfect event to showcase America's grasp on the new technology.
By today's standards, the video coverage was somewhat crude. There were only two stationary camera angles: The first was placed down the third base line to pick up infield throws to first, and the second was placed high above home plate to get an extensive view of the field. It was also difficult to capture fast-moving plays: Swinging bats looked like paper fans, and the ball was all but invisible during pitches and hits.
Nevertheless, the experiment was a success, driving interest in the development of television technology, particularly for sporting events. Though baseball owners were initially concerned that televising baseball would sap actual attendance, they soon warmed to the idea, and the possibilities for revenue generation that came with increased exposure of the game, including the sale of rights to air certain teams or games and television advertising.
Today, televised sports is a multi-billion dollar industry, with technology that gives viewers an astounding amount of visual and audio detail. Cameras are now so precise that they can capture the way a ball changes shape when struck by a bat, and athletes are wired to pick up field-level and sideline conversation.
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Keep em coming Shizz, I really enjoy these.
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Keep em coming Shizz, I really enjoy these.
Appreciate it. I know it gives people a little something to read each morning. Like a newspaper column you can look forward to. ;)
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Prohibition started in 1919 the USA. Moonshiner's in the Blue Ridge Mountains made stills to get them and drink and sale it. Thats how Junior Johnson learned to drive race cars escaping law enforcement with moonshine in the trunk.
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Prohibition started in 1919 the USA. Moonshiner's in the Blue Ridge Mountains made stills to get them and drink and sale it. Thats how Junior Johnson learned to drive race cars escaping law enforcement with moonshine in the trunk.
Awesome. I encourage people to add things to this thread. Just make sure it happened on the day that you post ;)
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Awesome. I encourage people to add things to this thread. Just make sure it happened on the day that you post ;)
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Aug 27, 2007
NFL star Michael Vick pleads guilty in dogfighting case
On this day in 2007, Michael Vick, a star quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, formally pleads guilty before a Richmond, Virginia, judge to a federal felony charge related to running a dogfighting ring. That December, the 27-year-old Vick, once the highest-paid player in the NFL, was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison.
In April 2007, law-enforcement officials raided a 15-acre property owned by Vick in rural Surry County, Virginia, and discovered dozens of pit bulls, some of them neglected, along with evidence of illegal dogfighting activities. That July, Vick and three other men, Purnell Peace, Quanis Phillips and Tony Taylor, were charged with engaging in competitive dogfighting, obtaining and training pit bulls for fighting, and carrying out the enterprise across state lines. All four men pled not guilty to the charges. However, Vick’s three co-defendants later changed their pleas to guilty and agreed to testify that the quarterback had participated in the execution of a number of dogs and had bankrolled the gambling and operating funds for the venture, known as Bad Newz Kennels, which had reportedly been in existence for about five years. Animal-rights organizations as well as the general public expressed outrage against Vick and the barbaric details of the case—dogs that underperformed in fights were put to death by such means as drowning, electrocution and hanging.
On August 27, Vick, the Falcons’ starting quarterback since 2002, pled guilty to one count of "conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture." Vick, who in 2004 signed a record 10-year, $130 million contract with the Falcons, was suspended indefinitely without pay by the NFL and lost his lucrative endorsement deals.
In December 2007, a judge sentenced Vick to 23 months in federal prison. Because the judge believed the football player had refused to accept responsibility for his actions (Vick failed a drug test after his August 2007 guilty plea and also flunked a lie-detector test about his role in the executions of underperforming dogs), the sentence was stiffer than the 12 months to 18 months suggested by federal guidelines. In July 2008, while in prison, Vick filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. That November, he pled guilty in Virginia to state dogfighting charges and received a three-year suspended sentence.
In May 2009, Vick was released from prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. That July, he was conditionally reinstated by the NFL and the following month signed a two-year deal with the Philadelphia Eagles. While his public image remained tarnished, Vick went on to make a strong comeback on the football field
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Aug 28, 1879
Zulu king captured
King Cetshwayo, the last great ruler of Zululand, is captured by the British following his defeat in the British-Zulu War. He was subsequently sent into exile. Cetshwayo's defiance of British rule in southern Africa led to Britain's invasion of Zululand in 1879.
In 1843, Britain succeeded the Boers as the rulers of Natal, which controlled Zululand, the neighboring kingdom of the Zulu people. Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers who came to South Africa in the 17th century. Zulus, a migrant people from the north, also came to southern Africa during the 17th century, settling around the Tugela River region. In 1838, the Boers, migrating north to elude the new British dominions in the south, first came into armed conflict with the Zulus, who were under the rule of King Dingane at the time. The European migrants succeeded in overthrowing Dingane in 1840, replacing him with his son Mpande, who became a vassal of the new Boer republic of Natal. In 1843, the British took over Natal and Zululand.
In 1872, King Mpande died and was succeeded by his son Cetshwayo, who was determined to resist European domination in his territory. In December 1878, Cetshwayo rejected the British demand that he disband his troops, and in January British forces invaded Zululand to suppress Cetshwayo. The British suffered grave defeats at Isandlwana, where 1,300 British soldiers were killed or wounded, and at Hlobane Mountain, but on March 29 the tide turned in favor of the British at the Battle of Khambula.
King Cetshwayo was subsequently captured and sent into exile, but in 1883 he was reinstated to rule over part of his former territory. However, because of his defeats he was discredited in the eyes of his subjects, and they soon drove him out of Zululand. He died in exile in the next year.
In 1887, faced with continuing Zulu rebellions, the British formally annexed Zululand, and in 1897 it became a part of Natal, which joined the Union of South Africa in 1910.
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Aug 29, 2005
Hurricane Katrina slams into Gulf Coast
Hurricane Katrina makes landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, as a Category 4 hurricane on this day in 2005. Despite being only the third most powerful storm of the 2005 hurricane season, Katrina was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. After briefly coming ashore in southern Florida on August 25 as a Category 1 hurricane, Katrina gained strength before slamming into the Gulf Coast on August 29. In addition to bringing devastation to the New Orleans area, the hurricane caused damage along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as other parts of Louisiana.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city on August 28, when Katrina briefly achieved Category 5 status and the National Weather Service predicted "devastating" damage to the area. But an estimated 150,000 people, who either did not want to or did not have the resources to leave, ignored the order and stayed behind. The storm brought sustained winds of 145 miles per hour, which cut power lines and destroyed homes, even turning cars into projectile missiles. Katrina caused record storm surges all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The surges overwhelmed the levees that protected New Orleans, located at six feet below sea level, from Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. Soon, 80 percent of the city was flooded up to the rooftops of many homes and small buildings.
Tens of thousands of people sought shelter in the New Orleans Convention Center and the Louisiana Superdome. The situation in both places quickly deteriorated, as food and water ran low and conditions became unsanitary. Frustration mounted as it took up to two days for a full-scale relief effort to begin. In the meantime, the stranded residents suffered from heat, hunger, and a lack of medical care. Reports of looting, rape, and even murder began to surface. As news networks broadcast scenes from the devastated city to the world, it became obvious that a vast majority of the victims were African-American and poor, leading to difficult questions among the public about the state of racial equality in the United States. The federal government and President George W. Bush were roundly criticized for what was perceived as their slow response to the disaster. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown, resigned amid the ensuing controversy.
Finally, on September 1, the tens of thousands of people staying in the damaged Superdome and Convention Center begin to be moved to the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, and another mandatory evacuation order was issued for the city. The next day, military convoys arrived with supplies and the National Guard was brought in to bring a halt to lawlessness. Efforts began to collect and identify corpses. On September 6, eight days after the hurricane, the Army Corps of Engineers finally completed temporary repairs to the three major holes in New Orleans' levee system and were able to begin pumping water out of the city.
In all, it is believed that the hurricane caused more than 1,300 deaths and up to $150 billion in damages to both private property and public infrastructure. It is estimated that only about $40 billion of that number will be covered by insurance. One million people were displaced by the disaster, a phenomenon unseen in the United States since the Great Depression. Four hundred thousand people lost their jobs as a result of the disaster. Offers of international aid poured in from around the world, even from poor countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Private donations from U.S. citizens alone approached $600 million.
The storm also set off 36 tornadoes in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, resulting in one death.
President Bush declared September 16 a national day of remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
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Also on August 29th..........
Aug 29, 1533
Pizarro Executes Last Inca Emperor
Atahuallpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, dies by strangulation at the hands of Francisco Pizarro's Spanish conquistadors. The execution of Atahuallpa, the last free reigning emperor, marked the end of 300 years of Inca civilization.
High in the Andes Mountains of Peru, the Inca built a dazzling empire that governed a population of 12 million people. Although they had no writing system, they had an elaborate government, great public works, and a brilliant agricultural system. In the five years before the Spanish arrival, a devastating war of succession gripped the empire. In 1532, Atahuallpa's army defeated the forces of his half-brother Huascar in a battle near Cuzco. Atahuallpa was consolidating his rule when Pizarro and his 180 soldiers appeared.
Francisco Pizarro was the son of a Spanish gentleman and worked as a swineherder in his youth. He became a soldier and in 1502 went to Hispaniola with the new Spanish governor of the New World colony. Pizarro served under Spanish conquistador Alonso de Ojeda during his expedition to Colombia in 1510 and was with Vasco Nunez de Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513. Hearing legends of the great wealth of an Indian civilization in South America, Pizarro formed an alliance with fellow conquistador Diego de Almagro in 1524 and sailed down the west coast of South America from Panama. The first expedition only penetrated as far as present-day Ecuador, but a second reached farther, to present-day Peru. There they heard firsthand accounts of the Inca empire and obtained Inca artifacts. The Spanish christened the new land Peru, probably after the Vire River.
Returning to Panama, Pizarro planned an expedition of conquest, but the Spanish governor refused to back the scheme. In 1528, Pizarro sailed back to Spain to ask the support of Emperor Charles V. Hernan Cortes had recently brought the emperor great wealth through his conquest of the Aztec Empire, and Charles approved Pizarro's plan. He also promised that Pizarro, not Almagro, would receive the majority of the expedition's profits. In 1530, Pizarro returned to Panama.
In 1531, he sailed down to Peru, landing at Tumbes. He led his army up the Andes Mountains and on November 15, 1532, reached the Inca town of Cajamarca, where Atahuallpa was enjoying the hot springs in preparation for his march on Cuzco, the capital of his brother's kingdom. Pizarro invited Atahuallpa to attend a feast in his honor, and the emperor accepted. Having just won one of the largest battles in Inca history, and with an army of 30,000 men at his disposal, Atahuallpa thought he had nothing to fear from the bearded white stranger and his 180 men. Pizarro, however, planned an ambush, setting up his artillery at the square of Cajamarca.
On November 16, Atahuallpa arrived at the meeting place with an escort of several thousand men, all apparently unarmed. Pizarro sent out a priest to exhort the emperor to accept the sovereignty of Christianity and Emperor Charles V., and Atahuallpa refused, flinging a Bible handed to him to the ground in disgust. Pizarro immediately ordered an attack. Buckling under an assault by the terrifying Spanish artillery, guns, and cavalry (all of which were alien to the Incas), thousands of Incas were slaughtered, and the emperor was captured.
Atahuallpa offered to fill a room with treasure as ransom for his release, and Pizarro accepted. Eventually, some 24 tons of gold and silver were brought to the Spanish from throughout the Inca empire. Although Atahuallpa had provided the richest ransom in the history of the world, Pizarro treacherously put him on trial for plotting to overthrow the Spanish, for having his half-brother Huascar murdered, and for several other lesser charges. A Spanish tribunal convicted Atahuallpa and sentenced him to die. On August 29, 1533, the emperor was tied to a stake and offered the choice of being burned alive or strangled by garrote if he converted to Christianity. In the hope of preserving his body for mummification, Atahuallpa chose the latter, and an iron collar was tightened around his neck until he died.
With Spanish reinforcements that had arrived at Cajamarca earlier that year, Pizarro then marched on Cuzco, and the Inca capital fell without a struggle in November 1533. Huascar's brother Manco Capac was installed as a puppet emperor, and the city of Quito was subdued. Pizarro established himself as Spanish governor of Inca territory and offered Diego Almagro the conquest of Chile as appeasement for claiming the riches of the Inca civilization for himself. In 1535, Pizarro established the city of Lima on the coast to facilitate communication with Panama. The next year, Manco Capac escaped from Spanish supervision and led an unsuccessful uprising that was quickly crushed. That marked the end of Inca resistance to Spanish rule.
Diego Almagro returned from Chile embittered by the poverty of that country and demanded his share of the spoils of the former Inca empire. Civil war soon broke out over the dispute, and Almagro seized Cuzco in 1538. Pizarro sent his half brother, Hernando, to reclaim the city, and Almagro was defeated and put to death. On June 26, 1541, allies of Diego el Monzo—Almagro's son—penetrated Pizarro's palace in Lima and assassinated the conquistador while he was eating dinner. Diego el Monzo proclaimed himself governor of Peru, but an agent of the Spanish crown refused to recognize him, and in 1542 Diego was captured and executed. Conflict and intrigue among the conquistadors of Peru persisted until Spanish Viceroy Andres Hurtado de Mendoza established order in the late 1550s.
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Aug 30, 30 B.C.
Cleopatra commits suicide
Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, takes her life following the defeat of her forces against Octavian, the future first emperor of Rome.
Cleopatra, born in 69 B.C., was made Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt, upon the death of her father, Ptolemy XII, in 51 B.C. Her brother was made King Ptolemy XIII at the same time, and the siblings ruled Egypt under the formal title of husband and wife. Cleopatra and Ptolemy were members of the Macedonian dynasty that governed Egypt since the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. Although Cleopatra had no Egyptian blood, she alone in her ruling house learned Egyptian. To further her influence over the Egyptian people, she was also proclaimed the daughter of Re, the Egyptian sun god. Cleopatra soon fell into dispute with her brother, and civil war erupted in 48 B.C.
Rome, the greatest power in the Western world, was also beset by civil war at the time. Just as Cleopatra was preparing to attack her brother with a large Arab army, the Roman civil war spilled into Egypt. Pompey the Great, defeated by Julius Caesar in Greece, fled to Egypt seeking solace but was immediately murdered by agents of Ptolemy XIII. Caesar arrived in Alexandria soon after and, finding his enemy dead, decided to restore order in Egypt.
During the preceding century, Rome had exercised increasing control over the rich Egyptian kingdom, and Cleopatra sought to advance her political aims by winning the favor of Caesar. She traveled to the royal palace in Alexandria and was allegedly carried to Caesar rolled in a rug, which was offered as a gift. Cleopatra, beautiful and alluring, captivated the powerful Roman leader, and he agreed to intercede in the Egyptian civil war on her behalf.
In 47 B.C., Ptolemy XIII was killed after a defeat against Caesar's forces, and Cleopatra was made dual ruler with another brother, Ptolemy XIV. Julius and Cleopatra spent several amorous weeks together, and then Caesar departed for Asia Minor, where he declared "Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered), after putting down a rebellion. In June 47 B.C., Cleopatra bore a son, whom she claimed was Caesar's and named Caesarion, meaning "little Caesar."
Upon Caesar's triumphant return to Rome, Cleopatra and Caesarion joined him there. Under the auspices of negotiating a treaty with Rome, Cleopatra lived discretely in a villa that Caesar owned outside the capital. After Caesar was assassinated in March 44 B.C., she returned to Egypt. Soon after, Ptolemy XIV died, likely poisoned by Cleopatra, and the queen made her son co-ruler with her as Ptolemy XV Caesar.
With Julius Caesar's murder, Rome again fell into civil war, which was temporarily resolved in 43 B.C. with the formation of the second triumvirate, made up of Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew and chosen heir; Mark Antony, a powerful general; and Lepidus, a Roman statesman. Antony took up the administration of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and he summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus, in Asia Minor, to answer charges that she had aided his enemies.
Cleopatra sought to seduce Antony, as she had Caesar before him, and in 41 B.C. arrived in Tarsus on a magnificent river barge, dressed as Venus, the Roman god of love. Successful in her efforts, Antony returned with her to Alexandria, where they spent the winter in debauchery. In 40 B.C., Antony returned to Rome and married Octavian's sister Octavia in an effort to mend his strained alliance with Octavian. The triumvirate, however, continued to deteriorate. In 37 B.C., Antony separated from Octavia and traveled east, arranging for Cleopatra to join him in Syria. In their time apart, Cleopatra had borne him twins, a son and a daughter. According to Octavian's propagandists, the lovers were then married, which violated the Roman law restricting Romans from marrying foreigners.
Antony's disastrous military campaign against Parthia in 36 B.C. further reduced his prestige, but in 34 B.C. he was more successful against Armenia. To celebrate the victory, he staged a triumphal procession through the streets of Alexandria, in which he and Cleopatra sat on golden thrones, and Caesarion and their children were given imposing royal titles. Many in Rome, spurred on by Octavian, interpreted the spectacle as a sign that Antony intended to deliver the Roman Empire into alien hands.
After several more years of tension and propaganda attacks, Octavian declared war against Cleopatra, and therefore Antony, in 31 B.C. Enemies of Octavian rallied to Antony's side, but Octavian's brilliant military commanders gained early successes against his forces. On September 2, 31 B.C., their fleets clashed at Actium in Greece. After heavy fighting, Cleopatra broke from the engagement and set course for Egypt with 60 of her ships. Antony then broke through the enemy line and followed her. The disheartened fleet that remained surrendered to Octavian. One week later, Antony's land forces surrendered.
Although they had suffered a decisive defeat, it was nearly a year before Octavian reached Alexandria and again defeated Antony. In the aftermath of the battle, Cleopatra took refuge in the mausoleum she had commissioned for herself. Antony, informed that Cleopatra was dead, stabbed himself with his sword. Before he died, another messenger arrived, saying Cleopatra still lived. Antony had himself carried to Cleopatra's retreat, where he died after bidding her to make her peace with Octavian. When the triumphant Roman arrived, she attempted to seduce him, but he resisted her charms. Rather than fall under Octavian's domination, Cleopatra committed suicide on August 30, 30 B.C., possibly by means of an asp, a poisonous Egyptian serpent and symbol of divine royalty.
Octavian then executed her son Caesarion, annexed Egypt into the Roman Empire, and used Cleopatra's treasure to pay off his veterans. In 27 B.C., Octavian became Augustus, the first and arguably most successful of all Roman emperors. He ruled a peaceful, prosperous, and expanding Roman Empire until his death in 14 A.D. at the age of 75.
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Aug 31, 1888
Jack the Ripper claims first victim
Prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim of London serial killer "Jack the Ripper," is found murdered and mutilated in Whitechapel's Buck's Row. The East End of London saw four more victims of the murderer during the next few months, but no suspect was ever found.
In Victorian England, London's East End was a teeming slum occupied by nearly a million of the city's poorest citizens. Many women were forced to resort to prostitution, and in 1888 there were estimated to be more than 1,000 prostitutes in Whitechapel. That summer, a serial killer began targeting these downtrodden women. On September 8, the killer claimed his second victim, Annie Chapman, and on September 30 two more prostitutes--Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes--were murdered and carved up on the same night. By then, London's police had determined the pattern of the killings. The murderer, offering to pay for sex, would lure his victims onto a secluded street or square and then slice their throats. As the women rapidly bled to death, he would then brutally mutilate them with the same six-inch knife.
The police, who lacked modern forensic techniques such as fingerprinting and blood typing, were at a complete loss for suspects. Dozens of letters allegedly written by the murderer were sent to the police, and the vast majority of these were immediately deemed fraudulent. However, two letters--written by the same individual--alluded to crime facts known only to the police and the killer. These letters, signed "Jack the Ripper," gave rise to the serial killer's popular nickname.
On November 7, after a month of silence, Jack took his fifth and last victim, Irish-born Mary Kelly, an occasional prostitute. Of all his victims' corpses, Kelly's was the most hideously mutilated. In 1892, with no leads found and no more murders recorded, the Jack the Ripper file was closed.
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Sep 1, 1802
Richmond Recorder publishes report of presidential concubine
On this day in 1802, the Richmond Recorder publishes a report that Thomas Jefferson, at the time temporarily retired from politics and living on his plantation, Monticello, kept one of his female slaves as a mistress. The article gave only the woman's first name, "Sally," but was most likely referring to Sally Hemings, a slave who had once served as a maid and seamstress to Jefferson's deceased wife, Martha. After Martha's death, Hemings became an attendant to Jefferson's daughter, Maria.
At the time, newspapers and broadsheets were venues through which some of America's top political personalities could unleash their unbridled criticism of an opponent behind a veil of anonymity. Rivals issued both personal and political attacks in attempts to shame or discredit each other. In 1792, publisher James Callendar—then a supporter of Jefferson's whose paper was secretly funded by Jefferson and his Republican allies--published a report of Alexander Hamilton's adulterous affair with a colleague's wife, to which Hamilton later confessed. In 1802, when then-President Jefferson snubbed Callendar by denying his request for a political appointment, Callendar retaliated with an exposé on Jefferson's "concubine," Hemings, who also happened to be the half- black half-sister of Jefferson's deceased wife. The article also charged that Hemings' son, John, bore a "striking...resemblance to those of the President himself." Jefferson chose not to respond to the allegations.
The belief that the widowed Jefferson was having an affair with one of his slaves persists to this day. Not only did it tarnish, for some, Jefferson's legacy as America's foremost proponent of equality, it spawned years of scholarly and scientific research regarding his and Hemings' alleged progeny. In 2000, a scholarly committee used DNA test results, original documents, oral histories and statistical data to conclude that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings' six children. Another committee, using the same data, concluded that Jefferson's younger brother Randolph was Hemings' lover and the father of her children.
Hemings left no written records. Jefferson never officially freed her, but did free her children. She left Monticello after Jefferson's death in 1826.
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Sep 2, 1789
Congress founds U.S. Treasury
On this day in 1789, the United States Treasury Department is founded.
The institution's roots can be traced to 1775, when America's leaders were looking for ways to fund the Revolutionary War. Their solution--issuing cash that doubled as redeemable "bills of credit"--raised enough capital to fuel the revolution. but also led to the country's first debt. The Continental Congress attempted to reign in the economy, even forming a pre-Constitutional version of the Treasury. Neither this move, nor the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which enabled the U.S. to seek loans from foreign countries, proved effective. The debt kept mounting, while war notes rapidly deflated in value.
With the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the American government established a permanent Treasury Department in hopes of controlling the nation's debt. President George Washington named his former aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton, to head the new office. The former New York lawyer and staunch Federalist stepped in as Secretary of the Treasury on September 11. Hamilton soon outlined a practical plan for reviving the nation's ailing economy: the government would pay back its $75 million war debt and thus repair its badly damaged public credit.
Hamilton had been elected to the Continental Congress from New York in 1782. He demonstrated a near-reactionary political philosophy and quickly became known as a determined proponent of a stronger national government. Hamilton published several papers with James Madison and John Jay arguing for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution that are now known as the "Federalist Papers." As the first secretary of the treasury, Hamilton established most of the centralized monetary institutions of the new nation, including the national bank, before resigning in January 1795. Hamilton then returned to the private sector and a law practice in New York City, but remained a close advisor to President Washington.
In 1800, Hamilton became embroiled in a bitter dispute when he threw his support behind President John Adams' reelection campaign instead of presidential candidate Aaron Burr's. After his defeat, Burr ran for governor of New York in 1804; Hamilton again opposed his candidacy. Humiliated, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel on July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey. Alexander Hamilton was shot in the duel and died of his wound the following day, July 12, in New York at the age of 49.
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Sep 3, 1783
Treaty of Paris signed
The American Revolution officially comes to an end when representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Spain and France sign the Treaty of Paris on this day in 1783. The signing signified America's status as a free nation, as Britain formally recognized the independence of its 13 former American colonies, and the boundaries of the new republic were agreed upon: Florida north to the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast west to the Mississippi River.
The events leading up to the treaty stretched back to April 1775, on a common green in Lexington, Massachusetts, when American colonists answered King George III's refusal to grant them political and economic reform with armed revolution. On July 4, 1776, more than a year after the first volleys of the war were fired, the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. Five difficult years later, in October 1781, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing to an end the last major battle of the Revolution.
In September 1782, Benjamin Franklin, along with John Adams and John Jay, began official peace negotiations with the British. The Continental Congress had originally named a five-person committee--including Franklin, Adams and Jay, along with Thomas Jefferson and Henry Laurens--to handle the talks. However, both Jefferson and Laurens missed the sessions--Jefferson had travel delays and Laurens had been captured by the British and was being held in the Tower of London. The U.S. delegation, which was distrustful of the French, opted to negotiate separately with the British.
During the talks Franklin demanded that Britain hand over Canada to the United States. This did not come to pass, but America did gain enough new territory south of the Canadian border to double its size. The United States also successfully negotiated for important fishing rights in Canadian waters and agreed, among other things, not to prevent British creditors from attempting to recover debts owed to them. Two months later, the key details had been hammered out and on November 30, 1882, the United States and Britain signed the preliminary articles of the treaty. France signed its own preliminary peace agreement with Britain on January 20, 1783, and then in September of that year, the final treaty was signed by all three nations and Spain. The Treaty of Paris was ratified by the Continental Congress on January 14, 1884.
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Sep 4, 2013
The Great Getbig server crash.
Many wept.
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Sep 5, 1972
Arab terrorists take Israeli hostages at the Olympics
In the early morning hours of September 5, six members of the Arab terrorist group known as Black September dressed in the Olympic sweat suits of Arab nations and jumped the fence surrounding the Olympic village in Munich, Germany, carrying bags filled with guns. Although guards spotted them, they paid little attention because athletes often jumped the fence during the competition to return to their living quarters.
After changing into disguises, the terrorists, toting machine guns, burst into the apartments of 21 Israeli athletes and officials. Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling referee who valiantly tried to keep the terrorists out, saved Tuvia Sokolovsky, who was able to climb out a window and escape. In another apartment, Moshe Weinberg was shot 12 times but still managed to wound one of the terrorists and save the life of one of his teammates.
Created in 1970 by a few survivors of the "ten terrible September days" of fighting against Jordan for a Palestinian homeland, Black September succeeded in taking nine hostages before demanding the release of 234 prisoners-most of whom were Arab terrorists. The demands were categorically refused, but it was eventually agreed that the terrorists and the hostages would be taken to the Furstenfeldbruck airport by helicopter and given a plane.
The German government planned an ambush at the airport, stationing sharpshooters around the runway and officers in the airplane. However, the plan quickly disintegrated when the officers in the plane, worried about their lack of preparation, deserted. There weren't nearly enough sharpshooters to effectively take down all of the terrorists either, partly because the Germans didn't realize that two other terrorists had joined the Black September attack.
Still, the ambush was carried out. Three terrorists were taken out in the first wave of shots, but the others were able to hide out of range. One threw a grenade into a helicopter where five hostages were still tied up, instantly killing them all. Another terrorist fired his machine gun into another helicopter, killing the remaining hostages.
Twenty hours after Black September had begun their attack, a German police official, 5 Palestinian terrorists, and 11 Israeli athletes lay dead. Three of the terrorists who survived were imprisoned but were set free a month later when Arabs hijacked a Lufthansa 727 and demanded their release.
A few days after the tragic event at the Olympics, Israel retaliated with air strikes against Syria and Lebanon, killing 66 people and wounding dozens. In addition, Israel sent out assassination squads to hunt down members of Black September while Israeli troops broke through the Lebanese border, igniting the heaviest fighting since the Six-Day War of 1967.
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Sep 6, 1522
Magellan's expedition circumnavigates globe
One of Ferdinand Magellan's five ships--the Vittoria--arrives at SanlÚcar de Barrameda in Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the world. The Vittoria was commanded by Basque navigator Juan SebastiÁn de Elcano, who took charge of the vessel after the murder of Magellan in the Philippines in April 1521. During a long, hard journey home, the people on the ship suffered from starvation, scurvy, and harassment by Portuguese ships. Only Elcano, 17 other Europeans, and four Indians survived to reach Spain in September 1522.
On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific. He searched the RÍo de la Plata, a large estuary south of Brazil, for a way through; failing, he continued south along the coast of Patagonia. At the end of March 1520, the expedition set up winter quarters at Port St. Julian. On Easter day at midnight, the Spanish captains mutinied against their Portuguese captain, but Magellan crushed the revolt, executing one of the captains and leaving another ashore when his ship left St. Julian in August.
On October 21, he finally discovered the strait he had been seeking. The Strait of Magellan, as it became known, is located near the tip of South America, separating Tierra del Fuego and the continental mainland. Only three ships entered the passage; one had been wrecked and another deserted. It took 38 days to navigate the treacherous strait, and when ocean was sighted at the other end Magellan wept with joy. He was the first European explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. His fleet accomplished the westward crossing of the ocean in 99 days, crossing waters so strangely calm that the ocean was named "Pacific," from the Latin word pacificus, meaning "tranquil." By the end, the men were out of food and chewed the leather parts of their gear to keep themselves alive. On March 6, 1521, the expedition landed at the island of Guam.
Ten days later, they dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebu--they were only about 400 miles from the Spice Islands. Magellan met with the chief of Cebú, who after converting to Christianity persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the neighboring island of Mactan. In subsequent fighting on April 27, Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades.
After Magellan's death, the survivors, in two ships, sailed on to the Moluccas and loaded the hulls with spice. One ship attempted, unsuccessfully, to return across the Pacific. The other ship, the Vittoria, continued west under the command of Juan SebastiÁn de Elcano. The vessel sailed across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived at the Spanish port of SanlÚcar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the globe. The Vittoria then sailed up the Guadalquivir River, reaching Seville a few days later.
Elcano was later appointed to lead a fleet of seven ships on another voyage to Moluccas on behalf of Emperor Charles V. He died of scurvy en route.
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Sep 7, 1996
Tupac Shakur is shot
Actor and hip-hop recording artist Tupac Shakur is shot several times in Las Vegas, Nevada, after attending a boxing match. Shakur was riding in a black BMW with Death Row Records founder Marion "Suge" Knight when a white Cadillac sedan pulled alongside and fired into Shakur's car. Knight was only grazed in the head, but Shakur was hit several times. He died in a hospital several days later.
Although Shakur's killer was never identified, some believe Orlando Anderson, a member of the Los Angeles gang Southside Crips, was responsible. Earlier in the evening, prior to the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon heavyweight fight, Anderson had been attacked in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel by a group from Death Row Records, including Suge Knight. When a videotape of the attack came to light, Knight, who was out on parole at the time, had to return to prison to serve out a nine-year sentence. Suspecting revenge as a motive, Shakur's mother filed suit against Anderson for her son's death; but the case was never resolved because Anderson was shot to death in May 1998 in a shoot-out outside a Los Angeles car wash.
Shakur had been involved in a string of violent encounters before the shooting in Las Vegas. In 1993, he was convicted of assault and battery after an attack on a music video producer. That same year, a limousine driver claimed that Shakur had severely beaten him. In 1995, while on trial for sexually abusing a young woman in a hotel room, Shakur was shot five times during an alleged robbery attempt at a New York recording studio. He was later convicted of sexual assault. In 1996, he was sent to prison for violating probation and for failure to complete his mandated community service.
Before his death, Shakur was also the defendant in a couple of civil lawsuits. When Ronald Ray Howard shot a Texas state trooper to death after listening to Shakur's songs in 1993, the trooper's widow filed suit against Shakur for manufacturing and distributing music that allegedly incited "imminent lawless action." In October 1994, two 17-year-old kids in Milwaukee killed a police officer in a sniper attack after claiming they had been "geeked up" by Shakur's music.
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Sep 8, 1664
New Amsterdam becomes New York
Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrenders New Amsterdam, the capital of New Netherland, to an English naval squadron under Colonel Richard Nicolls. Stuyvesant had hoped to resist the English, but he was an unpopular ruler, and his Dutch subjects refused to rally around him. Following its capture, New Amsterdam's name was changed to New York, in honor of the Duke of York, who organized the mission.
The colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company in 1624 and grew to encompass all of present-day New York City and parts of Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. A successful Dutch settlement in the colony grew up on the southern tip of Manhattan Island and was christened New Amsterdam.
To legitimatize Dutch claims to New Amsterdam, Dutch governor Peter Minuit formally purchased Manhattan from the local tribe from which it derives it name in 1626. According to legend, the Manhattans--Indians of Algonquian linguistic stock--agreed to give up the island in exchange for trinkets valued at only $24. However, as they were ignorant of European customs of property and contracts, it was not long before the Manhattans came into armed conflict with the expanding Dutch settlement at New Amsterdam. Beginning in 1641, a protracted war was fought between the colonists and the Manhattans, which resulted in the death of more than 1,000 Indians and settlers.
In 1664, New Amsterdam passed to English control, and English and Dutch settlers lived together peacefully. In 1673, there was a short interruption of English rule when the Netherlands temporary regained the settlement. In 1674, New York was returned to the English, and in 1686 it became the first city in the colonies to receive a royal charter. After the American Revolution, it became the first capital of the United States.
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Sep 9, 1850
California becomes the 31st state in record time
Though it had only been a part of the United States for less than two years, California becomes the 31st state in the union (without ever even having been a territory) on this day in 1850.
Mexico had reluctantly ceded California and much of its northern territory to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,. When the Mexican diplomats signed the treaty, they pictured California as a region of sleepy mission towns with a tiny population of about 7,300-not a devastating loss to the Mexican empire. Their regret might have been much sharper had they known that gold had been discovered at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, nine days before they signed the peace treaty. Suddenly, the greatest gold rush in history was on, and "forty-niners" began flooding into California chasing after the fist-sized gold nuggets rumored to be strewn about the ground just waiting to be picked up. California's population and wealth skyrocketed.
Most newly acquired regions of the U.S. went through long periods as territories before they had the 60,000 inhabitants needed to achieve statehood, and prior to the Gold Rush, emigration to California had been so slow that it would have been decades before the population reached that number. But with gold fever reaching epidemic proportions around the world, more than 60,000 people from around the globe came to California in 1849 alone. Faced with such rapid growth, as well as a thorny congressional debate over the question of slavery in the new territories, Congress allowed California to jump straight to full statehood without ever passing through the formal territorial stage. After a rancorous debate between the slave-state and free-soil advocates, Congress finally accepted California as a free-labor state under the Compromise of 1850, beginning the state's long reign as the most powerful economic and political force in the far West.
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Sep 10, 1608
Smith to lead Jamestown
English adventurer John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia--the first permanent English settlement in North America. Smith, a colorful figure, had won popularity in the colony because of his organizational abilities and effectiveness in dealing with local Native American groups.
In May 1607, about 100 English colonists settled along the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown. The settlers fared badly because of famine, disease, and Indian attacks, but were aided by the 27-year-old John Smith, who directed survival efforts and mapped the area. While exploring the Chickahominy River in December 1607, Smith and two colonists were captured by Powhatan warriors. At the time, the Powhatan Indian confederacy consisted of around 30 Tidewater-area tribes led by Chief Wahunsonacock, known as Chief Powhatan to the English. Smith's companions were killed, but he was spared and released (according to a 1624 account by Smith) because of the dramatic intercession of Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's 13-year-old daughter.
In 1608, Smith became president of the Jamestown colony, but the settlement continued to suffer. An accidental fire destroyed much of the town, and hunger, disease, and Indian attacks continued. During this time, Pocahontas often came to Jamestown as an emissary of her father, sometimes bearing gifts of food to help the hard-pressed settlers. She befriended the settlers and became acquainted with English ways. In 1609, Smith was injured from a fire in his gunpowder bag and was forced to return to England.
John Smith returned to the New World in 1614 to explore the New England coast, carefully mapping the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod. That April, Pocahontas married the English planter John Rolfe in Jamestown. On another voyage of exploration, in 1615, Smith was captured by pirates but escaped after three months of captivity. He then returned to England, where he died in 1631.
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Sep 11, 2001
Attack on America
At 8:45 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors. As the evacuation of the tower and its twin got underway, television cameras broadcasted live images of what initially appeared to be a freak accident. Then, 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767--United Airlines Flight 175--appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center, and sliced into the south tower at about the 60th floor. The collision caused a massive explosion that showered burning debris over surrounding buildings and the streets below. America was under attack.
The attackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America's support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and its continued military presence in the Middle East. Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the U.S. in the months before September 11 and acted as the "muscle" in the operation. The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through security at three East Coast airports and boarded four flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for the long transcontinental journey. Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming the ordinary commuter jets into guided missiles.
As millions watched in horror the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington and slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to a structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.
Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. The structural steel of the skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 mph and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel. At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed. Close to 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 other people were treated for injuries, many severe.
Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane--United Flight 93--was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett, Jr., told his wife over the phone that "I know we're all going to die. There's three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey." Another passenger--Todd Beamer--was heard saying "Are you guys ready? Let's roll" over an open line. Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were "Everyone's running to first class. I've got to go. Bye."
The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All 45 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.
At 7 p.m., President George W. Bush, who had spent the day being shuttled around the country because of security concerns, returned to the White House. At 9 p.m., he delivered a televised address from the Oval Office, declaring "Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve." In a reference to the eventual U.S. military response he declared: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."
Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led international effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and destroy Osama bin Laden's terrorist network based there, began on October 7, 2001. Bin Laden was killed during a raid of his compound in Pakistan by U.S. forces on May 2, 2011.
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Sep 12, 1940
Lascaux cave paintings discovered
Near Montignac, France, a collection of prehistoric cave paintings are discovered by four teenagers who stumbled upon the ancient artwork after following their dog down a narrow entrance into a cavern. The 15,000- to 17,000-year-old paintings, consisting mostly of animal representations, are among the finest examples of art from the Upper Paleolithic period.
First studied by the French archaeologist Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil, the Lascaux grotto consists of a main cavern 66 feet wide and 16 feet high. The walls of the cavern are decorated with some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols and nearly 1,500 engravings. The pictures depict in excellent detail numerous types of animals, including horses, red deer, stags, bovines, felines, and what appear to be mythical creatures. There is only one human figure depicted in the cave: a bird-headed man with an erect phallus. Archaeologists believe that the cave was used over a long period of time as a center for hunting and religious rites.
The Lascaux grotto was opened to the public in 1948 but was closed in 1963 because artificial lights had faded the vivid colors of the paintings and caused algae to grow over some of them. A replica of the Lascaux cave was opened nearby in 1983 and receives tens of thousands of visitors annually.
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Cool thread :)
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Sep 13, 1814
Key pens Star-Spangled Banner
On this day in 1814, Francis Scott Key pens a poem which is later set to music and in 1931 becomes America's national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." The poem, originally titled "The Defence of Fort McHenry," was written after Key witnessed the Maryland fort being bombarded by the British during the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the sight of a lone U.S. flag still flying over Fort McHenry at daybreak, as reflected in the now-famous words of the "Star-Spangled Banner": "And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there."
Francis Scott Key was born on August 1, 1779, at Terra Rubra, his family's estate in Frederick County (now Carroll County), Maryland. He became a successful lawyer in Maryland and Washington, D.C., and was later appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
On June 18, 1812, America declared war on Great Britain after a series of trade disagreements. In August 1814, British troops invaded Washington, D.C., and burned the White House, Capitol Building and Library of Congress. Their next target was Baltimore.
After one of Key's friends, Dr. William Beanes, was taken prisoner by the British, Key went to Baltimore, located the ship where Beanes was being held and negotiated his release. However, Key and Beanes weren't allowed to leave until after the British bombardment of Fort McHenry. Key watched the bombing campaign unfold from aboard a ship located about eight miles away. After a day, the British were unable to destroy the fort and gave up. Key was relieved to see the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry and quickly penned a few lines in tribute to what he had witnessed.
The poem was printed in newspapers and eventually set to the music of a popular English drinking tune called "To Anacreon in Heaven" by composer John Stafford Smith. People began referring to the song as "The Star-Spangled Banner" and in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson announced that it should be played at all official events. It was adopted as the national anthem on March 3, 1931.
Francis Scott Key died of pleurisy on January 11, 1843. Today, the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1914 is housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
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Sep 14, 1901
McKinley dies of infection from gunshot wounds
On this day in 1901, U.S. President William McKinley dies after being shot by a deranged anarchist during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
McKinley won his first Congressional seat at the age of 34 and spent 14 years in the House, becoming known as the leading Republican expert on tariffs. After losing his seat in 1890, McKinley served two terms as governor of Ohio. By 1896, he had emerged as the leading Republican candidate for president, aided by the support of the wealthy Ohio industrialist Mark Hanna. That fall, McKinley defeated his Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan, by the largest popular margin since the Civil War.
As president, McKinley became known--controversially--as a protector of big businesses, which enjoyed unprecedented growth during his administration. He advocated the protective tariff as a way of shielding U.S. business and labor from foreign competition, and he successfully argued for using the gold standard of currency.
Above all, however, McKinley's presidency was dominated by his foreign policy. In April 1898, he was pushed by Congress and American public opinion to intervene in Cuba's struggle for independence from Spanish colonial rule. In the first American war against a foreign power since 1812, the United States handily defeated Spain in just three months, freeing Cuba--although the island became a U.S. protectorate--and annexing Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. For the first time, the United States had become a colonialist power.
America's growing interests in the Pacific led McKinley's administration to greatly increase its involvement in Asian politics. In 1900, McKinley sent thousands of U.S. troops to China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion, aimed at driving out foreigners. His aggressive "Open Door" policy declared U.S. support for an independent China and argued that all nations with commercial interests in China should be able to compete on equal footing.
The popular McKinley won a second term by even greater margins over Bryan, who attacked him on his "imperialism" in the Pacific and, domestically, on the growth of illegal monopolies, or trusts. There was little time to see what his second term would bring, however. On September 6, 1901, while standing in a receiving line at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, McKinley was approached by Leon Czolgosz, a Polish-American anarchist carrying a concealed .32 revolver in a handkerchief. Drawing his weapon, Czolgosz shot McKinley twice at close range. One bullet deflected off a suit button, but the other entered his stomach, passed through the kidneys, and lodged in his back. When he was operated on, doctors failed to find the bullet, and gangrene soon spread throughout his body. McKinley died eight days later. Czolgosz was convicted of murder and executed soon after the shooting.
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Sep 15, 1916
Tanks introduced into warfare at the Somme
During the Battle of the Somme, the British launch a major offensive against the Germans, employing tanks for the first time in history. At Flers Courcelette, some of the 40 or so primitive tanks advanced over a mile into enemy lines but were too slow to hold their positions during the German counterattack and subject to mechanical breakdown. However, General Douglas Haig, commander of Allied forces at the Somme, saw the promise of this new instrument of war and ordered the war department to produce hundreds more.
On July 1, the British launched a massive offensive against German forces in the Somme River region of France. During the preceding week, 250,000 Allied shells had pounded German positions near the Somme, and 100,000 British soldiers poured out of their trenches and into no-man's-land on July 1, expecting to find the way cleared for them. However, scores of heavy German machine guns had survived the artillery onslaught, and the infantry were massacred. By the end of the day, 20,000 British soldiers were dead and 40,000 wounded. It was the single heaviest day of casualties in British military history.
After the initial disaster, Haig resigned himself to smaller but equally ineffectual advances, and more than 1,000 Allied lives were extinguished for every 100 yards gained on the Germans. Even Britain's September 15 introduction of tanks into warfare for the first time in history failed to break the deadlock in the Battle of the Somme. In October, heavy rains turned the battlefield into a sea of mud, and on November 18 Haig called off the Somme offensive after more than four months of mass slaughter.
Except for its effect of diverting German troops from the Battle of Verdun, the offensive was a miserable disaster. It amounted to a total advance of just five miles for the Allies, with more than 600,000 British and French soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in action. German casualties were more than 650,000. Although Haig was severely criticized for the costly battle, his willingness to commit massive amounts of men and resources to the stalemate along the western front did eventually contribute to the collapse of an exhausted Germany in 1918.
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I like this thread, Shizz.
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I like this thread, Shizz.
Im glad people enjoy it.
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Sep 16, 1620
Mayflower departs England
The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists--half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs--had been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the "Pilgrims" reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.
Thirty-five of the Pilgrims were members of the radical English Separatist Church, who traveled to America to escape the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they found corrupt. Ten years earlier, English persecution had led a group of Separatists to flee to Holland in search of religious freedom. However, many were dissatisfied with economic opportunities in the Netherlands, and under the direction of William Bradford they decided to immigrate to Virginia, where an English colony had been founded at Jamestown in 1607.
The Separatists won financial backing from a group of investors called the London Adventurers, who were promised a sizable share of the colony's profits. Three dozen church members made their way back to England, where they were joined by about 70 entrepreneurs--enlisted by the London stock company to ensure the success of the enterprise. In August 1620, the Mayflower left Southampton with a smaller vessel--the Speedwell--but the latter proved unseaworthy and twice was forced to return to port. On September 16, the Mayflower left for America alone from Plymouth.
In a difficult Atlantic crossing, the 90-foot Mayflower encountered rough seas and storms and was blown more than 500 miles off course. Along the way, the settlers formulated and signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement that bound the signatories into a "civil body politic." Because it established constitutional law and the rule of the majority, the compact is regarded as an important precursor to American democracy. After a 66-day voyage, the ship landed on November 21 on the tip of Cape Cod at what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts.
After coming to anchor in Provincetown harbor, a party of armed men under the command of Captain Myles Standish was sent out to explore the area and find a location suitable for settlement. While they were gone, Susanna White gave birth to a son, Peregrine, aboard the Mayflower. He was the first English child born in New England. In mid-December, the explorers went ashore at a location across Cape Cod Bay where they found cleared fields and plentiful running water and named the site Plymouth.
The expedition returned to Provincetown, and on December 21 the Mayflower came to anchor in Plymouth harbor. Just after Christmas, the pilgrims began work on dwellings that would shelter them through their difficult first winter in America.
In the first year of settlement, half the colonists died of disease. In 1621, the health and economic condition of the colonists improved, and that autumn Governor William Bradford invited neighboring Indians to Plymouth to celebrate the bounty of that year's harvest season. Plymouth soon secured treaties with most local Indian tribes, and the economy steadily grew, and more colonists were attracted to the settlement. By the mid 1640s, Plymouth's population numbered 3,000 people, but by then the settlement had been overshadowed by the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north, settled by Puritans in 1629.
The term "Pilgrim" was not used to describe the Plymouth colonists until the early 19th century and was derived from a manuscript in which Governor Bradford spoke of the "saints" who left Holland as "pilgrimes." The orator Daniel Webster spoke of "Pilgrim Fathers" at a bicentennial celebration of Plymouth's founding in 1820, and thereafter the term entered common usage.
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Sep 17, 1862
Rebels and Yankees clash at the Battle of Antietam
On this day in 1862, at the Battle of Antietam, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Union General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac fight to a standstill along a Maryland creek on the bloodiest day in American history. Although the battle was a tactical draw, it forced Lee to end his invasion of the North and retreat back to Virginia.
After Lee's decisive victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run, Virginia, on August 30, 1862, the Confederate general had steered his army north into Maryland. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis believed that another Rebel victory might bring recognition and aid from Great Britain and France. Lee also sought to relieve pressure on Virginia by carrying the conflict to the North. His ragtag army was in dire need of supplies, which Lee hoped to obtain from Maryland farms that were untouched by the war.
Lee split his army as he moved into Maryland. One corps marched to capture Harpers Ferry, Virginia, while the other two searched for provisions. Although a copy of Lee's orders ended up in the hands of McClellan, the Union general failed to act quickly, allowing Lee time to gather his army along Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg, Maryland. McClellan arrived on September 16 and prepared to attack.
The Battle of Antietam actually consisted of three battles. Beginning at dawn on September 17, Union General Joseph Hooker's men stormed Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's troops around the Dunker Church, the West Woods, and David Miller's cornfield. The Federals made repeated attacks, but furious Rebel counterattacks kept the Yankees in check. By early afternoon, the fighting moved south to the middle of the battlefield. Union troops under General Edwin Sumner inflicted devastating casualties on the Confederates along a sunken road that became known as "Bloody Lane," before the Southerners retreated. McClellan refused to apply reserves to exploit the opening in the Confederate center because he believed Lee's force to be much larger than it actually was. In the late afternoon, Union General Ambrose Burnside attacked General James Longstreet's troops across a stone bridge that came to bear Burnside's name. The Yankees crossed the creek, but a Confederate counterattack brought any further advance to a halt.
The fighting ended by early evening, and the two armies remained in place throughout the following day. After dark on September 18, Lee began pulling his troops out of their defenses for a retreat to Virginia. The losses for the one-day battle were staggering. Union casualties included 2,108 dead, 9,540 wounded, and 753 missing, while Confederate casualties numbered 1,546 dead, 7,752 wounded, and 1,108 missing.
Although the Union army drove Lee's force back to Virginia, the battle was a lost opportunity for the Yankees. McClellan had an overwhelming numerical advantage, but he did not know it. Another attack on September 18 may well have scattered the Confederates and cut off Lee's line of retreat.
A week later, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and expanded the Northern goal from a war for reunification into a crusade for the end of slavery.
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Sep 18, 1793
Capitol cornerstone is laid
On this day in 1793, George Washington lays the cornerstone to the United States Capitol building, the home of the legislative branch of American government. The building would take nearly a century to complete, as architects came and went, the British set fire to it and it was called into use during the Civil War. Today, the Capitol building, with its famous cast-iron dome and important collection of American art, is part of the Capitol Complex, which includes six Congressional office buildings and three Library of Congress buildings, all developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
As a young nation, the United States had no permanent capital, and Congress met in eight different cities, including Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia, before 1791. In 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which gave President Washington the power to select a permanent home for the federal government. The following year, he chose what would become the District of Columbia from land provided by Maryland. Washington picked three commissioners to oversee the capital city's development and they in turn chose French engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant to come up with the design. However, L'Enfant clashed with the commissioners and was fired in 1792. A design competition was then held, with a Scotsman named William Thornton submitting the winning entry for the Capitol building. In September 1793, Washington laid the Capitol's cornerstone and the lengthy construction process, which would involve a line of project managers and architects, got under way.
In 1800, Congress moved into the Capitol's north wing. In 1807, the House of Representatives moved into the building's south wing, which was finished in 1811. During the War of 1812, the British invaded Washington, D.C., and set fire to the Capitol on August 24, 1814. A rainstorm saved the building from total destruction. Congress met in nearby temporary quarters from 1815 to 1819. In the early 1850s, work began to expand the Capitol to accommodate the growing number of Congressmen. In 1861, construction was temporarily halted while the Capitol was used by Union troops as a hospital and barracks. Following the war, expansions and modern upgrades to the building continued into the next century.
Today, the Capitol, which is visited by 3 million to 5 million people each year, has 540 rooms and covers a ground area of about four acres.
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Sep 19, 1957
Nevada is site of first-ever underground nuclear explosion
On this day in 1957, the United States detonates a 1.7 kiloton nuclear weapon in an underground tunnel at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), a 1,375 square mile research center located 65 miles north of Las Vegas. The test, known as Rainier, was the first fully contained underground detonation and produced no radioactive fallout. A modified W-25 warhead weighing 218 pounds and measuring 25.7 inches in diameter and 17.4 inches in length was used for the test. Rainier was part of a series of 29 nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons safety tests known as Operation Plumbbob that were conducted at the NTS between May 28, 1957, and October 7, 1957.
In December 1941, the U.S. government committed to building the world's first nuclear weapon when President Franklin Roosevelt authorized $2 billion in funding for what came to be known as the Manhattan Project. The first nuclear weapon test took place on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. A few weeks later, on August 6, 1945, with the U.S. at war against Japan, President Harry Truman authorized the dropping of an atomic bomb named Little Boy over Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, on August 9, a nuclear bomb called Fat Man was dropped over Nagasaki. Two hundred thousand people, according to some estimates, were killed in the attacks on the two cities and on August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers.
1957's Operation Plumbbob took place at a time when the U.S. was engaged in a Cold War and nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. In 1963, the U.S. signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, underwater and outer space. A total of 928 tests took place at the Nevada Test Site between 1951 and 1992, when the U.S. conducted its last underground nuclear test. In 1996, the U.S signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits nuclear detonations in all environments.
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Sep 20, 1963
Kennedy proposes joint mission to the moon
An optimistic and upbeat President John F. Kennedy suggests that the Soviet Union and the United States cooperate on a mission to mount an expedition to the moon. The proposal caught both the Soviets and many Americans off guard.
In 1961, shortly after his election as president, John F. Kennedy announced that he was determined to win the "space race" with the Soviets. Since 1957, when the Soviet Union sent a small satellite--Sputnik--into orbit around the earth, Russian and American scientists had been competing to see who could make the next breakthrough in space travel. Outer space became another frontier in the Cold War. Kennedy upped the ante in 1961 when he announced that the United States would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Much had changed by 1963, however. Relations with the Soviet Union had improved measurably. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 had been settled peacefully. A "hot line" had been established between Washington and Moscow to help avert conflict and misunderstandings. A treaty banning the open air testing of nuclear weapons had been signed in 1963. On the other hand, U.S. fascination with the space program was waning. Opponents of the program cited the high cost of the proposed trip to the moon, estimated at more than $20 billion. In the midst of all of this, Kennedy, in a speech at the United Nations, proposed that the Soviet Union and United States cooperate in mounting a mission to the moon. "Why," he asked the audience, "therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition?" Kennedy noted, "the clouds have lifted a little" in terms of U.S.-Soviet relations, and declared "The Soviet Union and the United States, together with their allies, can achieve further agreements--agreements which spring from our mutual interest in avoiding mutual destruction."
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko applauded Kennedy's speech and called it a "good sign," but refused to comment on the proposal for a joint trip to the moon. In Washington, there was a good bit of surprise--and some skepticism--about Kennedy's proposal. The "space race" had been one of the focal points of the Kennedy administration when it came to office, and the idea that America would cooperate with the Soviets in sending a man to the moon seemed unbelievable. Other commentators saw economics, not politics, behind the proposal. With the soaring price tag for the lunar mission, perhaps a joint effort with the Soviets was the only way to save the costly program. What might have come of Kennedy's idea is unknown--just two months later, he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, abandoned the idea of cooperating with the Soviets but pushed ahead with the lunar program. In 1969, the United States landed a man on the moon, thus winning a significant victory the "space race."
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Sep 21, 1780
Benedict Arnold commits treason
On this day in 1780, during the American Revolution, American General Benedict Arnold meets with British Major John Andre to discuss handing over West Point to the British, in return for the promise of a large sum of money and a high position in the British army. The plot was foiled and Arnold, a former American hero, became synonymous with the word "traitor."
Arnold was born into a well-respected family in Norwich, Connecticut, on January 14, 1741. He apprenticed with an apothecary and was a member of the militia during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). He later became a successful trader and joined the Continental Army when the Revolutionary War broke out between Great Britain and its 13 American colonies in 1775. When the war ended in 1883, the colonies had won their independence from Britain and formed a new nation, the United States.
During the war, Benedict Arnold proved himself a brave and skillful leader, helping Ethan Allen's troops capture Fort Ticonderoga in 1775 and then participating in the unsuccessful attack on British Quebec later that year, which earned him a promotion to brigadier general. Arnold distinguished himself in campaigns at Lake Champlain, Ridgefield and Saratoga, and gained the support of George Washington. However, Arnold had enemies within the military and in 1777, five men of lesser rank were promoted over him. Over the course of the next few years, Arnold married for a second time and he and his new wife lived a lavish lifestyle in Philadelphia, accumulating substantial debt. The debt and the resentment Arnold felt over not being promoted faster were motivating factors in his choice to become a turncoat.
In 1780, Arnold was given command of West Point, an American fort on the Hudson River in New York (and future home of the U.S. military academy, established in 1802). Arnold contacted Sir Henry Clinton, head of the British forces, and proposed handing over West Point and his men. On September 21 of that year, Arnold met with Major John Andre and made his traitorous pact. However, the conspiracy was uncovered and Andre was captured and executed. Arnold, the former American patriot, fled to the enemy side and went on to lead British troops in Virginia and Connecticut. He later moved to England, though he never received all of what he'd been promised by the British. He died in London on June 14, 1801.
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Sep 22, 1862
Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation
On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issues a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which sets a date for the freedom of more than 3 million black slaves in the United States and recasts the Civil War as a fight against slavery.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, shortly after Lincoln's inauguration as America's 16th president, he maintained that the war was about restoring the Union and not about slavery. He avoided issuing an anti-slavery proclamation immediately, despite the urgings of abolitionists and radical Republicans, as well as his personal belief that slavery was morally repugnant. Instead, Lincoln chose to move cautiously until he could gain wide support from the public for such a measure.
In July 1862, Lincoln informed his cabinet that he would issue an emancipation proclamation but that it would exempt the so-called border states, which had slaveholders but remained loyal to the Union. His cabinet persuaded him not to make the announcement until after a Union victory. Lincoln's opportunity came following the Union win at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. On September 22, the president announced that slaves in areas still in rebellion within 100 days would be free.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, which declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebel states "are, and henceforward shall be free." The proclamation also called for the recruitment and establishment of black military units among the Union forces. An estimated 180,000 African Americans went on to serve in the army, while another 18,000 served in the navy.
After the Emancipation Proclamation, backing the Confederacy was seen as favoring slavery. It became impossible for anti-slavery nations such as Great Britain and France, who had been friendly to the Confederacy, to get involved on behalf of the South. The proclamation also unified and strengthened Lincoln's party, the Republicans, helping them stay in power for the next two decades.
The proclamation was a presidential order and not a law passed by Congress, so Lincoln then pushed for an antislavery amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ensure its permanence. With the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, slavery was eliminated throughout America (although blacks would face another century of struggle before they truly began to gain equal rights).
Lincoln's handwritten draft of the final Emancipation Proclamation was destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871. Today, the original official version of the document is housed in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
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Sep 23, 1943
Mussolini re-establishes a fascist regime in northern Italy
On this day in 1943, Benito Mussolini, deposed dictator of Italy, fashions a new fascist republic--by the leave of his new German masters--which he "rules" from his headquarters in northern Italy.
In July 1943, after a Grand Council vote of "no confidence," Mussolini was thrust from power and quickly placed under house arrest. The Italian masses, who had so enthusiastically embraced him for his promises of a new Italian "empire," now despised him for the humiliating defeat they had suffered during the war. But Mussolini still had one fan--Adolf Hitler.
Gen. Pietro Badoglio, who had assumed authority in Mussolini's absence, knew there might be an attempt to break the former Duce out of his confinement, and so moved him to a hotel in the Apennine Mountains. Despite the presence of an entire army of armed police, German commandos in a bold move swept onto an Apennine mountain peak from the air, overran the hotel, and flew Mussolini to Hitler's headquarters on the Russian front.
Mussolini could not sit still long and wanted to return to Italy to reassume power. But his German "patrons" had no intention of allowing him, whom they regarded as incompetent, to return to the scene of the disaster. So in order to pacify--and control--him, he was set up in a German-controlled area of northern Italy, Gargnano, on Lake Garda. Mussolini set about creating a reformed version of fascism, one that supposedly had learned from past mistakes and included elections and a free press. His "Verona Manifesto" was the blueprint for this new fascist republic-the Republic of Salo--where his government departments had fled in light of the Italian surrender to the Allies.
Of course, there were never any elections in the new fascist republic, and no freedom of anything. Salo was little more than a police state clogged with aging Black Shirts--corrupt, viscous, and delusional. And Mussolini, geographically removed from Salo, ensconced at Lake Garda as he was, controlled nothing. He was little more than a puppet of the Germans, spewing anti-Allied propaganda and avenging himself and his masters on traitors to the party by ordering the executions of former Grand Council members--including his own son-in-law, Count Ciano. Eventually, the Allied advance into northern Italy, and the brave guerilla warfare waged by the Italian partisans, spelled the end of Salo-and its paper ruler.
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Sep 24, 1789
The First Supreme Court
The Judiciary Act of 1789 is passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six justices who were to serve on the court until death or retirement. That day, President Washington nominated John Jay to preside as chief justice, and John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson to be associate justices. On September 26, all six appointments were confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
The U.S. Supreme Court was established by Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution granted the Supreme Court ultimate jurisdiction over all laws, especially those in which their constitutionality was at issue. The high court was also designated to oversee cases concerning treaties of the United States, foreign diplomats, admiralty practice, and maritime jurisdiction. On February 1, 1790, the first session of the U.S. Supreme Court was held in New York City's Royal Exchange Building.
The U.S. Supreme Court grew into the most important judicial body in the world in terms of its central place in the American political order. According to the Constitution, the size of the court is set by Congress, and the number of justices varied during the 19th century before stabilizing in 1869 at nine. In times of constitutional crisis, the nation's highest court has always played a definitive role in resolving, for better or worse, the great issues of the time.
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Sep 25, 1965
Fifty-nine-year-old Satchel Paige pitches three innings
On September 25, 1965, the Kansas City Athletics start ageless wonder Satchel Paige in a game against the Boston Red Sox. The 59-year-old Paige, a Negro League legend, proved his greatness once again by giving up only one hit in his three innings of play.
Leroy Page was born on July 7, 1906, in Mobile, Alabama. Page’s family changed the spelling of their name to Paige to differentiate themselves from John Page, Leroy’s absent and abusive father. "Satchel" got his nickname as a boy while working as a luggage carrier at the Mobile train station. When he was 12, his constant truancy coupled with a shoplifting incident got him sent to the Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama. It turned out to be a lucky break, as it was there that Paige learned to pitch. After leaving the school, he turned pro.
From 1927 to 1948 Paige served as the baseball equivalent of a hired gun: He pitched for any team in the United States or abroad that could afford him. He was the highest paid pitcher of his time, and he wowed crowds with the speed of his fastball, his trick pitches and his considerable bravado. Just for fun, Paige would sometimes call in his outfield and then strike out the side. From 1939 to 1942, the Kansas City Monarchs paid up for his services and were justly rewarded: Paige led the team to four consecutive Negro American League pennants from 1939 to 1942. In the 1942 Negro League World Series, Satchel won three games in a four-game sweep of the Homestead Grays, led by famed slugger Josh Gibson.
Paige’s contract was bought by Bill Veeck’s Cleveland Indians on July 7, 1948, his 42nd birthday. He made his major league debut two days later, entering in the fifth inning against the St. Louis Browns with the Indians trailing 4-1. He gave up two singles in two innings, striking one man out and inducing one batter to hit into a double play. The Indians lost the game 5-3 in spite of Paige’s contribution. That year Satchel Paige went 6-1 with a solid 2.48 ERA for the World Champion Cleveland Indians and was named to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Team for the American League in 1952 and 1953, when he was 46 and 47 years old respectively.
On September 25, 1965, Paige’s three innings for the Kansas City Athletics made him, at 59 years, 2 months and 18 days, the oldest pitcher ever to play a game in the major leagues. Before the game, Paige sat in the bullpen in a rocking chair while a nurse rubbed liniment into his pitching arm for the entire crowd to see. Any doubts about Paige’s ability were put to rest when he set down each of the Red Sox batters he faced except for Carl Yastremski, who hit a double.
Arguably the greatest pitcher of his era, Paige was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.
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Sep 26, 1580
Drake circumnavigates the globe
English seaman Francis Drake returns to Plymouth, England, in the Golden Hind, becoming the first British navigator to sail the earth.
On December 13, 1577, Drake set out from England with five ships on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World. After crossing the Atlantic, Drake abandoned two of his ships in South America and then sailed into the Straits of Magellan with the remaining three. A series of devastating storms besieged his expedition in the treacherous straits, wrecking one ship and forcing another to return to England. Only the Golden Hind reached the Pacific Ocean, but Drake continued undaunted up the western coast of South America, raiding Spanish settlements and capturing a rich Spanish treasure ship.
Drake then continued up the western coast of North America, searching for a possible northeast passage back to the Atlantic. Reaching as far north as present-day Washington before turning back, Drake paused near San Francisco Bay in June 1579 to repair his ship and prepare for a journey across the Pacific. Calling the land "Nova Albion," Drake claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I.
In July, the expedition set off across the Pacific, visiting several islands before rounding Africa's Cape of Good Hope and returning to the Atlantic Ocean. On September 26, 1580, the Golden Hind returned to Plymouth, England, bearing its rich captured treasure and valuable information about the world's great oceans. In 1581, Queen Elizabeth I knighted Drake during a visit to his ship. The most renowned of the Elizabethan seamen, he later played a crucial role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The explorer died 1596 at the age of 56.
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Thanks to whoever made this a sticky. :-*
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Sep 27, 1540
Jesuit order established
In Rome, the Society of Jesus--a Roman Catholic missionary organization--receives its charter from Pope Paul III. The Jesuit order played an important role in the Counter-Reformation and eventually succeeded in converting millions around the world to Catholicism.
The Jesuit movement was founded by Ignatius de Loyola, a Spanish soldier turned priest, in August 1534. The first Jesuits--Ignatius and six of his students--took vows of poverty and chastity and made plans to work for the conversion of Muslims. If travel to the Holy Land was not possible, they vowed to offer themselves to the pope for apostolic work. Unable to travel to Jerusalem because of the Turkish wars, they went to Rome instead to meet with the pope and request permission to form a new religious order. In September 1540, Pope Paul III approved Ignatius' outline of the Society of Jesus, and the Jesuit order was born.
Under Ignatius' charismatic leadership, the Society of Jesus grew quickly. Jesuit missionaries played a leading role in the Counter-Reformation and won back many of the European faithful who had been lost to Protestantism. In Ignatius' lifetime, Jesuits were also dispatched to India, Brazil, the Congo region, and Ethiopia. Education was of utmost importance to the Jesuits, and in Rome Ignatius founded the Roman College (later called the Gregorian University) and the Germanicum, a school for German priests. The Jesuits also ran several charitable organizations, such as one for former prostitutes and one for converted Jews. When Ignatius de Loyola died in July 1556, there were more than 1,000 Jesuit priests.
During the next century, the Jesuits set up ministries around the globe. The "Black-Robes," as they were known in Native America, often preceded other Europeans in their infiltration of foreign lands and societies. The life of a Jesuit was one of immense risk, and thousands of priests were persecuted or killed by foreign authorities hostile to their mission of conversion. However, in some nations, such as India and China, the Jesuits were welcomed as men of wisdom and science.
With the rise of nationalism in the 18th century, most European countries suppressed the Jesuits, and in 1773 Pope Clement XIV dissolved the order under pressure from the Bourbon monarchs. However, in 1814, Pope Pius VII gave in to popular demand and reestablished the Jesuits as an order, and they continue their missionary work to this day. Ignatius de Loyola was canonized a Catholic saint in 1622.
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Sep 28, 1066
William the Conqueror invades England
Claiming his right to the English throne, William, duke of Normandy, invades England at Pevensey on Britain's southeast coast. His subsequent defeat of King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings marked the beginning of a new era in British history.
William was the illegitimate son of Robert I, duke of Normandy, by his concubine Arlette, a tanner's daughter from the town of Falaise. The duke, who had no other sons, designated William his heir, and with his death in 1035 William became duke of Normandy at age seven. Rebellions were epidemic during the early years of his reign, and on several occasions the young duke narrowly escaped death. Many of his advisers did not. By the time he was 20, William had become an able ruler and was backed by King Henry I of France. Henry later turned against him, but William survived the opposition and in 1063 expanded the borders of his duchy into the region of Maine.
In 1051, William is believed to have visited England and met with his cousin Edward the Confessor, the childless English king. According to Norman historians, Edward promised to make William his heir. On his deathbed, however, Edward granted the kingdom to Harold Godwine, head of the leading noble family in England and more powerful than the king himself.
In January 1066, King Edward died, and Harold Godwine was proclaimed King Harold II. William immediately disputed his claim. In addition, King Harald III Hardraade of Norway had designs on England, as did Tostig, brother of Harold. King Harold rallied his forces for an expected invasion by William, but Tostig launched a series of raids instead, forcing the king to leave the English Channel unprotected. In September, Tostig joined forces with King Harald III and invaded England from Scotland. On September 25, Harold met them at Stamford Bridge and defeated and killed them both. Three days later, William landed in England at Pevensey.
With approximately 7,000 troops and cavalry, William seized Pevensey and marched to Hastings, where he paused to organize his forces. On October 13, Harold arrived near Hastings with his army, and the next day William led his forces out to give battle. At the end of a bloody, all-day battle, King Harold II was killed--shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend--and his forces were defeated.
William then marched on London and received the city's submission. On Christmas Day, 1066, William the Conqueror was crowned the first Norman king of England, in Westminster Abbey, and the Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end. French became the language of the king's court and gradually blended with the Anglo-Saxon tongue to give birth to modern English. William I proved an effective king of England, and the "Domesday Book," a great census of the lands and people of England, was among his notable achievements. Upon the death of William I in 1087, his son, William Rufus, became William II, the second Norman king of England.
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Sep 29, 1982
Cyanide-laced Tylenol kills six
Flight attendant Paula Prince buys a bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol. Prince was found dead on October 1, becoming the final victim of a mysterious ailment in Chicago, Illinois. Over the previous 24 hours, six other people had suddenly died of unknown causes in northwest Chicago. After Prince's death, Richard Keyworth and Philip Cappitelli, firefighters in the Windy City, realized that all seven victims had ingested Extra-Strength Tylenol prior to becoming ill. Further investigation revealed that several bottles of the Tylenol capsules had been poisoned with cyanide.
Mary Ann Kellerman, a seventh grader, was the first to die after ingesting the over-the-counter pain reliever. The next victim, Adam Janus, ended up in the emergency room in critical condition. After visiting his older brother in the hospital, Stanley Janus went back to Adam's house with his wife, Theresa. To alleviate their stress-induced headaches, they both took capsules from the open Tylenol bottle that was sitting on the counter. They too were poisoned--Stanley died and Theresa lapsed into a coma. That same day, Mary Reiner, who had a headache after giving birth, took the tainted pills. A woman named Mary McFarland was also poisoned.
While bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol were recalled nationwide, the only contaminated capsules were found in the Chicago area. The culprit was never caught, but the mass murder led to new tamper-proof medicine containers. It also led to a string of copycat crimes, as others sought to blackmail companies with alleged poisoning schemes, most of which proved to be false alarms.
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Sep 30, 1955
James Dean dies in car accident
At 5:45 PM on this day in 1955, 24-year-old actor James Dean is killed in Cholame, California, when the Porsche he is driving hits a Ford Tudor sedan at an intersection. The driver of the other car, 23-year-old California Polytechnic State University student Donald Turnupseed, was dazed but mostly uninjured; Dean’s passenger, German Porsche mechanic Rolf Wütherich was badly injured but survived. Only one of Dean’s movies, “East of Eden,” had been released at the time of his death (“Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” opened shortly afterward), but he was already on his way to superstardom--and the crash made him a legend.
James Dean loved racing cars, and in fact he and his brand-new, $7000 Porsche Spyder convertible were on their way to a race in Salinas, 90 miles south of San Francisco. Witnesses maintained that Dean hadn’t been speeding at the time of the accident--in fact, Turnupseed had made a left turn right into the Spyder’s path--but some people point out that he must have been driving awfully fast: He’d gotten a speeding ticket in Bakersfield, 150 miles from the crash site, at 3:30 p.m. and then had stopped at a diner for a Coke, which meant that he’d covered quite a distance in a relatively short period of time. Still, the gathering twilight and the glare from the setting sun would have made it impossible for Turnupseed to see the Porsche coming no matter how fast it was going.
Rumor has it that Dean’s car, which he’d nicknamed the Little Bastard, was cursed. After the accident, the car rolled off the back of a truck and crushed the legs of a mechanic standing nearby. Later, after a used-car dealer sold its parts to buyers all over the country, the strange incidents multiplied: The car’s engine, transmission and tires were all transplanted into cars that were subsequently involved in deadly crashes, and a truck carrying the Spyder’s chassis to a highway-safety exhibition skidded off the road, killing its driver. The remains of the car vanished from the scene of that accident and haven’t been seen since.
Wütherich, whose feelings of guilt after the car accident never abated, tried to commit suicide twice during the 1960s--and in 1967, he stabbed his wife 14 times with a kitchen knife in a failed murder/suicide--and he died in a drunk-driving accident in 1981. Turnupseed died of lung cancer in 1981.
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If anyone bothered to read this forum I would troll you so hard you would cry... again :D
:-*
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I read this thread everyday. History is my thing.
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I read this thread everyday. History is my thing.
I'm afraid one person is not enough for me to drive shizzo into an alcoholic breakdown.
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Oct 1, 1918
Lawrence of Arabia captures Damascus
A combined Arab and British force captures Damascus from the Turks during World War I, completing the liberation of Arabia. An instrumental commander in the Allied campaign was T.E. Lawrence, a legendary British soldier known as Lawrence of Arabia.
Lawrence, an Oxford-educated Arabist born in Tremadoc, Wales, began working for the British army as an intelligence officer in Egypt in 1914. He spent more than a year in Cairo, processing intelligence information. In 1916, he accompanied a British diplomat to Arabia, where Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, had proclaimed a revolt against Turkish rule. Lawrence convinced his superiors to aid Hussein's rebellion, and he was sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein's son Faisal as a liaison officer.
Under Lawrence's guidance, the Arabians launched an effective guerrilla war against the Turkish lines. He proved a gifted military strategist and was greatly admired by the Bedouin people of Arabia. In July 1917, Arabian forces captured Aqaba near the Sinai and joined the British march on Jerusalem. Lawrence was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In November, he was captured by the Turks while reconnoitering behind enemy lines in Arab dress and was tortured and sexually abused before escaping. He rejoined his army, which slowly worked its way north to Damascus. The Syrian capital fell on October 1, 1918.
Arabia was liberated, but Lawrence's hope that the peninsula would be united as a single nation was dashed when Arabian factionalism came to the fore after Damascus. Lawrence, exhausted and disillusioned, left for England. Feeling that Britain had exacerbated the rivalries between the Arabian groups, he appeared before King George V and politely refused the medals offered to him.
After the war, he lobbied hard for independence for Arab countries and appeared at the Paris peace conference in Arab robes. He later wrote a monumental war memoir, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and enlisted in the Royal Air Force (RAF) under an assumed name to escape his fame and acquire material for a new book. Discharged from the RAF in 1935, he was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident a few months later
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Moses was still wondering around Sinai desert (no GPS in those days).
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Oct 2, 1836
Darwin returns to England
The British naturalist Charles Darwin returns to Falmouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle, ending a five-year surveying expedition of the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Visiting such diverse places as Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and New Zealand, Darwin acquired an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, and geology of many lands. This information proved invaluable in the development of his theory of evolution, first put forth in his groundbreaking scientific work of 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Darwin's theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called "natural selection." In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment tend to propagate more descendants than organisms of the same species that lack the variation, thus influencing the overall genetic makeup of the species. His Origin of Species, the first significant work on the theory of evolution, was greeted with great interest in the scientific world but was attacked by religious leaders for its contradiction of the biblical account of creation
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Moses gang still in desert ......39 years & 364 days to go !
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Oct 2, 1836
Darwin returns to England
The British naturalist Charles Darwin returns to Falmouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle, ending a five-year surveying expedition of the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Visiting such diverse places as Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and New Zealand, Darwin acquired an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, and geology of many lands. This information proved invaluable in the development of his theory of evolution, first put forth in his groundbreaking scientific work of 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Darwin's theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called "natural selection." In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment tend to propagate more descendants than organisms of the same species that lack the variation, thus influencing the overall genetic makeup of the species. His Origin of Species, the first significant work on the theory of evolution, was greeted with great interest in the scientific world but was attacked by religious leaders for its contradiction of the biblical account of creation
Darwin neither mentioned nor knew about genes and "the overall genetic makeup" of anything. The word "genetics" wasn't even coined until 1905 (Darwin died in 1882).
You might want to check the quality and accuracy of the sources you cut and paste from.
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Awesome bigmc!!!!! Way to get involved. ;)
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Oct 3, 1863
Lincoln proclaims official Thanksgiving holiday
On this day in 1863, expressing gratitude for a pivotal Union Army victory at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln announces that the nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, 1863.
The speech, which was actually written by Secretary of State William Seward, declared that the fourth Thursday of every November thereafter would be considered an official U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving. This announcement harkened back to when George Washington was in his first term as the first president in 1789 and the young American nation had only a few years earlier emerged from the American Revolution. At that time, George Washington called for an official celebratory "day of public thanksgiving and prayer." While Congress overwhelmingly agreed to Washington's suggestion, the holiday did not yet become an annual event.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president, felt that public demonstrations of piety to a higher power, like that celebrated at Thanksgiving, were inappropriate in a nation based in part on the separation of church and state. Subsequent presidents agreed with him. In fact, no official Thanksgiving proclamation was issued by any president between 1815 and the day Lincoln took the opportunity to thank the Union Army and God for a shift in the country's fortunes on this day in 1863.
The fourth Thursday of November remained the annual day of Thanksgiving from 1863 until 1939. Then, at the tail-end of the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, hoping to boost the economy by providing shoppers and merchants a few extra days to conduct business between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, moved Thanksgiving to November's third Thursday. In 1941, however, Roosevelt bowed to Congress' insistence that the fourth Thursday of November be re-set permanently, without alteration, as the official Thanksgiving holiday.
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Oct 3, 1863
Lincoln proclaims official Thanksgiving holiday
On this day in 1863, expressing gratitude for a pivotal Union Army victory at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln announces that the nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, 1863.
The speech, which was actually written by Secretary of State William Seward, declared that the fourth Thursday of every November thereafter would be considered an official U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving. This announcement harkened back to when George Washington was in his first term as the first president in 1789 and the young American nation had only a few years earlier emerged from the American Revolution. At that time, George Washington called for an official celebratory "day of public thanksgiving and prayer." While Congress overwhelmingly agreed to Washington's suggestion, the holiday did not yet become an annual event.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president, felt that public demonstrations of piety to a higher power, like that celebrated at Thanksgiving, were inappropriate in a nation based in part on the separation of church and state. Subsequent presidents agreed with him. In fact, no official Thanksgiving proclamation was issued by any president between 1815 and the day Lincoln took the opportunity to thank the Union Army and God for a shift in the country's fortunes on this day in 1863.
The fourth Thursday of November remained the annual day of Thanksgiving from 1863 until 1939. Then, at the tail-end of the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, hoping to boost the economy by providing shoppers and merchants a few extra days to conduct business between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, moved Thanksgiving to November's third Thursday. In 1941, however, Roosevelt bowed to Congress' insistence that the fourth Thursday of November be re-set permanently, without alteration, as the official Thanksgiving holiday.
cool story bro
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Yesterday Salahuddin Al-Ayubbi liberated Jerusalem from a filthy 80 year rule of Crusaders.
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Yesterday Salahuddin Al-Ayubbi liberated Jerusalem from a filthy 80 year rule of Crusaders.
Do you have anymore info on the story? Many of us would love to read it. The Crusades were a pivotal time in world history.
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Oct 4, 2011
Man who served 25 years for murder exonerated by DNA
On this day in 2011, Michael Morton, who spent 25 years in prison for his wife’s murder, is released after DNA evidence implicates another man in the crime. The prosecutor in the case later was accused of withholding evidence indicating that Morton was innocent.
On the afternoon of August 13, 1986, a neighbor found 31-year-old Christine Morton beaten to death in her bed in the Williamson County, Texas, home (near Austin) she shared with Michael, a grocery store manager, and their 3-year-old son. Six weeks later, Morton, who had no criminal record or history of violence, was arrested for Christine’s murder. At trial, the prosecution contended Morton had slain his wife of seven years after she refused to have sex with him on the night of August 12, his 32nd birthday. Morton maintained he had nothing to do with his wife’s death and said an intruder must have killed her after he left for work early on the morning of August 13. No witnesses or physical evidence linked Morton to the crime; nevertheless, he was convicted on February 17, 1987, and sentenced to life behind bars.
In 2005, Morton’s defense team asked the state to test DNA on a variety of items, including a blood-stained bandanna found by police the day after the murder at an abandoned construction site close to the Morton home. The Williamson County district attorney successfully blocked all requests for testing until 2010, when a Texas appeals court ordered that testing on the bandana take place. In the summer of 2011, the test results revealed the bandana contained Christine Morton’s blood and hair, along with the DNA of another man, Mark Alan Norwood, a felon with a long criminal record who worked in the Austin area as a carpet layer at the time of the murder.
Michael Morton was released from prison on October 4, 2011, and officially exonerated in December of that year. A month after Morton was freed, Norwood, 57, was arrested for Christine Morton's murder. Based on DNA evidence, Norwood later was indicted for killing a second woman, Debra Baker, whose 1988 murder in Austin had remained unsolved. Like Morton, Baker was bludgeoned to death in her bed. She lived just blocks from Norwood at the time of her murder.
In October 2012, after a nearly yearlong investigation, the State Bar of Texas filed a disciplinary petition against Ken Anderson, the prosecutor in the Morton case and now a Texas district judge, alleging he withheld various pieces of evidence from Morton’s attorneys, including a transcript of an August 1986 taped interview between the case’s lead investigator and Morton’s mother-in-law, in which she stated that Morton’s 3-year-old son had told her in detail about witnessing his mother’s murder and said his father was not home at the time.
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Oct 5, 1892
The Dalton gang performs their last robbery attempt
The Dalton gang attempts to rob two banks simultaneously in Coffeyville, Kansas, but meets resistance from townspeople, who wind up killing four of the five bandits. Emmett Dalton, the sole survivor, returned to the site of the crime nearly 40 years later and offered a caution to would-be thieves: "The biggest fool on earth is the one who thinks he can beat the law, that crime can be made to pay. It never paid and it never will and that was the one big lesson of the Coffeyville raid."
Grat, Bob, and Emmett Dalton turned to a life of crime when they became bored with their other career possibilities on the Western frontier. They started with cattle rustling and moved on to armed robbery in 1890. Their younger brother, Bill, soon joined their endeavors. On February 6, 1891, Bob, Grat, and Bill tried to rob a Southern Pacific train heading to Los Angeles, California. Despite shooting and wounding a guard, the brothers didn't score any money, and Bill and Grat were captured.
Although Bill managed to escape the charges, Grat received a 20-year sentence. However, he escaped from the train that was taking him to prison, and all the brothers headed back to the Midwest together, where they recruited the best gunmen they could find and began an impressive crime spree. They got $14,000 from a train robbery in Oklahoma and then $19,000 from a bank.
Eugenia Moore, who was engaged to Bob, was in charge of scouting out the best robbery targets for the gang. She was adept at chatting with bankers and railroad workers in order to find out when large sums of money were to be transported. For over a year, the Dalton gang completed a streak of successful robberies that were designed to bring them enough money to retire. However, Eugenia died of cancer, and the gang soon made a huge blunder. Emmett, Grat, Bob, Dick Broadwell, and Bill Power rode into Coffeyville, Kansas, wearing false beards and carrying rifles. As Grat, Broadwell, and Power walked into the Condon Bank and Bob and Emmett entered the First National Bank, one of town's citizens recognized the Daltons and quickly called the town's men to action. (Some sources report that Moore was still alive when the gang went to Coffeyville; others report that there were in fact six robbers that day, not five, and that Moore was the sixth.)
As the gang was about to make their getaway, a throng of armed townsfolk surprised them. The five thieves shot their way to the alley where their horses were waiting and tried to defend themselves, but they were greatly outnumbered. In the epic gunfight that ensued, all five men were shot, but not before killing a number of the makeshift vigilantes, many of whom had been armed for the fight by a local hardware store. Dick Broadwell made it out of the alley on his horse but died a few miles outside of town.
Emmett Dalton, who had been shot more than 20 times, was the only one that managed to survive. He received a life sentence for the murder of the men who tried to stop him but was released a mere 15 years later. He lived a peaceful and law-abiding life until his death in 1937. In 1894, law enforcement officials shot his younger brother Bill, who was not at the fateful Coffeyville robbery, as he tried to escape deputy marshals who were trying to arrest him.
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Oct 6, 1981
The president of Egypt is assassinated
Islamic extremists assassinate Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, as he reviews troops on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Led by Khaled el Islambouli, a lieutenant in the Egyptian army with connections to the terrorist group Takfir Wal-Hajira, the terrorists, all wearing army uniforms, stopped in front of the reviewing stand and fired shots and threw grenades into a crowd of Egyptian government officials. Sadat, who was shot four times, died two hours later. Ten other people also died in the attack.
Despite Sadat's incredible public service record for Egypt (he was instrumental in winning the nation its independence and democratizing it), his controversial peace negotiation with Israel in 1977-78, for which he and Menachem Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize, made him a target of Islamic extremists across the Middle East. Sadat had also angered many by allowing the ailing Shah of Iran to die in Egypt rather than be returned to Iran to stand trial for his crimes against the country.
Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi, who sponsored Takfir Wal-Hajira, had engineered his own unsuccessful attempt on Sadat's life in 1980. Despite the well-known threats on his life, Sadat did not withdraw from the public eye, believing it was important to the country's well-being that he be open and available.
Before executing their plan, Islambouli's team of assassins took hits of hashish to honor a long-standing Middle Eastern tradition. As their vehicle passed the reviewing stand, they jumped out and started firing. Vice President Hosni Mubarak was sitting near Sadat but managed to survive the attack. Taking over the country when Sadat died, Mubarak arrested hundreds of people suspected to have participated in the conspiracy to kill Sadat.
Eventually, charges were brought against 25 men, who went to trial in November. Many of those charged were unrepentant and proudly admitted their involvement. Islambouli and four others were executed, while 17 others were sentenced to prison time.
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Oct 7, 2003
Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes California governor
On this day in 2003, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California, the most populous state in the nation with the world's fifth-largest economy. Despite his inexperience, Schwarzenegger came out on top in the 11-week campaign to replace Gray Davis, who had earlier become the first United States governor to be recalled by the people since 1921. Schwarzenegger was one of 135 candidates on the ballot, which included career politicians, other actors, and one adult-film star.
Born in Thal, Austria, on July 30, 1947, Arnold Schwarzenegger began body-building as a teenager. He won the first of four "Mr. Universe" body-building championships at the age of 20, and moved to the United States in 1968. He also went on to win a then-record seven "Mr. Olympia" championships, securing his reputation as a body-building legend, and soon began appearing in films. Schwarzenegger first attracted mainstream public attention for a Golden Globe®-winning performance in Stay Hungry (1976) and his appearance in the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron. At the same time, he was working on a B.A. at the University of Wisconsin, from which he graduated in 1979.
Schwarzenegger's film career took off after his starring turn in 1982's Conan the Barbarian. In 1983, he became a U.S. citizen; the next year he made his most famous film, The Terminator, directed by James Cameron. Although his acting talent is probably aptly described as limited, Schwarzenegger went on to become one of the most sought-after action-film stars of the 1980s and early 1990s and enjoyed an extremely lucrative career. The actor's romantic life also captured the attention of the American public: he married television journalist and lifelong Democrat Maria Shriver, niece of the late President John F. Kennedy, in 1986.
With his film career beginning to stagnate, Schwarzenegger, a staunch supporter of the Republican party who had long been thought to harbor political aspirations, announced his candidacy for governor of California during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Aside from his well-known stint serving as chairman of the President s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under President George H.W. Bush, Schwarzenegger had little political experience. His campaign, which featured his use of myriad one-liners well-known from his movie career, was dogged by criticism of his use of anabolic steroids, as well as allegations of sexual misconduct and racism. Still, Schwarzenegger was able to parlay his celebrity into a win, appealing to weary California voters with talk of reform. He beat his closest challenger, the Democratic lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante, by more than 1 million votes.
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Oct 8, 1871
Great Chicago Fire begins
On this day in 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaves 100,000 homeless and causes an estimated $200 million (in 1871 dollars; $3 billion in 2007 dollars) in damages. Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O'Leary barn and started the fire, but other theories hold that humans or even a comet may have been responsible for the event that left four square miles of the Windy City, including its business district, in ruins. Dry weather and an abundance of wooden buildings, streets and sidewalks made Chicago vulnerable to fire. The city averaged two fires per day in 1870; there were 20 fires throughout Chicago the week before the Great Fire of 1871.
Despite the fire's devastation, much of Chicago's physical infrastructure, including its water, sewage and transportation systems, remained intact. Reconstruction efforts began quickly and spurred great economic development and population growth, as architects laid the foundation for a modern city featuring the world's first skyscrapers. At the time of the fire, Chicago's population was approximately 324,000; within nine years, there were 500,000 Chicagoans. By 1893, the city was a major economic and transportation hub with an estimated population of 1.5 million. That same year, Chicago was chosen to host the World's Columbian Exposition, a major tourist attraction visited by 27.5 million people, or approximately half the U.S. population at the time.
In 1997, the Chicago City Council exonerated Mrs. O'Leary and her cow. She turned into a recluse after the fire, and died in 1895.
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Oct 8, 1934 - Bruno Hauptmann was indicted for the murder of the infant son of Charles A. Lindbergh.
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Oct 9, 1967
Che Guevara is executed
On this day in 1967, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia and assassinated him the following day. His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, Guevara's remains were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and thousands of Cubans.
Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna was born to a well-off family in Argentina in 1928. While studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, he took time off to travel around South America on a motorcycle; during this time, he witnessed the poverty and oppression of the lower classes. He received a medical degree in 1953 and continued his travels around Latin America, becoming involved with left-wing organizations. In the mid 1950s, Guevara met up with Fidel Castro and his group of exiled revolutionaries in Mexico. Guevara played a key role in Castro's seizure of power from Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and later served as Castro's right-hand man and minister of industry. Guevara strongly opposed U.S. domination in Latin America and advocated peasant-based revolutions to combat social injustice in Third World countries. Castro later described him as "an artist of revolutionary warfare."
Guevara resigned—some say he was dismissed—from his Cuban government post in April 1965, possibly over differences with Castro about the nation’s economic and foreign policies. Guevara then disappeared from Cuba, traveled to Africa and eventually resurfaced in Bolivia, where he was killed. Following his death, Guevara achieved hero status among people around the world as a symbol of anti-imperialism and revolution. A 1960 photo taken by Alberto Korda of Guevara in a beret became iconic and has since appeared on countless posters and T-shirts. However, not everyone considers Guevara a hero: He is accused, among other things, of ordering the deaths of hundreds of people in Cuban prisons during the revolution.
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Oct 10, 1877
Custer's funeral is held at West Point
On this day in 1877, the U.S. Army holds a West Point funeral with full military honors for Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Killed the previous year in Montana by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer's body had been returned to the East for burial on the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where Custer had graduated in 1861-at the bottom of his class.
Even before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer had won national fame as a bold-and some said foolhardy-Civil War commander who eventually became the youngest major general in the U.S. Army. A handsome man, famous for his long blond hair (though he cut it short while in the field), Custer, even after the Civil War, continued to attract the appreciative attention of newspapers and the nation as a lieutenant colonel in the 7th Cavalry, a unit recently created to fight in the western Indian wars. Reports that Custer treated deserters of the 7th with unnecessary cruelty and overworked his soldiers led to a court-martial and conviction in 1867. But Custer redeemed himself, at least in the eyes of some, with his subsequent attack on a winter camp of Cheyenne in on the Washita River. Others, though, faulted Custer for attacking a peaceful band of Cheyenne and leaving behind some of his men when he withdrew from the battle under cover of night.
Though Custer was controversial in his day, his spectacular death at the Little Big Horn transformed him into a beloved martyr in the eyes of many Americans, especially those who were calling for wholesale war against the Indians. Some newspapers began to refer to Custer as the "American Murat," a reference to a famous martyr of the French Revolution, and they called for decisive retaliation against the "treacherous Indians" who had murdered the golden-haired general. Others refused to believe that Custer's own tactical mistakes could alone explain the disaster at Little Big Horn, and they instead sought to place the blame on the shoulders of other commanders who had been at the battle. (Tellingly, no one suggested that clever tactics and leadership by the Indians might have been the cause for Custer's defeat.) Custer's widow, Elizabeth, also worked to transform her husband into a legend by writing several adulatory books chronicling his career. Hundreds of other books and movies, many of them more fiction than history, helped cement the image of Custer as the great fallen leader of the Indian wars in many American minds.
Custer's status as a national hero and martyr only began to be seriously questioned in the 1960s, and since then he has often been portrayed as a vain and glory-seeking man whose own ineptitude was all the explanation needed for the massacre at Little Big Horn. The truth about George Custer is probably somewhere in between these two extremes.
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Oct 11, 1975
Saturday Night Live debuts
On this day in 1975, Saturday Night Live (SNL), a topical comedy sketch show featuring Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman, makes its debut on NBC; it will go on to become the longest-running, highest-rated show on late-night television. The 90-minute program, which from its inception has been broadcast live from Studio 8H in the GE Building at Rockefeller Center, includes a different guest host and musical act each week. The opening sketch of each show ends with one actor saying, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
Created by the Canadian-born comedy writer Lorne Michaels, SNL has introduced a long list of memorable characters and catchphrases—from Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannada, to the Coneheads, to Billy Crystal’s Fernando (“You look mahvelous”), to Dana Carvey’s Church Lady (“Isn’t that special?”), to bodybuilders Hans and Franz (“We’re going to pump you up”), to Coffee Talk host Linda Richman (“like buttah” and “I’m all verklempt”)—that have become part of pop-culture history. The show, whose cast has changed continually over the years, has also launched the careers of such performers as Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tina Fey. Some SNL sketches have even been turned into feature films, the two most successful examples being 1980’s The Blues Brothers and 1992’s Wayne’s World.
The show was originally known as NBC’s Saturday Night because there was another show on ABC called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. However, NBC eventually purchased the naming rights, and since 1977 the edgy comedy program has been called Saturday Night Live. Lorne Michaels served as the show’s producer from 1975 to 1980, followed by Jean Doumanian from 1980 to 1981. Dick Ebersol helmed the show from 1981 to 1985. Michaels returned to the program that year, and has remained executive producer ever since.
The influential comedian George Carlin hosted the debut episode of SNL. Later that year, Candace Bergen became the first woman to assume SNL hosting duties. She went on to host the program four more times. In 1982, seven-year-old Drew Barrymore hosted the show, becoming the youngest person ever to do so. Starting in 1976, Steve Martin has hosted SNL 14 times. Since 1990, Alec Baldwin has hosted the show 13 times. John Goodman has hosted the show a dozen times, beginning in 1989. Other frequent guest hosts include Buck Henry, Chevy Chase, Tom Hanks and Christopher Walken. Musical guests who’ve performed on SNL five or more times include Paul Simon, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, James Taylor, Sting, Beck and the Foo Fighters.
SNL is known for its topical parodies and impersonations, and for pushing boundaries with its sketches. The show is also recognized for its political humor. Chevy Chase famously portrayed President Gerald Ford as a klutz, while Dana Carvey spoofed President George H.W. Bush and his “read my lips” line. More recently, Amy Poehler has played Senator Hillary Clinton in numerous skits (including one with the senator herself) and Tina Fey has portrayed the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.
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Oct 11, 1975
Saturday Night Live debuts
On this day in 1975, Saturday Night Live (SNL), a topical comedy sketch show featuring Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman, makes its debut on NBC;
Shit, I still remember the day he died. Entertainment Tonight covered it, I think 1980. I was at home getting ready for my Karate lessons. I must have been in 6th grade. Wow.
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Oct 12, 1870
Confederate leader Robert E. Lee dies
General Robert Edward Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, dies peacefully at his home in Lexington, Virginia. He was 63 years old.
Lee was born to Henry Lee and Ann Carter Lee at Stratford Hall, Virginia, in 1807. His father served in the American Revolution under George Washington and was later a governor of Virginia. Robert Lee attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and graduated second in his class in 1829. He did not earn a single demerit during his four years at the academy. Afterward, Lee embarked on a military career, eventually fighting in the Mexican War (1846-48) and later serving as the superintendent of West Point.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Lee sided with the Confederacy and spent the first year of the war as an advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia when Joseph Johnston was wounded in battle in May 1862. Over the next three years, Lee earned a reputation for his brilliant tactics and battlefield leadership. However, his invasions of the North, at Antietam in Maryland and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, ended in defeat.
After Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in 1865, he returned to Richmond, Virginia, and an uncertain future. With his military career over, he accepted the presidency of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. Under his leadership, the struggling institution's enrollment increased from a few dozen to more than 300 students. He contributed to faculty stability, revamped the curriculum, and improved the physical condition of the campus. He also became a symbol of the defeated South, a dignified and stoic figure who was lionized by North and South alike. Lee suffered a stroke on September 28, 1870, and lingered for two weeks before passing. The school changed its name to Washington and Lee College soon after he died.
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Oct 13, 2010
Chilean miners are rescued after 69 days underground
On this day in 2010, the last of 33 miners trapped nearly half a mile underground for more than two months at a caved-in mine in northern Chile, are rescued. The miners survived longer than anyone else trapped underground in recorded history.
The miners’ ordeal began on August 5, 2010, when the San Jose gold and copper mine where they were working, some 500 miles north of the Chilean capital city of Santiago, collapsed. The 33 men moved to an underground emergency shelter area, where they discovered just several days’ worth of food rations. As their situation grew more desperate over the next 17 days, the miners, uncertain if anyone would find them, considered suicide and cannibalism. Then, on August 22, a drill sent by rescuers broke through to the area where the miners were located, and the men sent back up a note saying, “We are fine in the refuge, the 33.”
Food, water, letters, medicine and other supplies were soon delivered to the miners via a narrow bore hole. Video cameras were also sent down, making it possible for rescuers to see the men and the hot, humid space in which they were entombed. As engineering and mining experts from around the world collaborated on the long, complex process of devising a way to bring the 33 men up to the surface, the miners maintained a system of jobs and routines in order to keep up morale.
Rescuers eventually drilled and reinforced an escape shaft wide enough to extract the men, one by one. (Employees of a Pennsylvania-based drilling-tool company played a role in drilling the rescue shaft.) On October 12, the first of the miners was raised to the surface in a narrow, 13-foot-tall capsule painted white, blue and red, the colors of the Chilean flag. The approximately 2,000-foot ascent to the surface in the capsule took around 15 minutes for each man.
The miners were greeted by a cheering crowd that included Chile’s president, Sebastian Pinera; media from around the world; and friends and relatives, many of whom had been camped at the base of the mine in the Atacama Desert for months. Millions of people around the globe watched the rescue on live TV. Less than 24 hours after the operation began, all 33 of the miners, who ranged in age from 19 to 63, had been safely rescued. Almost all the men were in good health, and each of them sported dark glasses to protect their eyes after being in a dimly lit space for so long.
The rescued miners were later honored with trips to a variety of destinations, including England, Israel and Florida’s Walt Disney World, where a parade was held in their honor.
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Oct 14, 1066
The Battle of Hastings
King Harold II of England is defeated by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, fought on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, England. At the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was killed--shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend--and his forces were destroyed. He was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
Just over two weeks before, William, the duke of Normandy, had invaded England, claiming his right to the English throne. In 1051, William is believed to have visited England and met with his cousin Edward the Confessor, the childless English king. According to Norman historians, Edward promised to make William his heir. On his deathbed, however, Edward granted the kingdom to Harold Godwine, head of the leading noble family in England and more powerful than the king himself. In January 1066, King Edward died, and Harold Godwine was proclaimed King Harold II. William immediately disputed his claim.
On September 28, 1066, William landed in England at Pevensey, on Britain's southeast coast, with approximately 7,000 troops and cavalry. Seizing Pevensey, he then marched to Hastings, where he paused to organize his forces. On October 13, Harold arrived near Hastings with his army, and the next day William led his forces out to give battle.
After his victory at the Battle of Hastings, William marched on London and received the city's submission. On Christmas Day, 1066, he was crowned the first Norman king of England, in Westminster Abbey, and the Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end. French became the language of the king's court and gradually blended with the Anglo-Saxon tongue to give birth to modern English. William I proved an effective king of England, and the "Domesday Book," a great census of the lands and people of England, was among his notable achievements. Upon the death of William I in 1087, his son, William Rufus, became William II, the second Norman king of England.
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Oct 15, 1917
Mata Hari executed
Mata Hari, the archetype of the seductive female spy, is executed for espionage by a French firing squad at Vincennes outside of Paris.
She first came to Paris in 1905 and found fame as a performer of exotic Asian-inspired dances. She soon began touring all over Europe, telling the story of how she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari, meaning "eye of the day" in Malay. In reality, Mata Hari was born in a small town in northern Holland in 1876, and her real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She acquired her superficial knowledge of Indian and Javanese dances when she lived for several years in Malaysia with her former husband, who was a Scot in the Dutch colonial army. Regardless of her authenticity, she packed dance halls and opera houses from Russia to France, mostly because her show consisted of her slowly stripping nude.
She became a famous courtesan, and with the outbreak of World War I her catalog of lovers began to include high-ranking military officers of various nationalities. In February 1917, French authorities arrested her for espionage and imprisoned her at St. Lazare Prison in Paris. In a military trial conducted in July, she was accused of revealing details of the Allies' new weapon, the tank, resulting in the deaths of thousands of soldiers. She was convicted and sentenced to death, and on October 15 she refused a blindfold and was shot to death by a firing squad at Vincennes.
There is some evidence that Mata Hari acted as a German spy, and for a time as a double agent for the French, but the Germans had written her off as an ineffective agent whose pillow talk had produced little intelligence of value. Her military trial was riddled with bias and circumstantial evidence, and it is probable that French authorities trumped her up as "the greatest woman spy of the century" as a distraction for the huge losses the French army was suffering on the western front. Her only real crimes may have been an elaborate stage fallacy and a weakness for men in uniform.
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Oct 16, 1987
Baby Jessica rescued from a well as the world watches
On this day in 1987, in an event that had viewers around the world glued to their televisions, 18-month-old Jessica McClure is rescued after being trapped for 58 hours in an abandoned water well in Midland, Texas.
The drama unfolded on the morning of October 14, 1987, when McClure fell through the 8-inch-wide opening of an abandoned well while playing with other children in the backyard of her aunt’s home day-care center. After dropping about 22 feet into the well, the little girl became stuck. Over the next two-and-a-half days, crews of rescue workers, mining experts and local volunteers labored around the clock to drill a shaft parallel to the one in which McClure was trapped. They then tunneled horizontally through dense rock to connect the two shafts. A microphone was lowered into the well to keep tabs on the toddler, who could be heard crying, humming and singing throughout the ordeal.
On the night of October 16, a bandaged and dirt-covered but alert Baby Jessica, as she became widely known, was safely pulled out of the well by paramedics. By that time, scores of journalists had descended on Midland, a West Texas oil city, and the rescue was carried out on live television before a massive audience.
After her rescue, McClure was hospitalized for more than a month and lost a toe to gangrene. She and her family were flooded with gifts and cards from well-wishers, and received a visit from Vice President George H.W. Bush and a phone call from President Ronald Reagan. Once out of the hospital, McClure went on to lead a normal life, spent largely out of the public spotlight. She graduated from high school in 2004, married two years later and became a mother. In 2011, at age 25, she gained access to a trust fund—reportedly worth at least $800,000—that was established following her rescue and made up of donations from people around the world.
Life proved more challenging for others involved in the Baby Jessica saga. McClure’s parents divorced several years after her accident, rescue workers in Midland feuded over a potential Hollywood movie deal and in 1995, a paramedic who played a key role in helping to save McClure committed suicide, possibly as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Fuck yeah shizz, you got your own sticky :D
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Fuck yeah shizz, you got your own sticky :D
It's a start ;D
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Oct 17, 1931
Capone goes to prison
On this day in 1931, gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000, signaling the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920s and 1930s.
Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1899 to Italian immigrants. He was expelled from school at 14, joined a gang and earned his nickname "Scarface" after being sliced across the cheek during a fight. By 1920, Capone had moved to Chicago, where he was soon helping to run crime boss Johnny Torrio's illegal enterprises, which included alcohol-smuggling, gambling and prostitution. Torrio retired in 1925 after an attempt on his life and Capone, known for his cunning and brutality, was put in charge of the organization.
Prohibition, which outlawed the brewing and distribution of alcohol and lasted from 1920 to 1933, proved extremely lucrative for bootleggers and gangsters like Capone, who raked in millions from his underworld activities. Capone was at the top of the F.B.I.'s "Most Wanted" list by 1930, but he avoided long stints in jail until 1931 by bribing city officials, intimidating witnesses and maintaining various hideouts. He became Chicago's crime kingpin by wiping out his competitors through a series of gangland battles and slayings, including the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Capone's men gunned down seven rivals. This event helped raise Capone's notoriety to a national level.
Among Capone's enemies was federal agent Elliot Ness, who led a team of officers known as "The Untouchables" because they couldn't be corrupted. Ness and his men routinely broke up Capone's bootlegging businesses, but it was tax-evasion charges that finally stuck and landed Capone in prison in 1931. Capone began serving his time at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, but amid accusations that he was manipulating the system and receiving cushy treatment, he was transferred to the maximum-security lockup at Alcatraz Island, in California's San Francisco Bay. He got out early in 1939 for good behavior, after spending his final year in prison in a hospital, suffering from syphilis.
Plagued by health problems for the rest of his life, Capone died in 1947 at age 48 at his home in Palm Island, Florida.
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Oct 18, 1867
U.S. takes possession of Alaska
On this day in 1867, the U.S. formally takes possession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, or less than two cents an acre. The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas, and was championed by William Henry Seward, the enthusiasticly expansionist secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson.
Russia wanted to sell its Alaska territory, which was remote, sparsely populated and difficult to defend, to the U.S. rather than risk losing it in battle with a rival such as Great Britain. Negotiations between Seward (1801-1872) and the Russian minister to the U.S., Eduard de Stoeckl, began in March 1867. However, the American public believed the land to be barren and worthless and dubbed the purchase "Seward's Folly" and "Andrew Johnson's Polar Bear Garden," among other derogatory names. Some animosity toward the project may have been a byproduct of President Johnson's own unpopularity. As the 17th U.S. president, Johnson battled with Radical Republicans in Congress over Reconstruction policies following the Civil War. He was impeached in 1868 and later acquitted by a single vote. Nevertheless, Congress eventually ratified the Alaska deal. Public opinion of the purchase turned more favorable when gold was discovered in a tributary of Alaska's Klondike River in 1896, sparking a gold rush. Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, and is now recognized for its vast natural resources. Today, 25 percent of America's oil and over 50 percent of its seafood come from Alaska. It is also the largest state in area, about one-fifth the size of the lower 48 states combined, though it remains sparsely populated. The name Alaska is derived from the Aleut word alyeska, which means "great land." Alaska has two official state holidays to commemorate its origins: Seward's Day, observed the last Monday in March, celebrates the March 30, 1867, signing of the land treaty between the U.S. and Russia, and Alaska Day, observed every October 18, marks the anniversary of the formal land transfer
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Oct 19, 1982
John Z. DeLorean is arrested in $24 million cocaine deal
On October 19, 1982, the automaker John Z. DeLorean is arrested and charged with conspiracy to obtain and distribute 55 pounds of cocaine. DeLorean was acquitted of the drug charges in August 1984, but his legal woes were only beginning. He soon went on trial for fraud and over the next two decades was forced to pay millions of dollars to creditors and lawyers. Nevertheless, DeLorean occupies an important place in automotive history: Thanks to its starring role in the 1985 film "Back to the Future," his gull-wing sports car is one of the most famous cars in the world.
DeLorean grew up in Detroit and began to work for Chrysler while he was still in college. His career was a promising one: He worked his way up the corporate ladder at General Motors, where he is credited with designing the GTO and the Firebird, and became a vice-president in 1972, but he left the company just a year later to pursue his own business interests. In 1978, he started the DeLorean Motor Company in Northern Ireland—the British government, along with investors like Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis, Jr., paid the bulk of his start-up costs—to build his dream car: the DMC-12, a sports car that was like nothing anyone had ever seen before. Its stainless-steel body was unpainted; its doors opened up, not out; it had a 130-hp Renault engine and could go from zero to 60 mph in eight seconds.
But not many people actually bought a DeLorean car. They were much too expensive: Each one cost $25,000, compared with $10,000 for the average car and $18,000 for a souped-up Corvette. The company's financial trouble, DeLorean's attorneys argued, was the reason the FBI had been able to entrap him in the $24 million drug deal--the authorities knew he would do anything to save his business.
DeLorean was already mired in legal problems by the time director Steven Spielberg chose a DMC–12 to serve as Marty McFly's time machine in "Back to the Future." Spielberg had originally planned to use an old refrigerator instead of a car, but had changed his mind at the last minute. (The director liked the DeLorean's futuristic look, but more than that he was worried that young fans of the movie might accidentally get stuck in refrigerators and freezers while playing make-believe.) While the DeLorean's instant celebrity did not do much to revive its creator's fortunes, it granted him a permanent footnote in pop-culture history.
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Oct 20, 1977
Three members of the southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd die in a Mississippi plane crash
In the summer of 1977, members of the rock band Aerosmith inspected an airplane they were considering chartering for their upcoming tour—a Convair 240 operated out of Addison, Texas. Concerns over the flight crew led Aerosmith to look elsewhere—a decision that saved one band but doomed another. The aircraft in question was instead chartered by the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, who were just setting out that autumn on a national tour that promised to be their biggest to date. On this day in 1977, however, during a flight from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lynyrd Skynyrd's tour plane crashed in a heavily wooded area of southeastern Mississippi during a failed emergency landing attempt, killing band-members Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines as well as the band's assistant road manager and the plane's pilot and co-pilot. Twenty others survived the crash.
The original core of Lynyrd Skynyrd—Ronnie Van Zant, Bob Burns, Gary Rossington, Allen Collins and Larry Junstrom—first came together under the name "My Backyard" back in 1964, as Jacksonville, Florida, teenagers. Under that name and several others, the group developed its chops playing local and regional gigs throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, then finally broke out nationally in 1973 following the adoption of the name "Lynyrd Skynyrd" in honor of a high school gym teacher/nemesis named Leonard Skinner. The newly renamed band scored a major hit with their hard-driving debut album (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd) (1973), which featured one of the most familiar and joked-about rock anthems of all time, "Free Bird." Their follow-up album, Second Helping (1974), included the even bigger hit "Sweet Home Alabama," and it secured the band's status as giants of the southern rock subgenre.
On October 17, 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd—now in a lineup that included backup singer Cassie Gaines and her guitarist brother, Steve—released their fifth studio album, Street Survivors, which would eventually be certified double-platinum. Three days later, however, tragedy struck the group when their chartered Convair 240 began to run out of fuel at 6,000 feet en route to Baton Rouge. The plane's crew, whom the National Transportation Safety Board would hold responsible for the mishap in the accident report issued eight months later, radioed Houston air-traffic control as the plane lost altitude, asking for directions to the nearest airfield. "We're low on fuel and we're just about out of it," the pilot told Houston Center at approximately 6:42 pm. "We want vectors to McComb [airfield] poste-haste please, sir." Approximately 13 minutes later, however, the plane crashed just outside of Gillsburg, Mississippi.
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Oct 21, 1867
Plains Indians sign key provisions of the Medicine Lodge Treaty in Kansas
On this day in 1867, more than 7,000 Southern Plains Indians gather near Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas, as their leaders sign one of the most important treaties in the history of U.S.-Indian relations.
For decades, Americans had viewed the arid Great Plains country west of the 100th meridian as unsuitable for white settlement; many maps even labeled the area as the Great American Desert. Because of this, policy makers since the days of the Jefferson administration had largely agreed that the territory should be used as one big reservation on which all American Indians could be relocated and left alone to continue their traditional ways of life. This plan was followed for decades. Unfortunately, by 1865, the Indians, roaming freely over the Great Plains, had become a threat to the increasingly important communication and transportation lines connecting the east and west coasts of the nation. At the same time, new dryland farming techniques had led a growing number of white Americans to settle in Kansas and Nebraska, and many others were now eager to move even farther west.
Departing from a half-century of precedent, a federal peace commission began negotiating with the Plains Indians in 1867 with the goal of removing them from the path of white settlement and establishing a new "system for civilizing the tribes." In the fall, the commission met with representatives from Commanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and other tribes, most of which proved willing to accept the American proposal, although many may not have fully comprehended the implications.
With the treaties signed on October 21 and 28, the old idea of a giant continuous Great Plains reservation was abandoned forever and replaced with a new system in which the Plains Tribes were required to relocate to a clearly bounded reservation in Western Oklahoma. Any tribal member living outside of the reservation would thereafter be in violation of the treaty, and the U.S. would be justified in using whatever means necessary to force them onto the reservation. Likewise, the new policy of "civilizing the tribes" meant that the U.S. would no longer allow the Indians to preserve their traditional ways, but would instead use schools and agricultural education programs to try and eradicate the old customs and assimilate Indians into white culture.
Although most of the major Plains Indian chiefs agreed to the treaty provisions, they did not necessarily speak for all of their people. The authority of chiefs was always highly provisional, and many bands of Plains Indians considered themselves free to accept or reject such treaties regardless of the wishes of their chiefs. When the full import of the Medicine Lodge Treaty became clear to them, some of these bands refused to abandon their hunting grounds and traditional ways, causing decades of violent conflict all across the West.
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I expect a this day in history post on my birthday
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I expect a this day in history post on my birthday
When would that be? :D
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Oct 22, 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis
In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, President John F. Kennedy announces that U.S. spy planes have discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. These missile sites—under construction but nearing completion—housed medium-range missiles capable of striking a number of major cities in the United States, including Washington, D.C. Kennedy announced that he was ordering a naval "quarantine" of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more offensive weapons to the island and explained that the United States would not tolerate the existence of the missile sites currently in place. The president made it clear that America would not stop short of military action to end what he called a "clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace."
What is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis actually began on October 15, 1962—the day that U.S. intelligence personnel analyzing U-2 spy plane data discovered that the Soviets were building medium-range missile sites in Cuba. The next day, President Kennedy secretly convened an emergency meeting of his senior military, political, and diplomatic advisers to discuss the ominous development. The group became known as ExCom, short for Executive Committee. After rejecting a surgical air strike against the missile sites, ExCom decided on a naval quarantine and a demand that the bases be dismantled and missiles removed. On the night of October 22, Kennedy went on national television to announce his decision. During the next six days, the crisis escalated to a breaking point as the world tottered on the brink of nuclear war between the two superpowers.
On October 23, the quarantine of Cuba began, but Kennedy decided to give Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev more time to consider the U.S. action by pulling the quarantine line back 500 miles. By October 24, Soviet ships en route to Cuba capable of carrying military cargoes appeared to have slowed down, altered, or reversed their course as they approached the quarantine, with the exception of one ship—the tanker Bucharest. At the request of more than 40 nonaligned nations, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant sent private appeals to Kennedy and Khrushchev, urging that their governments "refrain from any action that may aggravate the situation and bring with it the risk of war." At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. military forces went to DEFCON 2, the highest military alert ever reached in the postwar era, as military commanders prepared for full-scale war with the Soviet Union.
On October 25, the aircraft carrier USS Essex and the destroyer USS Gearing attempted to intercept the Soviet tanker Bucharest as it crossed over the U.S. quarantine of Cuba. The Soviet ship failed to cooperate, but the U.S. Navy restrained itself from forcibly seizing the ship, deeming it unlikely that the tanker was carrying offensive weapons. On October 26, Kennedy learned that work on the missile bases was proceeding without interruption, and ExCom considered authorizing a U.S. invasion of Cuba. The same day, the Soviets transmitted a proposal for ending the crisis: The missile bases would be removed in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba.
The next day, however, Khrushchev upped the ante by publicly calling for the dismantling of U.S. missile bases in Turkey under pressure from Soviet military commanders. While Kennedy and his crisis advisers debated this dangerous turn in negotiations, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, was killed. To the dismay of the Pentagon, Kennedy forbid a military retaliation unless any more surveillance planes were fired upon over Cuba. To defuse the worsening crisis, Kennedy and his advisers agreed to dismantle the U.S. missile sites in Turkey but at a later date, in order to prevent the protest of Turkey, a key NATO member.
On October 28, Khrushchev announced his government's intent to dismantle and remove all offensive Soviet weapons in Cuba. With the airing of the public message on Radio Moscow, the USSR confirmed its willingness to proceed with the solution secretly proposed by the Americans the day before. In the afternoon, Soviet technicians began dismantling the missile sites, and the world stepped back from the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was effectively over. In November, Kennedy called off the blockade, and by the end of the year all the offensive missiles had left Cuba. Soon after, the United States quietly removed its missiles from Turkey.
The Cuban Missile Crisis seemed at the time a clear victory for the United States, but Cuba emerged from the episode with a much greater sense of security. A succession of U.S. administrations have honored Kennedy's pledge not to invade Cuba, and the communist island nation situated just 80 miles from Florida remains a thorn in the side of U.S. foreign policy. The removal of antiquated Jupiter missiles from Turkey had no detrimental effect on U.S. nuclear strategy, but the Cuban Missile Crisis convinced a humiliated USSR to commence a massive nuclear buildup. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached nuclear parity with the United States and built intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking any city in the United States.
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Oct 23, 42 B.C.
Brutus commits suicide
Marcus Junius Brutus, a leading conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar, commits suicide after his defeat at the second battle of Philippi.
Two years before, Brutus had joined Gaius Cassius Longinus in the plot against the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, believing he was striking a blow for the restoration of the Roman Republic. However, the result of Caesar's assassination was to plunge the Roman world into a new round of civil wars, with the Republican forces of Brutus and Cassius vying for supremacy against Octavian and Mark Antony. After being defeated by Antony at a battle in Philippi, Greece, in October 42 B.C., Cassius killed himself. On October 23, Brutus' army was crushed by Octavian and Antony at a second encounter at Philippi, and Brutus took his own life.
Antony and Octavian soon turned against each other, and in 27 B.C. the Roman Republic was lost forever with the ascendance of Octavian as Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome.
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Oct 20, 1977
Three members of the southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd die in a Mississippi plane crash
In the summer of 1977, members of the rock band Aerosmith inspected an airplane they were considering chartering for their upcoming tour—a Convair 240 operated out of Addison, Texas. Concerns over the flight crew led Aerosmith to look elsewhere—a decision that saved one band but doomed another. The aircraft in question was instead chartered by the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, who were just setting out that autumn on a national tour that promised to be their biggest to date. On this day in 1977, however, during a flight from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lynyrd Skynyrd's tour plane crashed in a heavily wooded area of southeastern Mississippi during a failed emergency landing attempt, killing band-members Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines as well as the band's assistant road manager and the plane's pilot and co-pilot. Twenty others survived the crash.
I remember this very well. A very sad day in music. (Yes I am old ;D ) Surviving members and others formed the Rossington Collins Band in 1979. Most popular song, "Don't Misunderstand Me."
I enjoy reading these, thanks Shizz.
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Oct 24, 1861
Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line
On this day in 1861, workers of the Western Union Telegraph Company link the eastern and western telegraph networks of the nation at Salt Lake City, Utah, completing a transcontinental line that for the first time allows instantaneous communication between Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Stephen J. Field, chief justice of California, sent the first transcontinental telegram to President Abraham Lincoln, predicting that the new communication link would help ensure the loyalty of the western states to the Union during the Civil War.
The push to create a transcontinental telegraph line had begun only a little more than year before when Congress authorized a subsidy of $40,000 a year to any company building a telegraph line that would join the eastern and western networks. The Western Union Telegraph Company, as its name suggests, took up the challenge, and the company immediately began work on the critical link that would span the territory between the western edge of Missouri and Salt Lake City.
The obstacles to building the line over the sparsely populated and isolated western plains and mountains were huge. Wire and glass insulators had to be shipped by sea to San Francisco and carried eastward by horse-drawn wagons over the Sierra Nevada. Supplying the thousands of telegraph poles needed was an equally daunting challenge in the largely treeless Plains country, and these too had to be shipped from the western mountains. Indians also proved a problem. In the summer of 1861, a party of Sioux warriors cut part of the line that had been completed and took a long section of wire for making bracelets. Later, however, some of the Sioux wearing the telegraph-wire bracelets became sick, and a Sioux medicine man convinced them that the great spirit of the "talking wire" had avenged its desecration. Thereafter, the Sioux left the line alone, and the Western Union was able to connect the East and West Coasts of the nation much earlier than anyone had expected and a full eight years before the transcontinental railroad would be completed
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Oct 25, 1881
Pablo Picasso born
Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, is born in Malaga, Spain.
Picasso's father was a professor of drawing, and he bred his son for a career in academic art. Picasso had his first exhibit at age 13 and later quit art school so he could experiment full-time with modern art styles. He went to Paris for the first time in 1900, and in 1901 was given an exhibition at a gallery on Paris' rue Lafitte, a street known for its prestigious art galleries. The precocious 19-year-old Spaniard was at the time a relative unknown outside Barcelona, but he had already produced hundreds of paintings. Winning favorable reviews, he stayed in Paris for the rest of the year and later returned to the city to settle permanently.
The work of Picasso, which comprises more than 50,000 paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, and ceramics produced over 80 years, is described in a series of overlapping periods. His first notable period--the "blue period"—began shortly after his first Paris exhibit. In works such as The Old Guitarist (1903), Picasso painted in blue tones to evoke the melancholy world of the poor. The blue period was followed by the "rose period," in which he often depicted circus scenes, and then by Picasso's early work in sculpture. In 1907, Picasso painted the groundbreaking work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which, with its fragmented and distorted representation of the human form, broke from previous European art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon demonstrated the influence on Picasso of both African mask art and Paul Cezanne and is seen as a forerunner of the Cubist movement, founded by Picasso and the French painter Georges Braque in 1909.
In Cubism, which is divided into two phases, analytical and synthetic, Picasso and Braque established the modern principle that artwork need not represent reality to have artistic value. Major Cubist works by Picasso included his costumes and sets for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1917) and The Three Musicians (1921). Picasso and Braque's Cubist experiments also resulted in the invention of several new artistic techniques, including collage.
After Cubism, Picasso explored classical and Mediterranean themes, and images of violence and anguish increasingly appeared in his work. In 1937, this trend culminated in the masterpiece Guernica, a monumental work that evoked the horror and suffering endured by the Basque town of Guernica when it was destroyed by German war planes during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso remained in Paris during the Nazi occupation but was fervently opposed to fascism and after the war joined the French Communist Party.
Picasso's work after World War II is less studied than his earlier creations, but he continued to work feverishly and enjoyed commercial and critical success. He produced fantastical works, experimented with ceramics, and painted variations on the works of other masters in the history of art. Known for his intense gaze and domineering personality, he had a series of intense and overlapping love affairs in his lifetime. He continued to produce art with undiminished force until his death in 1973 at the age of 91.
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Oct 26, 1881
Shootout at the OK Corral
On this day in 1881, the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
After silver was discovered nearby in 1877, Tombstone quickly grew into one of the richest mining towns in the Southwest. Wyatt Earp, a former Kansas police officer working as a bank security guard, and his brothers, Morgan and Virgil, the town marshal, represented "law and order" in Tombstone, though they also had reputations as being power-hungry and ruthless. The Clantons and McLaurys were cowboys who lived on a ranch outside of town and sidelined as cattle rustlers, thieves and murderers. In October 1881, the struggle between these two groups for control of Tombstone and Cochise County ended in a blaze of gunfire at the OK Corral.
On the morning of October 25, Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury came into Tombstone for supplies. Over the next 24 hours, the two men had several violent run-ins with the Earps and their friend Doc Holliday. Around 1:30 p.m. on October 26, Ike's brother Billy rode into town to join them, along with Frank McLaury and Billy Claiborne. The first person they met in the local saloon was Holliday, who was delighted to inform them that their brothers had both been pistol-whipped by the Earps. Frank and Billy immediately left the saloon, vowing revenge.
Around 3 p.m., the Earps and Holliday spotted the five members of the Clanton-McLaury gang in a vacant lot behind the OK Corral, at the end of Fremont Street. The famous gunfight that ensued lasted all of 30 seconds, and around 30 shots were fired. Though it's still debated who fired the first shot, most reports say that the shootout began when Virgil Earp pulled out his revolver and shot Billy Clanton point-blank in the chest, while Doc Holliday fired a shotgun blast at Tom McLaury's chest. Though Wyatt Earp wounded Frank McLaury with a shot in the stomach, Frank managed to get off a few shots before collapsing, as did Billy Clanton. When the dust cleared, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. Ike Clanton and Claiborne had run for the hills.
Sheriff John Behan of Cochise County, who witnessed the shootout, charged the Earps and Holliday with murder. A month later, however, a Tombstone judge found the men not guilty, ruling that they were "fully justified in committing these homicides." The famous shootout has been immortalized in many movies, including Frontier Marshal (1939), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994).
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Oct 27, 1940
Mafia boss John Gotti is born
John Joseph Gotti, Jr., the future head of the Gambino crime family and a man later nicknamed “the Dapper Don” due to his polished appearance and expensive suits, is born in the Bronx, New York. Gotti, the grandson of Italian immigrants, was raised in a poor family with 13 children. Growing up, he did errands for mobsters in his East New York neighborhood, joined a gang called the Fulton-Rockaway Boys and quit school at age 16. He racked up a series of arrests for petty crimes, but escaped real jail time until 1968, when he pled guilty to hijacking trucks near New York’s Kennedy International Airport (then called Idlewild Airport). He served three years in prison.
In 1974, Gotti was arrested for the revenge slaying of a man who had kidnapped and killed the nephew of crime family boss Carlo Gambino. Gotti was sentenced to four years; however, as a result of bribes to prison officials, he was allowed out to visit his family and associates. After Gotti was officially released from prison in 1977, he was promoted to captain in the Bergin crew of the Gambino family, the nation’s biggest and most powerful organized crime group. In December 1985, Gotti grabbed control of the Gambino family after ordering the murder of then-boss Paul Castellano outside a Manhattan steak house.
In 1985, the federal government, which had been wiretapping Gotti and his associates, accumulated enough evidence to indict him on federal racketeering charges. The subsequent trial, in 1986, resulted in an acquittal for Gotti, who the media dubbed “the Teflon Don” for his ability to avoid conviction. The jury foreman in the case was later convicted of accepting a large bribe to vote for the mob boss’s acquittal.
As head of the Gambino family, Gotti’s swagger and colorful style made him a tabloid press favorite and he raked in millions of dollars from criminal activities, all the while claiming to be a hard-working plumbing salesman. Government wiretaps revealed that behind the showy public image, he was a ruthless figure who wouldn’t tolerate disrespect from anyone. In December 1990, Gotti and several co-horts were arrested on a variety of charges at the Ravenite Social Club in New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood. Mobster Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano eventually made a deal with the government to testify against his boss and in April 1992, a jury found Gotti guilty of 13 counts, including murder and racketeering. He was sent to the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, where he was locked in a cell 23 hours a day.
On June 10, 2002, Gotti died of throat cancer at age 61 at a medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.
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Oct 28, 1886
Statue of Liberty dedicated
The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, is dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.
Originally known as "Liberty Enlightening the World," the statue was proposed by the French historian Edouard de Laboulaye to commemorate the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution. Designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the 151-foot statue was the form of a woman with an uplifted arm holding a torch. Its framework of gigantic steel supports was designed by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, the latter famous for his design of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
In February 1877, Congress approved the use of a site on New York Bedloe's Island, which was suggested by Bartholdi. In May 1884, the statue was completed in France, and three months later the Americans laid the cornerstone for its pedestal in New York Harbor. In June 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty arrived in the New World, enclosed in more than 200 packing cases. Its copper sheets were reassembled, and the last rivet of the monument was fitted on October 28, 1886, during a dedication presided over by President Cleveland and attended by numerous French and American dignitaries.
On the pedestal was inscribed "The New Colossus," a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus that welcomed immigrants to the United States with the declaration, "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. / I lift my lamp beside the golden door." In 1892, Ellis Island, adjacent to Bedloe's Island, opened as the chief entry station for immigrants to the United States, and for the next 32 years more than 12 million immigrants were welcomed into New York harbor by the sight of "Lady Liberty." In 1924, the Statue of Liberty was made a national monument, and in 1956 Bedloe's Island was renamed Liberty Island. The statue underwent a major restoration in the 1980s.
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Oct 29, 1618
Sir Walter Raleigh executed
Sir Walter Raleigh, English adventurer, writer, and favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, is beheaded in London, under a sentence brought against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I.
During Elizabeth's reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the first English settlement in America, in 1587—the ill-fated Roanoke settlement located in present-day North Carolina. Raleigh later fell out of favor with Elizabeth after she learned of his secret marriage to Bessy Throckmorton, one of her maids-of-honor, and he was imprisoned with his wife in the Tower of London. After buying his freedom, Raleigh married Bessy and distanced himself from the jealous English queen.
After Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was implicated as a foe of King James I and imprisoned with a death sentence. The death sentence was later commuted, and in 1616 Raleigh was freed to lead an expedition to the New World, this time to establish a gold mine in the Orinoco River region of South America. However, the expedition was a failure, and when Raleigh returned to England the death sentence of 1603 was invoked against him.
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Oct 30, 1938
Welles scares nation
Orson Welles causes a nationwide panic with his broadcast of "War of the Worlds"—a realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth.
Orson Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells' 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of "The Shadow" in the hit mystery program of the same name. "War of the Worlds" was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause.
The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: "The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in 'War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells."
Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy "Charlie McCarthy" on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.
Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to "the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra." Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that "Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory" had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer's field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.
Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. "Good heavens," he declared, "something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here's another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me ... I can see the thing's body now. It's large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it... it ... ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it's so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate."
The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired "heat-ray" weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon "Martian cylinders" landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee. In fact, that was not far from the truth.
Perhaps as many as a million radio listeners believed that a real Martian invasion was underway. Panic broke out across the country. In New Jersey, terrified civilians jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders. People begged police for gas masks to save them from the toxic gas and asked electric companies to turn off the power so that the Martians wouldn't see their lights. One woman ran into an Indianapolis church where evening services were being held and yelled, "New York has been destroyed! It's the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!"
When news of the real-life panic leaked into the CBS studio, Welles went on the air as himself to remind listeners that it was just fiction. There were rumors that the show caused suicides, but none were ever confirmed.
The Federal Communications Commission investigated the program but found no law was broken. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future. Orson Welles feared that the controversy generated by "War of the Worlds" would ruin his career. In fact, the publicity helped land him a contract with a Hollywood studio, and in 1941 he directed, wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane—a movie that many have called the greatest American film ever made.
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Oct 31, 1517
Martin Luther posts 95 theses
On this day in 1517, the priest and scholar Martin Luther approaches the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nails a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation.
In his theses, Luther condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the papal practice of asking payment—called "indulgences"—for the forgiveness of sins. At the time, a Dominican priest named Johann Tetzel, commissioned by the Archbishop of Mainz and Pope Leo X, was in the midst of a major fundraising campaign in Germany to finance the renovation of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Though Prince Frederick III the Wise had banned the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg, many church members traveled to purchase them. When they returned, they showed the pardons they had bought to Luther, claiming they no longer had to repent for their sins.
Luther's frustration with this practice led him to write the 95 Theses, which were quickly snapped up, translated from Latin into German and distributed widely. A copy made its way to Rome, and efforts began to convince Luther to change his tune. He refused to keep silent, however, and in 1521 Pope Leo X formally excommunicated Luther from the Catholic Church. That same year, Luther again refused to recant his writings before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Germany, who issued the famous Edict of Worms declaring Luther an outlaw and a heretic and giving permission for anyone to kill him without consequence. Protected by Prince Frederick, Luther began working on a German translation of the Bible, a task that took 10 years to complete.
The term "Protestant" first appeared in 1529, when Charles V revoked a provision that allowed the ruler of each German state to choose whether they would enforce the Edict of Worms. A number of princes and other supporters of Luther issued a protest, declaring that their allegiance to God trumped their allegiance to the emperor. They became known to their opponents as Protestants; gradually this name came to apply to all who believed the Church should be reformed, even those outside Germany. By the time Luther died, of natural causes, in 1546, his revolutionary beliefs had formed the basis for the Protestant Reformation, which would over the next three centuries revolutionize Western civilization
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Nov 1, 1512
Sistine Chapel ceiling opens to public
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, one of Italian artist Michelangelo's finest works, is exhibited to the public for the first time.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, the greatest of the Italian Renaissance artists, was born in the small village of Caprese in 1475. The son of a government administrator, he grew up in Florence, a center of the early Renaissance movement, and became an artist's apprentice at age 13. Demonstrating obvious talent, he was taken under the wing of Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of the Florentine republic and a great patron of the arts. After demonstrating his mastery of sculpture in such works as the Pieta (1498) and David (1504), he was called to Rome in 1508 to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—the chief consecrated space in the Vatican.
Michelangelo's epic ceiling frescoes, which took several years to complete, are among his most memorable works. Central in a complex system of decoration featuring numerous figures are nine panels devoted to biblical world history. The most famous of these is The Creation of Adam, a painting in which the arms of God and Adam are stretching toward each other. In 1512, Michelangelo completed the work.
After 15 years as an architect in Florence, Michelangelo returned to Rome in 1534, where he would work and live for the rest of his life. That year saw his painting of the The Last Judgment on the wall above the altar in the Sistine Chapel for Pope Paul III. The massive painting depicts Christ's damnation of sinners and blessing of the virtuous and is regarded as a masterpiece of early Mannerism.
Michelangelo worked until his death in 1564 at the age of 88. In addition to his major artistic works, he produced numerous other sculptures, frescoes, architectural designs, and drawings, many of which are unfinished and some of which are lost. In his lifetime, he was celebrated as Europe's greatest living artist, and today he is held up as one of the greatest artists of all time, as exalted in the visual arts as William Shakespeare is in literature or Ludwig van Beethoven is in music.
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Nov 2, 1983
MLK federal holiday declared
President Ronald Reagan signs a bill in the White House Rose Garden designating a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., to be observed on the third Monday of January.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience to racial segregation. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.
A powerful orator, he appealed to Christian and American ideals and won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites. In 1963, he led his massive March on Washington, in which he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" address. In 1964, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. In October of that year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He donated the prize money, valued at $54,600, to the civil rights movement.
In the late 1960s, King openly criticized U.S. involvement in Vietnam and turned his efforts to winning economic equality for poorer Americans. By that time, the civil rights movement had begun to fracture, with activists such as Stokely Carmichael rejecting King's vision of nonviolent integration in favor of African American self-reliance and self-defense. In 1968, King intended to revive his movement through an interracial "Poor People's March" on Washington, but on April 4 escaped white convict James Earl Ray assassinated him in Memphis, Tennessee.
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June 13, 2013
....shitsoul banned from the Y board. :)
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June 13, 2013
....shitsoul banned from the Y board. :)
That was awesome. 10/10.
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June 13, 2013
....shitsoul banned from the Y board. :)
Clever.
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November 03, 2013
Shizzo defeated by getbig.
Here's the link if anyone wants to keep up with this while he's supposed to be gone.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
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maybe wolfox could keep it up ;)
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Nov 4, 1922
Entrance to King Tut's tomb discovered
British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, though the little-known King Tutankhamen, who had died when he was 18, was still unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for "King Tut's Tomb," finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the interior chambers of the tomb, finding them miraculously intact.
Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years. Most of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum.
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Nov 5th - 19th
Shizzo was in timeout.
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Nov 20, 1820
American vessel sunk by sperm whale
The American whaler Essex, which hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, is attacked by an 80-ton sperm whale 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America.
The 238-ton Essex was in pursuit of sperm whales, specifically the precious oil and bone that could be derived from them, when an enraged bull whale rammed the ship twice and capsized the vessel. The 20 crew members escaped in three open boats, but only five of the men survived the harrowing 83-day journey to the coastal waters of South America, where they were picked up by other ships. Most of the crew resorted to cannibalism during the long journey, and at one point men on one of the long boats drew straws to determine which of the men would be shot in order to provide sustenance for the others. Three other men who had been left on a desolate Pacific island were saved later.
The first capture of a sperm whale by an American vessel was in 1711, marking the birth of an important American industry that commanded a fleet of more than 700 ships by the mid 18th century. Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick (1851) was inspired in part by the story of the Essex.
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Nov 21, 1694
Voltaire's birthday
On this day in 1694, Francois-Marie Arouet, later known as Voltaire, is born in Paris to a treasury officer and his wife.
Voltaire studied law but abandoned it to become a writer. He won success with his plays-mostly classical tragedies at first. He also wrote histories and epic poetry. His writing brought him some measure of success, and his wise investments made him wealthy in his mid-30s. However, his epic poem La Henriade, a satirical attack on politics and religion, infuriated the government and landed Voltaire in the Bastille for nearly a year in 1717.
Voltaire's time in prison failed to quench his satire. In 1726, he again displeased authorities and fled to England. He returned several years later and continued to write plays. In 1734, his Lettres Philosophiques criticized established religions and political institutions, and he was forced to flee once more. He retreated to the region of Champagne, where he lived with his mistress and patroness, Madame du Chételet. In 1750, he moved to Berlin on the invitation of Frederick II of Prussia and later settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his best-known work, Candide. He died in Paris in 1778, having returned to supervise the production of one of his plays.
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Nov 22, 1963
John F. Kennedy assassinated
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible.
First lady Jacqueline Kennedy rarely accompanied her husband on political outings, but she was beside him, along with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, for a 10-mile motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas on November 22. Sitting in a Lincoln convertible, the Kennedys and Connallys waved at the large and enthusiastic crowds gathered along the parade route. As their vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository Building at 12:30 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired three shots from the sixth floor, fatally wounding President Kennedy and seriously injuring Governor Connally. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas' Parkland Hospital. He was 46.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was three cars behind President Kennedy in the motorcade, was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States at 2:39 p.m. He took the presidential oath of office aboard Air Force One as it sat on the runway at Dallas Love Field airport. The swearing in was witnessed by some 30 people, including Jacqueline Kennedy, who was still wearing clothes stained with her husband's blood. Seven minutes later, the presidential jet took off for Washington.
The next day, November 23, President Johnson issued his first proclamation, declaring November 25 to be a day of national mourning for the slain president. On that Monday, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of Washington to watch a horse-drawn caisson bear Kennedy's body from the Capitol Rotunda to St. Matthew's Catholic Cathedral for a requiem Mass. The solemn procession then continued on to Arlington National Cemetery, where leaders of 99 nations gathered for the state funeral. Kennedy was buried with full military honors on a slope below Arlington House, where an eternal flame was lit by his widow to forever mark the grave.
Lee Harvey Oswald, born in New Orleans in 1939, joined the U.S. Marines in 1956. He was discharged in 1959 and nine days later left for the Soviet Union, where he tried unsuccessfully to become a citizen. He worked in Minsk and married a Soviet woman and in 1962 was allowed to return to the United States with his wife and infant daughter. In early 1963, he bought a .38 revolver and rifle with a telescopic sight by mail order, and on April 10 in Dallas he allegedly shot at and missed former U.S. Army general Edwin Walker, a figure known for his extreme right-wing views. Later that month, Oswald went to New Orleans and founded a branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro organization. In September 1963, he went to Mexico City, where investigators allege that he attempted to secure a visa to travel to Cuba or return to the USSR. In October, he returned to Dallas and took a job at the Texas School Book Depository Building.
Less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, Oswald killed a policeman who questioned him on the street near his rooming house in Dallas. Thirty minutes later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater by police responding to reports of a suspect. He was formally arraigned on November 23 for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit.
On November 24, Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy's murder was the motive for his action. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder.
Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy. In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded innocent on the grounds that his great grief over Kennedy's murder had caused him to suffer "psychomotor epilepsy" and shoot Oswald unconsciously. The jury found Ruby guilty of "murder with malice" and sentenced him to die.
In October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the decision on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the time. In January 1967, while awaiting a new trial, to be held in Wichita Falls, Ruby died of lung cancer in a Dallas hospital.
The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee's findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.
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Nov 23, 1981
Reagan gives CIA authority to establish the Contras
On this day, President Ronald Reagan signs off on a top secret document, National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), which gives the Central Intelligence Agency the power to recruit and support a 500-man force of Nicaraguan rebels to conduct covert actions against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. A budget of $19 million was established for that purpose. NSDD-17 marked the beginning of official U.S. support for the so-called Contras in their struggle against the Sandinistas.
The decision came several months after President Reagan directed the CIA to develop a plan to stop what his administration believed to be a serious flow of arms from Nicaragua to rebels in neighboring El Salvador. The administration also believed that the Sandinista regime was merely a cat's paw for the Soviet Union. CIA officials subsequently set about securing pledges from Honduras to provide training bases and Argentina to give training to about 1,000 rebels (these would be in addition to the 500-man force trained and supplied by the CIA). Beyond the original goal of halting the flow of arms from Nicaragua, the tasks of the rebels were expanded to include spy missions and even paramilitary actions inside Nicaragua.
News of the directive leaked out to the press in March 1982, but Reagan administration officials quickly downplayed the significance of the action. They argued that the CIA plan was designed to support Nicaraguan "moderates" who opposed the Sandinista regime, not the disreputable former soldiers and allies of Anastasio Somoza, whom the Sandinista overthrew in 1979. Deputy Director of the CIA Admiral Bobby R. Inman argued that the $19 million allocation provided little buying power for arms and other materials, saying that "Nineteen million or $29 million isn't going to buy you much of any kind these days, and certainly not against that kind of military force."
In the years to come, U.S. support of the Contras became a highly charged issue among the American public. Congressional and public criticisms of the program eventually drove the Reagan administration to subvert congressional bans on aid to the Contras. These actions resulted in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986.
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Nov 24, 1859
Origin of Species is published
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a groundbreaking scientific work by British naturalist Charles Darwin, is published in England. Darwin's theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called "natural selection." In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment tend to propagate more descendants than organisms of the same species that lack the variation, thus influencing the overall genetic makeup of the species.
Darwin, who was influenced by the work of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and the English economist Thomas Mathus, acquired most of the evidence for his theory during a five-year surveying expedition aboard the HMS Beagle in the 1830s. Visiting such diverse places as the Galapagos Islands and New Zealand, Darwin acquired an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, and geology of many lands. This information, along with his studies in variation and interbreeding after returning to England, proved invaluable in the development of his theory of organic evolution.
The idea of organic evolution was not new. It had been suggested earlier by, among others, Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin, a distinguished English scientist, and Lamarck, who in the early 19th century drew the first evolutionary diagram—a ladder leading from one-celled organisms to man. However, it was not until Darwin that science presented a practical explanation for the phenomenon of evolution.
Darwin had formulated his theory of natural selection by 1844, but he was wary to reveal his thesis to the public because it so obviously contradicted the biblical account of creation. In 1858, with Darwin still remaining silent about his findings, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace independently published a paper that essentially summarized his theory. Darwin and Wallace gave a joint lecture on evolution before the Linnean Society of London in July 1858, and Darwin prepared On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection for publication.
Published on November 24, 1859, Origin of Species sold out immediately. Most scientists quickly embraced the theory that solved so many puzzles of biological science, but orthodox Christians condemned the work as heresy. Controversy over Darwin's ideas deepened with the publication of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), in which he presented evidence of man's evolution from apes.
By the time of Darwin's death in 1882, his theory of evolution was generally accepted. In honor of his scientific work, he was buried in Westminster Abbey beside kings, queens, and other illustrious figures from British history. Subsequent developments in genetics and molecular biology led to modifications in accepted evolutionary theory, but Darwin's ideas remain central to the field.
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Nov 24, 1859
Origin of Species is published
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a groundbreaking scientific work by British naturalist Charles Darwin, is published in England. Darwin's theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called "natural selection." In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment tend to propagate more descendants than organisms of the same species that lack the variation, thus influencing the overall genetic makeup of the species.
Darwin, who was influenced by the work of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and the English economist Thomas Mathus, acquired most of the evidence for his theory during a five-year surveying expedition aboard the HMS Beagle in the 1830s. Visiting such diverse places as the Galapagos Islands and New Zealand, Darwin acquired an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, and geology of many lands. This information, along with his studies in variation and interbreeding after returning to England, proved invaluable in the development of his theory of organic evolution.
The idea of organic evolution was not new. It had been suggested earlier by, among others, Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin, a distinguished English scientist, and Lamarck, who in the early 19th century drew the first evolutionary diagram—a ladder leading from one-celled organisms to man. However, it was not until Darwin that science presented a practical explanation for the phenomenon of evolution.
Darwin had formulated his theory of natural selection by 1844, but he was wary to reveal his thesis to the public because it so obviously contradicted the biblical account of creation. In 1858, with Darwin still remaining silent about his findings, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace independently published a paper that essentially summarized his theory. Darwin and Wallace gave a joint lecture on evolution before the Linnean Society of London in July 1858, and Darwin prepared On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection for publication.
Published on November 24, 1859, Origin of Species sold out immediately. Most scientists quickly embraced the theory that solved so many puzzles of biological science, but orthodox Christians condemned the work as heresy. Controversy over Darwin's ideas deepened with the publication of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), in which he presented evidence of man's evolution from apes.
By the time of Darwin's death in 1882, his theory of evolution was generally accepted. In honor of his scientific work, he was buried in Westminster Abbey beside kings, queens, and other illustrious figures from British history. Subsequent developments in genetics and molecular biology led to modifications in accepted evolutionary theory, but Darwin's ideas remain central to the field.
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Nov 25, 1970
Mishima commits ritual suicide
World-renowned Japanese writer Yukio Mishima commits suicide after failing to win public support for his often extreme political beliefs.
Born in 1925, Mishima was obsessed with what he saw as the spiritual barrenness of modern life. He preferred prewar Japan, with its austere patriotism and traditional values, to the materialistic, westernized nation that arose after 1945. In this spirit, he founded the "Shield Society," a controversial private army made up of about 100 students that was to defend the emperor in the event of a leftist uprising.
On November 25, Mishima delivered to his publisher the last installment of The Sea of Fertility, his four-volume epic on Japanese life in the 20th century that is regarded as his greatest work. He then went with several followers to a military building in Tokyo and seized control of a general's office. There, from a balcony, he gave a brief speech to about 1,000 assembled servicemen, in which he urged them to overthrow Japan's constitution, which forbids Japanese rearmament. The soldiers were unsympathetic, and Mishima committed seppuku, or ritual suicide, by disemboweling himself with his sword.
Though his extreme beliefs did not gain him much of a following, many mourned the loss of such a gifted author.
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Nov 26, 1941
FDR establishes modern Thanksgiving holiday
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill officially establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.
The tradition of celebrating the holiday on Thursday dates back to the early history of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, when post-harvest holidays were celebrated on the weekday regularly set aside as "Lecture Day," a midweek church meeting where topical sermons were presented. A famous Thanksgiving observance occurred in the autumn of 1621, when Plymouth governor William Bradford invited local Indians to join the Pilgrims in a three-day festival held in gratitude for the bounty of the season.
Thanksgiving became an annual custom throughout New England in the 17th century, and in 1777 the Continental Congress declared the first national American Thanksgiving following the Patriot victory at Saratoga. In 1789, President George Washington became the first president to proclaim a Thanksgiving holiday, when, at the request of Congress, he proclaimed November 26, a Tuesday, as a day of national thanksgiving for the U.S. Constitution. However, it was not until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to fall on the last Thursday of November, that the modern holiday was celebrated nationally.
With a few deviations, Lincoln's precedent was followed annually by every subsequent president--until 1939. In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt departed from tradition by declaring November 23, the next to last Thursday that year, as Thanksgiving Day. Considerable controversy surrounded this deviation, and some Americans refused to honor Roosevelt's declaration. For the next two years, Roosevelt repeated the unpopular proclamation, but on November 26, 1941, he admitted his mistake and signed a bill into law officially making the fourth Thursday in November the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day.
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Nov 27, 1095
Pope Urban II orders first Crusade
On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II makes perhaps the most influential speech of the Middle Ages, giving rise to the Crusades by calling all Christians in Europe to war against Muslims in order to reclaim the Holy Land, with a cry of "Deus vult!" or "God wills it!"
Born Odo of Lagery in 1042, Urban was a protege of the great reformer Pope Gregory VII. Like Gregory, he made internal reform his main focus, railing against simony (the selling of church offices) and other clerical abuses prevalent during the Middle Ages. Urban showed himself to be an adept and powerful cleric, and when he was elected pope in 1088, he applied his statecraft to weakening support for his rivals, notably Clement III.
By the end of the 11th century, the Holy Land—the area now commonly referred to as the Middle East—had become a point of conflict for European Christians. Since the 6th century, Christians frequently made pilgrimages to the birthplace of their religion, but when the Seljuk Turks took control of Jerusalem, Christians were barred from the Holy City. When the Turks then threatened to invade the Byzantine Empire and take Constantinople, Byzantine Emperor Alexius I made a special appeal to Urban for help. This was not the first appeal of its kind, but it came at an important time for Urban. Wanting to reinforce the power of the papacy, Urban seized the opportunity to unite Christian Europe under him as he fought to take back the Holy Land from the Turks.
At the Council of Clermont, in France, at which several hundred clerics and noblemen gathered, Urban delivered a rousing speech summoning rich and poor alike to stop their in-fighting and embark on a righteous war to help their fellow Christians in the East and take back Jerusalem. Urban denigrated the Muslims, exaggerating stories of their anti-Christian acts, and promised absolution and remission of sins for all who died in the service of Christ.
Urban's war cry caught fire, mobilizing clerics to drum up support throughout Europe for the crusade against the Muslims. All told, between 60,000 and 100,000 people responded to Urban's call to march on Jerusalem. Not all who responded did so out of piety: European nobles were tempted by the prospect of increased land holdings and riches to be gained from the conquest. These nobles were responsible for the death of a great many innocents both on the way to and in the Holy Land, absorbing the riches and estates of those they conveniently deemed opponents to their cause. Adding to the death toll was the inexperience and lack of discipline of the Christian peasants against the trained, professional armies of the Muslims. As a result, the Christians were initially beaten back, and only through sheer force of numbers were they eventually able to triumph.
Urban died in 1099, two weeks after the fall of Jerusalem but before news of the Christian victory made it back to Europe. His was the first of seven major military campaigns fought over the next two centuries known as the Crusades, the bloody repercussions of which are still felt today. Urban was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1881.
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Did anybody take over while you were in Time Out? Keep em coming bro!
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Did anybody take over while you were in Time Out? Keep em coming bro!
I considered it but I wouldn't have without the consent of shizz
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This is a good thread regardless of who contributes. If it happened on "this day", then I encourage you to post it!
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Nov 28, 1582
William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway
On this day in 1582, William Shakespeare, 18, and Anne Hathaway, 26, pay a 40-pound bond for their marriage license in Stratford-upon-Avon. Six months later, Anne gives birth to their daughter, Susanna, and two years later, to twins.
Little is known about Shakespeare's early life. His father was a tradesman who became an alderman and bailiff, and Shakespeare was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564. Sometime after the birth of his own children, Shakespeare set off for London to become an actor and by 1592 was well established in London's theatrical world as an actor and playwright. His earliest plays, including The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, were written in the early 1590s. Later in the decade, he wrote tragedies like Romeo and Juliet (1594-1595) and comedies including The Merchant of Venice (1596-1597). His greatest tragedies were written after 1600, including Hamlet (1600-01), Othello (1604-05), King Lear (1605-06), and Macbeth (1605-1606).
Shakespeare became a member of the popular theater troupe the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which later became the King's Men. The group built and operated the famous Globe Theater in London in 1599. Shakespeare became a major shareholder in the troupe and earned enough money to buy a large house in Stratford in 1597. He retired to Stratford in 1610, where he wrote his last plays, including The Tempest (1611) and The Winter's Tale (1610-11). Meanwhile, he had written more than 100 sonnets, which were published in 1609. Shakespeare's plays were not published during his lifetime. After his death, two members of his troupe collected copies of his plays and printed what is now called the First Folio (1623).
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Nov 29, 1864
Native Americans are massacred at Sand Creek, Colorado
On this day in 1864, peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians are massacred by a band of Colonel John Chivington's Colorado volunteers at Sand Creek, Colorado.
The causes of the Sand Creek massacre were rooted in the long conflict for control of the Great Plains of eastern Colorado. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 guaranteed ownership of the area north of the Arkansas River to the Nebraska border to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe. However, by the end of the decade, waves of Euro-American miners flooded across the region in search of gold in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, placing extreme pressure on the resources of the arid plains. By 1861, tensions between new settlers and Native Americans were rising. On February 8 of that year, a Cheyenne delegation, headed by Chief Black Kettle, along with some Arapahoe leaders, accepted a new settlement with the Federal government. The Native Americans ceded most of their land but secured a 600-square mile reservation and annuity payments. The delegation reasoned that continued hostilities would jeopardize their bargaining power. In the decentralized political world of the tribes, Black Kettle and his fellow delegates represented only part of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes. Many did not accept this new agreement, called the Treaty of Fort Wise.
The new reservation and Federal payments proved unable to sustain the tribes. During the Civil War, tensions again rose and sporadic violence broke out between Anglos and Native Americans. In June 1864, John Evans, governor of the territory of Colorado, attempted to isolate recalcitrant Native Americans by inviting "friendly Indians" to camp near military forts and receive provisions and protection. He also called for volunteers to fill the military void left when most of the regular army troops in Colorado were sent to other areas during the Civil War. In August 1864, Evans met with Black Kettle and several other chiefs to forge a new peace, and all parties left satisfied. Black Kettle moved his band to Fort Lyon, Colorado, where the commanding officer encouraged him to hunt near Sand Creek. In what can only be considered an act of treachery, Chivington moved his troops to the plains, and on November 29, they attacked the unsuspecting Native Americans, scattering men, women, and children and hunting them down. The casualties reflect the one-sided nature of the fight. Nine of Chivington's men were killed; 148 of Black Kettle's followers were slaughtered, more than half of them women and children. The Colorado volunteers returned and killed the wounded, mutilated the bodies, and set fire to the village.
The atrocities committed by the soldiers were initially praised, but then condemned as the circumstances of the massacre emerged. Chivington resigned from the military and aborted his budding political career. Black Kettle survived and continued his peace efforts. In 1865, his followers accepted a new reservation in Indian Territory.
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Nov 30, 1989
"America's First Female Serial Killer" strikes
Richard Mallory, a storeowner in Palm Harbor, Florida, is last seen taking a ride with Aileen Wuornos. The following day, his car—containing his wallet, some condoms, and an empty vodka bottle—was found abandoned in a remote area of Ormond Beach. Nearly two weeks later, his body turned up in a Daytona Beach junkyard with three bullets in his chest. Mallory's murder was the first of seven committed by Aileen Wuornos over the next year. Perhaps because she was one of the few women killers to gain widespread fame and notoriety, she was inaccurately dubbed "America's first female serial killer." Her case was heavily publicized through television talk show appearances and a documentary, The Selling of a Serial Killer.
Wuornos had been the victim of abuse and neglect herself. Her parents split before she was born and her father, who had been arrested for child molesting, killed himself while awaiting trial in a mental institution. When her mother abandoned her at a young age, Aileen was sent to live with her grandparents. But she was kicked out of their home when she got pregnant at age 14. From 1974 to 1976, Wuornos operated under several aliases and amassed an arrest record for offenses including drunk driving, assault, and armed robbery. In 1986, she became romantically and criminally involved with a woman named Tyria Moore.
In late 1989, Wuornos began her infamous killing spree. Five months after Richard Mallory was killed, David Spears was found dead, shot six times with a .22 caliber gun in the woods near Tampa. At around the same time, another male body turned up nearby that appeared to have been killed with the same type of gun. Three additional men met the same demise during the summer of 1990.
When the seventh victim was found in November, the media was alerted to the possibility of a serial killer. After receiving several tips, detectives caught Wuornos in a seedy biker bar in January 1991. With Moore assisting police, Wuornos decided to confess to the killings but claimed that they had all been done in self-defense. When a jury found Wuornos guilty on January 27, 1992, she screamed out, "I'm innocent! I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scumbags of America!" Her outburst was probably ill considered, given the fact that the same jury came back to decide her penalty the next day. Wuornos was sentenced to death.
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Dec 1, 1862
Lincoln gives State of the Union address
On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln addresses the U.S. Congress and speaks some of his most memorable words as he discusses the Northern war effort.
Lincoln used the address to present a moderate message concerning his policy towards slavery. Just 10 weeks before, he had issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that slaves in territories still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, would be free. The measure was not welcomed by everyone in the North--it met with considerable resistance from conservative Democrats who did not want to fight a war to free slaves.
The November 1862 elections were widely interpreted as a condemnation of the emancipation plan. The Democrats won the New York governorship and 34 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, though the Republicans gained five Senate seats and maintained control of most state legislatures. Lincoln used the State of the Union address to present a more moderate position on emancipation. He mentioned gradual, compensated emancipation of slaves, which many moderates and conservatives desired, but he also asserted that the slaves liberated thus far by Union armies would remain forever free.
Lincoln's closing paragraph was a statement on the trials of the time: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present...fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union...In giving freedom to the slave, we ensure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth."
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Dec 2, 1804
Napoleon crowned emperor
In Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Napoleon I, the first Frenchman to hold the title of emperor in a thousand years. Pope Pius VII handed Napoleon the crown that the 35-year-old conqueror of Europe placed on his own head.
The Corsican-born Napoleon, one of the greatest military strategists in history, rapidly rose in the ranks of the French Revolutionary Army during the late 1790s. By 1799, France was at war with most of Europe, and Napoleon returned home from his Egyptian campaign to take over the reigns of the French government and save his nation from collapse. After becoming first consul in February 1800, he reorganized his armies and defeated Austria. In 1802, he established the Napoleonic Code, a new system of French law, and in 1804 he established the French empire. By 1807, Napoleon's empire stretched from the River Elbe in the north, down through Italy in the south, and from the Pyrenees to the Dalmatian coast.
Beginning in 1812, Napoleon began to encounter the first significant defeats of his military career, suffering through a disastrous invasion of Russia, losing Spain to the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War, and enduring total defeat against an allied force by 1814. Exiled to the island of Elba, he escaped to France in early 1815 and raised a new Grand Army that enjoyed temporary success before its crushing defeat at Waterloo against an allied force under Wellington on June 18, 1815.
Napoleon was subsequently exiled to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa, where he lived under house arrest with a few followers. In May 1821, he died, most likely of stomach cancer. He was only 51 years old. In 1840, his body was returned to Paris, and a magnificent funeral was held. Napoleon's body was conveyed through the Arc de Triomphe and entombed under the dome of the Invalides.
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Dec 3, 1967
First human heart transplant
On December 3, 1967, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
Washkansky, a South African grocer dying from chronic heart disease, received the transplant from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman who was fatally injured in a car accident. Surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who trained at the University of Cape Town and in the United States, performed the revolutionary medical operation. The technique Barnard employed had been initially developed by a group of American researchers in the 1950s. American surgeon Norman Shumway achieved the first successful heart transplant, in a dog, at Stanford University in California in 1958.
After Washkansky's surgery, he was given drugs to suppress his immune system and keep his body from rejecting the heart. These drugs also left him susceptible to sickness, however, and 18 days later he died from double pneumonia. Despite the setback, Washkansky's new heart had functioned normally until his death.
In the 1970s, the development of better anti-rejection drugs made transplantation more viable. Dr. Barnard continued to perform heart transplant operations, and by the late 1970s many of his patients were living up to five years with their new hearts. Successful heart transplant surgery continues to be performed today, but finding appropriate donors is extremely difficult.
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Dec 5, 1945
Aircraft squadron lost in the Bermuda Triangle
At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned.
Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack of fuel.
By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m.
The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the 13 men of the Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found.
Although naval officials maintained that the remains of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found because stormy weather destroyed the evidence, the story of the "Lost Squadron" helped cement the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle is said to stretch from the southern U.S. coast across to Bermuda and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.
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Dec 6, 1884
Washington Monument completed
On this day in 1884, in Washington, D.C., workers place a nine-inch aluminum pyramid atop a tower of white marble, completing the construction of an impressive monument to the city's namesake and the nation's first president, George Washington. As early as 1783, the infant U.S. Congress decided that a statue of George Washington, the great Revolutionary War general, should be placed near the site of the new Congressional building, wherever it might be. After then-President Washington asked him to lay out a new federal capital on the Potomac River in 1791, architect Pierre L'Enfant left a place for the statue at the western end of the sweeping National Mall (near the monument's present location).
It wasn't until 1832, however--33 years after Washington's death--that anyone really did anything about the monument. That year, a private Washington National Monument Society was formed. After holding a design competition and choosing an elaborate Greek temple-like design by architect Robert Mills, the society began a fundraising drive to raise money for the statue's construction. These efforts--including appeals to the nation's schoolchildren--raised some $230,000, far short of the $1 million needed. Construction began anyway, on July 4, 1848, as representatives of the society laid the cornerstone of the monument: a 24,500-pound block of pure white marble.
Six years later, with funds running low, construction was halted. Around the time the Civil War began in 1861, author Mark Twain described the unfinished monument as looking like a "hollow, oversized chimney." No further progress was made until 1876--the centennial of American independence--when President Ulysses S. Grant authorized construction to be completed.
Made of some 36,000 blocks of marble and granite stacked 555 feet in the air, the monument was the tallest structure in the world at the time of its completion in December 1884. In the six months following the dedication ceremony, over 10,000 people climbed the nearly 900 steps to the top of the Washington Monument. Today, an elevator makes the trip far easier, and more than 800,000 people visit the monument each year. A city law passed in 1910 restricted the height of new buildings to ensure that the monument will remain the tallest structure in Washington, D.C.--a fitting tribute to the man known as the "Father of His Country."
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Dec 7, 1941
Pearl Harbor bombed
At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.
With diplomatic negotiations with Japan breaking down, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers knew that an imminent Japanese attack was probable, but nothing had been done to increase security at the important naval base at Pearl Harbor. It was Sunday morning, and many military personnel had been given passes to attend religious services off base. At 7:02 a.m., two radar operators spotted large groups of aircraft in flight toward the island from the north, but, with a flight of B-17s expected from the United States at the time, they were told to sound no alarm. Thus, the Japanese air assault came as a devastating surprise to the naval base.
Much of the Pacific fleet was rendered useless: Five of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than 200 aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded, many while valiantly attempting to repulse the attack. Japan's losses were some 30 planes, five midget submarines, and fewer than 100 men. Fortunately for the United States, all three Pacific fleet carriers were out at sea on training maneuvers. These giant aircraft carriers would have their revenge against Japan six months later at the Battle of Midway, reversing the tide against the previously invincible Japanese navy in a spectacular victory.
The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress and declared, "Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." After a brief and forceful speech, he asked Congress to approve a resolution recognizing the state of war between the United States and Japan. The Senate voted for war against Japan by 82 to 0, and the House of Representatives approved the resolution by a vote of 388 to 1. The sole dissenter was Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a devout pacifist who had also cast a dissenting vote against the U.S. entrance into World War I. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the U.S. government responded in kind.
The American contribution to the successful Allied war effort spanned four long years and cost more than 400,000 American lives.
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Dec. 7th 2013
I dont see Japan messing with us too much anymore. Other than sending us cars.
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Dec. 7th 2013
I dont see Japan messing with us too much anymore. Other than sending us cars.
Crazy how they invaded us like that. Not sure if someone could invade us today. They would all be shot out of the sky.
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Why do you think the US Navy busted a gut trying to get dirigibles to work? To have platforms that could hang in the air and search for hostile fleets in the pacific that were a threat.
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Dec 8, 1980
John Lennon is assassinated in New York City
Former Beatle John Lennon is shot and killed by Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980.
For those who were listening to the radio on the evening of December 8, 1980, the news was probably broken by a disc jockey reading from the sketchy initial bulletin that came over the Associated Press newswire shortly after 11:25 p.m., Eastern Standard Time: "There's a report that John Lennon has been shot. It happened in New York. On the Upper West Side." In fact, Lennon had been declared dead some 10 minutes earlier in the emergency room of a Manhattan hospital—news that millions of Americans would receive, jarringly, from Monday Night Football announcer Howard Cosell, breaking into the regular commentary on that evening's contest between the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots: "An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City...shot twice in the back, rushed to the Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival."
John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, were returning home from a transfer session at a midtown Manhattan recording studio at approximately 10:50 p.m. on this day in 1980, when they exited their limousine onto the West 72nd Street sidewalk just outside their apartment building, the now-famous Dakota. On nearly the same spot some six hours earlier, Lennon had signed his autograph on a copy of his new album, Double Fantasy, for the man who would soon shoot him dead: Mark David Chapman. In his statement to the authorities later that evening, the 25-year-old Chapman, whom police took into custody peaceably after finding him reading a copy of The Catcher in the Rye at the site of the shooting, said, "I'm sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil."
A worldwide outpouring of grief and tribute followed John Lennon's assassination, culminating in a 10-minute silent vigil on December 14 that saw some 100,000 people gather in New York's Central Park and tens of thousands of others in cities around the world. Of Chapman, who pled guilty to Lennon's killing and was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, Yoko Ono would later say, "I don't even want to think about him, and I usually don't. Because it's so irrelevant who pulled the trigger. That was not what was relevant. The fact that John's gone is what we're living with."
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Why is this ridiculous thread necessary? The content is cut and pasted from elsewhere (without acknowledgement), so it contains nothing original.
Besides there are sites that do this sort of thing better and more completely. For example:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
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Why is this ridiculous thread necessary? The content is cut and pasted from elsewhere (without acknowledgement), so it contains nothing original.
Besides there are sites that do this sort of thing better and more completely. For example:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
Most people already know where I get the content from. It all comes from History.com
It would be very hard to come up with original articles everyday of the week. Nobody has the time, knowledge, or desire to do so.
I do not see how this would bother you?
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Dec 9, 1992
U.S Marines storm Mogadishu, Somalia
On this day in 1992, 1,800 United States Marines arrive in Mogadishu, Somalia, to spearhead a multinational force aimed at restoring order in the conflict-ridden country.
Following centuries of colonial rule by countries including Portugal, Britain and Italy, Mogadishu became the capital of an independent Somalia in 1960. Less than 10 years later, a military group led by Major General Muhammad Siad Barre seized power and declared Somalia a socialist state. A drought in the mid-1970s combined with an unsuccessful rebellion by ethnic Somalis in a neighboring province of Ethiopia to deprive many of food and shelter. By 1981, close to 2 million of the country's inhabitants were homeless. Though a peace accord was signed with Ethiopia in 1988, fighting increased between rival clans within Somalia, and in January 1991 Barre was forced to flee the capital. Over the next 23 months, Somalia's civil war killed some 50,000 people; another 300,000 died of starvation as United Nations peacekeeping forces struggled in vain to restore order and provide relief amid the chaos of war.
In early December 1992, outgoing U.S. President George H.W. Bush sent the contingent of Marines to Mogadishu as part of a mission dubbed Operation Restore Hope. Backed by the U.S. troops, international aid workers were soon able to restore food distribution and other humanitarian aid operations. Sporadic violence continued, including the murder of 24 U.N. soldiers from Pakistan in 1993. As a result, the U.N. authorized the arrest of General Mohammed Farah Aidid, leader of one of the rebel clans. On October 3, 1993, during an attempt to make the arrest, rebels shot down two of the U.S. Army's Black Hawk helicopters and killed 18 American soldiers.
As horrified TV viewers watched images of the bloodshed—-including footage of Aidid's supporters dragging the body of one dead soldier through the streets of Mogadishu, cheering—-President Bill Clinton immediately gave the order for all American soldiers to withdraw from Somalia by March 31, 1994. Other Western nations followed suit. When the last U.N. peacekeepers left in 1995, ending a mission that had cost more than $2 billion, Mogadishu still lacked a functioning government. A ceasefire accord signed in Kenya in 2002 failed to put a stop to the violence, and though a new parliament was convened in 2004, rival factions in various regions of Somalia continue to struggle for control of the troubled nation.
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Dec 10, 1963
Frank Sinatra Jr. endures a frightening ordeal
Frank Sinatra Jr., who was kidnapped in Lake Tahoe, California, on December 8, is allowed to talk to his father briefly. The 19-year-old man, who was trying to follow in his father's footsteps by pursuing a singing career, was abducted at gunpoint from his hotel room at Harrah's Casino and taken to Canoga Park, an area of Southern California's San Fernando Valley. After the brief conversation between father and son, the kidnappers demanded a ransom of $240,000.
Barry Keenan, the young mastermind behind the scheme, had also considered abducting the sons of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. But he and his partners decided upon Frank Sinatra Jr. because they thought he would be tough enough to handle the stress of a kidnapping. Although the crime was originally scheduled for November, President Kennedy's assassination delayed their plan.
Immediately following his son's abduction, Frank Sr. received offers of assistance from Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Sam Giancana, one of the country's most powerful organized crime leaders. He declined and instead accepted aid from the FBI. After a series of phone calls, the kidnappers revealed the drop point for the ransom money and said that Frank Jr. could be found on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. In an attempt to avoid a public scene, law enforcement officials picked the young Sinatra up and brought him home in the trunk of their car.
Within a couple of days, John Irwin, one of Keenan's partners, turned himself in to the San Diego FBI field office and confessed to the crime. By December 14, all the perpetrators had been located and arrested.
During the trial, which took place in the spring of 1964, controversy erupted when the defendants claimed that Frank Jr. had orchestrated the abduction as an elaborate publicity stunt. Gladys Root, a flamboyant Los Angeles attorney, pursued this line of defense, despite the fact that there was no evidence to support the accusation. Even after Keenan and the others were convicted, the rumors persisted. For his part, Keenan served 4-and-a-half years in federal prison. After his release, he became a successful real-estate developer.
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Most people already know where I get the content from. It all comes from History.com
It would be very hard to come up with original articles everyday of the week. Nobody has the time, knowledge, or desire to do so.
I do not see how this would bother you?
It doesn't bother me at all. Just strikes me as a waste of time and resources.
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Dec 11, 2008
Billionaire conman Bernard Madoff arrested
On this day in 2008, financier Bernard Madoff is arrested at his New York City apartment and charged with masterminding a long-running Ponzi scheme later estimated to involve around $65 billion, making it one of the biggest investment frauds in Wall Street history.
Madoff, who was born in Queens, New York, in 1938, founded a small trading firm bearing his name in 1960. The business was established, in part, with money he earned working as a lifeguard. Two decades later, Madoff’s firm, which helped revolutionize the way stocks are traded, had grown into one of the largest independent trading operations in the securities industry, and he and his family lived a life of luxury, owning multiple homes, boats and expensive artwork and jewelry.
Based on the success of his legitimate operations, Madoff launched an investment-advisory business as part of his firm, and it was this business that by the 1990s had become a Ponzi scheme, in which he paid his earlier investors with funds received from more recent investors. For years, clients of this business were sent account statements showing consistently high—and fraudulent—returns. Potential new customers clamored for Madoff to invest their money. However, in 2008, with the U.S. economy in crisis, Madoff’s financial swindle began to fall apart as his clients took money out faster than he could bring in fresh cash.
On December 10, 2008, Madoff revealed to his brother and two sons, who worked for the legitimate arm of his firm, that his investment-advisory business was a fraud and nearly bankrupt. Madoff’s sons turned in their father to federal authorities, who arrested him the next day. Madoff was freed on $10 million bail, and placed under 24-hour house arrest at his penthouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The fallout from Madoff’s scam was widespread: The victims included everyone from his wealthy country-club acquaintances, Hollywood celebrities, banks and hedge funds to universities, charities and ordinary individual investors, some of whom lost their life savings. The charitable foundation of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel lost more than $15 million, and Wiesel also lost his personal savings. Public outrage was further stoked when it was revealed that since the late 1990s a private financial fraud investigator, Harry Markopolos, had repeatedly warned the Securities and Exchange Commission about his suspicion that Madoff was operating a massive investment scam.
On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to the 11 felony counts against him, including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury. On June 29 of that year, a federal district court judge in Manhattan sentenced Madoff to 150 years behind bars, calling his actions “extraordinary evil.”
On December 11, 2010, the second anniversary of Madoff’s arrest, his 46-year-old son Mark was found dead in his Manhattan apartment after committing suicide. Bernard Madoff, who is serving his sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, has maintained that his family members knew nothing about his crimes and although they have faced intense scrutiny, none have been charged with any wrongdoing. Several of Madoff’s former employees, including his accountant and chief financial officer, have pleaded guilty in connection with the long-running fraud.
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I like the thread and since I'm a alpha mod it stays as a sticky.
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It shouldn't bother anyone so long as Ron has no copyright or other concerns. It makes you happy to do this. It's actually kind of sad in a way but who am I to judge.
Perhaps I was too harsh. Would not want to be too harsh on Getbig.
If the OP wants to do this, it's not my concern. But my opinion is that it would be a worthwhile thread if it was not just a copy and paste from another site with the same name as the thread. Like, for example, adding stuff that might be gathered and analyzed from multiple sites. Or even, if you are going to use History.com's content, attribute it and then offer your own penetrating (or asinine, as the case may be) insights on that day in history.
But to just copy and paste with no attribution? I don't see the point, and you are ripping off another site.
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Dec 12, 1980
Da Vinci notebook sells for over 5 million
On this day in 1980, American oil tycoon Armand Hammer pays $5,126,000 at auction for a notebook containing writings by the legendary artist Leonardo da Vinci.
The manuscript, written around 1508, was one of some 30 similar books da Vinci produced during his lifetime on a variety of subjects. It contained 72 loose pages featuring some 300 notes and detailed drawings, all relating to the common theme of water and how it moved. Experts have said that da Vinci drew on it to paint the background of his masterwork, the Mona Lisa. The text, written in brown ink and chalk, read from right to left, an example of da Vinci's favored mirror-writing technique. The painter Giuseppi Ghezzi discovered the notebook in 1690 in a chest of papers belonging to Guglielmo della Porto, a 16th-century Milanese sculptor who had studied Leonardo's work. In 1717, Thomas Coke, the first earl of Leicester, bought the manuscript and installed it among his impressive collection of art at his family estate in England.
More than two centuries later, the notebook--by now known as the Leicester Codex--showed up on the auction block at Christie's in London when the current Lord Coke was forced to sell it to cover inheritance taxes on the estate and art collection. In the days before the sale, art experts and the press speculated that the notebook would go for $7 to $20 million. In fact, the bidding started at $1.4 million and lasted less than two minutes, as Hammer and at least two or three other bidders competed to raise the price $100,000 at a time. The $5.12 million price tag was the highest ever paid for a manuscript at that time; a copy of the legendary Gutenberg Bible had gone for only $2 million in 1978. "I’m very happy with the price. I expected to pay more," Hammer said later. "There is no work of art in the world I wanted more than this." Lord Coke, on the other hand, was only "reasonably happy" with the sale; he claimed the proceeds would not be sufficient to cover the taxes he owed.
Hammer, the president of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, renamed his prize the Hammer Codex and added it to his valuable collection of art. When Hammer died in 1990, he left the notebook and other works to the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Several years later, the museum offered the manuscript for sale, claiming it was forced to take this action to cover legal costs incurred when the niece and sole heir of Hammer's late wife, Frances, sued the estate claiming Hammer had cheated Frances out of her rightful share of his fortune. On November 11, 1994, the Hammer Codex was sold to an anonymous bidder--soon identified as Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft--at a New York auction for a new record high price of $30.8 million. Gates restored the title of Leicester Codex and has since loaned the manuscript to a number of museums for public display.
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Dec 12, 1980
Da Vinci notebook sells for over 5 million
Leonardo had no last name. The "Da Vinci" refers to the town where he was born. When you say "Da Vinci," you are saying "from Vinci." If you do not say the full "Leonardo Da Vinci," you say "Leonardo."
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Leonardo had no last name. The "Da Vinci" refers to the town where he was born. When you say "Da Vinci," you are saying "from Vinci." If you do not say the full "Leonardo Da Vinci," you say "Leonardo."
No shit sherlock. Blame History.com ;D
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Leonardo had no last name. The "Da Vinci" refers to the town where he was born. When you say "Da Vinci," you are saying "from Vinci." If you do not say the full "Leonardo Da Vinci," you say "Leonardo."
Ah, like Vito Corleone.
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Dec 13, 2003
Saddam Hussein captured
After spending nine months on the run, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is captured on this day in 2003. Saddam's downfall began on March 20, 2003, when the United States led an invasion force into Iraq to topple his government, which had controlled the country for more than 20 years.
Saddam Hussein was born into a poor family in Tikrit, 100 miles outside of Baghdad, in 1937. After moving to Baghdad as a teenager, Saddam joined the now-infamous Baath party, which he would later lead. He participated in several coup attempts, finally helping to install his cousin as dictator of Iraq in July 1968. Saddam took over for his cousin 11 years later. During his 24 years in office, Saddam's secret police, charged with protecting his power, terrorized the public, ignoring the human rights of the nation's citizens. While many of his people faced poverty, he lived in incredible luxury, building more than 20 lavish palaces throughout the country. Obsessed with security, he is said to have moved among them often, always sleeping in secret locations.
In the early 1980s, Saddam involved his country in an eight-year war with Iran, which is estimated to have taken more than a million lives on both sides. He is alleged to have used nerve agents and mustard gas on Iranian soldiers during the conflict, as well as chemical weapons on Iraq's own Kurdish population in northern Iraq in 1988. After he invaded Kuwait in 1990, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in 1991, forcing the dictator's army to leave its smaller neighbor, but failing to remove Saddam from power. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam faced both U.N. economic sanctions and air strikes aimed at crippling his ability to produce chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. With Iraq continuing to face allegations of illegal oil sales and weapons-building, the United States again invaded the country in March 2003, this time with the expressed purpose of ousting Saddam and his regime.
Despite proclaiming in early March 2003 that, "it is without doubt that the faithful will be victorious against aggression," Saddam went into hiding soon after the American invasion, speaking to his people only through an occasional audiotape, and his government soon fell. After declaring Saddam the most important of a list of his regime's 55 most-wanted members, the United States began an intense search for the former leader and his closest advisors. On July 22, 2003, Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, who many believe he was grooming to one day fill his shoes, were killed when U.S. soldiers raided a villa in which they were staying in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Five months later, on December 13, 2003, U.S. soldiers found Saddam Hussein hiding in a six-to-eight-foot deep hole, nine miles outside his hometown of Tikrit. The man once obsessed with hygiene was found to be unkempt, with a bushy beard and matted hair. He did not resist and was uninjured during the arrest. A soldier at the scene described him as "a man resigned to his fate."
Saddam is now in Iraqi custody with U.S. security and faces trial in front of a special tribunal on several criminal cases pending against him. The first began in October 2005. On November 5 of the next year, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. After an unsuccessful appeal, he was executed on December 30, 2006. Despite a prolonged search, weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq.
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that last line "....Despite a prolonged search, weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq." is what really gets to me! :( :( :(
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Dec 14, 1799
George Washington dies
George Washington, the American revolutionary leader and first president of the United States, dies of acute laryngitis at his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia. He was 67 years old.
George Washington was born in 1732 to a farm family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His first direct military experience came as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia colonial militia in 1754, when he led a small expedition against the French in the Ohio River valley on behalf of the governor of Virginia. Two years later, Washington took command of the defenses of the western Virginian frontier during the French and Indian War. After the war's fighting moved elsewhere, he resigned from his military post, returned to a planter's life, and took a seat in Virginia's House of Burgesses.
During the next two decades, Washington openly opposed the escalating British taxation and repression of the American colonies. In 1774, he represented Virginia at the Continental Congress. After the American Revolution erupted in 1775, Washington was nominated to be commander in chief of the newly established Continental Army. Some in the Continental Congress opposed his appointment, thinking other candidates were better equipped for the post, but he was ultimately chosen because as a Virginian his leadership helped bind the Southern colonies more closely to the rebellion in New England.
With his inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers, General Washington led an effective war of harassment against British forces in America while encouraging the intervention of the French into the conflict on behalf of the colonists. On October 19, 1781, with the surrender of British General Charles Lord Cornwallis' massive British army at Yorktown, Virginia, General Washington had defeated one of the most powerful nations on earth.
After the war, the victorious general retired to his estate at Mount Vernon, but in 1787 he heeded his nation's call and returned to politics to preside over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The drafters created the office of president with him in mind, and in February 1789 Washington was unanimously elected the first president of the United States.
As president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad. Of his presidency, he said, "I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent." He successfully implemented executive authority, making good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term.
In 1797, he finally began a long-awaited retirement at his estate in Virginia. He died two years later. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy for the father of the United States: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
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Dec 15, 1961
Architect of the Holocaust sentenced to die
In Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler's "final solution of the Jewish question," is condemned to death by an Israeli war crimes tribunal.
Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1906. In November 1932, he joined the Nazi's elite SS (Schutzstaffel) organization, whose members came to have broad responsibilities in Nazi Germany, including policing, intelligence, and the enforcement of Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic policies. Eichmann steadily rose in the SS hierarchy, and with the German annexation of Austria in 1938 he was sent to Vienna with the mission of ridding the city of Jews. He set up an efficient Jewish deportment center and in 1939 was sent to Prague on a similar mission. That year, Eichmann was appointed to the Jewish section of the SS central security office in Berlin.
In January 1942, Eichmann met with top Nazi officials at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin for the purpose of planning a "final solution of the Jewish question," as Nazi leader Hermann Goering put it. The Nazis decided to exterminate Europe's Jewish population. Eichmann was appointed to coordinate the identification, assembly, and transportation of millions of Jews from occupied Europe to the Nazi death camps, where Jews were gassed or worked to death. He carried this duty out with horrifying efficiency, and between three to four million Jews perished in the extermination camps before the end of World War II. Close to two million were executed elsewhere.
Following the war, Eichmann was captured by U.S. troops, but he escaped a prison camp in 1946 before having to face the Nuremberg International War Crimes Tribunal. Eichmann traveled under an assumed identity between Europe and the Middle East, and in 1950 he arrived in Argentina, which maintained lax immigration policies and was a safe haven for many Nazi war criminals. In 1957, a German prosecutor secretly informed Israel that Eichmann was living in Argentina. Agents from Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, were deployed to Argentina, and in early 1960 they located Eichmann living in the San Fernando section of Buenos Aires under the name of Ricardo Klement.
In May 1960, Argentina was celebrating the 150th anniversary of its revolution against Spain, and many tourists were traveling to Argentina from abroad to attend the festivities. The Mossad used the opportunity to smuggle more agents into the country. Israel, knowing that Argentina might never extradite Eichmann for trial, had decided to abduct him and take him to Israel illegally. On May 11, Mossad operatives descended on Garibaldi Street in San Fernando and snatched Eichmann away as he was walking from the bus to his home. His family called local hospitals but not the police, and Argentina knew nothing of the operation. On May 20, a drugged Eichmann was flown out of Argentina disguised as an Israeli airline worker who had suffered head trauma in an accident. Three days later, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced that Eichmann was in Israeli custody.
Argentina demanded Eichmann's return, but Israel argued that his status as an international war criminal gave them the right to proceed with a trial. On April 11, 1961, Eichmann's trial began in Jerusalem. It was the first televised trial in history. Eichmann faced 15 charges, including crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and war crimes. He claimed he was just following orders, but the judges disagreed, finding him guilty on all counts on December 15 and sentencing him to die. On May 31, 1962, he was hanged near Tel Aviv. His body was cremated and his ashes thrown into the sea.
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Dec 16, 1773
The Boston Tea Party
In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.
The midnight raid, popularly known as the "Boston Tea Party," was in protest of the British Parliament's Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny.
When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the "tea party" with about 60 members of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group. The British tea dumped in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16 was valued at some $18,000.
Parliament, outraged by the blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.
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Dec 17, 1903
First airplane flies
Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet on its inaugural flight.
Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and developed an interest in aviation after learning of the glider flights of the German engineer Otto Lilienthal in the 1890s. Unlike their older brothers, Orville and Wilbur did not attend college, but they possessed extraordinary technical ability and a sophisticated approach to solving problems in mechanical design. They built printing presses and in 1892 opened a bicycle sales and repair shop. Soon, they were building their own bicycles, and this experience, combined with profits from their various businesses, allowed them to pursue actively their dream of building the world's first airplane.
After exhaustively researching other engineers' efforts to build a heavier-than-air, controlled aircraft, the Wright brothers wrote the U.S. Weather Bureau inquiring about a suitable place to conduct glider tests. They settled on Kitty Hawk, an isolated village on North Carolina's Outer Banks, which offered steady winds and sand dunes from which to glide and land softly. Their first glider, tested in 1900, performed poorly, but a new design, tested in 1901, was more successful. Later that year, they built a wind tunnel where they tested nearly 200 wings and airframes of different shapes and designs. The brothers' systematic experimentations paid off--they flew hundreds of successful flights in their 1902 glider at Kill Devils Hills near Kitty Hawk. Their biplane glider featured a steering system, based on a movable rudder, that solved the problem of controlled flight. They were now ready for powered flight.
In Dayton, they designed a 12-horsepower internal combustion engine with the assistance of machinist Charles Taylor and built a new aircraft to house it. They transported their aircraft in pieces to Kitty Hawk in the autumn of 1903, assembled it, made a few further tests, and on December 14 Orville made the first attempt at powered flight. The engine stalled during take-off and the plane was damaged, and they spent three days repairing it. Then at 10:35 a.m. on December 17, in front of five witnesses, the aircraft ran down a monorail track and into the air, staying aloft for 12 seconds and flying 120 feet. The modern aviation age was born. Three more tests were made that day, with Wilbur and Orville alternately flying the airplane. Wilbur flew the last flight, covering 852 feet in 59 seconds.
During the next few years, the Wright brothers further developed their airplanes but kept a low profile about their successes in order to secure patents and contracts for their flying machines. By 1905, their aircraft could perform complex maneuvers and remain aloft for up to 39 minutes at a time. In 1908, they traveled to France and made their first public flights, arousing widespread public excitement. In 1909, the U.S. Army's Signal Corps purchased a specially constructed plane, and the brothers founded the Wright Company to build and market their aircraft. Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever in 1912; Orville lived until 1948.
The historic Wright brothers' aircraft of 1903 is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
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Dec 18, 1620
Mayflower docks at Plymouth Harbor
On December 18, 1620, the British ship Mayflower docked at modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its passengers prepared to begin their new settlement, Plymouth Colony.
The famous Mayflower story began in 1606, when a group of reform-minded Puritans in Nottinghamshire, England, founded their own church, separate from the state-sanctioned Church of England. Accused of treason, they were forced to leave the country and settle in the more tolerant Netherlands. After 12 years of struggling to adapt and make a decent living, the group sought financial backing from some London merchants to set up a colony in America. On September 6, 1620, 102 passengers–dubbed Pilgrims by William Bradford, a passenger who would become the first governor of Plymouth Colony–crowded on the Mayflower to begin the long, hard journey to a new life in the New World.
On November 11, 1620, the Mayflower anchored at what is now Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod. Before going ashore, 41 male passengers–heads of families, single men and three male servants–signed the famous Mayflower Compact, agreeing to submit to a government chosen by common consent and to obey all laws made for the good of the colony. Over the next month, several small scouting groups were sent ashore to collect firewood and scout out a good place to build a settlement. Around December 10, one of these groups found a harbor they liked on the western side of Cape Cod Bay. They returned to the Mayflower to tell the other passengers, but bad weather prevented them from docking until December 18. After exploring the region, the settlers chose a cleared area previously occupied by members of a local Native American tribe, the Wampanoag. The tribe had abandoned the village several years earlier, after an outbreak of European disease. That winter of 1620-1621 was brutal, as the Pilgrims struggled to build their settlement, find food and ward off sickness. By spring, 50 of the original 102 Mayflower passengers were dead. The remaining settlers made contact with returning members of the Wampanoag tribe and in March they signed a peace treaty with a tribal chief, Massasoit. Aided by the Wampanoag, especially the English-speaking Squanto, the Pilgrims were able to plant crops–especially corn and beans–that were vital to their survival. The Mayflower and its crew left Plymouth to return to England on April 5, 1621.
Over the next several decades, more and more settlers made the trek across the Atlantic to Plymouth, which gradually grew into a prosperous shipbuilding and fishing center. In 1691, Plymouth was incorporated into the new Massachusetts Bay Association, ending its history as an independent colony.
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Dec 19, 1998
President Clinton impeached
After nearly 14 hours of debate, the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton, the second president in American history to be impeached, vowed to finish his term.
In November 1995, Clinton began an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old unpaid intern. Over the course of a year and a half, the president and Lewinsky had nearly a dozen sexual encounters in the White House. In April 1996, Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon. That summer, she first confided in Pentagon co-worker Linda Tripp about her sexual relationship with the president. In 1997, with the relationship over, Tripp began secretly to record conversations with Lewinsky, in which Lewinsky gave Tripp details about the affair.
In December, lawyers for Paula Jones, who was suing the president on sexual harassment charges, subpoenaed Lewinsky. In January 1998, allegedly under the recommendation of the president, Lewinsky filed an affidavit in which she denied ever having had a sexual relationship with him. Five days later, Tripp contacted the office of Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, to talk about Lewinsky and the tapes she made of their conversations. Tripp, wired by FBI agents working with Starr, met with Lewinsky again, and on January 16, Lewinsky was taken by FBI agents and U.S. attorneys to a hotel room where she was questioned and offered immunity if she cooperated with the prosecution. A few days later, the story broke, and Clinton publicly denied the allegations, saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."
In late July, lawyers for Lewinsky and Starr worked out a full-immunity agreement covering both Lewinsky and her parents, all of whom Starr had threatened with prosecution. On August 6, Lewinsky appeared before the grand jury to begin her testimony, and on August 17 President Clinton testified. Contrary to his testimony in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case, President Clinton acknowledged to prosecutors from the office of the independent counsel that he had had an extramarital affair with Ms. Lewinsky.
In four hours of closed-door testimony, conducted in the Map Room of the White House, Clinton spoke live via closed-circuit television to a grand jury in a nearby federal courthouse. He was the first sitting president ever to testify before a grand jury investigating his conduct. That evening, President Clinton also gave a four-minute televised address to the nation in which he admitted he had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky. In the brief speech, which was wrought with legalisms, the word "sex" was never spoken, and the word "regret" was used only in reference to his admission that he misled the public and his family.
Less than a month later, on September 9, Kenneth Starr submitted his report and 18 boxes of supporting documents to the House of Representatives. Released to the public two days later, the Starr Report outlined a case for impeaching Clinton on 11 grounds, including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering, and abuse of power, and also provided explicit details of the sexual relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky. On October 8, the House authorized a wide-ranging impeachment inquiry, and on December 11, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment. On December 19, the House impeached Clinton.
On January 7, 1999, in a congressional procedure not seen since the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, the trial of President Clinton got underway in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (William Rehnquist at this time) was sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in as jurors.
Five weeks later, on February 12, the Senate voted on whether to remove Clinton from office. The president was acquitted on both articles of impeachment. The prosecution needed a two-thirds majority to convict but failed to achieve even a bare majority. Rejecting the first charge of perjury, 45 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted "not guilty," and on the charge of obstruction of justice the Senate was split 50-50. After the trial concluded, President Clinton said he was "profoundly sorry" for the burden his behavior imposed on Congress and the American people.
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Dec 20, 1957
Elvis Presley is drafted
On this day in 1957, while spending the Christmas holidays at Graceland, his newly purchased Tennessee mansion, rock-and-roll star Elvis Presley receives his draft notice for the United States Army.
With a suggestive style--one writer called him "Elvis the Pelvis"--a hit movie, Love Me Tender, and a string of gold records including "Heartbreak Hotel," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel," Presley had become a national icon, and the world's first bona fide rock-and-roll star, by the end of 1956. As the Beatles' John Lennon once famously remarked: "Before Elvis, there was nothing." The following year, at the peak of his career, Presley received his draft notice for a two-year stint in the army. Fans sent tens of thousands of letters to the army asking for him to be spared, but Elvis would have none of it. He received one deferment--during which he finished working on his movie King Creole--before being sworn in as an army private in Memphis on March 24, 1958.
After six months of basic training--including an emergency leave to see his beloved mother, Gladys, before she died in August 1958--Presley sailed to Europe on the USS General Randall. For the next 18 months, he served in Company D, 32nd Tank Battalion, 3rd Armor Corps in Friedberg, Germany, where he attained the rank of sergeant. For the rest of his service, he shared an off-base residence with his father, grandmother and some Memphis friends. After working during the day, Presley returned home at night to host frequent parties and impromptu jam sessions. At one of these, an army buddy of Presley's introduced him to 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, whom Elvis would marry some years later. Meanwhile, Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, continued to release singles recorded before his departure, keeping the money rolling in and his most famous client fresh in the public's mind. Widely praised for not seeking to avoid the draft or serve domestically, Presley was seen as a model for all young Americans. After he got his polio shot from an army doctor on national TV, vaccine rates among the American population shot from 2 percent to 85 percent by the time of his discharge on March 2, 1960.
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Dec 21, 1866
Indians massacre Fetterman and eighty soldiers
Determined to challenge the growing American military presence in their territory, Indians in northern Wyoming lure Lieutenant Colonel William Fetterman and his soldiers into a deadly ambush on this day in 1866.
Tensions in the region started rising in 1863, when John Bozeman blazed the Bozeman Trail, a new route for emigrants traveling to the Montana gold fields. Bozeman's trail was of questionable legality since it passed directly through hunting grounds that the government had promised to the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Thus when Colorado militiamen murdered more than two hundred peaceful Cheyenne during the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, the Indians began to take revenge by attacking whites all across the Plains, including the emigrants traveling the Bozeman Trail. The U.S. government responded by building a series of protective forts along the trail; the largest and most important of these was Fort Phil Kearney, erected in 1866 in north-central Wyoming.
Indians under the leadership of Red Cloud and Crazy Horse began to focus their attacks on Fort Phil Kearney, constantly harassing the soldiers and raiding their wood and supply parties. On December 6, 1866, Crazy Horse discovered to his surprise that he could lead a small detachment of soldiers into a fatal ambush by dismounting from his horse and fleeing as if he were defenseless. Struck by the foolish impulsiveness of the soldiers, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud reasoned that perhaps a much larger force could be lured into a similar deadly trap.
On the bitterly cold morning of December 21, about 2,000 Indians concealed themselves along the road just north of Fort Phil Kearney. A small band made a diversionary attack on a party of woodcutters from the fort, and commandant Colonel Henry Carrington quickly ordered Colonel Fetterman to go to their aid with a company of 80 troopers. Crazy Horse and 10 decoy warriors then rode into view of the fort. When Carrington fired an artillery round at them, the decoys ran away as if frightened. The party of woodcutters made it safely back to the fort, but Colonel Fetterman and his men chased after the fleeing Crazy Horse and his decoys, just as planned. The soldiers rode straight into the ambush and were wiped out in a massive attack during which some 40,000 arrows rained down on the hapless troopers. None of them survived.
With 81 fatalities, the Fetterman Massacre was the army's worst defeat in the West until the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Further Indian attacks eventually forced the army to reconsider its commitment to protecting the Bozeman Trail, and in 1868 the military abandoned the forts and pulled out. It was one of only a handful of clear Indian victories in the Plains Indian Wars.
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Dec 22, 1808
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony given world premiere in Vienna
If the initial reviews failed to recognize it as one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, one needs to understand the adverse conditions under which the work was first heard. The concert venue was freezing cold; it was more than two hours into a mammoth four-hour program before the piece began; and the orchestra played poorly enough that day to force the nearly deaf composer—also acting as conductor and pianist—to stop the ensemble partway into one passage and start again from the very beginning. It was, all in all, a very inauspicious beginning for what would soon become the world's most recognizable piece of classical music: Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67—the "Fifth Symphony"—which received its world premiere on this day in 1808.
Also premiering that day at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna were Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, and the Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68—the "Pastoral Symphony." But it was the Fifth Symphony that, despite its shaky premiere, would eventually be recognized as Beethoven's greatest achievement to that point in his career. Writing in 1810, the critic E.T.A. Hoffman praised Beethoven for having outstripped the great Haydn and Mozart with a piece that "opens the realm of the colossal and immeasurable to us...evokes terror, fright, horror, and pain, and awakens that endless longing that is the essence of Romanticism."
That assessment would stand the test of time, and the Fifth Symphony would quickly become a centerpiece of the classical repertoire for orchestras around the world. But beyond its revolutionary qualities as a serious composition, the Fifth Symphony has also proven to be a work with enormous pop-cultural staying power, thanks primarily to its powerful four-note opening motif—three short Gs followed by a long E-flat. Used in World War II-era Britain to open broadcasts of the BBC because it mimicked the Morse-code "V" for "Victory," and used in the disco-era United States by Walter Murphy as the basis for his unlikely #1 pop hit "A Fifth Of Beethoven," the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony have become a kind of instantly recognizable musical shorthand since they were first heard by the public on this day in 1808.
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Dec 23, 1984
Bernhard Goetz goes on the lam
Bernhard Goetz, who shot four young black men on a subway car the previous day, flees New York City and heads for New Hampshire after becoming the central figure in a media firestorm.
On the afternoon of December 22, Troy Canty, Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, and James Ramseur reportedly approached Goetz as he was riding the subway and demanded $5. Goetz pulled out a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and shot each of the boys in response. He then shot Cabey a second time, severing his spinal cord. After refusing to give up his gun, he walked to the end of train, jumped onto the tracks, and disappeared.
Immediately catching the public's attention, the case ignited serious debate and controversy. While the so-called "Subway Vigilante" was on the lam in New Hampshire, police discovered that three of the shooting victims had been carrying screwdrivers in their pockets during the attempted mugging and all had significant criminal records. Many observers immediately used this information as justification for Goetz's behavior, congratulating him for standing up to the boys.
Goetz turned himself in to New Hampshire police on December 31. Back in New York, he was released on $50,000 bail while a grand jury was convened. Goetz was initially indicted on only three counts of illegal gun possession, but prosecutors were dissatisfied with the insignificant charges, and the grand jury reconvened in March. This time they charged Goetz with four counts of attempted murder. The victims also instituted civil suits.
During the criminal trial, which began in December 1986, Goetz attempted to persuade jurors that he had acted in self-defense. To this end, the defense highlighted the fact that Goetz had been mugged in 1981 and the accused attacker was charged only with "mischievous mischief." Goetz was found not guilty on all criminal charges but was found guilty for violating one minor gun statute, for which he received a one-year sentence. However, in the civil trial, Goetz was ordered to pay a multimillion-dollar sum for paralyzing Darrell Cabey, although it is unlikely that Cabey will ever receive the money.
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Dec 23, 1984
Bernhard Goetz goes on the lam
Bernhard Goetz, who shot four young black men on a subway car the previous day, flees New York City and heads for New Hampshire after becoming the central figure in a media firestorm.
On the afternoon of December 22, Troy Canty, Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, and James Ramseur reportedly approached Goetz as he was riding the subway and demanded $5. Goetz pulled out a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and shot each of the boys in response. He then shot Cabey a second time, severing his spinal cord. After refusing to give up his gun, he walked to the end of train, jumped onto the tracks, and disappeared.
Immediately catching the public's attention, the case ignited serious debate and controversy. While the so-called "Subway Vigilante" was on the lam in New Hampshire, police discovered that three of the shooting victims had been carrying screwdrivers in their pockets during the attempted mugging and all had significant criminal records. Many observers immediately used this information as justification for Goetz's behavior, congratulating him for standing up to the boys.
Goetz turned himself in to New Hampshire police on December 31. Back in New York, he was released on $50,000 bail while a grand jury was convened. Goetz was initially indicted on only three counts of illegal gun possession, but prosecutors were dissatisfied with the insignificant charges, and the grand jury reconvened in March. This time they charged Goetz with four counts of attempted murder. The victims also instituted civil suits.
During the criminal trial, which began in December 1986, Goetz attempted to persuade jurors that he had acted in self-defense. To this end, the defense highlighted the fact that Goetz had been mugged in 1981 and the accused attacker was charged only with "mischievous mischief." Goetz was found not guilty on all criminal charges but was found guilty for violating one minor gun statute, for which he received a one-year sentence. However, in the civil trial, Goetz was ordered to pay a multimillion-dollar sum for paralyzing Darrell Cabey, although it is unlikely that Cabey will ever receive the money.
HE was Zimmerman before Zimmerman was Zimmerman.
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On this day Shizzo died again. But there is no way in hell he will stay dead.
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On this day Shizzo died again. But there is no way in hell he will stay dead.
;D
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Dec 24, 1865
KKK founded
In Pulaski, Tennessee, a group of Confederate veterans convenes to form a secret society that they christen the "Ku Klux Klan." The KKK rapidly grew from a secret social fraternity to a paramilitary force bent on reversing the federal government's progressive Reconstruction Era-activities in the South, especially policies that elevated the rights of the local African American population.
The name of the Ku Klux Klan was derived from the Greek word kyklos, meaning "circle," and the Scottish-Gaelic word "clan," which was probably chosen for the sake of alliteration. Under a platform of philosophized white racial superiority, the group employed violence as a means of pushing back Reconstruction and its enfranchisement of African Americans. Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was the KKK's first grand wizard; in 1869, he unsuccessfully tried to disband it after he grew critical of the Klan's excessive violence.
Most prominent in counties where the races were relatively balanced, the KKK engaged in terrorist raids against African Americans and white Republicans at night, employing intimidation, destruction of property, assault, and murder to achieve its aims and influence upcoming elections. In a few Southern states, Republicans organized militia units to break up the Klan. In 1871, the Ku Klux Act passed Congress, authorizing President Ulysses S. Grant to use military force to suppress the KKK. The Ku Klux Act resulted in nine South Carolina counties being placed under martial law and thousands of arrests. In 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Ku Klux Act unconstitutional, but by that time Reconstruction had ended and the KKK had faded away.
The 20th century witnessed two revivals of the KKK: one in response to immigration in the 1910s and '20s, and another in response to the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.
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Dec 24, 1865
KKK founded
In Pulaski, Tennessee, a group of Confederate veterans convenes to form a secret society that they christen the "Ku Klux Klan." The KKK rapidly grew from a secret social fraternity to a paramilitary force bent on reversing the federal government's progressive Reconstruction Era-activities in the South, especially policies that elevated the rights of the local African American population.
The name of the Ku Klux Klan was derived from the Greek word kyklos, meaning "circle," and the Scottish-Gaelic word "clan," which was probably chosen for the sake of alliteration. Under a platform of philosophized white racial superiority, the group employed violence as a means of pushing back Reconstruction and its enfranchisement of African Americans. Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was the KKK's first grand wizard; in 1869, he unsuccessfully tried to disband it after he grew critical of the Klan's excessive violence.
Most prominent in counties where the races were relatively balanced, the KKK engaged in terrorist raids against African Americans and white Republicans at night, employing intimidation, destruction of property, assault, and murder to achieve its aims and influence upcoming elections. In a few Southern states, Republicans organized militia units to break up the Klan. In 1871, the Ku Klux Act passed Congress, authorizing President Ulysses S. Grant to use military force to suppress the KKK. The Ku Klux Act resulted in nine South Carolina counties being placed under martial law and thousands of arrests. In 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Ku Klux Act unconstitutional, but by that time Reconstruction had ended and the KKK had faded away.
The 20th century witnessed two revivals of the KKK: one in response to immigration in the 1910s and '20s, and another in response to the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.
Damn right
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Dec 25, 6 B.C.
Christ is born?
Although most Christians celebrate December 25 as the birthday of Jesus Christ, few in the first two Christian centuries claimed any knowledge of the exact day or year in which he was born. The oldest existing record of a Christmas celebration is found in a Roman almanac that tells of a Christ's Nativity festival led by the church of Rome in 336 A.D. The precise reason why Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25 remains obscure, but most researchers believe that Christmas originated as a Christian substitute for pagan celebrations of the winter solstice.
To early Christians (and to many Christians today), the most important holiday on the Christian calendar was Easter, which commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, as Christianity began to take hold in the Roman world, in the early fourth century, church leaders had to contend with a popular Roman pagan holiday commemorating the "birthday of the unconquered sun" (natalis solis invicti)--the Roman name for the winter solstice.
Every winter, Romans honored the pagan god Saturn, the god of agriculture, with a festival that began on December 17 and usually ended on or around December 25 with a winter-solstice celebration in honor of the beginning of the new solar cycle. This festival was a time of merrymaking, and families and friends would exchange gifts. At the same time, Mithraism--worship of the ancient Persian god of light--was popular in the Roman army, and the cult held some of its most important rituals on the winter solstice.
After the Roman Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity in 312 and sanctioned Christianity, church leaders made efforts to appropriate the winter-solstice holidays and thereby achieve a more seamless conversion to Christianity for the emperor's subjects. In rationalizing the celebration of Jesus' birthday in late December, church leaders may have argued that since the world was allegedly created on the spring equinox (late March), so too would Jesus have been conceived by God on that date. The Virgin Mary, pregnant with the son of God, would hence have given birth to Jesus nine months later on the winter solstice.
From Rome, the Christ's Nativity celebration spread to other Christian churches to the west and east, and soon most Christians were celebrating Christ's birth on December 25. To the Roman celebration was later added other winter-solstice rituals observed by various pagan groups, such as the lighting of the Yule log and decorations with evergreens by Germanic tribes. The word Christmas entered the English language originally as Christes maesse, meaning "Christ's mass" or "festival of Christ" in Old English. A popular medieval feast was that of St. Nicholas of Myra, a saint said to visit children with gifts and admonitions just before Christmas. This story evolved into the modern practice of leaving gifts for children said to be brought by "Santa Claus," a derivative of the Dutch name for St. Nicholas--Sinterklaas.
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Dec 26, 1610
Bathory's torturous escapades are exposed
On this day in 1609 or 1610 (sources are not conclusive), Count Gyorgy Thurzo makes an investigative visit to Csejthe Castle in Hungary on orders from King Matthias and discovers Countess Elizabeth Bathory directing a torture session of young girls. Bathory was already infamous in the area for her torture and murder of servants and peasants, but her title and high-ranking relatives had, until this point, made her untouchable. Her bloodthirsty activities have led many to cite her as one of the first vampires in history.
Bathory was born in Transylvania in 1560 to a distinguished family that included kings, cardinals, knights, and judges. Though she counted many luminaries among her relatives, her family tree also featured some seriously disturbed kin. One of her uncles instructed her in Satanism, while her aunt taught her all about sadomasochism. At the age of 15, Bathory was married to Count Nadady, and the couple settled into Csejthe Castle. To please his wife, her husband reportedly built a torture chamber to her specifications.
Bathory's torture included jamming pins and needles under the fingernails of her servant girls, and tying them down, smearing them with honey, and leaving them to be attacked by bees and ants. Although the count participated in his wife's cruelties, he may have also restrained her impulses; when he died in the early 1600s, she became much worse. With the help of her former nurse, Ilona Joo, and local witch Dorotta Szentes, Bathory began abducting peasant girls to torture and kill. She often bit chunks of flesh from her victims, and one unfortunate girl was even forced to cook and eat her own flesh. Bathory reportedly believed that human blood would keep her looking young and healthy.
Since her family headed the local government, Bathory's crimes were ignored until 1610. But King Matthias finally intervened because Bathory had begun finding victims among the daughters of local nobles. In January 1611, Bathory and her cohorts were put on trial for 80 counts of murder. All were convicted, but only Bathory escaped execution. Instead, she was confined to a room of the castle that only had slits for air and food. She survived for three years but was found dead in August 1614.
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Dec 27, 1979
Soviets take over in Afghanistan
In an attempt to stabilize the turbulent political situation in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union sends 75,000 troops to enforce the installation of Babrak Karmal as the new leader of the nation. The new government and the imposing Soviet presence, however, had little success in putting down antigovernment rebels. Thus began nearly 10 years of an agonizing, destructive, and ultimately fruitless Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.
Ironically, Karmal overthrew and murdered another Afghan communist, Hafizullah Amin, to take power. Amin's government became unpopular and unstable after it attempted to install a harsh communist regime, declared one-party rule and abolished the Afghan constitution. Muslims in the nation rejected his rule and formed a rebel force, the Mujahideen. When it became apparent that Amin could not control the rebellion, Soviet troops intervened and put a puppet ruler, Karmal, into power. For the Soviets, political turbulence in this bordering nation, which was viewed by some officials as a potentially useful ally pursuing its interests in the Middle East, was unacceptable.
The Soviet intervention cost Russia dearly. The seemingly endless civil war in Afghanistan resulted in thousands of Soviet dead and untold monetary costs. It also brought an abrupt end to the era of détente between the United States and the Soviet Union that began during the Nixon years. In response to the Soviet intervention, President Jimmy Carter withdrew the SALT II agreement from consideration by Congress. The treaty, which had been signed in June 1979, was designed to establish parity in nuclear delivery vehicles between the United States and the Soviet Union. Carter also halted grain shipments to the Soviet Union and ordered a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics that were to be held in Moscow.
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Dec 28, 1869
America's first Labor Day
The Knights of Labor, a labor union of tailors in Philadelphia, hold the first Labor Day ceremonies in American history. The Knights of Labor was established as a secret society of Pennsylvanian tailors earlier in the year and later grew into a national body that played an important role in the labor movement of the late 19th century.
The first annual observance of Labor Day was organized by the American Federation of Labor in 1884, which resolved in a convention in Chicago that "the first Monday in September be set aside as a laborer's national holiday." In 1887, Oregon became the first state to designate Labor Day a holiday, and in 1894 Congress designated the first Monday in September a legal holiday for all federal employees and the residents of the District of Columbia.
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Dec 29, 1170
The making of an English martyr
Archbishop Thomas Becket is brutally murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by four knights of King Henry II of England, apparently on orders of the king.
In 1155, Henry II appointed Becket as chancellor, a high post in the English government. Becket proved a skilled diplomat and won the trust of Henry, who nominated him as archbishop of Canterbury in 1162. The king hoped his friend would help in his efforts to curb the growing power of the church. However, soon after his consecration, the new archbishop emerged a zealous defender of the jurisdiction of the church over its own affairs. In 1164, Becket was forced to flee to France under fear of retaliation by the king.
He was later reconciled with Henry and in 1170 returned to Canterbury amid great public rejoicing. Soon afterward, against the objections of the pope, Henry had his son crowned co-king by the archbishop of York, and tensions again came to a head between Becket and Henry. At this time, perhaps merely in a moment of frustration, the king issued to his court the following public plea: "What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished in my house, and not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk." A group of Henry's knights took the statement very seriously, and on December 29, Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral.
The Christian world was shocked by Becket's death, and in 1173 he was canonized a Catholic saint. In 1174, Henry was forced to do penance at his tomb, and his efforts to end the separation between church and state ceased. In 1220, Becket's bones were transferred to Trinity Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, which later became a popular site of English religious pilgrimage.
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Dec 30, 1916
Rasputin murdered
Grigory Rasputin, a self-fashioned Russian holy man, is murdered by Russian nobles eager to end his sway over the royal family.
Rasputin won the favor of Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra through his ability to stop the bleeding of their hemophiliac son, Alexei. Although the Siberian-born peasant was widely criticized for his lechery and drunkenness, he exerted a powerful influence on the ruling family of Russia. He particularly influenced the czarina, and when Nicholas departed to lead Russian forces in World War I, Rasputin effectively ruled Russia through her.
In the early hours of December 30, 1916, a group of nobles lured Rasputin to Yusupovsky Palace, where they attempted to poison him. Seemingly unaffected by the large doses of poison placed in his wine and food, he was finally shot at close range and collapsed. A minute later he rose, beat one of his assailants, and attempted to escape from the palace grounds, where he was shot again. Rasputin, still alive, was then bound and tossed into a freezing river. A few months later, the imperial regime was overthrown by the Russian Revolution.
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Jan 13, 1929
Wyatt Earp dies in Los Angeles
Nearly 50 years after the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp dies quietly in Los Angeles at the age of 80.
The Earp brothers had long been competing with the Clanton-McClaury ranching families for political and economic control of Tombstone, Arizona, and the surrounding region. On October 26, 1881, the simmering tensions finally boiled over into violence, and Wyatt, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and his close friend, Doc Holliday, killed three men from the Clanton and McLaury clans in a 30-second shoot-out on a Tombstone street near the O.K. Corral. A subsequent hearing found that the Earps and Holliday had been acting in their capacity as law officers and deputies, and they were acquitted of any wrongdoing. However, not everyone was satisfied with the verdict, and the Earps found their popularity among the townspeople was on the wane. Worse, far from bringing an end the long-standing feud between the Earps and Clanton-McLaurys, the shoot-out sparked a series of vengeful attacks and counterattacks.
In late December 1881, the Clantons and McLaurys launched their vendetta with a shotgun ambush of Virgil Earp; he survived, but lost the use of his left arm. Three months later, Wyatt and Morgan were playing billiards when two shots were fired from an unknown source. Morgan was fatally wounded.
As a U.S. deputy marshal, Wyatt had a legal right and obligation to bring Morgan's killers to justice, but he quickly proved to be more interested in avenging his brother's death than in enforcing the law. Three days after Morgan's murder, Frank Stillwell, one of the suspects in the murder, was found dead in a Tucson, Arizona, rail yard. Wyatt and his close friend Doc Holliday were accused—accurately, as later accounts revealed—of murdering Stillwell. Wyatt refused to submit to arrest, and instead fled Arizona with Holliday and several other allies, pausing long enough to stop and kill a Mexican named Florentino Cruz, who he believed also had been involved in Morgan's death.
In the years to come, Wyatt wandered throughout the West, speculating in gold mines in Idaho, running a saloon in San Francisco, and raising thoroughbred horses in San Diego. At the turn of the century, the footloose gunslinger joined the Alaskan gold rush, and he ran a saloon in Nome until 1901. After participating in the last of the great gold rushes in Nevada, Wyatt finally settled in Los Angeles, where he tried unsuccessfully to find someone to publicize his many western adventures. Wyatt's famous role in the shootout at the O.K. Corral did attract the admiring attention of the city's thriving new film industry. For several years, Wyatt became an unpaid technical consultant on Hollywood Westerns, drawing on his colorful past to tell flamboyant matinee idols like William Hart and Tom Mix how it had really been. When Wyatt died in 1929, Mix reportedly wept openly at his funeral.
Ironically, the wider fame that eluded Wyatt in life came soon after he died. A young journalist named Stuart Lake published Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall, a wildly fanciful biography that portrayed the gunman as a brave and virtuous instrument of frontier justice. Dozens of similarly laudatory books and movies followed, ensuring Wyatt Earp an enduring place in the popular American mythology of the Wild West.
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Jan 14, 1973
Undefeated Dolphins beat Redskins in Super Bowl VII
On January 14, 1973, the Miami Dolphins defeat the Washington Redskins 14-7 at the Los Angeles Coliseum in Super Bowl VII, becoming the first team in National Football League (NFL) history to finish with an undefeated season.
Despite their perfect regular season record, Coach Don Shula’s Dolphins were three-point underdogs in the game, according to the bettors. The Redskins came into Super Bowl VII with an 11-3 regular-season record and playoff victories over the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, who had defeated Miami in the previous year’s Super Bowl. Washington was led by quarterback Bill Kilmer, while Shula gave the starting nod to quarterback Bob Griese over the 38-year-old Earl Morrall, who had led the Dolphins to nine consecutive victories after Griese broke his ankle in the fifth game of the season.
On their third possession of the game, Miami scored on a pass from Griese at the Washington 28 to wide receiver Howard Twilley at the five-yard line. Cutting inside and then outside, Twilley faked his Redskins defender, Pat Fischer, and ran the ball in for a score. By halftime, Miami led 14-0 after Kilmer threw an interception to set up the Dolphins’ second touchdown on a one-yard run by Jim Kiick.
A measure of excitement entered the game late in the fourth quarter, when the Dolphins kicker Garo Yepremian botched a field goal attempt, then tried to throw a 42-yard pass after his kick was blocked. Redskins cornerback Mike Bass intercepted the pass and ran 49 yards into the end zone for his team’s only touchdown, with 2:07 left in the game. In general, however, the Miami defense, despite lacking any big-name stars, remained impenetrable throughout the game, harassing Kilmer and holding the Redskins to a total of only 228 yards. Miami safety Jake Scott, who caught two of three Dolphins interceptions, was voted the game’s Most Valuable Player, as his team wrapped up their 17th straight victory and the first-ever undefeated season in the NFL.
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Jan 15, 1559
Elizabeth crowned queen of England
Two months after the death of her half-sister, Queen Mary I of England, Elizabeth Tudor, the 25-year-old daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, is crowned Queen Elizabeth I at Westminster Abbey in London.
The two half-sisters, both daughters of Henry VIII, had a stormy relationship during Mary's five-year reign. Mary, who was brought up as a Catholic, enacted pro-Catholic legislation and made efforts to restore papal supremacy in England. A Protestant rebellion ensued, and Queen Mary imprisoned Elizabeth, a Protestant, in the Tower of London on suspicion of complicity. After Mary's death, Elizabeth survived several Catholic plots against her; although her ascension was greeted with approval by most of England's lords, who were largely Protestant and hoped for greater religious tolerance under a Protestant queen. Under the early guidance of Secretary of State Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth repealed Mary's pro-Catholic legislation, established a permanent Protestant Church of England, and encouraged the Calvinist reformers in Scotland.
In foreign affairs, Elizabeth practiced a policy of strengthening England's Protestant allies and dividing her foes. Elizabeth was opposed by the pope, who refused to recognize her legitimacy, and by Spain, a Catholic nation that was at the height of its power. In 1588, English-Spanish rivalry led to an abortive Spanish invasion of England in which the Spanish Armada, the greatest naval force in the world at the time, was destroyed by storms and a persistent English navy.
With increasing English domination at sea, Elizabeth encouraged voyages of discovery, such as Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the world and Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions to the North American coast.
The long reign of Elizabeth, who became known as the "Virgin Queen" for her reluctance to endanger her authority through marriage, coincided with the flowering of the English Renaissance, associated with such renowned authors as William Shakespeare. By her death in 1603, England had become a major world power in every respect, and Queen Elizabeth I passed into history as one of England's greatest monarchs.
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Jan 16, 1997
Entertainer Bill Cosby's son murdered along CA interstate
On this day in 1997, comedian and TV star Bill Cosby's 27-year-old son Ennis Cosby is murdered after he stops to fix a flat tire along California's Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. The 405, which runs some 70 miles from Irvine to San Fernando, is known as one of the planet's busiest and most congested roadways. Construction began on Interstate 405 in the late 1950s, with the first section opening in the early 1960s.
At approximately 1 a.m. on January 16, 1997, Ennis Cosby, a graduate student in special education at Columbia University Teachers College who was on vacation in Los Angeles, was driving a Mercedes-Benz convertible on Interstate 405 when he pulled off to Skirball Center Drive to change a flat tire. A Ukrainian-born teenager, Mikhail Markhasev, and two friends were at a nearby park-and-ride lot using the phone. Markhasev, reportedly high on drugs, approached Cosby to rob him but when Cosby took too long to hand over money he was shot and killed. Ennis Cosby was the third of Bill Cosby's five children and said to be the inspiration for the character of Theo Huxtable on the hit TV sitcom "The Cosby Show," which originally aired from 1984 to 1992.
In August 1998, Markhasev, then 19, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for Cosby's murder. During his trial, Markhasev reportedly showed no remorse for his crime; however, in 2001, he confessed his guilt, stopped his appeals process and apologized to the Cosby family.
Prior to the Cosby roadside homicide, Interstate 405 was in the news as the scene of the famous June 17, 1994, televised, low-speed police chase involving former football star O.J. Simpson in a white 1993 Ford Bronco driven by his former college teammate Al Cowlings. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman had been found brutally murdered days earlier, on June 12. Simpson was later arrested for the murders. However, following a highly publicized trial, a jury found him not guilty on October 3, 1995.
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Jan 17, 1893
Americans overthrow Hawaiian monarchy
On the Hawaiian Islands, a group of American sugar planters under Sanford Ballard Dole overthrow Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch, and establish a new provincial government with Dole as president. The coup occurred with the foreknowledge of John L. Stevens, the U.S. minister to Hawaii, and 300 U.S. Marines from the U.S. cruiser Boston were called to Hawaii, allegedly to protect American lives.
The first known settlers of the Hawaiian Islands were Polynesian voyagers who arrived sometime in the eighth century, and in the early 18th century the first American traders came to Hawaii to exploit the islands' sandalwood, which was much valued in China at the time. In the 1830s, the sugar industry was introduced to Hawaii and by the mid-19th century had become well established. American missionaries and planters brought about great changes in Hawaiian political, cultural, economic, and religious life, and in 1840 a constitutional monarchy was established, stripping the Hawaiian monarch of much of his authority. Four years later, Sanford B. Dole was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to American parents.
During the next four decades, Hawaii entered into a number of political and economic treaties with the United States, and in 1887 a U.S. naval base was established at Pearl Harbor as part of a new Hawaiian constitution. Sugar exports to the United States expanded greatly during the next four years, and U.S. investors and American sugar planters on the islands broadened their domination over Hawaiian affairs. However, in 1891 Liliuokalani, the sister of the late King Kalakaua, ascended to the throne, refusing to recognize the constitution of 1887 and replacing it with a constitution increasing her personal authority.
In January 1893, a revolutionary "Committee of Safety," organized by Sanford B. Dole, staged a coup against Queen Liliuokalani with the tacit support of the United States. On February 1, Minister John Stevens recognized Dole's new government on his own authority and proclaimed Hawaii a U.S. protectorate. Dole submitted a treaty of annexation to the U.S. Senate, but most Democrats opposed it, especially after it was revealed that most Hawaiians did want annexation.
President Grover Cleveland sent a new U.S. minister to Hawaii to restore Queen Liliuokalani to the throne under the 1887 constitution, but Dole refused to step aside and instead proclaimed the independent Republic of Hawaii. Cleveland was unwilling to overthrow the government by force, and his successor, President William McKinley, negotiated a treaty with the Republic of Hawaii in 1897. In 1898, the Spanish-American War broke out, and the strategic use of the naval base at Pearl Harbor during the war convinced Congress to approve formal annexation. Two years later, Hawaii was organized into a formal U.S. territory and in 1959 entered the United States as the 50th state.
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Jan 17, 1893
Americans overthrow Hawaiian monarchy
On the Hawaiian Islands, a group of American sugar planters under Sanford Ballard Dole overthrow Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch, and establish a new provincial government with Dole as president. The coup occurred with the foreknowledge of John L. Stevens, the U.S. minister to Hawaii, and 300 U.S. Marines from the U.S. cruiser Boston were called to Hawaii, allegedly to protect American lives.
The first known settlers of the Hawaiian Islands were Polynesian voyagers who arrived sometime in the eighth century, and in the early 18th century the first American traders came to Hawaii to exploit the islands' sandalwood, which was much valued in China at the time. In the 1830s, the sugar industry was introduced to Hawaii and by the mid-19th century had become well established. American missionaries and planters brought about great changes in Hawaiian political, cultural, economic, and religious life, and in 1840 a constitutional monarchy was established, stripping the Hawaiian monarch of much of his authority. Four years later, Sanford B. Dole was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to American parents.
During the next four decades, Hawaii entered into a number of political and economic treaties with the United States, and in 1887 a U.S. naval base was established at Pearl Harbor as part of a new Hawaiian constitution. Sugar exports to the United States expanded greatly during the next four years, and U.S. investors and American sugar planters on the islands broadened their domination over Hawaiian affairs. However, in 1891 Liliuokalani, the sister of the late King Kalakaua, ascended to the throne, refusing to recognize the constitution of 1887 and replacing it with a constitution increasing her personal authority.
In January 1893, a revolutionary "Committee of Safety," organized by Sanford B. Dole, staged a coup against Queen Liliuokalani with the tacit support of the United States. On February 1, Minister John Stevens recognized Dole's new government on his own authority and proclaimed Hawaii a U.S. protectorate. Dole submitted a treaty of annexation to the U.S. Senate, but most Democrats opposed it, especially after it was revealed that most Hawaiians did want annexation.
President Grover Cleveland sent a new U.S. minister to Hawaii to restore Queen Liliuokalani to the throne under the 1887 constitution, but Dole refused to step aside and instead proclaimed the independent Republic of Hawaii. Cleveland was unwilling to overthrow the government by force, and his successor, President William McKinley, negotiated a treaty with the Republic of Hawaii in 1897. In 1898, the Spanish-American War broke out, and the strategic use of the naval base at Pearl Harbor during the war convinced Congress to approve formal annexation. Two years later, Hawaii was organized into a formal U.S. territory and in 1959 entered the United States as the 50th state.
:o
Who needs to have a monarch to enforce Imperialism. Merica
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Jan 18, 1803
Jefferson requests funding for Lewis and Clark expedition
On this day in 1803, Thomas Jefferson requests funding from Congress to finance the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Jefferson officially asked for $2,500 in funding from Congress, though some sources indicate the expedition ultimately cost closer to $50,000. Lewis was joined by his friend William Clark and 50 others on the journey, including an African-American slave and a female Indian guide named Sacagawea. The team, which Jefferson called the Corps of Discovery, first surveyed the territory that comprised the Louisiana Purchase, a vast expanse that reached as far north as present-day North Dakota, south to the Gulf of Mexico and stopped at the eastern border of Spanish territory in present-day Texas. The team then crossed the Rockies and navigated river routes to the Pacific coast of present-day Oregon. Upon their return, the duo's reports of the exotic and awe-inspiring new lands they had encountered sparked a new wave of westward expansion.
Jefferson first proposed the exploratory expedition even before Napoleon offered to sell France's American territory, which would become known as the Louisiana Purchase, to the United States and had authorization from Congress to launch a survey of the area when news of Napoleon's offer to sell reached Washington. In a stroke of luck for the United States, Napoleon had abandoned plans to establish a French foothold on America's southern flank and sold the land to the U.S. to subsidize his conquest of Europe.
Though he did not disclose his intentions to Congress, Jefferson planned to send Meriwether Lewis, his private secretary, on a reconnaissance mission that far exceeded the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase to determine how far west the U.S. might extend commerce in the North American fur trade and to assess the viability of future territorial expansion into the west. In misleading Congress, Jefferson had temporarily stifled his distaste for an abuse of executive privilege to achieve a strategic goal. A product of the Enlightenment, Jefferson was a man with strong political principles, but he was also fascinated by what the expedition might yield in terms of scientific discovery and adventure. Jefferson sought to claim more territory for the United States, eliminate foreign competition and convert the Indian nations to Christianity, viewing westward expansion as a way for the nation to maintain its agrarian values and to ward off the same political perils that plagued an increasingly overcrowded Europe.
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Jan 19, 1999
Man charged in California cyberstalking case
A mere three weeks after California passed a law against cyberstalking, Gary Dellapenta is charged with using the Internet to solicit the rape of a woman who had rejected his advances. Dellapenta terrorized a North Hollywood woman by placing ads in her name that claimed she had rape fantasies and provided her address and instructions for disarming her security system. At least six men saw the Internet ads and came to the woman's home. Many more called with obscene messages.
On January 1, 1999, California had become the first state to ban cyberstalking, or stalking that involves electronic communications. Dellapenta went afoul of the new law by using the Internet to get back at the woman who had repeatedly rejected his romantic interest in her.
At first the woman had no idea why men were banging on her door in the middle of the night saying that they were there to rape her. When she finally learned about the Internet ads, she placed notes on her door explaining that the ads were false. However, Dellapenta then placed new ads saying that the notes were part of the fantasy. He was caught when the victim's father pretended to respond to the ads and traced their origin.
In April, Dellapenta pleaded guilty to one count of stalking and three counts of solicitation of sexual assault and received a six-year prison sentence.
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Jan 20, 1974
Football player-turned-murderer born
Rae Carruth, the pro football player convicted of hiring someone to kill his pregnant girlfriend, was born on this day in Sacramento, California.
On the night of November 15, 1999, Carruth, a receiver for the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, and his girlfriend, Cherica Adams, 24, went to see a movie in Charlotte, North Carolina. Later that night, they each got into their own cars and began driving to Adams’ home. Carruth drove ahead of Adams, who was in her third trimester of pregnancy. Shortly after 12:30 a.m., a vehicle pulled alongside Adams’ car and she was shot four times. Adams called 911 on her cell phone and indicated that Carruth had somehow been involved in the shooting. When paramedics arrived, Carruth was gone. Adams was taken to the hospital, where her son, Chancellor Lee Adams, was delivered by emergency Caesarean section. Adams died from her injuries a month later, but not before giving statements to the police implicating Carruth in the crime and suggesting he had slowed his vehicle and blocked her from escaping the gun shots.
On November 25, Carruth and Van Brett Watkins, an ex-convict who later admitted to being the shooter, were arrested and charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and firing a weapon into an occupied vehicle. Within days, the man believed to be driving Watkins’ vehicle and another man who was a passenger were also arrested and charged. Cell phone records indicated that Carruth had been in contact with the men in the other vehicle around the time of the shooting. After Cherica Adams died on November 14, the charges against the four men were upgraded to murder. At that point, Carruth, who was out on bail, disappeared and was found a day later hiding in the trunk of a car outside a motel in Tennessee.
Watkins eventually agreed to plead guilty to shooting Adams and to testify against Carruth in order to avoid the death penalty. During trial, prosecutors claimed that Carruth had hired Watkins to kill Adams because he didn’t want to pay child support.
Defense attorneys for Carruth claimed he was being framed for his refusal to finance a drug deal for Watkins. Attorneys also argued that Watkins had once admitted to shooting Adams not because Carruth had paid him but because she had made an obscene gesture at him while his car drove by her.
In January 2001, a jury acquitted Carruth of first-degree murder but found him guilty of conspiracy to murder, shooting into an occupied vehicle and attempting to kill an unborn child. He is currently serving a minimum prison sentence of 18 years and 11 months.
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Jan 21, 1793
King Louis XVI executed
One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris.
Louis ascended to the French throne in 1774 and from the start was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems that he had inherited from his grandfather, King Louis XV. In 1789, in a last-ditch attempt to resolve his country's financial crisis, Louis assembled the States-General, a national assembly that represented the three "estates" of the French people--the nobles, the clergy, and the commons. The States-General had not been assembled since 1614, and the third estate--the commons--used the opportunity to declare itself the National Assembly, igniting the French Revolution. On July 14, 1789, violence erupted when Parisians stormed the Bastille--a state prison where they believed ammunition was stored.
Although outwardly accepting the revolution, Louis resisted the advice of constitutional monarchists who sought to reform the monarchy in order to save it; he also permitted the reactionary plotting of his unpopular queen, Marie Antoinette. In October 1789, a mob marched on Versailles and forced the royal couple to move to Tuileries; in June 1791, opposition to the royal pair had become so fierce that the two were forced to flee to Austria. During their trip, Marie and Louis were apprehended at Varennes, France, and carried back to Paris. There, Louis was forced to accept the constitution of 1791, which reduced him to a mere figurehead.
In August 1792, the royal couple was arrested by the sans-cullottes and imprisoned, and in September the monarchy was abolished by the National Convention (which had replaced the National Assembly). In November, evidence of Louis XVI's counterrevolutionary intrigues with Austria and other foreign nations was discovered, and he was put on trial for treason by the National Convention.
The next January, Louis was convicted and condemned to death by a narrow majority. On January 21, he walked steadfastly to the guillotine and was executed. Nine months later, Marie Antoinette was convicted of treason by a tribunal, and on October 16 she followed her husband to the guillotine.
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Jan 22, 2008
Heath Ledger dies of accidental prescription drug overdose
On this day in 2008, Hollywood mourns a talented young actor’s life cut tragically short, after the body of 28-year-old Heath Ledger is found by his masseuse and housekeeper on the floor of his rented apartment in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City.
Best known for his Academy Award-nominated turn as the closeted gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar in the director Ang Lee’s acclaimed Brokeback Mountain (2005), Ledger was a former child actor from Australia who first became known to American audiences in the 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. He later passed up other teen comedies and was rewarded with a big break when he landed the role of Mel Gibson’s son in the Revolutionary War drama The Patriot (2000). After appearing in the well-reviewed Monster’s Ball (2001), Ledger starred in two critical and commercial flops, A Knight’s Tale (2001) and The Four Feathers (2002). He roared back in 2005, with lead roles in no fewer than four films, including Casanova, in which he played the title role.
It was Brokeback Mountain, however, that truly made Ledger a star and earned him comparisons to acting greats such as Marlon Brando. Ledger lost the Best Actor Oscar to Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) but Brokeback Mountain cemented his reputation as an A-list actor and a fixture in the pages of celebrity-obsessed magazines. This last role--which he fulfilled uneasily--was intensified by his relationship with the actress Michelle Williams, whom he met on the set of Brokeback Mountain. The couple had a daughter, Matilda, born in October 2005, and were often photographed in various scenes of domestic bliss. In September 2007, however, Ledger and Williams announced they were separating, and Ledger moved from their house in Brooklyn to the rented SoHo apartment.
Though his personal life might have been in turmoil, Ledger’s professional life was flourishing in the months before his death. Near the end of 2007, he was in London filming Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. In addition to a role as one of several Bob Dylan alter egos in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, he had also recently finished work on The Dark Knight, the latest Batman film, in which Ledger played a younger version of the Joker, the villainous role originated by Jack Nicholson. In interviews that would be scrutinized exhaustively after his death, the actor admitted that the Joker role had been difficult for him and that he had been using prescription drugs to manage recurring bouts of stress and insomnia.
Soon after the masseuse and housekeeper discovered Ledger’s body, emergency crews arrived on the scene but were unable to revive him. Media speculation about his possible illegal drug use intensified over the next two weeks, until on February 8, the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office released the results of toxicology tests performed on Ledger’s body. The report stated that he died of an accidental “abuse of prescription medications” that included commonly known painkillers, anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills. After memorial services in New York and Los Angeles, Ledger’s family took his body back to their native Australia; he is buried next to his grandparents, in his hometown of Perth.
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http://thewallstreetexecutive.tumblr.com/post/74179137419/today-in-sports-history-in-2002-mike-tyson-and
Today in sports history: In 2002, Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis had this memorable press conference.
(http://31.media.tumblr.com/23e6d2554a5e481789b2b08ccb51633d/tumblr_mzt9sychw71rudjnno1_400.gif)
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Jan 23, 1870
Soldiers massacre the wrong camp of Indians
Declaring he did not care whether or not it was the rebellious band of Indians he had been searching for, Colonel Eugene Baker orders his men to attack a sleeping camp of peaceful Blackfeet along the Marias River in northern Montana.
The previous fall, Malcolm Clarke, an influential Montana rancher, had accused a Blackfeet warrior named Owl Child of stealing some of his horses; he punished the proud brave with a brutal whipping. In retribution, Owl Child and several allies murdered Clarke and his son at their home near Helena, and then fled north to join a band of rebellious Blackfeet under the leadership of Mountain Chief. Outraged and frightened, Montanans demanded that Owl Child and his followers be punished, and the government responded by ordering the forces garrisoned under Major Eugene Baker at Fort Ellis (near modern-day Bozeman, Montana) to strike back.
Strengthening his cavalry units with two infantry groups from Fort Shaw near Great Falls, Baker led his troops out into sub-zero winter weather and headed north in search of Mountain Chief's band. Soldiers later reported that Baker drank a great deal throughout the march. On January 22, Baker discovered an Indian village along the Marias River, and, postponing his attack until the following morning, spent the evening drinking heavily.
At daybreak on the morning of January 23, 1870, Baker ordered his men to surround the camp in preparation for attack. As the darkness faded, Baker's scout, Joe Kipp, recognized that the painted designs on the buffalo-skin lodges were those of a peaceful band of Blackfeet led by Heavy Runner. Mountain Chief and Owl Child, Kipp quickly realized, must have gotten wind of the approaching soldiers and moved their winter camp elsewhere. Kipp rushed to tell Baker that they had the wrong Indians, but Baker reportedly replied, "That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans [Blackfeet] and we will attack them." Baker then ordered a sergeant to shoot Kipp if he tried to warn the sleeping camp of Blackfeet and gave the command to attack.
Baker's soldiers began blindly firing into the village, catching the peaceful Indians utterly unaware and defenseless. By the time the brutal attack was over, Baker and his men had, by the best estimate, murdered 37 men, 90 women, and 50 children. Knocking down lodges with frightened survivors inside, the soldiers set them on fire, burnt some of the Blackfeet alive, and then burned the band's meager supplies of food for the winter. Baker initially captured about 140 women and children as prisoners to take back to Fort Ellis, but when he discovered many were ill with smallpox, he abandoned them to face the deadly winter without food or shelter.
When word of the Baker Massacre (now known as the Marias Massacre) reached the east, many Americans were outraged. One angry congressman denounced Baker, saying "civilization shudders at horrors like this." Baker's superiors, however, supported his actions, as did the people of Montana, with one journalist calling Baker's critics "namby-pamby, sniffling old maid sentimentalists." Neither Baker nor his men faced a court martial or any other disciplinary actions. However, the public outrage over the massacre did derail the growing movement to transfer control of Indian affairs from the Department of Interior to the War Department--President Ulysses S. Grant decreed that henceforth all Indian agents would be civilians rather than soldiers.
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Jan 24, 1965
Winston Churchill dies
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, dies in London at the age of 90.
Born at Blenheim Palace in 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father's death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals, serving in a number of important posts before being appointed Britain's first lord of the admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British navy to a readiness for the war that he foresaw.
In 1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns, and he was excluded from the war coalition government. He resigned and volunteered to command an infantry battalion in France. However, in 1917, he returned to politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he was secretary of state for war and in 1924 returned to the Conservative Party, where two years later he played a leading role in the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill issued unheeded warnings of the threat of Nazi and Japanese aggression.
After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill was called back to his post as first lord of the admiralty and eight months later replaced the ineffectual Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would "never surrender." He rallied the British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that crushed the Axis.
In July 1945, 10 weeks after Germany's defeat, his Conservative government suffered a defeat against Clement Attlee's Labour Party, and Churchill resigned as prime minister. He became leader of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. Two years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his six-volume historical study of World War II and for his political speeches; he was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1955, he retired as prime minister but remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his death.
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Jan 25, 1971
Manson and followers convicted
In Los Angeles, California, cult leader Charles Manson is convicted, along with followers Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkle, of the brutal 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others.
In 1967, Manson, a lifetime criminal, was released from a federal penitentiary in Washington State and traveled to San Francisco, where he attracted a following among rebellious young women with troubled emotional lives. Manson established a cult based on his concept of "Helter Skelter"--an apocalyptic philosophy predicting that out of an imminent racial war in America would emerge five ruling angels: Manson, who would take on the role of Jesus Christ, and the four members of the Beatles. Manson convinced his followers that it would be necessary to murder celebrities in order to attract attention to the cult, and in 1969 they targeted Sharon Tate, a marginally successful actress who was married to Roman Polanski, a film director.
On the night of August 9, 1969, with detailed instructions from Manson, four of his followers drove up to Cielo Drive above Beverly Hills and burst into Polanski and Tate's home. (Polanski was not home and friends were staying with the pregnant Tate.) During the next few hours, they engaged in a murderous rampage that left five dead, including a very pregnant Sharon Tate, three of her friends, and an 18-year-old man who was visiting the caretaker of the estate. The next night, Manson followers murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles; this time, Manson went along to make sure the killings were carried out correctly. The cases went unsolved for over a year before the Los Angeles Police Department discovered the Manson connection. Various members of his cult confessed, and Manson and five others were indicted on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
In January 1972, Manson and three others were found guilty, and on March 29 all four were sentenced to death. The trial of another defendant, Charles "Tex" Watson, was delayed by extradition proceedings, but he was likewise found guilty and sentenced to death. In 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in California, and Manson and his followers' death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment.
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Jan 26, 1788
Australia Day
On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia. After overcoming a period of hardship, the fledgling colony began to celebrate the anniversary of this date with great fanfare.
Australia, once known as New South Wales, was originally planned as a penal colony. In October 1786, the British government appointed Arthur Phillip captain of the HMS Sirius, and commissioned him to establish an agricultural work camp there for British convicts. With little idea of what he could expect from the mysterious and distant land, Phillip had great difficulty assembling the fleet that was to make the journey. His requests for more experienced farmers to assist the penal colony were repeatedly denied, and he was both poorly funded and outfitted. Nonetheless, accompanied by a small contingent of Marines and other officers, Phillip led his 1,000-strong party, of whom more than 700 were convicts, around Africa to the eastern side of Australia. In all, the voyage lasted eight months, claiming the deaths of some 30 men.
The first years of settlement were nearly disastrous. Cursed with poor soil, an unfamiliar climate and workers who were ignorant of farming, Phillip had great difficulty keeping the men alive. The colony was on the verge of outright starvation for several years, and the marines sent to keep order were not up to the task. Phillip, who proved to be a tough but fair-minded leader, persevered by appointing convicts to positions of responsibility and oversight. Floggings and hangings were commonplace, but so was egalitarianism. As Phillip said before leaving England: "In a new country there will be no slavery and hence no slaves."
Though Phillip returned to England in 1792, the colony became prosperous by the turn of the 19th century. Feeling a new sense of patriotism, the men began to rally around January 26 as their founding day. Historian Manning Clarke noted that in 1808 the men observed the "anniversary of the foundation of the colony" with "drinking and merriment."
Finally, in 1818, January 26 became an official holiday, marking the 30th anniversary of British settlement in Australia. And, as Australia became a sovereign nation, it became the national holiday known as Australia Day. Today, Australia Day serves both as a day of celebration for the founding of the white British settlement, and as a day of mourning for the Aborigines who were slowly dispossessed of their land as white colonization spread across the continent.
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Jan 27, 1978
The so-called Dracula killer
On this day in 1978, Richard Chase, who becomes known as the "Dracula Killer," murders Evelyn Miroth and Daniel Meredith, as well as Miroth's 6-year-old son and another woman, in Sacramento, California. Chase sexually assaulted Miroth with a knife before killing her and mutilating her body. He removed some of the organs of the body and filled them with blood before taking them with him. Meredith was found shot in the head.
The previous year, the 28-year-old Chase had been found in a field, naked and covered in cow's blood. His behavior did not come as a complete surprise to those who knew him. As a child, he had been known to kill animals, drinking the blood of a bird on one occasion. He had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for most of his life. A year prior to the killings, Chase was released because his psychiatrist found that Chase had a handle on his problems.
Upon his arrest, police found that Chase's home was filled with human blood. It was found in the blender and in the sinks, suggesting that Chase had been drinking it for some time.
In 1979, Chase went to trial and his attorney argued that he was insane. However, a jury found that he was sane, convicted him of six counts of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. Chase killed himself in his cell at San Quentin on December 26,1980.
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Jan 28, 1986
Challenger explodes after liftoff
The space shuttle Challenger explodes just after liftoff on this day in 1986, killing the seven astronauts aboard.
The Challenger was the second shuttle built by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It took its first flight into space on April 4, 1983, and made a total of nine voyages prior to January 1986. The 10th trip for Challenger included a teacher from New Hampshire, Christa MacAuliffe, among the astronauts, as part of a new Teacher in Space project.
The Challenger was scheduled to launch on January 22, but a series of problems with the weather delayed the launch until January 28. It was a cold morning at Cape Canaveral and engineers working on the shuttle team warned their superiors that certain equipment on the shuttle was vulnerable to failure at cold temperatures. However, these warnings went unheeded and at 11:39 a.m., the Challenger was launched. Problems began immediately.
First, the O-ring seal on the Challenger's solid rocket booster, which had become brittle in the cold temperatures, failed. Flames then broke out of the booster and damaged the external fuel tank. Within 73 seconds, the shuttle began breaking apart, and then it plunged into the ocean. All seven astronauts died but it remains unclear what caused their deaths. A later investigation revealed that the forces involved in the shuttle breakup were not sufficient to have killed them, but that they may have lost consciousness only seconds later as their module lost cabin pressure.
President Ronald Reagan postponed the State of the Union address that was scheduled for that evening and instead addressed the nation about the tragedy. He appointed a commission to investigate the accident and the shuttle program was put on hiatus.
The Rogers Commission determined that Morton Thiokol, the company that designed the solid rocket boosters, had ignored warnings about potential flaws. NASA managers were aware of these design problems, but also failed to take action. Famously, scientist Richard Feynman, a member of the Rogers Commission, demonstrated the O-ring flaw to the public using a simple glass of ice water.
Ten years after the disaster, two large pieces from the Challenger washed ashore on a Florida beach. The remaining debris from the Challenger is now stored in a missile silo at Cape Canaveral.
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Avesher was born.
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Jan 25, 1971
Manson and followers convicted
In Los Angeles, California, cult leader Charles Manson is convicted, along with followers Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkle, of the brutal 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others.
In 1967, Manson, a lifetime criminal, was released from a federal penitentiary in Washington State and traveled to San Francisco, where he attracted a following among rebellious young women with troubled emotional lives. Manson established a cult based on his concept of "Helter Skelter"--an apocalyptic philosophy predicting that out of an imminent racial war in America would emerge five ruling angels: Manson, who would take on the role of Jesus Christ, and the four members of the Beatles. Manson convinced his followers that it would be necessary to murder celebrities in order to attract attention to the cult, and in 1969 they targeted Sharon Tate, a marginally successful actress who was married to Roman Polanski, a film director.
On the night of August 9, 1969, with detailed instructions from Manson, four of his followers drove up to Cielo Drive above Beverly Hills and burst into Polanski and Tate's home. (Polanski was not home and friends were staying with the pregnant Tate.) During the next few hours, they engaged in a murderous rampage that left five dead, including a very pregnant Sharon Tate, three of her friends, and an 18-year-old man who was visiting the caretaker of the estate. The next night, Manson followers murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles; this time, Manson went along to make sure the killings were carried out correctly. The cases went unsolved for over a year before the Los Angeles Police Department discovered the Manson connection. Various members of his cult confessed, and Manson and five others were indicted on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
In January 1972, Manson and three others were found guilty, and on March 29 all four were sentenced to death. The trial of another defendant, Charles "Tex" Watson, was delayed by extradition proceedings, but he was likewise found guilty and sentenced to death. In 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in California, and Manson and his followers' death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment.
Steven Parent, lived a few blocks away from where I grew up.
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Jan 29, 1845
"The Raven" is published
Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem "The Raven," beginning "Once upon a midnight dreary," is published on this day in the New York Evening Mirror.
Poe's dark and macabre work reflected his own tumultuous and difficult life. Born in Boston in 1809, Poe was orphaned at age three and went to live with the family of a Richmond, Virginia, businessman. Poe enrolled in a military academy but was expelled for gambling. He later studied briefly at the University of Virginia.
In 1827, Poe self-published a collection of poems. Six years later, his short story "MS Found in a Bottle" won $50 in a story contest. He edited a series of literary journals, including the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond starting in 1835, and Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in Philadelphia, starting in 1839. Poe's excessive drinking got him fired from several positions. His macabre work, often portraying motiveless crimes and intolerable guilt that induces growing mania in his characters, was a significant influence on such European writers as Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, and even Dostoyevsky.
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Jan 30, 1948
Gandhi sssassinated in New Delhi
Mohandas Gandhi, the world's chief advocate of non-violence, is assassinated in New Delhi by a terrorist sponsored by a right-wing Hindu militia group. The murder came only 10 days after a failed attempt on Gandhi's life. Thirty-nine-year-old Nathuram Godse shot the great Indian leader as he made his way through a small crowd to lead a prayer session.
The father of Indian independence had angered Hindu extremists by his efforts to bring peace in the wake of the British withdrawal from India. Muslims and Hindus had been fighting a civil war since the decision to the Muslim-dominated western region of India had become separated as Pakistan. Religious-inspired riots were breaking out all over India when Gandhi went on a hunger strike in September 1947.
The fast almost killed Gandhi but it successfully suspended the fighting. However, he was forced to fast again in January in order to finally bring the sides together for a peace pact. Hindu extremists saw this as selling out the nation and plotted Gandhi's death. On January 20, the group detonated explosives inside the wall of a New Delhi house where Gandhi was, but stopped short of throwing a grenade at Gandhi because they feared that bystanders would be killed.
Gandhi was instrumental in driving the British out of India. His non-violent protests and boycotts crippled England's ability to control the populace and brought unwanted attention to one of the world's last major bastions of colonialism. He was a leader in the Indian National Congress, and led the revolution for independence. His ideas and tactics were later borrowed by Martin Luther King, Jr., who used them successfully in the 1960s civil rights protests.
The assassin Godse tried to kill himself after the attack, but was grabbed before he had the chance. Four accomplices were arrested over the next several days. Godse showed no remorse for his crime. Along with Narayan Apte, Godse was hanged to death on November 15, 1949, against the wishes of Gandhi's sons, who argued that the execution stood against everything Gandhi believed in.
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Jan 31, 1606
The death of Guy Fawkes
At Westminster in London, Guy Fawkes, a chief conspirator in the plot to blow up the British Parliament building, jumps to his death moments before his execution for treason.
On the eve of a general parliamentary session scheduled for November 5, 1605, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, found Guy Fawkes lurking in a cellar of the Parliament building. Fawkes was detained and the premises thoroughly searched. Nearly two tons of gunpowder were found hidden within the cellar. In his interrogation, Fawkes revealed that he was a participant in an English Catholic conspiracy organized by Robert Catesby to annihilate England's entire Protestant government, including King James I. The king was to have attended Parliament on November 5.
Over the next few months, English authorities killed or captured all of the conspirators in the "Gunpowder Plot" but also arrested, tortured, or killed dozens of innocent English Catholics. After a brief trial, Guy Fawkes was sentenced, along with the other surviving chief conspirators, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered in London. On January 30, 1606, the gruesome public executions began in London, and on January 31 Fawkes was called to meet his fate. While climbing to the hanging platform, however, he jumped from the ladder and broke his neck, dying instantly.
In remembrance of the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated across Great Britain every year on the fifth of November. As dusk falls in the evening, villagers and city dwellers across Britain light bonfires, set off fireworks, and burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes, celebrating his failure to blow up Parliament and James I.
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Feb 1, 1887
Official registration of Hollywood
On this day in 1887, Harvey Wilcox officially registers Hollywood with the Los Angeles County recorder’s office. Wilcox and his wife, Daeida, had moved to Southern California four years earlier from Topeka, Kansas, where Harvey had made his fortune in real estate. They bought 160 acres of land in the Cahuenga Valley, located in the foothills to the west of the city of Los Angeles. A once-sleepy settlement founded in 1781 as El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Poricuncula, Los Angeles was by then expanding rapidly thanks to the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1876 (the Santa Fe Railroad would arrive in 1885).
Wilcox, who had lost the use of his legs as a child due to polio, envisioned the land as the perfect site for a utopian-like community for devout Christians, where they could live a highly moral life free of vices such as alcohol (Wilcox was a prohibitionist). Daeida Wilcox called the new community “Hollywood,” borrowing the name from a Chicago friend who told her that was the name of a summer home she had in the Midwest. Harvey laid out a street map of the settlement, centered on a main street he called Prospect Avenue (it was later renamed Hollywood Boulevard). After filing the map with the L.A. County recorder’s office, Wilcox set about laying out Hollywood’s streets, made of dirt and lined with pepper trees.
As Harvey sold lots, Daeida worked to raise money to build churches, a school and a library. By 1900, nine years after Harvey Wilcox’s death, Hollywood had a population of 500, compared with 100,000 people in Los Angeles at the time. It was connected to L.A. by a single-track streetcar running down Prospect Avenue; it took two hours to make the seven-mile trip, and service was infrequent. In 1910, the community of Hollywood voted to consolidate with Los Angeles due to an inadequate supply of water. Shortly thereafter, the fledgling motion-picture industry began growing exponentially, as moviemakers found their ideal setting in the mild, sunny climate and varied terrain of Southern California. As the years went by, Harvey Wilcox’s dreams of a sober, conservative religious community faded even further into the background, as Hollywood became known throughout the world as the gilded center of an industry built on fantasy, fame and glamour.
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Feb 2, 1887
First Groundhog Day
On this day in 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring.
Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal--the hedgehog--as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.
Groundhogs, also called woodchucks and whose scientific name is Marmota monax, typically weigh 12 to 15 pounds and live six to eight years. They eat vegetables and fruits, whistle when they're frightened or looking for a mate and can climb trees and swim. They go into hibernation in the late fall; during this time, their body temperatures drop significantly, their heartbeats slow from 80 to five beats per minute and they can lose 30 percent of their body fat. In February, male groundhogs emerge from their burrows to look for a mate (not to predict the weather) before going underground again. They come out of hibernation for good in March.
In 1887, a newspaper editor belonging to a group of groundhog hunters from Punxsutawney called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club declared that Phil, the Punxsutawney groundhog, was America's only true weather-forecasting groundhog. The line of groundhogs that have since been known as Phil might be America's most famous groundhogs, but other towns across North America now have their own weather-predicting rodents, from Birmingham Bill to Staten Island Chuck to Shubenacadie Sam in Canada.
In 1993, the movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray popularized the usage of "groundhog day" to mean something that is repeated over and over. Today, tens of thousands of people converge on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney each February 2 to witness Phil's prediction. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club hosts a three-day celebration featuring entertainment and activities.
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Not biased at all ;)
Feb 3, 2002
New England Patriots win first Super Bowl
On this day in 2002, the New England Patriots shock football fans everywhere by defeating the heavily favored St. Louis Rams, 20-17, to take home their first Super Bowl victory. Pats’ kicker Adam Vinatieri made a 48-yard field goal to win the game just as the clock expired.
Super Bowl XXXVI took place at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans with a crowd of almost 73,000 in attendance. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, the game was played amidst intense security and included a tribute to the 9/11 victims. Former President George H.W. Bush conducted the coin toss, the first president to ever do so in person. Mariah Carey sang the National Anthem and U2 performed during the halftime show.
The NFC champion Rams were coached by Mike Martz, who joined the team in 1999 as offensive coordinator and became head coach in 2000. The team’s offense--nicknamed “The Greatest Show on Turf”--was believed to be one of the best in football history. Kurt Warner, a two-time NFL MVP, quarterbacked the Rams, who had won their first Super Bowl in 2000. The American Football Conference champion Patriots were coached by Bill Belichick, who joined the team in 2000, the same year quarterback Tom Brady was drafted. Brady took over for Pats’ starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe after he was injured early in the 2001-2002 season, and Belichick made the decision to stay with the younger quarterback even after Bledsoe recovered, a call that initially met with controversy. (Bledsoe did play in the AFC Championship game, after Brady was forced to leave with an injury.)
Going into the Super Bowl on February 3, the Rams’ high-powered offense and Super Bowl experience combined to make them 14-point favorites. True to form, the Rams scored first, but by halftime, the underdog Patriots had stifled the Rams offense, and capitalized on two St. Louis turnovers to pull ahead, 14-3.
The Pats converted another Rams turnover into a 17-3 lead in the third quarter before the Rams finally seemed to come alive. Warner ran in a touchdown and then connected with wide receiver Ricky Proehl with just one minute, 30 seconds remaining to tie the score. In the end, though, it proved too little, too late: Brady deftly led the Pats on a 53-yard drive and into field goal range, and with seven seconds left on the clock, Adam Vinatieri kicked a 48-yard field goal to give the Pats the victory, 20-17. It was the first time a Super Bowl had ever been won with a team scoring on the last play of the game.
Brady completed 16 of 27 passes for 145 yards, scored one touchdown and was named the game’s MVP. (Warner completed 28 of 44 passes for 365 yards, scored one touchdown and had two interceptions.) Brady went on to lead the Patriots to Super Bowl championships in 2004, against the Carolina Panthers, and in 2005, against the Philadelphia Eagles, and is considered one of the best quarterbacks in football history. Meanwhile, Drew Bledsoe left the Patriots after the 2001 season to play for the Buffalo Bills.
Adam Vinatieri played for the Pats from 1996 to 2005 and earned a reputation as the best clutch place kicker in NFL history. At Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004, he repeated his 2002 Super Bowl performance by kicking a game-winning 41-yard field goal in the final seconds.
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Feb 4, 1789
First U.S. president elected
George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, is unanimously elected the first president of the United States by all 69 presidential electors who cast their votes. John Adams of Massachusetts, who received 34 votes, was elected vice president. The electors, who represented 10 of the 11 states that had ratified the U.S. Constitution, were chosen by popular vote, legislative appointment, or a combination of both four weeks before the election.
According to Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, the states appointed a number of presidential electors equal to the "number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress." Each elector voted for two people, at least one of whom did not live in their state. The individual receiving the greatest number of votes was elected president, and the next-in-line, vice president. (In 1804, this practice was changed by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which ordered separate ballots for the office of president and vice president.)
New York--though it was to be the seat of the new United States government--failed to choose its eight presidential electors in time for the vote on February 4, 1789. Two electors each from Virginia and Maryland were delayed by weather and did not vote. In addition, North Carolina and Rhode Island, which would have had seven and three electors respectively, had not ratified the Constitution and so could not vote.
That the remaining 69 unanimously chose Washington to lead the new U.S. government was a surprise to no one. As commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary War, he had led his inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers to victory over one of the world's great powers. After the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, Washington rejected with abhorrence a suggestion by one of his officers that he use his preeminence to assume a military dictatorship. He would not subvert the very principles for which so many Americans had fought and died, he replied, and soon after, he surrendered his military commission to the Continental Congress and retired to his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia.
When the Articles of Convention proved ineffectual, and the fledging republic teetered on the verge of collapse, Washington again answered his country's call and traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to preside over the Constitutional Convention. Although he favored the creation of a strong central government, as president of the convention he maintained impartiality in the public debates. Outside the convention hall, however, he made his views known, and his weight of character did much to bring the proceedings to a close. The drafters created the office of president with him in mind, and on September 17, 1787, the document was signed.
The next day, Washington started for home, hoping that, his duty to his country again served, he could live out the rest of his days in privacy. However, a crisis soon arose when the Constitution fell short of its necessary ratification by nine states. Washington threw himself into the ratification debate, and a compromise agreement was made in which the remaining states would ratify the document in exchange for passage of the constitutional amendments that would become the Bill of Rights.
Government by the United States began on March 4, 1789. In April, Congress sent word to George Washington that he had unanimously won the presidency. He borrowed money to pay off his debts in Virginia and traveled to New York. On April 30, he came across the Hudson River in a specially built and decorated barge. The inaugural ceremony was performed on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and a large crowed cheered after he took the oath of office. The president then retired indoors to read Congress his inaugural address, a quiet speech in which he spoke of "the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." The evening celebration was opened and closed by 13 skyrockets and 13 cannons.
As president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad. Of his presidency, he said, "I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent." He successfully implemented executive authority, making good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his Cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term.
In 1797, he finally began his long-awaited retirement at Mount Vernon. He died on December 14, 1799. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy for the father of the United States: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
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On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by two black men and a white woman, all three of whom are armed. Her fiance, Stephen Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she was put in the trunk of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street were forced to take cover after the kidnappers fired their guns to cover their escape.
Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small U.S. leftist group, announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station that it was holding Hearst as a "prisoner of war." Four days later, the SLA demanded that the Hearst family give $70 in foodstuffs to every needy person from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles. This done, said the SLA, negotiation would begin for the return of Patricia Hearst. Randolph Hearst hesitantly gave away some $2 million worth of food. The SLA then called this inadequate and asked for $6 million more. The Hearst Corporation said it would donate the additional sum if the girl was released unharmed.
In April, however, the situation changed dramatically when a surveillance camera took a photo of Hearst participating in an armed robbery of a San Francisco bank, and she was also spotted during a robbery of a Los Angeles store. She later declared, in a tape sent to the authorities, that she had joined the SLA of her own free will.
On May 17, Los Angeles police raided the SLA's secret headquarters, killing six of the group's nine known members. Among the dead was the SLA's leader, Donald DeFreeze, an African American ex-convict who called himself General Field Marshal Cinque. Patty Hearst and two other SLA members wanted for the April bank robbery were not on the premises.
Finally, on September 18, 1975, after crisscrossing the country with her captors--or conspirators--for more than a year, Hearst, or "Tania" as she called herself, was captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. Despite her claim that she had been brainwashed by the SLA, she was convicted on March 20, 1976, and sentenced to seven years in prison. She served 21 months before her sentence was commuted by President Carter. After leaving prison, she returned to a more routine existence and later married her bodyguard. She was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001.
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Feb 5, 1988
Noriega indicted on U.S. drug charges
On February 5, 1988, two federal grand juries in Florida announce indictments of Panama military strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega and 16 associates on drug smuggling and money laundering charges. Noriega, the de facto dictator of Panama since 1983, was charged with smuggling marijuana into the United States, laundering millions of U.S. dollars, and assisting Colombia's Medellin drug cartel in trafficking cocaine to America. The Panamanian leader denied the charges and threatened expulsion of the 10,000 U.S. service personnel and their families stationed around the Panama Canal.
In 1968, Noriega, then a first lieutenant in the Panamanian National Guard, played an important part in a coup that ousted President Arnulfo Arias and brought General Omar Torrijos to power. Early the next year, Torrijos rewarded Noriega for his loyalty by promoting him to lieutenant colonel and appointing him chief of military intelligence.
In 1970, Noriega, who had first been approached by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) while a promising military student in the early 1960s, went on the payroll of the CIA. The United States used Noriega as a check against the left-leaning Torrijos and as an informer on Central American revolutionaries, the Colombian drug cartels, and communist Cuba, which Torrijos, though not a Marxist himself, admired and visited. Noriega, meanwhile, developed his G-2 intelligence agency into a feared secret police force and became involved in the drug trade.
The U.S. government was aware of his drug trafficking, and in 1977 he was removed from the CIA payroll. However, in 1981, the United States organized and financed the anti-Sandinista Contras in Nicaragua, and Noriega was brought back into the CIA fold. For a salary of close to $200,000 a year, Noriega provided intelligence about the Sandinistas and Cubans to the Americans and aided the Contras in their drug-trafficking efforts.
In July 1981, Omar Torrijos was killed in a plane crash, and Colonel Noriega became chief of staff to General Ruben Dario Paredes, head of the National Guard. For two years, military and civilian leader struggled to gain the upper hand. In 1983, Paredes resigned and control of the military and the country passed to Noriega.
Noriega unified the armed forces into the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF), promoted himself to the rank of general, and consolidated his rule. Under his regime, political repression and corruption became widespread. In 1984, he held a presidential election, but when Arnulfo Arias won another apparent victory, Noriega tampered with the returns and gave the election to Nicolas Ardito Barletta, who became a puppet president. Still, Noriega enjoyed the continued support of the Reagan administration, which valued his aid in its efforts to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government.
In 1986, just months before the outbreak of the Iran-Contra affair, allegations arose concerning Noriega's history as a drug trafficker, money launderer, and CIA employee. Most shocking, however, were reports that Noriega had acted as a double agent for Cuba's intelligence agency and the Sandinistas. The U.S. government disowned Noriega, and his supporters staged protests against the American presence in Panama. Meanwhile, the dictator cracked down on growing political opposition in Panama.
In February 1988, Noriega was indicted by federal grand juries in Tampa and Miami, and Panamanian President Eric Arturo Delvalle attempted to dismiss Noriega. Delvalle was himself dismissed by the Noriega-led National Assembly. In March 1988, the United States froze all Panamanian assets in U.S. banks and imposed sanctions, and the same month an attempted coup by a handful of anti-Noriega PDF officers was crushed by loyal PDF soldiers. During the next year, tensions between Americans and Noriega supporters in Panama continued to grow, and the United States increased its economic sanctions.
In May 1989, Noriega annulled a presidential election that would have made Guillermo Endara president, and demonstrators protesting the fraud were attacked by the Noriega-subsidized Dignity Battalions. In response, U.S. President George Bush ordered additional U.S. troops to the Panama Canal Zone and urged U.S. civilians to return to the United States.
In October, another coup attempt by anti-Noriega PDF soldiers failed, and on December 15 the Noriega-led assembly declared the dictator the official chief executive while recognizing that a state of war existed with the United States. The next day, an off-duty U.S. Marine officer was shot to death at a PDF roadblock. U.S. forces in Panama were put on high alert, and on December 17 President Bush authorized Operation Just Cause--the U.S. invasion of Panama to overthrow Noriega.
On December 20, 9,000 U.S. troops joined the 12,000 U.S. military personnel already in Panama and were met with scattered resistance from the PDF. By December 24, the PDF was crushed, the United States held most of the country, and Noriega sought asylum with the Vatican nuncio in Panama City. Meanwhile, Endara had been made president by U.S. forces, and he ordered the PDF dissolved. On January 3, Noriega surrendered and was taken to Howard Air Force Base, where he was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials for his grand jury indictments. On January 4, he arrived in Florida to await his trial.
The U.S. invasion of Panama cost the lives of 23 U.S. soldiers and three U.S. civilians. Some 150 PDF soldiers were killed along with an estimated 500 Panamanian civilians. The Organization of American States and the European Parliament both formally protested the invasion, which they condemned as a flagrant violation of international law.
Noriega's criminal trial began in 1991, and he pleaded innocent. On April 9, 1992, he was found guilty on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering, marking the first time in history that a U.S. jury had convicted a foreign leader of criminal charges. He was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment and remains in prison in Miami, Florida.
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Feb 6, 1917
German sub sinks U.S. passenger ship California
Just three days after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's speech of February 3, 1917—in which he broke diplomatic relations with Germany and warned that war would follow if American interests at sea were again assaulted—a German submarine torpedoes and sinks the Anchor Line passenger steamer California off the Irish coast.
The SS California departed New York on January 29 bound for Glasgow, Scotland, with 205 passengers and crewmembers on board. Eight days later, some 38 miles off the coast of Fastnet Island, Ireland, the ship's captain, John Henderson, spotted a submarine off his ship's port side at a little after 9 a.m. and ordered the gunner at the stern of the ship to fire in defense if necessary. Moments later and without warning, the submarine fired two torpedoes at the ship. One of the torpedoes missed, but the second torpedo exploded into the port side of the steamer, killing five people instantly. The explosion of the torpedo was so violent and devastating that the 470-foot, 9,000-ton steamer sank just nine minutes after the attack. Despite desperate S.O.S. calls sent by the crew to ensure the arrival of rescue ships, 38 people drowned after the initial explosion, for a total of 43 dead.
This type of blatant German defiance of Wilson's warning about the consequences of unrestricted submarine warfare, combined with the subsequent discovery and release of the Zimmermann telegram—an overture made by Germany's foreign minister to the Mexican government involving a possible Mexican-German alliance in the event of a war between Germany and the U.S.—drove Wilson and the United States to take the final steps towards war. On April 2, Wilson went before Congress to deliver his war message; the formal declaration of U.S. entrance into the First World War came four days later.
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Feb 7, 1938
Tire king Firestone dies
On February 7, 1938, automotive industry pioneer Harvey Samuel Firestone, founder of the major American tire company that bore his name, dies at the age of 69 in Miami Beach, Florida.
Firestone was born on a farm near Columbiana, Ohio, on December 20, 1868. As a young man, he worked as a salesman for a buggy company and later became convinced that rubber carriage tires would provide a more comfortable ride than steel tires or wooden wheels. Around 1895, Firestone met a young engineer in Detroit named Henry Ford, who was developing his first automobile. Firestone sold Ford a set of rubber carriage tires, an event that marked the start of an important business relationship and friendship between the two men. In 1900, believing that the horse-and-buggy era was ending and the auto age beginning, Firestone incorporated the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. (Akron, which would come to be known as the world's rubber capital, was also home to Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, founded in 1898, and B. F. Goodrich, established in 1870.) Firestone began producing its own tires in 1903 and three years later sold 2,000 sets of detachable tires to Henry Ford, in what was then the world's largest tire order. In 1908, Ford launched his first factory-built Model T cars. (By the time production ended in 1927, more than 15 million Model T's had come off the assembly line; it was the all-time best-selling car until 1972, when it was surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle.)
By 1910, Firestone's profits passed $1 million for the first time. The following year, the winner of the inaugural Indianapolis 500 auto race, Ray Harroun, drove a Marmon Wasp equipped with Firestone tires. By 1926, Firestone was manufacturing more than 10 million tires each year, which represented approximately 25 percent of America's total tire output. Around this time, Firestone established its own rubber plantations in Liberia, Africa, in order to break free of Britain and the Netherlands, who controlled the rubber market through production in their Asian colonies.
Harvey Firestone retired in 1932 and died in 1938. In 1988, the Firestone company was acquired by Japan-based Bridgestone Corporation, a leading global tire manufacturer founded in 1931.
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Feb 8, 1587
Mary Queen of Scots beheaded
After 19 years of imprisonment, Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England for her complicity in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I.
In 1542, while just six days old, Mary ascended to the Scottish throne upon the death of her father, King James V. Her mother sent her to be raised in the French court, and in 1558 she married the French dauphin, who became King Francis II of France in 1559 but died the following year. After Francis' death, Mary returned to Scotland to assume her designated role as the country's monarch.
In 1565, she married her English cousin Lord Darnley in order to reinforce her claim of succession to the English throne after Elizabeth's death. In 1567, Darnley was mysteriously killed in an explosion at Kirk o' Field, and Mary's lover, the Earl of Bothwell, was the key suspect. Although Bothwell was acquitted of the charge, his marriage to Mary in the same year enraged the nobility. Mary brought an army against the nobles, but was defeated and imprisoned at Lochleven, Scotland, and forced to abdicate in favor of her son by Darnley, James.
In 1568, Mary escaped from captivity and raised a substantial army but was defeated and fled to England. Queen Elizabeth initially welcomed Mary but was soon forced to put her friend under house arrest after Mary became the focus of various English Catholic and Spanish plots to overthrow Elizabeth. Nineteen years later, in 1586, a major plot to murder Elizabeth was reported, and Mary was brought to trial. She was convicted for complicity and sentenced to death.
On February 8, 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for treason. Her son, King James VI of Scotland, calmly accepted his mother's execution, and upon Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603 he became king of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
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Feb 9, 1960
Coors brewery heir is kidnapped
Adolph Coors disappears while driving to work from his Morrison, Colorado, home. The grandson of the Coors' founder and chairman of the Golden, Colorado, brewery was kidnapped and held for ransom before being shot to death. Surrounding evidence launched one of the FBI's largest manhunts: the search for Joe Corbett.
Corbett, a Fulbright scholar at the University of Oregon, was headed to medical school when, in 1951, he got into an altercation with an Air Force sergeant. During the fight, he shot the man and ended up pleading guilty to second-degree murder. He was sent to San Quentin Prison for several years before being transferred to a minimum-security facility, where he easily escaped and began living under an alias, Walter Osborne.
Eight days after Coors was kidnapped, a car was found on fire in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The gasoline-fueled fire had been deliberately set, but it couldn't destroy the serial number imprinted on the engine. The car was traced back to Corbett, whose yellow Mercury had been spotted by many witnesses in the area of the crime in the days leading up to the abduction. Dirt from the car was ultimately traced back to the area where Coors was grabbed and taken hostage.
Seven months after the abduction of Adolph Coors in 1960, the millionaire's clothes were found in a dump near Sedalia, Colorado. This evidence led to the discovery of Coors' remains nearby. A ransom letter was traced back to Joe Corbett's typewriter. He had also ordered handcuffs, leg irons, and a gun through the mail in the months preceding the kidnapping. The FBI distributed 1.5 million posters with Corbett's picture and then tracked him all the way across Canada, from Toronto to Vancouver, where he was finally apprehended.
Corbett never testified at his trial and never made any statement, but the evidence was enough to convince the jury who convicted him in 1961. He was released in 1978.
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Feb 10, 1992
Boxing legend convicted of raping beauty queen
Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, accused of raping 18-year-old beauty-pageant contestant Desiree Washington, is found guilty by an Indiana jury. The following month, Tyson was given a 10-year prison sentence, with four years suspended.
Mike Tyson rose to fame in 1986 when he beat Trevor Berbick and became, at age 20, the youngest heavyweight champ in boxing history. Born June 30, 1966, in Brooklyn, New York, Tyson had a troubled childhood and was sent to reform school in upstate New York. There, his boxing talent was discovered and he flourished under the tutelage of legendary trainer Cus D'Amato. Tyson turned pro in 1985 and the following year became heavyweight champ, a title he retained until 1990, when he was upset by James "Buster" Douglas.
In July 1991, Tyson met Desiree Washington at a rehearsal for the Miss Black America pageant in Indianapolis. Washington accompanied Tyson back to his hotel room, where, in the early hours of July 19, he allegedly raped her. Tyson claimed the sex was consensual. The world-famous fighter was indicted by a grand jury in September of that year and convicted in February 1992. In March, he began serving his term at the Indiana Youth Center near Plainfield, Indiana. While in prison, he reportedly studied Islam and the writings of Mao Zedong and Malcolm X. He was released, after serving three years, in March 1995.
Post-prison, Tyson briefly recaptured the heavyweight title in 1996. However, the notorious pugilist continued to court controversy. In 1997, during a bout against Evander Holyfield, Tyson bit off a piece of the heavyweight champ's ear; as a result, his boxing license was temporarily revoked. Tyson also had run-ins with the law and spent several months in jail for assaulting motorists after a traffic accident. Additionally, he battled drug addiction and faced financial problems after squandering the multi-million dollar fortune he had amassed. Tyson's professional career ended in 2005, when he quit during the middle of a bout against Kevin McBride.
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Feb 11, 1990
Nelson Mandela released from prison
Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, is released from prison after 27 years on February 11, 1990.
In 1944, Mandela, a lawyer, joined the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest black political organization in South Africa, where he became a leader of Johannesburg's youth wing of the ANC. In 1952, he became deputy national president of the ANC, advocating nonviolent resistance to apartheid--South Africa's institutionalized system of white supremacy and racial segregation. However, after the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960, Nelson helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in guerrilla warfare against the white minority government.
In 1961, he was arrested for treason, and although acquitted he was arrested again in 1962 for illegally leaving the country. Convicted and sentenced to five years at Robben Island Prison, he was put on trial again in 1964 on charges of sabotage. In June 1964, he was convicted along with several other ANC leaders and sentenced to life in prison.
Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island Prison. Confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing, he was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He could write and receive a letter once every six months, and once a year he was allowed to meet with a visitor for 30 minutes. However, Mandela's resolve remained unbroken, and while remaining the symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid movement, he led a movement of civil disobedience at the prison that coerced South African officials into drastically improving conditions on Robben Island. He was later moved to another location, where he lived under house arrest.
In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South African president and set about dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and in February 1990 ordered the release of Nelson Mandela.
Mandela subsequently led the ANC in its negotiations with the minority government for an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One year later, the ANC won an electoral majority in the country's first free elections, and Mandela was elected South Africa's president.
Mandela retired from politics in 1999, but remained a global advocate for peace and social justice until his death in December 2013.
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Feb 12, 2008
GM reports record loss, offers buyouts to 74,000 workers
On this day in 2008, in an attempt to cut costs, struggling auto giant General Motors (GM) offers buyouts to all 74,000 of its hourly employees in the U.S. represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. The move came after GM lost $38.7 billion in 2007, which at the time was the largest loss ever experienced by any car maker. (Two weeks later, on February 26, the loss was adjusted by $4.6 billion, to $43.3 billion.)
GM offered its employees a range of buyout options, including a $140,000 lump payment to those who worked at the company for at least 10 years and agreed to give up their health benefits and pension. GM's goal was to replace the employees who accepted buyouts with new workers brought in at a lower pay scale. At the time, a veteran GM worker (who belonged to the UAW) had an average base salary of $28.12 an hour, but once such benefits as health-care coverage and pension were added in, the cost to GM jumped to $78.21, according to a report by CNNMoney.com.
Some 19,000 GM workers ended up taking buyouts; however, the company's troubles were far from over, as gas prices reached record highs in the summer of 2008 and auto sales continued to slump amidst a growing global economic crisis. GM was criticized for focusing too heavily on its sport utility vehicles and small trucks and being slow to respond to an increasing consumer demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. In December 2008, the federal government stepped in with a $13.4 billion loan to help keep GM afloat (Chrysler, the third-largest U.S. automaker, also received federal bailout funds). Also in 2008, Japan-based Toyota surpassed GM as the world's largest automaker, a title the American company, which was founded in 1908, had held since 1931. At its peak in the early 1960s, GM made more than half of all the cars and trucks purchased in the U.S.
In March 2009, President Barack Obama announced that in order to receive additional federal aid and avoid possible bankruptcy, both GM and Chrysler would be required to make deep concessions and develop radical restructuring plans. Additionally, GM's chief executive Rick Wagoner, who had held the top job since 2000, was forced to resign immediately. Nevertheless, on April 30, 2009, Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced it would enter a partnership with Italian automaker Fiat. GM filed for bankruptcy a month later, on June 1.
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Feb 13, 1861
First Medal of Honor action
The earliest military action to be revered with a Medal of Honor award is performed by Colonel Bernard J.D. Irwin, an assistant army surgeon serving in the first major U.S.-Apache conflict. Near Apache Pass, in southeastern Arizona, Irwin, an Irish-born doctor, volunteered to go to the rescue of Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom, who was trapped with 60 men of the U.S. Seventh Infantry by the Chiricahua Apaches. Irwin and 14 men, initially without horses, began the 100-mile trek to Bascom's forces riding on mules. After fighting and capturing Apaches along the way and recovering stolen horses and cattle, they reached Bascom's forces on February 14 and proved instrumental in breaking the siege.
The first U.S.-Apache conflict had begun several days before, when Cochise, the Chiricahua Apache chief, kidnapped three white men to exchange for his brother and two nephews held by the U.S. Army on false charges of stealing cattle and kidnapping a child. When the exchange was refused, Cochise killed the white men, and the army responded by killing his relatives, setting off the first of the Apache wars.
Although Irwin's bravery in this conflict was the earliest Medal of Honor action, the award itself was not created until 1862, and it was not until January 21, 1894, that Irwin received the nation's highest military honor.
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Feb 14, 1929
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran's headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran's henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran.
George "Bugs" Moran was a career criminal who ran the North Side gang in Chicago during the bootlegging era of the 1920s. He fought bitterly with "Scarface" Al Capone for control of smuggling and trafficking operations in the Windy City. Throughout the 1920s, both survived several attempted murders. On one notorious occasion, Moran and his associates drove six cars past a hotel in Cicero, Illionis, where Capone and his associates were having lunch and showered the building with more than 1,000 bullets.
A $50,000 bounty on Capone's head was the final straw for the gangster. He ordered that Moran's gang be destroyed. On February 14, a delivery of bootleg whiskey was expected at Moran's headquarters. But Moran was late and happened to see police officers entering his establishment. Moran waited outside, thinking that his gunmen inside were being arrested in a raid. However, the disguised assassins were actually killing the seven men inside.
The murdered men included Moran's best killers, Frank and Pete Gusenberg. Reportedly Frank was still alive when real officers appeared on the scene. When asked who had shot him, the mortally wounded Gusenberg kept his code of silence, responding, "No one, nobody shot me."
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre actually proved to be the last confrontation for both Capone and Moran. Capone was jailed in 1931 and Moran lost so many important men that he could no longer control his territory. On the seventh anniversary of the massacre, Jack McGurn, one of the Valentine's Day hit men, was killed him in a crowded bowling alley with a burst of machine-gun fire.
McGurn's killer remains unidentified, but was likely Moran, though he was never charged with the murder. Moran was relegated to small-time robberies until he was sent to jail in 1946. He died in Leavenworth Federal Prison in 1957 of lung cancer.
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on this day in history shizzo lost what ever small piece of dignity he had left
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Feb 15, 1965
Canada adopts maple leaf flag
In accordance with a formal proclamation by Queen Elizabeth II of England, a new Canadian national flag is raised above Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the capital of Canada.
Beginning in 1610, Lower Canada, a new British colony, flew Great Britain's Union Jack, or Royal Union Flag. In 1763, as a result of the French and Indian Wars, France lost its sizable colonial possessions in Canada, and the Union Jack flew all across the wide territory of Canada. In 1867, the Dominion of Canada was established as a self-governing federation within the British Empire, and three years later a new flag, the Canadian Red Ensign, was adopted. The Red Ensign was a solid red flag with the Union Jack occupying the upper-left corner and a crest situated in the right portion of the flag.
The search for a new national flag that would better represent an independent Canada began in earnest in 1925 when a committee of the Privy Council began to investigate possible designs. Later, in 1946, a select parliamentary committee was appointed with a similar mandate and examined more than 2,600 submissions. Agreement on a new design was not reached, and it was not until the 1960s, with the centennial of Canadian self-rule approaching, that the Canadian Parliament intensified its efforts to choose a new flag.
In December 1964, Parliament voted to adopt a new design. Canada's national flag was to be red and white, the official colors of Canada as decided by King George V of Britain in 1921, with a stylized 11-point red maple leaf in its center. Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed February 15, 1965, as the day on which the new flag would be raised over Parliament Hill and adopted by all Canadians.
Today, Canada's red maple leaf flag is one of the most recognizable national flags in the world.
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8)
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Feb 16, 1923
Archaeologist opens tomb of King Tut
On this day in 1923, in Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter enters the sealed burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen.
Because the ancient Egyptians saw their pharaohs as gods, they carefully preserved their bodies after death, burying them in elaborate tombs containing rich treasures to accompany the rulers into the afterlife. In the 19th century, archeologists from all over the world flocked to Egypt, where they uncovered a number of these tombs. Many had long ago been broken into by robbers and stripped of their riches.
When Carter arrived in Egypt in 1891, he became convinced there was at least one undiscovered tomb--that of the little known Tutankhamen, or King Tut, who lived around 1400 B.C. and died when he was still a teenager. Backed by a rich Brit, Lord Carnarvon, Carter searched for five years without success. In early 1922, Lord Carnarvon wanted to call off the search, but Carter convinced him to hold on one more year.
In November 1922, the wait paid off, when Carter's team found steps hidden in the debris near the entrance of another tomb. The steps led to an ancient sealed doorway bearing the name Tutankhamen. When Carter and Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb's interior chambers on November 26, they were thrilled to find it virtually intact, with its treasures untouched after more than 3,000 years. The men began exploring the four rooms of the tomb, and on February 16, 1923, under the watchful eyes of a number of important officials, Carter opened the door to the last chamber.
Inside lay a sarcophagus with three coffins nested inside one another. The last coffin, made of solid gold, contained the mummified body of King Tut. Among the riches found in the tomb--golden shrines, jewelry, statues, a chariot, weapons, clothing--the perfectly preserved mummy was the most valuable, as it was the first one ever to be discovered. Despite rumors that a curse would befall anyone who disturbed the tomb, its treasures were carefully catalogued, removed and included in a famous traveling exhibition called the "Treasures of Tutankhamen." The exhibition's permanent home is the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
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8)
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Feb 17, 1996
Kasparov defeats chess-playing computer
In the final game of a six-game match, world chess champion Garry Kasparov triumphs over Deep Blue, IBM’s chess-playing computer, and wins the match, 4-2. However, Deep Blue goes on to defeat Kasparov in a heavily publicized rematch the following year.
Garry Kasparov, considered one of the greatest players in the history of chess, was born April 13, 1963, in the Russian republic of Azerbaijan. In 1985, at 22, Kasparov became the youngest world champion in history when he defeated Anatoly Karpov.
Deep Blue’s origins trace back to 1985, when Carnegie Mellon University doctoral student Feng Hsiung Hsu began developing a chess-playing computer called “ChipTest.” The computer later became known as “Deep Thought,” after a machine in the science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Hsu and his collaborators, Murray Campbell and Thomas Anantharaman, were later hired by IBM, where they continued to work on the chess-playing computer. In 1989, Gary Kasparov easily trounced Deep Thought when they met for a 2-game match. The IBM team continued to refine their supercomputer, which in 1993 was renamed “Deep Blue,” a combination of Deep Thought and Big Blue, IBM’s nickname.
The six-game match between Kasparov and Deep Blue began on February 10, 1996, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. Although Deep Blue was capable of evaluating 100 million different chess positions per second, the IBM team wasn’t sure how the computer would perform in competition and Kasparov was favored to win. Instead, much to his frustration, the world chess champ lost the first game to Deep Blue. However, the tenacious, brilliant Kasparov quickly staged a comeback and won the second game. The third and fourth games ended in a draw, while Kasparov won the fifth game. On February 17, the human chess master triumphed over Deep Blue in the sixth game and took the match, with a final score of 4-2.
A heavily publicized 6-game rematch between man and machine began on May 3, 1997. The IBM team had been working to upgrade Deep Blue since its 1996 defeat to Kasparov and the improved version of the computer was able to examine 200 million different chess positions per second. Kasparov took the first game while Deep Blue won the second. The third, fourth and fifth games ended in a draw. On May 11, Deep Blue won the sixth as well as the match, 3.5 to 2.5. The victory was a huge publicity boost for IBM. A disgruntled Kasparov suggested Deep Blue had been aided by some sort of human assistance during the games, charges that IBM denied. Kasparov demanded a rematch, but instead, IBM retired Deep Blue.
Kasparov retained his world chess champion title until 2000. In March 2005, he announced his retirement from professional chess. In 2007, he became a candidate for the Russian presidency.
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Feb 16, 1923
Archaeologist opens tomb of King Tut
On this day in 1923, in Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter enters the sealed burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen.
Because the ancient Egyptians saw their pharaohs as gods, they carefully preserved their bodies after death, burying them in elaborate tombs containing rich treasures to accompany the rulers into the afterlife. In the 19th century, archeologists from all over the world flocked to Egypt, where they uncovered a number of these tombs. Many had long ago been broken into by robbers and stripped of their riches.
When Carter arrived in Egypt in 1891, he became convinced there was at least one undiscovered tomb--that of the little known Tutankhamen, or King Tut, who lived around 1400 B.C. and died when he was still a teenager. Backed by a rich Brit, Lord Carnarvon, Carter searched for five years without success. In early 1922, Lord Carnarvon wanted to call off the search, but Carter convinced him to hold on one more year.
In November 1922, the wait paid off, when Carter's team found steps hidden in the debris near the entrance of another tomb. The steps led to an ancient sealed doorway bearing the name Tutankhamen. When Carter and Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb's interior chambers on November 26, they were thrilled to find it virtually intact, with its treasures untouched after more than 3,000 years. The men began exploring the four rooms of the tomb, and on February 16, 1923, under the watchful eyes of a number of important officials, Carter opened the door to the last chamber.
Inside lay a sarcophagus with three coffins nested inside one another. The last coffin, made of solid gold, contained the mummified body of King Tut. Among the riches found in the tomb--golden shrines, jewelry, statues, a chariot, weapons, clothing--the perfectly preserved mummy was the most valuable, as it was the first one ever to be discovered. Despite rumors that a curse would befall anyone who disturbed the tomb, its treasures were carefully catalogued, removed and included in a famous traveling exhibition called the "Treasures of Tutankhamen." The exhibition's permanent home is the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
So, did they get to keep any of the loot?
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So, did they get to keep any of the loot?
Im sure a few of them took things home. The curse made sure they didnt get to enjoy them for long though :-X
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Feb 18, 2001
Dale Earnhardt killed in crash
On this day in 2001, Dale Earnhardt Sr., considered one of the greatest drivers in National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) history, dies at the age of 49 in a last-lap crash at the 43rd Daytona 500 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Earnhardt was driving his famous black No. 3 Chevrolet and vying for third place when he collided with another car, then crashed into a wall. After being cut from his car, Earnhardt, whose tough, aggressive driving style earned him the nickname "The Intimidator," was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead of head injuries.
Earnhardt had been involved in another crash at the Daytona 500 in 1997, when his car flipped upside down on the backstretch. He managed to escape serious injury and went on to win Daytona in 1998, his first and only victory in that race after 20 years of trying. The 200-lap, 500-mile Daytona 500, which was first run in 1959 at the newly opened Daytona International Speedway, is one of NASCAR's premiere events as well as its season opener.
Earnhardt, whose father was a race car driver, was born on April 29, 1951, in Kannapolis, North Carolina, and dropped out of high school to pursue his own racing career. He went on to become one of NASCAR's most successful and respected competitors, winning 76 Winston Cup (now known as the Sprint Cup) races in his career and taking home a record seven Cup championships, a feat achieved by just one other driver in his sport, Richard Petty. In addition to his legendary accomplishments as a driver, Earnhardt was also a successful businessman and NASCAR team owner. The 2001 Daytona race which cost Earnhardt his life was won by Michael Waltrip, who drove for Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI). Earnhardt's son, Dale Jr., also a DEI driver (until 2008, when he began driving for the Hendrick Motorsports team), took second place in the race.
Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s death in 2001 made him the fourth NASCAR driver to die within a nine-month period and eventually prompted NASCAR officials to implement a series of more stringent safety regulations, including the use of head-and-neck restraints
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Feb 19, 1473
Copernicus born
On February 19, 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Torun, a city in north-central Poland on the Vistula River. The father of modern astronomy, he was the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
Copernicus was born into a family of well-to-do merchants, and after his father's death, his uncle--soon to be a bishop--took the boy under his wing. He was given the best education of the day and bred for a career in canon (church) law. At the University of Krakow, he studied liberal arts, including astronomy and astrology, and then, like many Poles of his social class, was sent to Italy to study medicine and law.
While studying at the University of Bologna, he lived for a time in the home of Domenico Maria de Novara, the principal astronomer at the university. Astronomy and astrology were at the time closely related and equally regarded, and Novara had the responsibility of issuing astrological prognostications for Bologna. Copernicus sometimes assisted him in his observations, and Novara exposed him to criticism of both astrology and aspects of the Ptolemaic system, which placed Earth at the center of the universe.
Copernicus later studied at the University of Padua and in 1503 received a doctorate in canon law from the University of Ferrara. He returned to Poland, where he became a church administrator and doctor. In his free time, he dedicated himself to scholarly pursuits, which sometimes included astronomical work. By 1514, his reputation as an astronomer was such that he was consulted by church leaders attempting to reform the Julian calendar.
The cosmology of early 16th-century Europe held that Earth sat stationary and motionless at the center of several rotating, concentric spheres that bore the celestial bodies: the sun, the moon, the known planets, and the stars. From ancient times, philosophers adhered to the belief that the heavens were arranged in circles (which by definition are perfectly round), causing confusion among astronomers who recorded the often eccentric motion of the planets, which sometimes appeared to halt in their orbit of Earth and move retrograde across the sky.
In the second century A.D., the Alexandrian geographer and astronomer Ptolemy sought to resolve this problem by arguing that the sun, planets, and moon move in small circles around much larger circles that revolve around Earth. These small circles he called epicycles, and by incorporating numerous epicycles rotating at varying speeds he made his celestial system correspond with most astronomical observations on record.
The Ptolemaic system remained Europe's accepted cosmology for more than 1,000 years, but by Copernicus' day accumulated astronomical evidence had thrown some of his theories into confusion. Astronomers disagreed on the order of the planets from Earth, and it was this problem that Copernicus addressed at the beginning of the 16th century.
Sometime between 1508 and 1514, he wrote a short astronomical treatise commonly called the Commentariolus, or "Little Commentary," which laid the basis for his heliocentric (sun-centered) system. The work was not published in his lifetime. In the treatise, he correctly postulated the order of the known planets, including Earth, from the sun, and estimated their orbital periods relatively accurately.
For Copernicus, his heliocentric theory was by no means a watershed, for it created as many problems as it solved. For instance, heavy objects were always assumed to fall to the ground because Earth was the center of the universe. Why would they do so in a sun-centered system? He retained the ancient belief that circles governed the heavens, but his evidence showed that even in a sun-centered universe the planets and stars did not revolve around the sun in circular orbits. Because of these problems and others, Copernicus delayed publication of his major astronomical work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi, or "Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs," nearly all his life. Completed around 1530, it was not published until 1543--the year of his death.
In the work, Copernicus' groundbreaking argument that Earth and the planets revolve around the sun led him to make a number of other major astronomical discoveries. While revolving around the sun, Earth, he argued, spins on its axis daily. Earth takes one year to orbit the sun and during this time wobbles gradually on its axis, which accounts for the precession of the equinoxes. Major flaws in the work include his concept of the sun as the center of the whole universe, not just the solar system, and his failure to grasp the reality of elliptical orbits, which forced him to incorporate numerous epicycles into his system, as did Ptolemy. With no concept of gravity, Earth and the planets still revolved around the sun on giant transparent spheres.
In his dedication to De revolutionibus--an extremely dense scientific work--Copernicus noted that "mathematics is written for mathematicians." If the work were more accessible, many would have objected to its non-biblical and hence heretical concept of the universe. For decades, De revolutionibus remained unknown to all but the most sophisticated astronomers, and most of these men, while admiring some of Copernicus' arguments, rejected his heliocentric basis. It was not until the early 17th century that Galileo and Johannes Kepler developed and popularized the Copernican theory, which for Galileo resulted in a trial and conviction for heresy. Following Isaac Newton's work in celestial mechanics in the late 17th century, acceptance of the Copernican theory spread rapidly in non-Catholic countries, and by the late 18th century it was almost universally accepted.
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Feb 20, 1725
American colonists practice scalping
In the American colonies, a posse of New Hampshire volunteers comes across a band of encamped Native Americans and takes 10 "scalps" in the first significant appropriation of this Native American practice by European colonists. The posse received a bounty of 100 pounds per scalp from the colonial authorities in Boston.
Although the custom of "scalping" was once practiced in Europe and Asia, it is generally associated with North American native groups. In scalping, the skin around the crown of the head was cut and removed from the enemy's skull, usually causing death. In addition to its value as a war trophy, a scalp was often believed to bestow the possessor with the powers of the scalped enemy. In their early wars with Native Americans, European colonists of North America retaliated against hostile native groups by adopting their practice of scalp taking. Bounties were offered for them by colonial authorities, which in turn led to an escalation of intertribal warfare and scalping in North America.
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Feb 21, 1848
Marx publishes Manifesto
On February 21, 1848, The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, is published in London by a group of German-born revolutionary socialists known as the Communist League. The political pamphlet--arguably the most influential in history--proclaimed that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" and that the inevitable victory of the proletariat, or working class, would put an end to class society forever. Originally published in German as Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei ("Manifesto of the Communist Party"), the work had little immediate impact. Its ideas, however, reverberated with increasing force into the 20th century, and by 1950 nearly half the world's population lived under Marxist governments.
Karl Marx was born in Trier, Prussia, in 1818--the son of a Jewish lawyer who converted to Lutheranism. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Berlin and Jena and initially was a follower of G.W.F. Hegel, the 19th-century German philosopher who sought a dialectical and all-embracing system of philosophy. In 1842, Marx became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal democratic newspaper in Cologne. The newspaper grew considerably under his guidance, but in 1843 the Prussian authorities shut it down for being too outspoken. That year, Marx moved to Paris to co-edit a new political review.
Paris was at the time a center for socialist thought, and Marx adopted the more extreme form of socialism known as communism, which called for a revolution by the working class that would tear down the capitalist world. In Paris, Marx befriended Friedrich Engels, a fellow Prussian who shared his views and was to become a lifelong collaborator. In 1845, Marx was expelled from France and settled in Brussels, where he renounced his Prussian nationality and was joined by Engels.
During the next two years, Marx and Engels developed their philosophy of communism and became the intellectual leaders of the working-class movement. In 1847, the League of the Just, a secret society made up of revolutionary German workers living in London, asked Marx to join their organization. Marx obliged and with Engels renamed the group the Communist League and planned to unite it with other German worker committees across Europe. The pair were commissioned to draw up a manifesto summarizing the doctrines of the League.
Back in Brussels, Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto in January 1848, using as a model a tract Engels wrote for the League in 1847. In early February, Marx sent the work to London, and the League immediately adopted it as their manifesto. Many of the ideas in The Communist Manifesto were not new, but Marx had achieved a powerful synthesis of disparate ideas through his materialistic conception of history. The Manifesto opens with the dramatic words, "A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of communism," and ends by declaring: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!"
In The Communist Manifesto, Marx predicted imminent revolution in Europe. The pamphlet had hardly cooled after coming off the presses in London when revolution broke out in France on February 22 over the banning of political meetings held by socialists and other opposition groups. Isolated riots led to popular revolt, and on February 24 King Louis-Philippe was forced to abdicate. The revolution spread like brushfire across continental Europe. Marx was in Paris on the invitation of the provincial government when the Belgian government, fearful that the revolutionary tide would soon engulf Belgium, banished him. Later that year, he went to the Rhineland, where he agitated for armed revolt.
The bourgeoisie of Europe soon crushed the Revolution of 1848, and Marx would have to wait longer for his revolution. He went to London to live and continued to write with Engels as they further organized the international communist movement. In 1864, Marx helped found the International Workingmen's Association--known as the First International--and in 1867 published the first volume of his monumental Das Kapital--the foundation work of communist theory. By his death in 1884, communism had become a movement to be reckoned with in Europe. Twenty-three years later, in 1917, Vladimir Lenin, a Marxist, led the world's first successful communist revolution in Russia.
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Feb 22, 1819
The U.S. acquires Spanish Florida
Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis and U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sign the Florida Purchase Treaty, in which Spain agrees to cede the remainder of its old province of Florida to the United States.
Spanish colonization of the Florida peninsula began at St. Augustine in 1565. The Spanish colonists enjoyed a brief period of relative stability before Florida came under attack from resentful Native Americans and ambitious English colonists to the north in the 17th century. Spain's last-minute entry into the French and Indian War on the side of France cost it Florida, which the British acquired through the first Treaty of Paris in 1763. After 20 years of British rule, however, Florida was returned to Spain as part of the second Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution in 1783.
Spain's hold on Florida was tenuous in the years after American independence, and numerous boundary disputes developed with the United States. In 1819, after years of negotiations, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams achieved a diplomatic coup with the signing of the Florida Purchase Treaty, which officially put Florida into U.S. hands at no cost beyond the U.S. assumption of some $5 million of claims by U.S. citizens against Spain. Formal U.S. occupation began in 1821, and General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, was appointed military governor. Florida was organized as a U.S. territory in 1822 and was admitted into the Union as a slave state in 1845.
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Feb 23, 1945
Marines raise the flag on Mt. Suribachi
On this day, during the battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, the highest point on the island of Iwo Jima and a key strategic point. Later, Marine commanders decide to raise a second, larger flag, an event which an Associated Press photographer captured on film. The resulting photograph became a defining image of the war.
The amphibious landings of Marines, after severe and relentless bombing of the island, began the morning of February 19, 1945, as the secretary of the navy, James Forrestal, accompanied by journalists, surveyed the scene from a command ship offshore. As the Marines made their way onto the island, seven Japanese battalions opened fire on the 9,000 Marines headed for them. By that evening, more than 550 Marines were dead and more than 1,800 were wounded.
In the face of such fierce counterattack, the Americans reconciled themselves to the fact that Iwo Jima could be taken only one yard at a time. A key position on the island was Mt. Suribachi, the center of the Japanese defense. The 28th Marine Regiment closed in and around the base of the volcanic mountain at the rate of 400 yards per day, employing flamethrowers, grenades, and demolition charges against the Japanese hidden in caves and pillboxes (low concrete emplacements for machine-gun nests). Approximately 40 Marines finally began a climb up the volcanic ash mountain, which was smoking from the constant bombardment, and at about 10 a.m. on February 23, a half-dozen Marines raised a small American flag on the peak--but not before disposing of a Japanese officer who attempted to prevent them. With Mt. Suribachi claimed, one-third of Iwo Jima was under American control. This first flag-raising was photographed by Marine photographer Sgt. Louis R. Lowery. On Lowery's way down Mt. Suribachi, he ran into AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and two other Marine photographers, PFC Bob Campbell and PFC Bill Genaust, who was shooting movies, informing them that the flag-raising they were looking for had already occurred, but encouraging them to check out the view from the top of the hill. The three men continued up the volcano.
Once atop Mt. Suribachi, Rosenthal attempted but was unable to find the soldiers involved in the first flag-raising, deciding instead to photograph the second flag-raising, which featured a much bigger and more photogenic Stars and Stripes. Lowery's film was sent back to military headquarters for processing via ordinary army post--and took a month to arrive. Rosenthal's film was sent by seaplane to Guam, and sent from there via radio-photo to the United States. The photograph so impressed President Roosevelt that he ordered the men pictured in it to return home for a publicity tour. Rosenthal later won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo, but for years was forced to deny erroneous reports that he personally staged the second flag-raising and attempted to pass it off as the original.
Although the famous photograph has long led people to believe that the flag-raising was a turning point in the fight for Iwo Jima, vicious fighting to control the island actually continued for 31 more days.
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Feb 23, 1945
Marines raise the flag on Mt. Suribachi
On this day, during the battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, the highest point on the island of Iwo Jima and a key strategic point. Later, Marine commanders decide to raise a second, larger flag, an event which an Associated Press photographer captured on film. The resulting photograph became a defining image of the war.
The amphibious landings of Marines, after severe and relentless bombing of the island, began the morning of February 19, 1945, as the secretary of the navy, James Forrestal, accompanied by journalists, surveyed the scene from a command ship offshore. As the Marines made their way onto the island, seven Japanese battalions opened fire on the 9,000 Marines headed for them. By that evening, more than 550 Marines were dead and more than 1,800 were wounded.
In the face of such fierce counterattack, the Americans reconciled themselves to the fact that Iwo Jima could be taken only one yard at a time. A key position on the island was Mt. Suribachi, the center of the Japanese defense. The 28th Marine Regiment closed in and around the base of the volcanic mountain at the rate of 400 yards per day, employing flamethrowers, grenades, and demolition charges against the Japanese hidden in caves and pillboxes (low concrete emplacements for machine-gun nests). Approximately 40 Marines finally began a climb up the volcanic ash mountain, which was smoking from the constant bombardment, and at about 10 a.m. on February 23, a half-dozen Marines raised a small American flag on the peak--but not before disposing of a Japanese officer who attempted to prevent them. With Mt. Suribachi claimed, one-third of Iwo Jima was under American control. This first flag-raising was photographed by Marine photographer Sgt. Louis R. Lowery. On Lowery's way down Mt. Suribachi, he ran into AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and two other Marine photographers, PFC Bob Campbell and PFC Bill Genaust, who was shooting movies, informing them that the flag-raising they were looking for had already occurred, but encouraging them to check out the view from the top of the hill. The three men continued up the volcano.
Once atop Mt. Suribachi, Rosenthal attempted but was unable to find the soldiers involved in the first flag-raising, deciding instead to photograph the second flag-raising, which featured a much bigger and more photogenic Stars and Stripes. Lowery's film was sent back to military headquarters for processing via ordinary army post--and took a month to arrive. Rosenthal's film was sent by seaplane to Guam, and sent from there via radio-photo to the United States. The photograph so impressed President Roosevelt that he ordered the men pictured in it to return home for a publicity tour. Rosenthal later won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo, but for years was forced to deny erroneous reports that he personally staged the second flag-raising and attempted to pass it off as the original.
Although the famous photograph has long led people to believe that the flag-raising was a turning point in the fight for Iwo Jima, vicious fighting to control the island actually continued for 31 more days.
Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers is about this, but it's not nearly as good as its counterpart, Letters from Iwo Jima. The latter depicts the invasion from the Japanese POV. Excellent film.
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Feb 24, 1840
Adams begins arguments in the Amistad case
On this day in 1840, former President John Quincy Adams begins to argue the Amistad case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
A practicing lawyer and member of the House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams was the son of America's second president, founding father and avowed abolitionist John Adams. Although John Quincy Adams publicly downplayed his abolitionist stance, he too viewed the practice as contrary to the nation's core principles of freedom and equality. After serving one term as president between 1825 and 1829, Adams was elected to the House of Representatives, in which he served until his death in 1848. During his tenure, he succeeded in repealing a rule that prevented any debate about slavery on the House floor.
In 1839, a Spanish slave ship named La Amistad appeared off the coast of New York. The "slaves" aboard it, who were free Africans kidnapped in Africa and originally bound for sale in Cuba, had rebelled, killing the Spanish ship's captain and cook. The African mutineers then promised to spare the lives of the ship's crew and their captors if they took them back to Africa. The crew agreed, but then duped the slaves by sailing up the coast to New York, where they were taken into custody by the U.S. Navy.
A complicated series of trials ensued regarding the ownership and outcome of the ship and its human cargo. The capture of the Amistad occurred in an era in which debate over the institution of slavery, its legality within the United States and its role in the American economy became more intense. Although the federal government had ruled the slave trade between the U.S. and other countries illegal in 1808, the "peculiar institution" persisted in the South and some northeastern states.
The Navy captains who commandeered the Amistad off the coast of New York turned the ship in to authorities in Connecticut. In Connecticut at this time, slavery was still technically legal, a fact that further complicated the case. Abolitionists filed a suit on behalf of the Africans against the slave captors for assault, kidnapping and false imprisonment. Spain, backed by a 1795 anti-piracy treaty with the U.S., also claimed rights to the Amistad and her cargo. President Martin Van Buren, personally neutral on the issue of slavery and concerned about his popularity in southern states, supported Spain's claim.
After two district courts ruled in favor of the abolitionists, President Van Buren immediately instructed the U.S. attorney general to appeal. Abolitionists hired Adams, who some referred to as "Old Man Eloquent," to argue for the Africans' freedom in the Supreme Court.
In a seven-hour argument that lasted two days, Adams attacked Van Buren's abuse of executive power. His case deflated the U.S. attorney's argument that the treaty with Spain should override U.S. principles of individual rights. In appeasing a foreign nation, Adams argued that the president committed the "utter injustice [of interfering] in a suit between parties for their individual rights." In a dramatic moment, Adams faced the judges, pointed to a copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging on the courtroom wall, and said "[I know] no law, statute or constitution, no code, no treaty, except that law...which [is] forever before the eyes of your Honors."
Adams' skillful arguments convinced the court to rule in favor of returning the Africans to their native country, but later, President Tyler refused to allocate federal funds to send the Africans back to Africa. Instead, the abolitionists had to raise money to pay for the expense.
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Feb 25, 2004
The Passion of the Christ opens in the United States
The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s film about the last 44 hours of Jesus of Nazareth’s life, opens in theaters across the United States on this day in 2004. Not coincidentally, the day was Ash Wednesday, the start of the Catholic season of Lent.
The star of action-packed blockbusters like the Lethal Weapon series and Braveheart, Gibson was earning more than $20 million per movie at the time he decided to direct The Passion of the Christ, for which he received no cash compensation. Largely based on the 18th-century diaries of Saint Anne Catherine Emmerich, the film was a true labor of love for Gibson, who later told Time magazine that he had “a deep need to tell this story…The Gospels tell you what basically happened; I want to know what really went down.” He scouted locations in Italy himself, and had the script translated from English into Aramaic (thought to be Jesus’ first language) and Latin by a Jesuit scholar. Gibson’s original intention was to show The Passion of the Christ without subtitles, in an attempt to “transcend the language barriers with visual storytelling,” as he later explained. With dialogue entirely in Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic, the film was eventually released with subtitles.
A year before The Passion of the Christ was released, controversy flared over whether it was anti-Semitic. Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) went on record saying that Gibson’s film “could fuel hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism.” Specifically, its opponents claimed the movie would contribute to the idea that Jews should be blamed for the death of Jesus, which has been at the root of much anti-Jewish violence over the course of history. For his part, Gibson categorically denied the allegations of anti-Semitism, but they continued to haunt him years after the film’s release. (In July 2006, he was arrested for driving under the influence; a leaked police report of the incident stated that Gibson made anti-Semitic remarks to the arresting officer. Gibson later acknowledged the report’s accuracy, and publicly apologized for the remarks.) Meanwhile, Christian critics of the film’s story pointed to its departure from the New Testament and its reliance on works other than the Bible, such as Emmerich’s diaries.
Gibson, who put millions of his own money into the project, initially had trouble finding a distributor for the film. Eventually, Newmarket Films signed on to release it in the United States. Upon its debut in February 2004, The Passion of the Christ surprised many by becoming a huge hit at the box office. It also continued to fuel the fires of controversy, earning harsh criticism for its extreme violence and gore--much of the film focuses on the brutal beating of Jesus prior to his crucifixion--which many saw as overkill. The film critic Roger Ebert called The Passion of the Christ “the most violent film I have ever seen.” Gibson’s response to similar charges was that such a reaction was intentional. In an interview with Diane Sawyer, he claimed: “I wanted it to be shocking. And I wanted it to be extreme.... So that they see the enormity, the enormity of that sacrifice; to see that someone could endure that and still come back with love and forgiveness, even through extreme pain and suffering and ridicule.”
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Feb 26, 2012
Florida teen Trayvon Martin is shot and killed
On this day in 2012, Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen walking home from a trip to a convenience store, is fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer patrolling the townhouse community of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman later claimed to have shot the unarmed 17-year-old out of self-defense during a physical altercation. After police initially opted not to arrest Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother is Hispanic, the case sparked protests and ignited national debates about racial profiling and self-defense laws. Zimmerman later was charged with second-degree murder; following a high-profile trial that riveted America, he was acquitted of the charges against him.
On February 26, Martin, a Miami high school student, was in Sanford visiting his father. Dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, the teen was on his way back to the home of his father’s fiancée, after buying a bag of Skittles and a bottle of juice, when he was spotted by Zimmerman, a 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator who was captain of the neighborhood patrol at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, which recently had experienced a series of break-ins and burglaries. Zimmerman called the non-emergency line of the Sanford police to report that Martin looked suspicious then ignored a police dispatcher’s advice not to follow the young man. Moments later, gunfire rang out. When officers arrived, Martin was dead at the scene. Zimmerman, who had a bloody nose and cuts on the back of his head, was questioned then released. There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, and police chose not to arrest Zimmerman, who claimed to have acted in self-defense.
After Martin’s parents raised concerns about the police investigation into the death of their son, who had no criminal record, the case gained national attention. Protest rallies were held in cities nationwide, including New York City, where on March 21 hundreds of people gathered for the Million Hoodie March and demanded justice for Martin, who many believed Zimmerman had profiled as suspicious and threatening simply because the teen was black. Two days later, President Barack Obama said of the shooting: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” In addition to raising a national debate about race relations, the shooting drew attention to Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, which allows people to use lethal force if they fear for their safety and does not require them to retreat from a dangerous situation, even when it’s possible to do so.
On April 11, 2012, following weeks of demonstrations, a special prosecutor appointed by Florida’s governor charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty and the case went to trial in June 2013. In court, the prosecution portrayed Zimmerman as a wannabe cop who had profiled Martin as a criminal, chased him down and fought him. Prosecutors also tried to poke holes in Zimmerman’s self-defense claim by pointing to inconsistencies in his statements to the police. Defense attorneys for Zimmerman, who did not take the stand, contended he only shot Martin after the teen attacked him. On July 13, after deliberating for 16 hours over two days, a jury of six women found Zimmerman not guilty.
In November 2013, the city of Sanford announced new rules forbidding volunteers in its neighborhood watch program from carrying guns and pursuing suspects.
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Feb 27, 1936
Shirley Temple receives $50,000 per film
On this day in 1936, Shirley Temple receives a new contract from 20th Century Fox that will pay the seven-year-old star $50,000 per film.
Temple was born in 1928 in Santa Monica, California, and started appearing in a series of short films spoofing current movies, called Baby Burlesks, at the age of four. At six, she attracted attention with her complex song-and-dance number “Baby Take a Bow,” performed with James Dunn, in the 1934 movie Stand Up and Cheer. Based on the film’s success, 20th Century Fox signed little Shirley to a seven-year contract. She would appear in a string of films that year and the next, including Little Miss Marker, Change of Heart, Bright Eyes (which featured one of her most famous songs, the bouncy tune “On the Good Ship Lollipop”), and Curly Top. At the height of the Great Depression, Temple’s films provided a cheery alternate universe for audiences suffering the effects of widespread unemployment and general economic hardship.
Knowing they had a cash cow on their hands, 20th Century Fox refined the terms of Temple’s contract in 1936, paying her the unprecedented sum of $50,000 per picture. They also famously altered the year on her birth certificate, making it appear that she was a year younger in order to prolong her adorable child-star status. By 1938, Temple was the No. 1 box-office draw in America. The public loved her, and she routinely upstaged her adult counterparts on the big screen. Over the course of the 1930s, the box-office success of her more than 40 films, including Poor Little Rich Girl, Wee Willie Winkie, Heidi and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, went a long way towards helping Fox weather the Depression.
Temple’s career began to peter out in her teenage years, however, and her later films met with less and less success with audiences. In 1950, she retired from movies, though she narrated the television series Shirley Temple’s Storybook from 1957 to 1959. Also in 1950, she married naval officer Charles Black, changing her name to Shirley Temple Black. (She had been previously married to Jack Agar; they wed when she was 17 and divorced after having one child, Linda.) With Black, she had two more children, Charles Jr. and Lori.
Some 20 years after retiring from Hollywood, Temple Black launched a political career, running as the Republican candidate for a congressional seat in San Mateo, California, in 1967 and coming in second of 14 candidates. The following year, President Richard Nixon appointed her as an ambassador to the United Nations; she worked for the State Department in the United States and overseas for more than two decades. She was the first woman to ever serve as chief of protocol, a post she held for 11 years under President Gerald R. Ford, and President George H.W. Bush named her ambassador to Czechoslovakia in 1989; by the end of her term in 1993, it had become the Czech Republic.
Temple Black published her autobiography, Child Star, in 1988. She still serves on the Institute of International Studies. The former child star also became a spokeswoman for breast cancer awareness after she discovered a malignant lump in her breast in 1972 and underwent a simple mastectomy. In 1999, at an event hosted by then-President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, Temple Black received a medal from the Kennedy Center for lifetime achievement to the United States and the world.
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Feb 28, 1993
ATF raids Branch Davidian compound
At Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, agents of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) launch a raid against the Branch Davidian compound as part of an investigation into illegal possession of firearms and explosives by the Christian cult. As the agents attempted to penetrate the complex, gunfire erupted, beginning an extended gun battle that left four ATF agents dead and 15 wounded. Six Branch Davidians were fatally wounded, and several more were injured, including David Koresh, the cult's founder and leader. After 45 minutes of shooting, the ATF agents withdrew, and a cease-fire was negotiated over the telephone. The operation, which involved more than 100 ATF agents, was the one of the largest ever mounted by the bureau and resulted in the highest casualties of any ATF operation.
David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell in Houston, Texas, in 1959. In 1981, he joined the Branch Davidians, a sect of the Seventh Day Adventist Church founded in 1934 by a Bulgarian immigrant named Victor Houteff. Koresh, who possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the Bible, rapidly rose in the hierarchy of the small religious community, eventually entering into a power struggle with the Davidians' leader, George Roden.
For a short time, Koresh retreated with his followers to eastern Texas, but in late 1987 he returned to Mount Carmel with seven armed followers and raided the compound, severely wounding Roden. Koresh went on trial for attempted murder, but the charge was dropped after his case was declared a mistrial. By 1990, he was the leader of the Branch Davidians and legally changed his name to David Koresh, with David representing his status as head of the biblical House of David, and Koresh standing for the Hebrew name for Cyrus, the Persian king who allowed the Jews held captive in Babylon to return to Israel.
Koresh took several wives at Mount Carmel and fathered at least 12 children from these women, several of whom were as young as 12 or 13 when they became pregnant. There is also evidence that Koresh may have harshly disciplined some of the 100 or so Branch Davidians living inside the compound, particularly his children. A central aspect of Koresh's religious teachings was his assertion that the apocalyptic events predicted in the Bible's book of Revelation were imminent, making it necessary, he asserted, for the Davidians to stockpile weapons and explosives in preparation.
Following the unsuccessful ATF raid, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took over the situation. A standoff with the Branch Davidians stretched into seven weeks, and little progress was made in the telephone negotiations as the Davidians had stockpiled years of food and other necessities before the raid.
On April 18, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno approved a tear-gas assault on the compound, and at approximately 6:00 a.m. on April 19 the Branch Davidians were informed of the imminent attack and asked to surrender, which they did not. A few minutes later, two FBI combat vehicles began inserting gas into the building and were joined by Bradley tanks, which fired tear-gas canisters through the compound's windows. The Branch Davidians, many with gas masks on, refused to evacuate, and by 11:40 a.m. the last of some 100 tear-gas canisters was fired into the compound. Just after noon, a fire erupted at one or more locations on the compound, and minutes later nine Davidians fled the rapidly spreading blaze. Gunfire was reported but ceased as the compound was completely engulfed by the flames.
Koresh and at least 80 of his followers, including 22 children, died during the federal government's second disastrous assault on Mount Carmel. The FBI and Justice Department maintained there was conclusive evidence that the Branch Davidian members ignited the fire, citing an eyewitness account and various forensic data. Of the gunfire reported during the fire, the government argued that the Davidians were either killing each other as part of a suicide pact or were killing dissenters who attempted to escape the Koresh-ordered suicide by fire. Most of the surviving Branch Davidians contested this official position, as do some critics in the press and elsewhere, whose charges against the ATF and FBI's handling of the Waco standoff ranged from incompetence to premeditated murder. In 1999, the FBI admitted that they used tear-gas grenades in the assault, which have been known to cause fires because of their incendiary properties.
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Mar 1, 1692
Salem Witch Hunt begins
In Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados, are charged with the illegal practice of witchcraft. Later that day, Tituba, possibly under coercion, confessed to the crime, encouraging the authorities to seek out more Salem witches.
Trouble in the small Puritan community began the month before, when nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece, respectively, of the Reverend Samuel Parris, began experiencing fits and other mysterious maladies. A doctor concluded that the children were suffering from the effects of witchcraft, and the young girls corroborated the doctor's diagnosis. With encouragement from a number of adults in the community, the girls, who were soon joined by other "afflicted" Salem residents, accused a widening circle of local residents of witchcraft, mostly middle-aged women but also several men and even one four-year-old child. During the next few months, the afflicted area residents incriminated more than 150 women and men from Salem Village and the surrounding areas of Satanic practices.
In June 1692, the special Court of Oyer, "to hear," and Terminer, "to decide," convened in Salem under Chief Justice William Stoughton to judge the accused. The first to be tried was Bridget Bishop of Salem, who was found guilty and executed by hanging on June 10. Thirteen more women and four men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows, and one man, Giles Corey, was executed by crushing. Most of those tried were condemned on the basis of the witnesses' behavior during the actual proceedings, characterized by fits and hallucinations that were argued to be caused by the defendants on trial.
In October 1692, Governor William Phipps of Massachusetts ordered the Court of Oyer and Terminer dissolved and replaced with the Superior Court of Judicature, which forbade the type of sensational testimony allowed in the earlier trials. Executions ceased, and the Superior Court eventually released all those awaiting trial and pardoned those sentenced to death. The Salem witch trials, which resulted in the executions of 19 innocent women and men, had effectively ended.
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Mar 2, 1978
Grave robbers steal Charlie Chaplin’s body
In one of history’s most famous cases of body-snatching, two men steal the corpse of the revered film actor Sir Charles Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva, near Lausanne, Switzerland, on this day in 1978.
A comic actor who was perhaps most famous for his alter ego, the Little Tramp, Chaplin was also a respected filmmaker whose career spanned Hollywood’s silent film era and the momentous transition to “talkies” in the late 1920s. Chaplin died on Christmas Day in 1977, at the age of 88. Two months later, his body was stolen from the Swiss cemetery, sparking a police investigation and a hunt for the culprits.
After Chaplin’s widow, Oona, received a ransom demand of some $600,000, police began monitoring her phone and watching 200 phone kiosks in the region. Oona had refused to pay the ransom, saying that her husband would have thought the demand “ridiculous.” The callers later made threats against her two youngest children. Oona Chaplin was Charlie’s fourth wife (after Mildred Harris, Lita Grey and Paulette Goddard) and the daughter of the playwright Eugene O’Neill. She and Chaplin were married in 1943, when she was 18 and he was 54; they had eight children together. The family had settled in Switzerland in 1952 after the controversial Chaplin--whom his enemies accused of being a Communist sympathizer--learned he would be denied a reentry visa to the United States en route to the London premiere of his film Limelight.
After a five-week investigation, police arrested two auto mechanics--Roman Wardas, of Poland, and Gantscho Ganev, of Bulgaria--who on May 17 led them to Chaplin’s body, which they had buried in a cornfield about one mile from the Chaplin family’s home in Corsier. That December, Wardas and Ganev were convicted of grave robbing and attempted extortion. Political refugees from Eastern Europe, Wardas and Ganev apparently stole Chaplin’s body in an attempt to solve their financial difficulties. Wardas, identified as the mastermind of the plot, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years of hard labor. As he told it, he was inspired by a similar crime that he had read about in an Italian newspaper. Ganev was given an 18-month suspended sentence, as he was believed to have limited responsibility for the crime. As for Chaplin, his family reburied his body in a concrete grave to prevent future theft attempts.
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Mar 3, 1931
"The Star-Spangled Banner" becomes official
President Herbert Hoover signs a congressional act making "The Star-Spangled Banner" the official national anthem of the United States.
On September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key composed the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner" after witnessing the massive overnight British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812. Key, an American lawyer, watched the siege while under detainment on a British ship and penned the famous words after observing with awe that Fort McHenry's flag survived the 1,800-bomb assault.
After circulating as a handbill, the patriotic lyrics were published in a Baltimore newspaper on September 20, 1814. Key's words were later set to the tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven," a popular English song. Throughout the 19th century, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was regarded as the national anthem by most branches of the U.S. armed forces and other groups, but it was not until 1916, and the signing of an executive order by President Woodrow Wilson, that it was formally designated as such. In March 1931, Congress passed an act confirming Wilson's presidential order, and on March 3 President Hoover signed it into law.
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March 2, 2014. Two words: Adele Dazeem.
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Mar 4, 1995
John Candy dies
The larger-than-life comedic star John Candy dies suddenly of a heart attack on this day in 1995, at the age of 43. At the time of his death, he was living near Durango, Mexico, while filming Wagons East, a Western comedy co-starring the comedian Richard Lewis.
Born in 1950, Candy's first professional acting work was in children's theater in his native Canada. In 1972, he was accepted into the prestigious Second City comedy troupe in Toronto, where he would become a regular writer and performer for the group's television program, SCTV, alongside other rising comics like Eugene Levy (later Candy's co-star in Splash) and Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters). When SCTV moved to network television in 1981, Candy moved with it; that year and the next, he won Emmy Awards for writing for the show. Candy's recurring (and most famous) SCTV persona was Yosh Shmenge, a clarinet player in a polka band. He would reprise the character in a mock documentary, The Last Polka, on HBO in 1985 and would also play a polka musician in the smash hit Home Alone (1990).
Candy made his big break into movies with Splash (1984), in which he stole most of his scenes as the idle, high-living brother of the main character, played by Tom Hanks. The film, directed by Ron Howard, was a smash hit, jump-starting the careers of Candy, Hanks, Darryl Hannah and Levy. In one particularly memorable scene, Candy throws himself with abandon around a racquetball court, using his hefty frame to full comedic effect. Six-foot-three and weighing as much as 275 pounds, he struggled with dieting over the years, but his heft undoubtedly contributed to his success as a comic performer.
After Splash, Candy was in high demand as a lovable oaf. He starred in a number of box-office hits over the next 10 years, including Spaceballs (1987), and collaborations with the writer, producer and director John Hughes in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988) and Uncle Buck (1989). A devoted sports fan and co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League, he was also part owner of House of Blues, with the actors Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi. In 1993, Candy won praise for his role as the sensitive coach of an unlikely Jamaican bobsled team in Cool Runnings (1993).
At the time of his death, Candy had just completed his directorial debut, the Fox Television movie comedy Hostage for a Day. He had performed two-thirds of his scenes in Wagons East, which was finished after the filmmakers' insurance company paid a reported $15 million settlement. Another recently wrapped movie, Canadian Bacon, was released in 1995. Candy was survived by his wife, Rosemary, and their two children, Jennifer and Christopher.
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Mar 5, 1770
Civilians and soldiers clash in the Boston Massacre
On the cold, snowy night of March 5, 1770, a mob of angry colonists gathers at the Customs House in Boston and begins tossing snowballs and rocks at the lone British soldier guarding the building. The protesters opposed the occupation of their city by British troops, who were sent to Boston in 1768 to enforce unpopular taxation measures passed by a British parliament without direct American representation.
The previous Friday, British soldiers looking for part-time work and local Bostonian laborers had brawled at John Hancock's wharf. After the brouhaha escalated to include forty soldiers, their colonel, William Dalrymple confined them to their barracks. Peace settled over the city during the two-day observance of the Puritan Sabbath. However, tempers on both sides were still flaring and no one expected Monday, March 5, to pass without incident. After sunset, the brawl between Boston civilians and British soldiers began again.
When the customs-house sentinel called for assistance, a British corporal and seven soldiers came to his aid. Two of these reinforcements had been among the soldiers brawling on Hancockýs wharf the previous Friday. British Captain Thomas Preston assumed command of the riled Redcoats and ordered them to fix their bayonets. As the crowd dared the snow-pelted soldiers to fire, Private Hugh Montgomery slipped and fell, leading him to discharge his rifle into the jeering crowd. The other soldiers began firing a moment later, and when the smoke cleared, five colonists were dead or dying: Crispus Attucks, Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick and James Caldwell. Three more were injured. Although it is unclear whether Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Indian ancestry, was the first to fall, as is commonly believed, the deaths of the five men are sometimes regarded as the first fatalities of the American Revolution.
The British soldiers were put on trial, and John Adams and Josiah Quincy Jr. agreed to defend the soldiers, in a show of support of the colonial justice system. When the trial ended in December 1770, only two of the six British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter. They were branded on the thumb and released.
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Mar 6, 2001
The death spiral of Napster begins
In the year 2000, a new company called Napster created something of a music-fan's utopia—a world in which nearly every song ever recorded was instantly available on your home computer—for free. Even to some at the time, it sounded too good to be true, and in the end, it was. The fantasy world that Napster created came crashing down in 2001 in the face of multiple copyright-violation lawsuits. After a string of adverse legal decisions, Napster, Inc. began its death spiral on March 6, 2001, when it began complying with a Federal court order to block the transfer of copyrighted material over its peer-to-peer network.
Oh, but people enjoyed it while it lasted. At the peak of Napster's popularity in late 2000 and early 2001, some 60 million users around the world were freely exchanging digital mp3 files with the help of the program developed by Northeastern University college student Shawn Fanning in the summer of 1999. Radiohead? Robert Johnson? The Runaways? Metallica? Nearly all of their music was right at your fingertips, and free for the taking. Which, of course, was a problem for the bands, like Metallica, which after discovering their song "I Disappear" circulating through Napster prior to its official release, filed suit against the company, alleging "vicarious copyright infringement" under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1996. Hip-hop artist Dr. Dre soon did the same, but the case that eventually brought Napster down was the $20 billion infringement case filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
That case—A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc—wended its way through the courts over the course of 2000 and early 2001 before being decided in favor of the RIAA on February 12, 2001. The decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected Napster's claims of fair use, as well as its call for the court to institute a payment system that would have compensated the record labels while allowing Napster to stay in business. Then, on March 5, 2001, District Court Judge Marilyn Patel issued a preliminary injunction ordering Napster to remove, within 72 hours, any songs named by the plaintiffs in a list of their copyrighted material on the Napster network. The following day, March 6, 2001, Napster, Inc. began the process of complying with Judge Patel's order. Though the company would attempt to stay afloat, it shut down its service just three months later, having begun the process of dismantling itself on this day in 2001.
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Mar 7, 1777
Five letters pass between Abigail and John Adams
On this day in 1777, Continental Congressman John Adams writes three letters to and receives two letters from his wife, Abigail. He is with Congress in Philadelphia, while she maintains their farm in Braintree, Massachusetts.
The remarkable correspondence between Abigail and John Adams—numbering 1,160 letters in total—covered topics ranging from politics and military strategy to household economy and family health. Their mutual respect and adoration served as evidence that even in an age when women were unable to vote, there were nonetheless marriages in which wives and husbands were true intellectual and emotional equals.
In the second letter John drafted to Abigail on March 7, he declared that Philadelphia had lost its vibrancy during Congress' removal to Baltimore. This City is a dull Place, in Comparason [sic] of what it was. More than one half the Inhabitants have removed to the Country, as it was their Wisdom to do—the Remainder are chiefly Quakers as dull as Beetles. From these neither good is to be expected nor Evil to be apprehended. They are a kind of neutral Tribe, or the Race of the insipids. By contrast, Adams described the Loyalists, who prepared their Minds and Bodies, Houses and Cellars, to receive General William Howe should he attack, as a Pack of sordid Scoundrels male and female.
In the letters John received, which Abigail had written in February, she bemoaned not only the difficulty of correspondence during war, but also of the lack of military fervor demonstrated by the New Englanders around her. She wrote that she awaited greater patriotism, greater prosperity and future correspondence from her beloved husband to his devoted Portia. (Portia, Adams' nickname for his wife was likely a reference to the intelligent and devoted heroine of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.)
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Mar 8, 1971
Ali battles Frazier for heavyweight championship
On March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier meet for the "Fight of the Century" at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The bout marked Ali’s return to the marquee three-and-a-half years after boxing commissions revoked his license over his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War. It was also Ali’s first chance to win back the heavyweight championship, which had been stripped by the WBA (World Boxing Association).
Both Ali and Frazier were undefeated and had won Olympic gold medals and multiple Golden Gloves championships, but their personalities were vastly different. Ali was a showboat, and his mastery of the media, his improvisational poetry during interviews and his debonair good looks separated him from every other fighter, and every other athlete, of his generation. Much to his opponent’s dismay, Ali successfully painted the less popular and more reserved Frazier as an "Uncle Tom" and an instrument of the establishment. Leading up to the fight, the national press fawned over Ali, heralding "the hero’s return." Ali played right along, while doing his best to knock Frazier off his game through mental intimidation. He even went so far as to repeatedly call Frazier a "gorilla."
On the night of the fight, celebrities filled Madison Square Garden. Miles Davis was resplendent in a red suit. Frank Sinatra sat ringside, photographing the fight for a Life magazine article. It was said that billions of people were following the fight in person, on TV or on the radio, and most of them were cheering for Ali.
The fight lived up to the hype. Ali initially landed more punches, gliding about the ring as light on his feet as he was in the prime of his career. Frazier’s punches, however, seemed to have more impact. By the eighth round, Frazier was leading six rounds to two with each judge. In the 11th round, Ali staggered but fought back, forcing the action into the 12th and 13th rounds. The fight was already decided by the 15th, when Frazier landed a left hook to Ali’s right chin, knocking down the champ for the first time in his pro career. Ali got up, but Frazier won the fight by unanimous decision, retaining his title and delivering Ali the first loss of his career.
The two fighters would fight twice more, in 1974 and 1975, with Ali winning both fights. The rivalry was so intense that, 20 years after their final fight, when Ali carried the torch and lit the ceremonial flame at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Frazier said "If I had the chance, I would have pushed him in."
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Mar 9, 1997
Rapper Notorious B.I.G. is killed in Los Angeles
Christopher Wallace, a.k.a Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G., is shot to death at a stoplight in Los Angeles. The murder was thought to be the culmination of an ongoing feud between rap music artists from the East and West coasts. Just six months earlier, rapper Tupac Shakur was killed when he was shot while in his car in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Ironically, Wallace's death came only weeks before his new album, titled Life After Death, was scheduled to be released.
Wallace was the most prominent East Coast practictioner of "gangsta rap," peppering his song with profane, violent and misogynistic lyrics. His 1994 record Ready to Die sold millions. That same year, Shakur, the West Coast's leading rapper, was shot several times in a robbery at a recording studio in New York. Shakur claimed that Wallace was partially responsible and later taunted Wallace on one of his songs. He claimed to have slept with Wallace's ex-wife, singer Faith Evans, and insulted the overweight rapper for his ample girth.
Wallace's raps about violent street life were not completely fiction. He grew up in a poor section of Brooklyn and had many run-ins with the law growing up. Even after he reached stardom in the music world, his legal woes continued. In the summer of 1996 he was arrested when police found marijuana and firearms at his New Jersey home. He also gave a new meaning to fan appreciation when he assaulted a pair of admirers with a baseball bat. The murder of Wallace has never been solved, though it has been suggested that either Marion "Suge" Knight, the former head of Death Row Records, Shakur's label, or the Crips gang may be be responsible. Knight was also shot (but not wounded seriously) in the fatal Las Vegas attack on Shakur and is rumored to have engineered a retaliatory strike against Wallace, whom he held responsible for the Las Vegas shooting. Since Wallace's death, Knight had been in and out of court and prison on a variety of charges.
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Mar 10, 1876
Speech transmitted by telephone
On this day, the first discernible speech is transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant in another room by saying, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you." Bell had received a comprehensive telephone patent just three days before.
Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, was the son of Alexander Melville Bell, a leading authority in public speaking and speech correction. The young Bell was trained to take over the family business, and while still a teenager he became a voice teacher and began to experiment in sound. In 1870, his family moved to Ontario, Canada, and in 1871 Bell went to Boston to demonstrate his father's method of teaching speech to the deaf. The next year, he opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of the deaf and in 1873 became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.
In his free time, Bell experimented with sound waves and became convinced that it would be possible to transmit speech over a telegraph-like system. He enlisted the aid of a gifted mechanic, Thomas Watson, and together the two spent countless nights trying to convert Bell's ideas into practical form. In 1875, while working on his multiple harmonic telegraph, Bell developed the basic ideas for the telephone. He designed a device to transmit speech vibrations electrically between two receivers and in June 1875 tested his invention. No intelligible words were transmitted, but sounds resembling human speech were heard at the receiving end.
On February 14, 1876, he filed a U.S. patent application for his telephone. Just a few hours later, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office about his intent to seek a similar patent on a telephone transmitter and receiver. Bell filed first, so on March 7 he was awarded U.S. patent 174,465, which granted him ownership over both his telephone instruments and the concept of a telephone system.
Three days later, on March 10, Bell successfully tested his telephone for the first time in his Boston home. In May, he publicly demonstrated the invention before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, and in June at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In October, he successfully tested his telephone over a two-mile distance between Boston and Cambridgeport.
In 1877, he formed the Bell Telephone Company with two investors, and the first commercial applications of the telephone took place. Within a few months, the first of hundreds of legal challenges to Bell's telephone patent began. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually upheld Bell's claims, and the Bell Telephone Company enjoyed a monopoly on the telephone until the expiration of the patent in 1894. After 1878, however, the legal battles were out of Alexander Graham Bell's hands because he sold his company to a group of financiers. The company, which after 1899 was led by the parent American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), eventually grew into the largest corporation in the world.
Alexander Graham Bell continued his experiments in communication, inventing the photophone, which transmitted speech by light rays, and the graphophone, which recorded sound. He continued to work with the deaf, including the educator Helen Keller, and used the royalties from his inventions to finance several organizations dedicated to the oral education of the deaf. He later served as president of the National Geographic Society. Beginning in 1895, he experimented with the possibility of flight and built giant man-carrying kites and a hydrofoil craft. He died in 1922 at his summer home and laboratory on Cape Breton Island, Canada.
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Mar 11, 1818
Frankenstein published
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is published. The book, by 21-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, is frequently called the world's first science fiction novel. In Shelley's tale, a scientist animates a creature constructed from dismembered corpses. The gentle, intellectually gifted creature is enormous and physically hideous. Cruelly rejected by its creator, it wanders, seeking companionship and becoming increasingly brutal as it fails to find a mate.
Mary Shelley created the story on a rainy afternoon in 1816 in Geneva, where she was staying with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend Lord Byron. Byron proposed they each write a gothic ghost story, but only Mary Shelley completed hers. Although serving as the basis for the Western horror story and the inspiration for numerous movies in the 20th century, the book Frankenstein is much more than pop fiction. The story explores philosophical themes and challenges Romantic ideals about the beauty and goodness of nature.
Mary Shelley led a life nearly as tumultuous as the monster she created. The daughter of free-thinking philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, she lost her mother days after her birth. She clashed with her stepmother and was sent to Scotland to live with foster parents during her early teens, then eloped with the married poet Shelley when she was 17. After Shelley's wife committed suicide in 1817, the couple married but spent much of their time abroad, fleeing Shelley's creditors. Mary Shelley gave birth to five children, but only one lived to adulthood. Mary was only 24 years old when Shelley drowned in a sailing accident; she went on to edit two volumes of his works. She lived on a small stipend from her father-in-law, Lord Shelley, until her surviving son inherited his fortune and title in 1844. She died at the age of 53. Although Mary Shelley was a respected writer for many years, only Frankenstein and her journals are still widely read.
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Mar 10, 1876
Speech transmitted by telephone
On this day, the first discernible speech is transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant in another room by saying, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you." Bell had received a comprehensive telephone patent just three days before.
Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, was the son of Alexander Melville Bell, a leading authority in public speaking and speech correction. The young Bell was trained to take over the family business, and while still a teenager he became a voice teacher and began to experiment in sound. In 1870, his family moved to Ontario, Canada, and in 1871 Bell went to Boston to demonstrate his father's method of teaching speech to the deaf. The next year, he opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of the deaf and in 1873 became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.
In his free time, Bell experimented with sound waves and became convinced that it would be possible to transmit speech over a telegraph-like system. He enlisted the aid of a gifted mechanic, Thomas Watson, and together the two spent countless nights trying to convert Bell's ideas into practical form. In 1875, while working on his multiple harmonic telegraph, Bell developed the basic ideas for the telephone. He designed a device to transmit speech vibrations electrically between two receivers and in June 1875 tested his invention. No intelligible words were transmitted, but sounds resembling human speech were heard at the receiving end.
On February 14, 1876, he filed a U.S. patent application for his telephone. Just a few hours later, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office about his intent to seek a similar patent on a telephone transmitter and receiver. Bell filed first, so on March 7 he was awarded U.S. patent 174,465, which granted him ownership over both his telephone instruments and the concept of a telephone system.
Three days later, on March 10, Bell successfully tested his telephone for the first time in his Boston home. In May, he publicly demonstrated the invention before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, and in June at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In October, he successfully tested his telephone over a two-mile distance between Boston and Cambridgeport.
In 1877, he formed the Bell Telephone Company with two investors, and the first commercial applications of the telephone took place. Within a few months, the first of hundreds of legal challenges to Bell's telephone patent began. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually upheld Bell's claims, and the Bell Telephone Company enjoyed a monopoly on the telephone until the expiration of the patent in 1894. After 1878, however, the legal battles were out of Alexander Graham Bell's hands because he sold his company to a group of financiers. The company, which after 1899 was led by the parent American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), eventually grew into the largest corporation in the world.
Alexander Graham Bell continued his experiments in communication, inventing the photophone, which transmitted speech by light rays, and the graphophone, which recorded sound. He continued to work with the deaf, including the educator Helen Keller, and used the royalties from his inventions to finance several organizations dedicated to the oral education of the deaf. He later served as president of the National Geographic Society. Beginning in 1895, he experimented with the possibility of flight and built giant man-carrying kites and a hydrofoil craft. He died in 1922 at his summer home and laboratory on Cape Breton Island, Canada.
This probably explains the "Family Guy" skit involving this scenario.
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Mar 12, 1969
London police conduct drug raid at home of George Harrison
The London drug squad appears at house of George Harrison and Pattie Boyd with a warrant and drug-sniffing canines. Boyd immediately used the direct hotline to Beatles headquarters and George returned to find his home turned upside down. He is reported to have told the officers "You needn't have turned the whole bloody place upside down. All you had to do was ask me and I would have shown you where I keep everything."
Without his assistance, the constables, including Sergeant Pilcher who had directed the drug-related arrest of John Lennon the previous year, had already found a considerable amount of hashish. Harrison and Boyd were arrested and as they were being escorted to the police station, a photographer began shooting pictures of the famous couple. Harrison chased after the photographer, with the cops trailing right behind him down the London street. Finally, the man dropped his camera and George stomped on it before the officers subdued him.
Harrison and his model wife, who missed Paul and Linda McCartney's wedding that same day because of the arrest, were released on bail. A few weeks later, Harrison and Boyd were allowed to plead guilty. Despite the rather prodigious amount of hash recovered from their home, the authorities were satisfied that it was all for their personal use. They were fined 250 pounds each, and even had a confiscated pipe returned to them. Ten years later, Boyd married guitarist Eric Clapton and Harrison sang and played at their wedding.
Sergeant Pilcher, the man behind the raid, was convicted of planting drugs in other cases and went to jail in 1972.
George Harrison died in November 2001 after a struggle with cancer.
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Mar 12, 1969
London police conduct drug raid at home of George Harrison
The London drug squad appears at house of George Harrison and Pattie Boyd with a warrant and drug-sniffing canines. Boyd immediately used the direct hotline to Beatles headquarters and George returned to find his home turned upside down. He is reported to have told the officers "You needn't have turned the whole bloody place upside down. All you had to do was ask me and I would have shown you where I keep everything."
Without his assistance, the constables, including Sergeant Pilcher who had directed the drug-related arrest of John Lennon the previous year, had already found a considerable amount of hashish. Harrison and Boyd were arrested and as they were being escorted to the police station, a photographer began shooting pictures of the famous couple. Harrison chased after the photographer, with the cops trailing right behind him down the London street. Finally, the man dropped his camera and George stomped on it before the officers subdued him.
Harrison and his model wife, who missed Paul and Linda McCartney's wedding that same day because of the arrest, were released on bail. A few weeks later, Harrison and Boyd were allowed to plead guilty. Despite the rather prodigious amount of hash recovered from their home, the authorities were satisfied that it was all for their personal use. They were fined 250 pounds each, and even had a confiscated pipe returned to them. Ten years later, Boyd married guitarist Eric Clapton and Harrison sang and played at their wedding.
Sergeant Pilcher, the man behind the raid, was convicted of planting drugs in other cases and went to jail in 1972.
George Harrison died in November 2001 after a struggle with cancer.
Wow, has it been that long?
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Mar 13, 1781
William Hershel discovers Uranus
The German-born English astronomer William Hershel discovers Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. Herschel's discovery of a new planet was the first to be made in modern times, and also the first to be made by use of a telescope, which allowed Herschel to distinguish Uranus as a planet, not a star, as previous astronomers believed.
Herschel, who was later knighted for his historic discovery, named the planet Georgium Sidus, or the "Georgian Planet," in honor of King George III of England. However, German astronomer Johann Bode proposed the name "Uranus" for the celestial body in order to conform to the classical mythology-derived names of other known planets. Uranus, the ancient Greek deity of the heavens, was a predecessor of the Olympian gods. By the mid-19th century, it was also the generally accepted name of the seventh planet from the sun.
The planet Uranus is a gas giant like Jupiter and Saturn and is made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane. The third largest planet, Uranus orbits the sun once every 84 earth years and is the only planet to spin perpendicular to its solar orbital plane. In January 1986, the unmanned U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 visited the planet, discovering 10 additional moons to the five already known, and a system of faint rings around the gas giant.
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Mar 14, 1950
The FBI debuts 10 Most Wanted
On this day in 1950, the Federal Bureau of Investigation institutes the "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list in an effort to publicize particularly dangerous fugitives. The creation of the program arose out of a wire service news story in 1949 about the "toughest guys" the FBI wanted to capture. The story drew so much public attention that the "Ten Most Wanted" list was given the okay by J. Edgar Hoover the following year. As of 2011, 465 of the criminals included on the list have been apprehended or located, 153 as a result of tips from the public. The Criminal Investigative Division (CID) of the FBI asks all fifty-six field offices to submit candidates for inclusion on the list. The CID in association with the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs then proposes finalists for approval of by the FBI's Deputy Director. The criteria for selection is simple, the criminal must have a lengthy record and current pending charges that make him or her particularly dangerous. And the the FBI must believe that the publicity attendant to placement on the list will assist in the apprehension of the fugitive.
Generally, the only way to get off the list is to die or to be captured. There have only been a handful of cases where a fugitive has been removed from the list because they no longer were a particularly dangerous menace to society. Only eight women have appeared on the Ten Most Wanted list. Ruth Eisemann-Schier was the first in 1968.
The FBI also works closely with the Fox television show America's Most Wanted to further publicize the effort to capture dangerous felons.
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Mar 15, 44 B.C.
The ides of March: Julius Caesar is murdered
Julius Caesar, the "dictator for life" of the Roman Empire, is murdered by his own senators at a meeting in a hall next to Pompey's Theatre. The conspiracy against Caesar encompassed as many as sixty noblemen, including Caesar's own protege, Marcus Brutus.
Caesar was scheduled to leave Rome to fight in a war on March 18 and had appointed loyal members of his army to rule the Empire in his absence. The Republican senators, already chafing at having to abide by Caesar's decrees, were particularly angry about the prospect of taking orders from Caesar's underlings. Cassius Longinus started the plot against the dictator, quickly getting his brother-in-law Marcus Brutus to join.
Caesar should have been well aware that many of the senators hated him, but he dismissed his security force not long before his assassination. Reportedly, Caesar was handed a warning note as he entered the senate meeting that day but did not read it. After he entered the hall, Caesar was surrounded by senators holding daggers. Servilius Casca struck the first blow, hitting Caesar in the neck and drawing blood. The other senators all joined in, stabbing him repeatedly about the head.
Marcus Brutus wounded Caesar in the groin and Caesar is said to have remarked in Greek, "You, too, my child?" In the aftermath of the assassination, Antony attempted to carry out Caesar's legacy. However, Caesar's will left Octavian in charge as his adopted son. Cassius and Brutus tried to rally a Republican army and Brutus even issued coins celebrating the assassination, known as the Ides of March. Octavian vowed revenge against the assassins, two years later Cassius and Brutus committed suicide after learning that Octavian's forces had defeated theirs at the Battle of Philippa in Greece.
Antony took his armies east, where he hooked up with Caesar's old paramour, Cleopatra. Octavian and Antony fought for many years until Octavian prevailed. In 30 B.C., Antony committed suicide. Octavian, later known as Augustus, ruled the Roman Empire for many more years.
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Mar 16, 1850
The Scarlet Letter is published
Nathaniel Hawthorne's story of adultery and betrayal in colonial America, The Scarlet Letter, is published.
Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. Although the infamous Salem witch trials had taken place more than 100 years earlier, the events still hung over the town and made a lasting impression on the young Hawthorne. Witchcraft figured in several of his works, including "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which a house is cursed by a wizard condemned by the witch trials.
After attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he began his career as a writer. He self-published his first book, Fanshawe (1828), but tried to destroy all copies shortly after publication. He later wrote several books of short stories, including Twice Told Tales (1837). In 1841, he tried his hand at communal living at the agricultural cooperative Brook Farm but came away highly disillusioned by the experience, which he fictionalized in his novel The Blithedale Romance (1852).
Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in 1842, having at last earned enough money from his writing to start a family. The two lived in a house called the Old Manse, in Concord, Massachusetts, and socialized with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Branson Alcott, father of writer Louisa May Alcott.
Plagued by financial difficulties as his family grew, he took a job in 1845 at Salem's custom house, where he worked for three years. After leaving the job, he spent several months writing The Scarlet Letter, which made him famous.
In 1853, Hawthorne's old college friend, President Franklin Pierce, appointed him American consul to England, and the family moved to England, where they lived for three years. Hawthorne died in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1864.
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Mar 16, 1850
The Scarlet Letter is published
Nathaniel Hawthorne's story of adultery and betrayal in colonial America, The Scarlet Letter, is published.
Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. Although the infamous Salem witch trials had taken place more than 100 years earlier, the events still hung over the town and made a lasting impression on the young Hawthorne. Witchcraft figured in several of his works, including "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which a house is cursed by a wizard condemned by the witch trials.
After attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he began his career as a writer. He self-published his first book, Fanshawe (1828), but tried to destroy all copies shortly after publication. He later wrote several books of short stories, including Twice Told Tales (1837). In 1841, he tried his hand at communal living at the agricultural cooperative Brook Farm but came away highly disillusioned by the experience, which he fictionalized in his novel The Blithedale Romance (1852).
Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in 1842, having at last earned enough money from his writing to start a family. The two lived in a house called the Old Manse, in Concord, Massachusetts, and socialized with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Branson Alcott, father of writer Louisa May Alcott.
Plagued by financial difficulties as his family grew, he took a job in 1845 at Salem's custom house, where he worked for three years. After leaving the job, he spent several months writing The Scarlet Letter, which made him famous.
In 1853, Hawthorne's old college friend, President Franklin Pierce, appointed him American consul to England, and the family moved to England, where they lived for three years. Hawthorne died in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1864.
It was also the day, 1920, that the Victorious Allies occupied Constantinople.
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Mar 17, 1762
First St. Patrick's Day parade
In New York City, the first parade honoring the Catholic feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is held by Irish soldiers serving in the British army.
Saint Patrick, who was born in the late 4th century, was one of the most successful Christian missionaries in history. Born in Britain to a Christian family of Roman citizenship, he was taken prisoner at the age of 16 by a group of Irish raiders who attacked his family's estate. They transported him to Ireland, and he spent six years in captivity before escaping back to Britain. Believing he had been called by God to Christianize Ireland, he joined the Catholic Church and studied for 15 years before being consecrated as the church's second missionary to Ireland. Patrick began his mission to Ireland in 432, and by his death in 461, the island was almost entirely Christian.
Early Irish settlers to the American colonies, many of whom were indentured servants, brought the Irish tradition of celebrating St. Patrick's feast day to America. The first recorded St. Patrick's Day parade was held not in Ireland but in New York City in 1762, and with the dramatic increase of Irish immigrants to the United States in the mid-19th century, the March 17th celebration became widespread. Today, across the United States, millions of Americans of Irish ancestry celebrate their cultural identity and history by enjoying St. Patrick's Day parades and engaging in general revelry.
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Mar 18, 1852
Wells Fargo and Company established
Businessmen in New York establish Wells, Fargo and Company, destined to become the leading freight and banking company of the West.
The California economy boomed after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1849, spurring a huge demand for shipping. Henry Wells and William Fargo joined with several other New York investors to create Wells, Fargo and Company to serve and profit from this demand. In July 1852, the company began transporting its first loads of freight between the East Coast and the isolated mining camps of California. From the beginning, Wells, Fargo and Company also engaged in banking, making good profits in the traffic of gold dust and providing loans that helped sustain the growth of the California economy.
The company usually used stagecoaches to move gold dust, critical business papers, and other express freight quickly. The stages could carry nine paying passengers, and if the interior seats were full, a few more hardy travelers could ride on top with the driver. The traveling conditions were far from luxurious, and passengers had to tolerate crowding, dust, cold, heat, and the occasional holdup or Indian attack. Nonetheless, the relatively fast pace of travel ensured a steady supply of customers.
Wells, Fargo and Company never hesitated to dispatch a rider on horseback to deliver or pick up an important message or package-provided the sender was willing to pay a premium price. The company operated several small "pony express" routes around California, and these were particularly valuable to the business community during winter, when snow often blocked stage and rail routes in the Sierra Nevada.
In 1866, the company merged with several other major express and stagecoach lines, including Ben Holladay's Overland Mail Company. For the next three years, the expanded Wells, Fargo and Company was the unquestionable leader in western transportation, providing speedy and reliable service at reasonable prices. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the company's dominant position was undermined, especially in the transcontinental mail and freight business. However, Wells, Fargo and Company continued to provide essential local transportation for decades, and the company still exists today as a major banking institution.
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Mar 18, 1852
Wells Fargo and Company established
Businessmen in New York establish Wells, Fargo and Company, destined to become the leading freight and banking company of the West.
The California economy boomed after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1849, spurring a huge demand for shipping. Henry Wells and William Fargo joined with several other New York investors to create Wells, Fargo and Company to serve and profit from this demand. In July 1852, the company began transporting its first loads of freight between the East Coast and the isolated mining camps of California. From the beginning, Wells, Fargo and Company also engaged in banking, making good profits in the traffic of gold dust and providing loans that helped sustain the growth of the California economy.
The company usually used stagecoaches to move gold dust, critical business papers, and other express freight quickly. The stages could carry nine paying passengers, and if the interior seats were full, a few more hardy travelers could ride on top with the driver. The traveling conditions were far from luxurious, and passengers had to tolerate crowding, dust, cold, heat, and the occasional holdup or Indian attack. Nonetheless, the relatively fast pace of travel ensured a steady supply of customers.
Wells, Fargo and Company never hesitated to dispatch a rider on horseback to deliver or pick up an important message or package-provided the sender was willing to pay a premium price. The company operated several small "pony express" routes around California, and these were particularly valuable to the business community during winter, when snow often blocked stage and rail routes in the Sierra Nevada.
In 1866, the company merged with several other major express and stagecoach lines, including Ben Holladay's Overland Mail Company. For the next three years, the expanded Wells, Fargo and Company was the unquestionable leader in western transportation, providing speedy and reliable service at reasonable prices. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the company's dominant position was undermined, especially in the transcontinental mail and freight business. However, Wells, Fargo and Company continued to provide essential local transportation for decades, and the company still exists today as a major banking institution.
Are they related t Loomis Fargo?
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Mar 19, 1931
Nevada legalizes gambling
In an attempt to lift the state out of the hard times of the Great Depression, the Nevada state legislature votes to legalize gambling.
Located in the Great Basin desert, few settlers chose to live in Nevada after the United States acquired the territory at the end of the Mexican War in 1848. In 1859, the discovery of the "Comstock Lode" of gold and silver spurred the first substantial number of settlers into Nevada to exploit the territory's mining opportunities. Five years later, during the Civil War, Nevada was hastily made the 36th state in order to strengthen the Union.
At the beginning of the Depression, Nevada's mines were in decline, and its economy was in shambles. In March 1931, Nevada's state legislature responded to population flight by taking the drastic measure of legalizing gambling and, later in the year, divorce. Established in 1905, Las Vegas, Nevada, has since become the gambling and entertainment capital of the world, famous for its casinos, nightclubs, and sporting events. In the first few decades after the legalization of gambling, organized crime flourished in Las Vegas. Today, state gambling taxes account for the lion's share of Nevada's overall tax revenues.
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Mar 20, 1345
Black Death is created, allegedly
According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death is created on this day in 1345, from what they call "a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345". The Black Death, also known as the Plague, swept across Europe, the Middle East and Asia during the 14th century, leaving an estimated 25 million dead in its wake.
Despite what these scholars claimed, it is now known that bubonic plague, the most common ailment known as the Black Death, is caused by the yersinia pestis bacterium. The plague was carried by fleas that usually traveled on rats, but jumped off to other mammals when the rat died. It most likely first appeared in humans in Mongolia around 1320. Usually, people who came down with the plague first complained of headaches, fever and chills. Their tongues often appeared a whitish color before there was severe swelling of the lymph nodes. Finally, black and purple spots appeared on the skin of the afflicted; death could follow within a week. Later, a pneumonic form of the plague developed that was less common but killed 95 percent of the people who contracted it.
After the nomadic tribes of Mongolia were devastated by the plague, it moved south and east to China and India. Wherever it went, the death toll was high. It is thought that the disease made its way to Europe in 1346. In one famous incident, the Tatars, a group of Turks, were battling Italians from Genoa in the Middle East when the Tatars were suddenly stuck down by the plague. Reportedly, they began catapulting dead bodies over the Genoans' walls toward their enemy, who fled back to Italy with the disease. Although this account may not be true, it is certain that rats carrying the plague hitched rides on ships from Asia and the Middle East to Europe. In port cities everywhere, the Black Death began to strike. In Venice, 100,000 people died in total, with as many as 600 dying every day at the peak of the outbreak.
In 1347, the disease worked its way to France and Paris lost an estimated 50,000 people. The following year, Britain fell victim. Typically, countries would believe themselves to be superior and immune to infection when their neighbors came down with the plague, but soon found they were mistaken as the Black Death traveled across Eurasia, spreading devastation in its wake. By the time the worst was over in 1352, one third of the continent's population was dead.
Devastation on this scale brought out the worst in people. Often, it was not the movement of stars that was blamed for the disease, but the minorities in the community. Witches and gypsies were frequent targets. Jewish people were tortured and burned to death by the thousands for supposedly causing the Black Death. Preachers claimed that the disease was God's punishment for immorality. Many turned to prayer and those that did survive ascribed their good luck to their devotion, resulting in the rise of splinter religions and cults in the aftermath of the plague's destruction. Alternatively, some resorted to useless home cures to try to avoid the disease, bathing in urine or menstrual blood in an attempt to deter it.
The plague popped up periodically until the 1700s, but never again reached epidemic proportions after the 14th century.
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Mar 21, 1804
Napoleonic Code approved in France
After four years of debate and planning, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enacts a new legal framework for France, known as the "Napoleonic Code." The civil code gave post-revolutionary France its first coherent set of laws concerning property, colonial affairs, the family, and individual rights.
In 1800, General Napoleon Bonaparte, as the new dictator of France, began the arduous task of revising France's outdated and muddled legal system. He established a special commission, led by J.J. Cambaceres, which met more than 80 times to discuss the revolutionary legal revisions, and Napoleon presided over nearly half of these sessions. In March 1804, the Napoleonic Code was finally approved.
It codified several branches of law, including commercial and criminal law, and divided civil law into categories of property and family. The Napoleonic Code made the authority of men over their families stronger, deprived women of any individual rights, and reduced the rights of illegitimate children. All male citizens were also granted equal rights under the law and the right to religious dissent, but colonial slavery was reintroduced. The laws were applied to all territories under Napoleon's control and were influential in several other European countries and in South America.
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Mar 22, 1933
FDR legalizes sale of beer and wine
On this day in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. This law levies a federal tax on all alcoholic beverages to raise revenue for the federal government and gives individual states the option to further regulate the sale and distribution of beer and wine.
With the passage of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act in 1919, temperance advocates in the U.S. finally achieved their long sought-after goal of prohibiting the sale of alcohol or "spirits." Together, the new laws prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of liquor and ushered in the era known as "Prohibition," defining an alcoholic beverage as anything containing over 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. President Woodrow Wilson had unsuccessfully tried to veto the Volstead Act, which set harsh punishments for violating the 18th Amendment and endowed the Internal Revenue Service with unprecedented regulatory and enforcement powers. In the end, Prohibition proved difficult and expensive to enforce and actually increased illegal trafficking without cutting down on consumption. In one of his first addresses to Congress as president, FDR announced his intention to modify the Volstead Act with the Beer and Wine Revenue Act.
No fan of temperance himself, FDR had developed a taste for alcohol when he attended New York cocktail parties as a budding politician. (While president, FDR refused to fire his favorite personal valet for repeated drunkenness on the job.) FDR considered the new law "of the highest importance" for its potential to generate much-needed federal funds and included it in a sweeping set of New Deal policies designed to vault the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression.
The Beer and Wine Revenue act was followed, in December 1933, by the passage of the 21st Amendment, which officially ended Prohibition.
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Mar 22, 1933
FDR legalizes sale of beer and wine
On this day in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. This law levies a federal tax on all alcoholic beverages to raise revenue for the federal government and gives individual states the option to further regulate the sale and distribution of beer and wine.
With the passage of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act in 1919, temperance advocates in the U.S. finally achieved their long sought-after goal of prohibiting the sale of alcohol or "spirits." Together, the new laws prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of liquor and ushered in the era known as "Prohibition," defining an alcoholic beverage as anything containing over 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. President Woodrow Wilson had unsuccessfully tried to veto the Volstead Act, which set harsh punishments for violating the 18th Amendment and endowed the Internal Revenue Service with unprecedented regulatory and enforcement powers. In the end, Prohibition proved difficult and expensive to enforce and actually increased illegal trafficking without cutting down on consumption. In one of his first addresses to Congress as president, FDR announced his intention to modify the Volstead Act with the Beer and Wine Revenue Act.
No fan of temperance himself, FDR had developed a taste for alcohol when he attended New York cocktail parties as a budding politician. (While president, FDR refused to fire his favorite personal valet for repeated drunkenness on the job.) FDR considered the new law "of the highest importance" for its potential to generate much-needed federal funds and included it in a sweeping set of New Deal policies designed to vault the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression.
The Beer and Wine Revenue act was followed, in December 1933, by the passage of the 21st Amendment, which officially ended Prohibition.
And God smiled.
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Mar 23, 1983
Artificial-heart patient dies
On March 23, 1983, Barney Clark dies 112 days after becoming the world's first recipient of a permanent artificial heart. The 61-year-old dentist spent the last four months of his life in a hospital bed at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, attached to a 350-pound console that pumped air in and out of the aluminum-and-plastic implant through a system of hoses.
In the late 19th century, scientists began developing a pump to temporarily supplant heart action. In 1953, an artificial heart-lung machine was employed successfully for the first time during an operation on a human patient. In this procedure, which is still used today, the machine temporarily takes over heart and lung function, allowing doctors to operate extensively on these organs. After a few hours, however, blood becomes damaged by the pumping and oxygenation.
In the late 1960s, hope was given to patients with irreparably damaged hearts when heart-transplant operations began. However, the demand for donor hearts always exceeded availability, and thousands died every year while waiting for healthy hearts to become available.
On April 4, 1969, a historic operation was performed by surgeon Denton Cooley of the Texas Heart Institute on Haskell Karp, a patient whose heart was on the brink of total collapse and to whom no donor heart had become available. Karp was the first person in history to have his diseased heart replaced by an artificial heart. The temporary plastic-and-Dacron heart extended Karp's life for the three days it took doctors to find him a donor heart. However, soon after the human heart was transplanted into his chest, he died from infection. Seven more failed attempts were made, and many doctors lost faith in the possibility of replacing the human heart with a prosthetic substitute.
In the early 1980s, however, a pioneering new scientist resumed efforts to develop a viable artificial heart. Robert K. Jarvik had decided to study medicine and engineering after his father died of heart disease. By 1982, he was conducting animal trials at the University of Utah with his Jarvik-7 artificial heart.
On December 2, 1982, a team led by Dr. William C. DeVries implanted the Jarvik-7 into Barney Clark. Because Jarvik's artificial heart was intended to be permanent, the Clark case drew worldwide attention. Clark spent his last 112 days in the hospital and suffered considerably from complications and the discomfort of having compressed air pumped in and out of his body. He died on March 23, 1983, from various complications. Clark's experience left many feeling that the time of the permanent artificial heart had not yet come.
During the next decade, Jarvik and others concentrated their efforts on developing mechanical pumps to assist a diseased heart rather than replace it. These devices allow many patients to live the months or even years it takes for them to find a donor heart. Battery powered, these implants give heart-disease patients mobility and allow them to live relatively normal lives. Meanwhile, in the 1990s, the Jarvik-7 was used on more than 150 patients whose hearts were too damaged to be aided by the mechanical pump implant. More than half of these patients survived until they got a transplant.
In 2001, a company called AbioMed unveiled the AbioCor, the first completely self-contained replacement heart. Although patients implanted with the AbioCor have still eventually died, AbioMed has shown it is possible to live as long as 500 days with the implant. Scientists continue to look for ways to improve artificial hearts for long-term use.
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Mar 24, 1989
Exxon Valdez runs aground in Alaska
On this day in 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker hits a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, resulting in an enormous oil spill. Though there were no human victims of the crash, hundreds of miles of pristine coastline became coated with oil and thousands of sea birds, mammals and fish perished in the disaster.
The Valdez was delivered to Exxon in 1986 and named after the Alaskan port terminal where oil was sent out to the main 48 states. It was capable of carrying 200,000 tons of crude oil and was usually manned by a 20-person crew. On the night of March 23, the ship left port in Valdez at about 9 p.m. Captain Joseph Hazelwood was in charge, but handed over the piloting of the ship to Third Mate Greg Cousins shortly into the journey. Just after midnight, there was a miscommunication on a change of course as the Valdez maneuvered its way through a narrow shipping lane between Bligh Reef and Busby Island in Prince William Sound.
The Valdez ran aground on the reef, puncturing the ship's hull and sending oil spilling into the sound. Unfortunately, the response to the spill was not ideal. There was a limited attempt to use dispersants by helicopter, but there was only a small supply of them available near the site. Also, some reports suggested that dispersants, chemicals applied to the oil to push it below the surface (where it causes the most damage), were ineffective. Booms and skimmers, equipment that prevents the spread of oil in water and manually removes oil from the water, were not available for use until a full day after the spill. Unfortunately, even after the booms and skimmers were finally brought into service, they often broke down and were thus also not completely effective.
Overall, the Valdez spilled close to 30 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound over several days. Beaches in the Knight Island chain were covered in oil. The primary victims of the oil were sea birds. Some estimate that as many as 250,000 of the birds were killed, as well as several thousand sea otters and hundreds of seals and bald eagles. Salmon and herring egg losses were also extensive. In total, about 800 miles of coastline were damaged by the oil.
The Valdez accident led to a long series of lawsuits and legislative changes. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which included a clause banning the Valdez from Alaska. A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, awarded millions of dollars in damages against Exxon to the affected Alaskan communities as well as a $5 billion punitive-damage award. On appeal, the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the judge had to reduce the award. When the judge reduced it only slightly, Exxon appealed again and even many years after the incident, the ultimate resolution was still in doubt. Captain Hazelwood was accused of being intoxicated at the time of the accident, but such allegations were never fully proven. He was, however, convicted of negligence, fined and ordered to perform community service.
After undergoing $30 million in repairs, the Valdez was renamed Sea River Mediterranean and returned to service, but is no longer used in Alaska.
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Mar 25, 1634
The settlement of Maryland
The first colonists to Maryland arrive at St. Clement's Island on Maryland's western shore and found the settlement of St. Mary's.
In 1632, King Charles I of England granted a charter to George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, yielding him proprietary rights to a region east of the Potomac River in exchange for a share of the income derived from the land. The territory was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, the queen consort of Charles I. Before settlement began, George Calvert died and was succeeded by his son Cecilius, who sought to establish Maryland as a haven for Roman Catholics persecuted in England. In March 1634, the first English settlers--a carefully selected group of Catholics and Protestants--arrived at St. Clement's Island aboard the Ark and the Dove.
Religious conflict was strong in ensuing years as the American Puritans, growing more numerous in Maryland and supported by Puritans in England, set out to revoke the religious freedoms guaranteed in the founding of the colony. In 1649, Maryland Governor William Stone responded by passing an act ensuring religious liberty and justice to all who believed in Jesus Christ. In 1654, however, the so-called Toleration Act was repealed after Puritans seized control of the colony, leading to a brief civil war that ended with Lord Baltimore losing control of propriety rights over Maryland in March 1655.
Although the Calverts later regained control of Maryland, anti-Catholic activity persisted until the 19th century, when many Catholic immigrants to America chose Baltimore as their home and helped enact laws to protect their free practice of religion.
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Mar 26, 1997
Heaven's Gate cult members found dead
Following an anonymous tip, police enter a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, an exclusive suburb of San Diego, California, and discover 39 victims of a mass suicide. The deceased--21 women and 18 men of varying ages--were all found lying peaceably in matching dark clothes and Nike sneakers and had no noticeable signs of blood or trauma. It was later revealed that the men and women were members of the "Heaven's Gate" religious cult, whose leaders preached that suicide would allow them to leave their bodily "containers" and enter an alien spacecraft hidden behind the Hale-Bopp comet.
The cult was led by Marshall Applewhite, a music professor who, after surviving a near-death experience in 1972, was recruited into the cult by one of his nurses, Bonnie Lu Nettles. In 1975, Applewhite and Nettles persuaded a group of 20 people from Oregon to abandon their families and possessions and move to eastern Colorado, where they promised that an extraterrestrial spacecraft would take them to the "kingdom of heaven." Nettles, who called herself "Ti," and Applewhite, who took the name of "Do," explained that human bodies were merely containers that could be abandoned in favor of a higher physical existence. As the spacecraft never arrived, membership in Heaven's Gate diminished, and in 1985 Bonnie Lu Nettles, Applewhite's "sexless partner," died.
During the early 1990s, the cult resurfaced as Applewhite began recruiting new members. Soon after the 1995 discovery of the comet Hale-Bopp, the Heaven's Gate members became convinced that an alien spacecraft was on its way to earth, hidden from human detection behind the comet. In October 1996, Applewhite rented a large home in Rancho Santa Fe, explaining to the owner that his group was made up of Christian-based angels. Applewhite advocated sexual abstinence, and several male cult members followed his example by undergoing castration operations.
In 1997, as part of its 4,000-year orbit of the sun, the comet Hale-Bopp passed near Earth in one of the most impressive astronomical events of the 20th century. In late March 1997, as Hale-Bopp reached its closest distance to Earth, Applewhite and 38 of his followers drank a lethal mixture of phenobarbital and vodka and then lay down to die, hoping to leave their bodily containers, enter the alien spacecraft, and pass through Heaven's Gate into a higher existence.
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Mar 27, 1939
March Madness is born
The University of Oregon defeats The Ohio State University 46–33 on this day in 1939 to win the first-ever NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The Final Four, as the tournament became known, has grown exponentially in size and popularity since 1939. By 2005, college basketball had become the most popular sporting event among gamblers, after the Super Bowl. The majority of that betting takes place at tournament time, when Las Vegas, the internet and office pools around the country see action from sports enthusiasts and once-a-year gamblers alike.
For the first 12 years of the men’s tournament, only eight teams were invited to participate. That number grew steadily until a 65-team tournament format was unveiled in 2001. After a "play-in" game between the 64th and 65th seeds, the tournament breaks into four regions of 16 teams. The winning teams from those regions comprise the Final Four, who meet in that year’s host city to decide the championship.
The most successful team in NCAA men’s tournament history has been the UCLA Bruins, who have taken home a record 11 championships, 10 of them under legendary coach John Wooden between 1964 and 1975. The University of Kentucky is second with seven titles and Indiana University rounds out the top three with five tournament wins. At the end of every tournament, a Most Outstanding Player is chosen. Almost all of these players go on to productive careers in the NBA. Lew Alcindor, later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, won the award three times while leading UCLA to three national championships in 1967, 1968 and 1969. Bill Walton, who succeeded Alcindor at center for UCLA, Jerry Lucas of Ohio State, Alex Groza of Kentucky and Bob Kurland of Oklahoma A&M all won the award twice.
The NCAA held its first women’s basketball tournament in 1982. The women’s tournament started with 32 teams, expanding to 64 teams before the 1994 season. Today, the women’s format echoes the men’s, with play in four regions culminating in a Final Four held in a single location. The championship is played the day after the men’s, concluding the college basketball season. The most dominant team in women’s tournament history has been the Tennessee Volunteers, who won six championships under renowned coach Pat Summit from 1973 to 2006. The Connecticut Huskies are second, with five championships under coach Geno Auriemma. Past women’s Most Outstanding Player winners include Cheryl Miller of USC, Diana Taurasi of Connecticut and Chamique Holdsclaw of Tennessee; all went on to become stars of the WNBA.
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Why is this not a sticky anymore?
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Why is this not a sticky anymore?
I don't know? Princess L, please make this a sticky again.
Also, why does it say the Y board's history thread? Does this mean I am Y board approved? ;)
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Mar 28, 1969
Eisenhower dies
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States and one of the most highly regarded American generals of World War II, dies in Washington, D.C., at the age of 78.
Born in Denison, Texas, in 1890, Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915, and after World War I he steadily rose in the peacetime ranks of the U.S. Army. After the U.S. entrance into World War II, he was appointed commanding general of the European theater of operations and oversaw U.S. troops massing in Great Britain. In 1942, Eisenhower, who had never commanded troops in the field, was put in charge of Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings in Morocco and Algeria.
As supreme commander of a mixed force of Allied nationalities, services, and equipment, Eisenhower designed a system of unified command and rapidly won the respect of his British and Canadian subordinates. From North Africa, he successfully directed the invasions of Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy, and in January 1944 was appointed supreme Allied commander of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe. Although Eisenhower left much of the specific planning for the actual Allied landing in the hands of his capable staff, such as British Field Marshall Montgomery, he served as a brilliant organizer and administrator both before and after the successful invasion.
After the war, he briefly served as president of Columbia University before returning to military service in 1951 as supreme commander of the combined land and air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Pressure on Eisenhower to run for U.S. president was great, however, and in the spring of 1952 he relinquished his NATO command to run for president on the Republican ticket.
In November 1952, "Ike" won a resounding victory in the presidential elections and in 1956 was reelected in a landslide. A popular president, he oversaw a period of great economic growth in the United States and deftly navigated the country through increasing Cold War tension on the world stage. In 1961, he retired with his wife, Mamie Doud Eisenhower, to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He died in 1969 and was buried on a family plot in Abilene, Kansas.
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Mar 29, 1951
The Mad Bomber strikes in New York
On this day in 1951, a homemade device explodes at Grand Central Station in New York City, startling commuters but injuring no one. In the next few months, five more bombs were found at landmark sites around New York, including the public library. Authorities realized that this new wave of terrorist acts was the work of the Mad Bomber.
New York's first experience with the so-called Mad Bomber was on November 16, 1940, when a pipe bomb was left in the Edison building with a note that read, "Con Edison crooks, this is for you." More bombs were recovered in 1941, each more powerful than the last, until the Mad Bomber sent a note in December stating, "I will make no more bomb units for the duration of the war." He went on to say that Con Edison, New York's electric utility company, would be brought to justice in due time.
The patriotic Mad Bomber made good on his promise, although he did periodically send threatening notes to the press. After his flurry of activity in 1951, the Mad Bomber was silent until a bomb went off at Radio City Music Hall in 1954. In 1955, the Mad Bomber hit Grand Central Station, Macy's, the RCA building and the Staten Island Ferry.
The police had no luck finding the Mad Bomber, but an investigative team working for Con Ed finally tracked him down. Looking through their employment records, they found that George Peter Metesky had been a disgruntled ex-employee since an accident in 1931. Metesky was enraged that Con Ed refused to pay disability benefits and resorted to terrorism as his revenge.
Metesky, a rather mild-mannered man, was found living with his sisters in Connecticut. He was sent to a mental institution in April 1957 where he stayed until his release in 1973.
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Mar 30, 1981
Ronald Reagan is shot by John Hinckley, Jr.
John Hinckley, Jr. shoots President Ronald Reagan outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. just after the president had addressed the Building and Construction Workers Union of the AFL-CIO. Hinckley was armed with a .22 revolver with exploding bullets and was only ten feet away from Reagan when he began shooting. Fortunately, he was a poor shot and most of the bullets did not explode as they were supposed to. Hinckley's first shot hit press secretary James Brady and other shots wounded a police officer and a Secret Service agent. The final shot hit Reagan's limo and then ricocheted into the President's chest.
Hinckley's path toward the assassination attempt began in 1976 when he saw the movie Taxi Driver. Robert DeNiro's Travis Bickle stalks a Presidential candidate in the hopes that he will somehow impress and rescue a young prostitute played by Jodie Foster. Hinckley, who spent seven years in college without earning a degree or making a friend, added Foster to his list of obsessions, which also included Nazis, the Beatles and assassins.
In May 1980, Hinckley wrote to Foster while she attended Yale University, traveled there and talked to her on the phone at least once. Soon after, he began following President Jimmy Carter. In October, he was arrested at airport near a Carter campaign stop for carrying guns. However, the Secret Service was not notified. Hinckley simply went to a pawnshop in Dallas and bought more guns.
For the next several months, Hinckley's plans changed daily. He pondered kidnapping Foster, considered killing Senator Edward Kennedy and began stalking newly elected President Reagan. Finally, he wrote a letter to Foster explaining that his attempt on Reagan's life was for her. He kept abreast of the president's schedule by reading the newspaper.
After Reagan was shot and nearly killed, there was a great deal of confusion at the upper levels of government. In the most notable incident, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told the press that "I am in control here in the White House, pending return of the vice-president," under the mistaken belief that the chain of command placed him in charge.
Hinckley was later not found not guilty by reason of insanity.
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7th grade, I remember it well. Then the pope got shot not too long after.
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Mar 31, 1889
Eiffel Tower opens
On March 31, 1889, the Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower's designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries, and 200 construction workers.
In 1889, to honor of the centenary of the French Revolution, the French government planned an international exposition and announced a design competition for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars in central Paris. Out of more than 100 designs submitted, the Centennial Committee chose Eiffel's plan of an open-lattice wrought-iron tower that would reach almost 1,000 feet above Paris and be the world's tallest man-made structure. Eiffel, a noted bridge builder, was a master of metal construction and designed the framework of the Statue of Liberty that had recently been erected in New York Harbor.
Eiffel's tower was greeted with skepticism from critics who argued that it would be structurally unsound, and indignation from others who thought it would be an eyesore in the heart of Paris. Unperturbed, Eiffel completed his great tower under budget in just two years. Only one worker lost his life during construction, which at the time was a remarkably low casualty number for a project of that magnitude. The light, airy structure was by all accounts a technological wonder and within a few decades came to be regarded as an architectural masterpiece.
The Eiffel Tower is 984 feet tall and consists of an iron framework supported on four masonry piers, from which rise four columns that unite to form a single vertical tower. Platforms, each with an observation deck, are at three levels. Elevators ascend the piers on a curve, and Eiffel contracted the Otis Elevator Company of the United States to design the tower's famous glass-cage elevators.
The elevators were not completed by March 31, 1889, however, so Gustave Eiffel ascended the tower's stairs with a few hardy companions and raised an enormous French tricolor on the structure's flagpole. Fireworks were then set off from the second platform. Eiffel and his party descended, and the architect addressed the guests and about 200 workers. In early May, the Paris International Exposition opened, and the tower served as the entrance gateway to the giant fair.
The Eiffel Tower remained the world's tallest man-made structure until the completion of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930. Incredibly, the Eiffel Tower was almost demolished when the International Exposition's 20-year lease on the land expired in 1909, but its value as an antenna for radio transmission saved it. It remains largely unchanged today and is one of the world's premier tourist attractions.
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On 3/30/2014.
Shizzo pumped out 25 pushups in good form.
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Apr 1, 1700
April Fools tradition popularized
On this day in 1700, English pranksters begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools' Day by playing practical jokes on each other.
Although the day, also called All Fools' Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery. Some historians speculate that April Fools' Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as "poisson d'avril" (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.
Historians have also linked April Fools' Day to ancient festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in Rome at the end of March and involved people dressing up in disguises. There's also speculation that April Fools' Day was tied to the vernal equinox, or first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when Mother Nature fooled people with changing, unpredictable weather.
April Fools' Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th century. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event, starting with "hunting the gowk," in which people were sent on phony errands (gowk is a word for cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool) and followed by Tailie Day, which involved pranks played on people's derrieres, such as pinning fake tails or "kick me" signs on them.
In modern times, people have gone to great lengths to create elaborate April Fools' Day hoaxes. Newspapers, radio and TV stations and Web sites have participated in the April 1 tradition of reporting outrageous fictional claims that have fooled their audiences. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees; numerous viewers were fooled. In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia's Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a "Left-Handed Whopper," scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.
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April 2, 2005
Pope John Paul II Dies
On this day in 2005, John Paul II, history's most well-traveled pope and the first non-Italian to hold the position since the 16th century, dies at his home in the Vatican. Six days later, two million people packed Vatican City for his funeral, said to be the biggest funeral in history.
John Paul II was born Karol Jozef Wojtyla in Wadowice, Poland, 35 miles southwest of Krakow, in 1920. After high school, the future pope enrolled at Krakow's Jagiellonian University, where he studied philosophy and literature and performed in a theater group. During World War II, Nazis occupied Krakow and closed the university, forcing Wojtyla to seek work in a quarry and, later, a chemical factory. By 1941, his mother, father, and only brother had all died, leaving him the sole surviving member of his family.
Although Wojtyla had been involved in the church his whole life, it was not until 1942 that he began seminary training. When the war ended, he returned to school at Jagiellonian to study theology, becoming an ordained priest in 1946. He went on to complete two doctorates and became a professor of moral theology and social ethics. On July 4, 1958, at the age of 38, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Krakow by Pope Pius XII. He later became the city s archbishop, where he spoke out for religious freedom while the church began the Second Vatican Council, which would revolutionize Catholicism. He was made a cardinal in 1967, taking on the challenges of living and working as a Catholic priest in communist Eastern Europe. Once asked if he feared retribution from communist leaders, he replied, "I m not afraid of them. They are afraid of me."
Wojtyla was quietly and slowly building a reputation as a powerful preacher and a man of both great intellect and charisma. Still, when Pope John Paul I died in 1978 after only a 34-day reign, few suspected Wojtyla would be chosen to replace him. But, after seven rounds of balloting, the Sacred College of Cardinals chose the 58-year-old, and he became the first-ever Slavic pope and the youngest to be chosen in 132 years.
A conservative pontiff, John Paul II s papacy was marked by his firm and unwavering opposition to communism and war, as well as abortion, contraception, capital punishment, and homosexual sex. He later came out against euthanasia, human cloning, and stem cell research. He traveled widely as pope, using the eight languages he spoke (Polish, Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin) and his well-known personal charm, to connect with the Catholic faithful, as well as many outside the fold.
On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter s Square by a Turkish political extremist, Mehmet Ali Agca. After his release from the hospital, the pope famously visited his would-be assassin in prison, where he had begun serving a life sentence, and personally forgave him for his actions. The next year, another unsuccessful attempt was made on the pope s life, this time by a fanatical priest who opposed the reforms of Vatican II.
Although it was not confirmed by the Vatican until 2003, many believe Pope John Paul II began suffering from Parkinson s disease in the early 1990s. He began to develop slurred speech and had difficulty walking, though he continued to keep up a physically demanding travel schedule. In his final years, he was forced to delegate many of his official duties, but still found the strength to speak to the faithful from a window at the Vatican. In February 2005, the pope was hospitalized with complications from the flu. He died two months later.
Pope John Paul II is remembered for his successful efforts to end communism, as well as for building bridges with peoples of other faiths, and issuing the Catholic Church s first apology for its actions during World War II. He was succeeded by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI began the process to beatify John Paul II in May 2005.
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Apr 3, 1882
Jesse James is murdered
One of America's most famous criminals, Jesse James, is shot to death by fellow gang member Bob Ford, who betrayed James for reward money. For 16 years, Jesse and his brother, Frank, committed robberies and murders throughout the Midwest. Detective magazines and pulp novels glamorized the James gang, turning them into mythical Robin Hoods who were driven to crime by unethical landowners and bankers. In reality, Jesse James was a ruthless killer who stole only for himself.
The teenage James brothers joined up with southern guerrilla leaders when the Civil War broke out. Both participated in massacres of settlers and troops affiliated with the North. After the war was over, the quiet farming life of the James brothers' youth no longer seemed enticing, and the two turned to crime. Jesse's first bank robbery occurred on February 13, 1866, in Liberty, Missouri.
Over the next couple of years, the James brothers became the suspects in several bank robberies throughout western Missouri. However, locals were sympathetic to ex-southern guerrillas and vouched for the brothers. Throughout the late 1860s and early 1870s, the James gang robbed only a couple banks a year, otherwise keeping a low profile.
In 1873, the James gang got into the train robbery game. During one such robbery, the gang declined to take any money or valuables from southerners. The train robberies brought out the Pinkerton Detective Agency, employed to bring the James gang to justice. However, the Pinkerton operatives' botched attempt to kill James left a woman and her child injured and elicited public sympathy for Jesse and Frank James.
The James gang suffered a setback in 1876 when they raided the town of Northfield, Minnesota. The Younger brothers, cousins of the James brothers, were shot and wounded during the brazen midday robbery. After running off in a different direction from Jesse and Frank, the Younger brothers were captured by a large posse and later sentenced to life in prison. Jesse and Frank, the only members of the gang to escape successfully, headed to Tennessee to hide out.
After spending a few quiet years farming, Jesse organized a new gang. Charlie and Robert Ford were on the fringe of the new gang, but they disliked Jesse intensely and decided to kill him for the reward money. On April 3, while Jesse's mother made breakfast, the new gang met to hear Jesse's plan for the next robbery. When Jesse turned his back to adjust a picture on the wall, Bob Ford shot him several times in the back.
His tombstone reads, "Jesse W. James, Died April 3, 1882, Aged 34 years, 6 months, 28 days, Murdered by a traitor and a coward whose name is not worthy to appear here."
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Apr 3, 1882
Jesse James is murdered
One of America's most famous criminals, Jesse James, is shot to death by fellow gang member Bob Ford, who betrayed James for reward money. For 16 years, Jesse and his brother, Frank, committed robberies and murders throughout the Midwest. Detective magazines and pulp novels glamorized the James gang, turning them into mythical Robin Hoods who were driven to crime by unethical landowners and bankers. In reality, Jesse James was a ruthless killer who stole only for himself.
The teenage James brothers joined up with southern guerrilla leaders when the Civil War broke out. Both participated in massacres of settlers and troops affiliated with the North. After the war was over, the quiet farming life of the James brothers' youth no longer seemed enticing, and the two turned to crime. Jesse's first bank robbery occurred on February 13, 1866, in Liberty, Missouri.
Over the next couple of years, the James brothers became the suspects in several bank robberies throughout western Missouri. However, locals were sympathetic to ex-southern guerrillas and vouched for the brothers. Throughout the late 1860s and early 1870s, the James gang robbed only a couple banks a year, otherwise keeping a low profile.
In 1873, the James gang got into the train robbery game. During one such robbery, the gang declined to take any money or valuables from southerners. The train robberies brought out the Pinkerton Detective Agency, employed to bring the James gang to justice. However, the Pinkerton operatives' botched attempt to kill James left a woman and her child injured and elicited public sympathy for Jesse and Frank James.
The James gang suffered a setback in 1876 when they raided the town of Northfield, Minnesota. The Younger brothers, cousins of the James brothers, were shot and wounded during the brazen midday robbery. After running off in a different direction from Jesse and Frank, the Younger brothers were captured by a large posse and later sentenced to life in prison. Jesse and Frank, the only members of the gang to escape successfully, headed to Tennessee to hide out.
After spending a few quiet years farming, Jesse organized a new gang. Charlie and Robert Ford were on the fringe of the new gang, but they disliked Jesse intensely and decided to kill him for the reward money. On April 3, while Jesse's mother made breakfast, the new gang met to hear Jesse's plan for the next robbery. When Jesse turned his back to adjust a picture on the wall, Bob Ford shot him several times in the back.
His tombstone reads, "Jesse W. James, Died April 3, 1882, Aged 34 years, 6 months, 28 days, Murdered by a traitor and a coward whose name is not worthy to appear here."
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" depicts this brilliantly.
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Apr 4, 1968
Dr. King is assassinated
Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old.
In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in America. He organized a Poor People's Campaign to focus on the issue, including an interracial poor people's march on Washington, and in March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers' protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of an African-American teenager. King left the city but vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration.
On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, "We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop...And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."
One day after speaking those words, Dr. King was shot and killed by a sniper. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D.C. On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute to King's casket as it passed by in a wooden farm cart drawn by two mules.
The evening of King's murder, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.
On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King's murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King's assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named "Raoul" had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning enterprise. On April 4, 1968, he said, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled to Canada. Ray's motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29 years.
During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King Jr. spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists' minds, implicated circumstantially. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI. Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military intelligence, which may have been asked to watch King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.
Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney's office, and three times by the U.S. Justice Department. The investigations all ended with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King. The House committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence to definitively prove this theory. In addition to the mountain of evidence against him--such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and his admitted presence at the rooming house on April 4--Ray had a definite motive in assassinating King: hatred. According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who informed them of his intent to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He died in 1998.
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Apr 5, 1994
Kurt Cobain commits suicide
Modern rock icon Kurt Cobain commits suicide on this day in 1994. His body was discovered inside his home in Seattle, Washington, three days later by Gary Smith, an electrician, who was installing a security system in the suburban house. Despite indications that Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, killed himself, several skeptics questioned the circumstances of his death and pinned responsibility on his wife, Courtney Love.
At least two books, including one penned by Love's estranged father, and a nationally released documentary, Kurt & Courtney, openly expressed doubt that Cobain killed himself and all but accused Love of having her husband killed. Her volatile reputation and healthy list of enemies helped to circulate the rumors. However, police have concluded that Cobain's death was the result of suicide.
Cobain's downward spiral began taking shape in Italy the previous month. He went into a coma and nearly died after mixing champagne and the drug Rohypnol. The public was led to believe that the coma was induced by an accidental heroin overdose, since Cobain had a well-known problem with the drug.
Back at home in Seattle, the police were called to Cobain and Love's home when he again threatened to kill himself. Although Cobain stated in a 1991 interview that he didn't believe in guns, the officers confiscated four from his possession. As his wife and friends watched him spin out of control, they attempted to intervene. Cobain mostly ignored their concerns but reluctantly checked into a rehabilitation clinic in Los Angeles at the end of March.
On March 30, Cobain walked away from the clinic without informing his family or friends. For the next few days, Love could not locate him and decided to hire a private detective on April 3. The detective made contact with Cobain the following day in Seattle, but Cobain refused to return to Los Angeles.
In the meantime, Cobain had convinced a friend to buy him a gun, claiming he needed it for protection. On April 5, Cobain returned home. He had ingested enough Valium and heroin to reach near-fatal levels. In the apartment above the garage was Cobain's sloppily written suicide note, quoting Neil Young's lyric that it is "better to burn out than to fade away."
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Apr 6, 1830
Mormon Church established
In Fayette Township, New York, Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, organizes the Church of Christ during a meeting with a small group of believers.
Born in Vermont in 1805, Smith claimed in 1823 that he had been visited by a Christian angel named Moroni who spoke to him of an ancient Hebrew text that had been lost for 1,500 years. The holy text, supposedly engraved on gold plates by a Native American historian in the fourth century, related the story of Israelite peoples who had lived in America in ancient times. During the next six years, Smith dictated an English translation of this text to his wife and other scribes, and in 1830 The Book of Mormon was published. In the same year, Smith founded the Church of Christ--later known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--in Fayette Township.
The religion rapidly gained converts, and Smith set up Mormon communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. However, the Christian sect was also heavily criticized for its unorthodox practices, such as polygamy, and on June 27, 1844, Smith and his brother were murdered in a jail cell by an anti-Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois.
Two years later, Smith's successor, Brigham Young, led an exodus of persecuted Mormons from Nauvoo, Illinois, along the western wagon trails in search of religious and political freedom. In July 1847, the 148 initial Mormon pioneers reached Utah's Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Upon viewing the valley, Young declared, "This is the place," and the pioneers began preparations for the tens of thousands of Mormon migrants who would follow them and settle there.
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Apr 7, 1994
Civil war erupts in Rwanda
On this day in 1994, Rwandan armed forces kill 10 Belgian peacekeeping officers in a successful effort to discourage international intervention in the genocide that had begun only hours earlier. In approximately three months, the Hutu extremists who controlled Rwanda brutally murdered an estimated 500,000 to 1 million innocent civilian Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the worst episode of ethnic genocide since World War II.
The immediate roots of the 1994 genocide dated back to the early 1990s, when President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, began using anti-Tutsi rhetoric to consolidate his power among the Hutus. Beginning in October 1990, there were several massacres of hundreds of Tutsis. Although the two ethnic groups were very similar, sharing the same language and culture for centuries, the law required registration based on ethnicity. The government and army began to assemble the Interahamwe (meaning "those who attack together") and prepared for the elimination of the Tutsis by arming Hutus with guns and machetes. In January 1994, the United Nations forces in Rwanda warned that larger massacres were imminent.
On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down. It is not known if the attack was carried out by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi military organization stationed outside the country at the time, or by Hutu extremists trying to instigate a mass killing. In any event, Hutu extremists in the military, led by Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, immediately went into action, murdering Tutsis and moderate Hutus within hours of the crash.
The Belgian peacekeepers were killed the next day, a key factor in the withdrawal of U.N. forces from Rwanda. Soon afterward, the radio stations in Rwanda were broadcasting appeals to the Hutu majority to kill all Tutsis in the country. The army and the national police directed the slaughter, sometimes threatening Hutu civilians when persuasion didn't work. Thousands of innocent people were hacked to death with machetes by their neighbors. Despite the horrific crimes, the international community, including the United States, hesitated to take any action. They wrongly ascribed the genocide to chaos amid tribal war. President Bill Clinton later called America's failure to do anything to stop the genocide "the biggest regret" of his administration.
It was left to the RPF, led by Paul Kagame, to begin an ultimately successful military campaign for control of Rwanda. By the summer, the RPF had defeated the Hutu forces and driven them out of the country and into several neighboring nations. However, by that time, an estimated 75 percent of the Tutsis living in Rwanda had been murdered.
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Apr 8, 563 B.C.
Buddhists celebrate birth of Gautama Buddha
On this day, Buddhists celebrate the commemoration of the birth of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, thought to have lived in India from 563 B.C. to 483 B.C. Actually, the Buddhist tradition that celebrates his birthday on April 8 originally placed his birth in the 11th century B.C., and it was not until the modern era that scholars determined that he was more likely born in the sixth century B.C., and possibly in May rather than April.
According to the Tripitaka, which is recognized by scholars as the earliest existing record of the Buddha's life and discourses, Gautama Buddha was born as Prince Siddhartha, the son of the king of the Sakya people. The kingdom of the Sakyas was situated on the borders of present-day Nepal and India. Siddhartha's family was of the Gautama clan. His mother, Queen Mahamaya, gave birth to him in the park of Lumbini, in what is now southern Nepal. A pillar placed there in commemoration of the event by an Indian emperor in the third century B.C. still stands.
At his birth, it was predicted that the prince would either become a great world monarch or a Buddha--a supremely enlightened teacher. The Brahmans told his father, King Suddhodana, that Siddhartha would become a ruler if he were kept isolated from the outside world. The king took pains to shelter his son from misery and anything else that might influence him toward the religious life. Siddhartha was brought up in great luxury, and he married and fathered a son. At age 29, he decided to see more of the world and began excursions off the palace grounds in his chariot. In successive trips, he saw an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, and since he had been protected from the miseries of aging, sickness, and death, his charioteer had to explain what they were. Finally, Siddhartha saw a monk, and, impressed with the man's peaceful demeanor, he decided to go into the world to discover how the man could be so serene in the midst of such suffering.
Siddhartha secretly left the palace and became a wandering ascetic. He traveled south, where the centers of learning were, and studied meditation under the teachers Alara Kalama and Udraka Ramaputra. He soon mastered their systems, reaching high states of mystical realization, but was unsatisfied and went out again in search of nirvana, the highest level of enlightenment. For nearly six years, he undertook fasting and other austerities, but these techniques proved ineffectual and he abandoned them. After regaining his strength, he seated himself under a pipal tree at what is now Bodh Gaya in west-central India and promised not to rise until he had attained the supreme enlightenment. After fighting off Mara, an evil spirit who tempted him with worldly comforts and desires, Siddhartha reached enlightenment, becoming a Buddha at the age of 35.
The Gautama Buddha then traveled to the deer park near Benares, India, where he gave his first sermon and outlined the basic doctrines of Buddhism. According to Buddhism, there are "four noble truths": (1) existence is suffering; (2) this suffering is caused by human craving; (3) there is a cessation of the suffering, which is nirvana; and (4) nirvana can be achieved, in this or future lives, though the "eightfold path" of right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
For the rest of his life, the Buddha taught and gathered disciples to his sangha, or community of monks. He died at age 80, telling his monks to continue working for their spiritual liberation by following his teachings. Buddhism eventually spread from India to Central and Southeast Asia, China, Korea, Japan, and, in the 20th century, to the West. Today, there are an estimated 350 million people in 100 nations who adhere to Buddhist beliefs and practices.
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Apr 9, 1865
Robert E. Lee surrenders
At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.
In retreating from the Union army's Appomattox Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had actually outrun Lee's army, blocking their retreat and taking 6,000 prisoners at Sayler's Creek. Desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Confederates were surrounded with no possibility of escape. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. The two generals met in the parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o'clock in the afternoon.
Lee and Grant, both holding the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican War and exchanged awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant arrived in his muddy field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword. Lee asked for the terms, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. All officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property--most important, the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee's starving men would be given Union rations.
Shushing a band that had begun to play in celebration, General Grant told his officers, "The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again." Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks, for all practical purposes the Civil War had come to an end.
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Apr 10, 1866
ASPCA is founded
On April 10, 1866, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by philanthropist and diplomat Henry Bergh, 54.
In 1863, Bergh had been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to a diplomatic post at the Russian court of Czar Alexander II. It was there that he was horrified to witness work horses beaten by their peasant drivers. En route back to America, a June 1865 visit to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in London awakened his determination to secure a charter not only to incorporate the ASPCA but to exercise the power to arrest and prosecute violators of the law.
Back in New York, Bergh pleaded on behalf of "these mute servants of mankind" at a February 8, 1866, meeting at Clinton Hall. He argued that protecting animals was an issue that crossed party lines and class boundaries. "This is a matter purely of conscience; it has no perplexing side issues," he said. "It is a moral question in all its aspects." The speech prompted a number of dignitaries to sign his "Declaration of the Rights of Animals."
Bergh's impassioned accounts of the horrors inflicted on animals convinced the New York State legislature to pass the charter incorporating the ASPCA on April 10, 1866. Nine days later, the first effective anti-cruelty law in the United States was passed, allowing the ASPCA to investigate complaints of animal cruelty and to make arrests.
Bergh was a hands-on reformer, becoming a familiar sight on the streets and in the courtrooms of New York. He regularly inspected slaughter houses, worked with police to close down dog- and rat-fighting pits and lectured in schools and to adult societies. In 1867, the ASPCA established and operated the nation's first ambulance for horses.
As the pioneer and innovator of the humane movement, the ASPCA quickly became the model for more than 25 other humane organizations in the United States and Canada. And by the time Bergh died in 1888, 37 of the 38 states in the Union had passed anti-cruelty laws.
Bergh’s dramatic street rescues of mistreated horses and livestock served as a model for those trying to protect abused children. After Mary Ellen McCormack, 9, was found tied to a bed and brutally beaten by her foster parents in 1874, activists founded the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Bergh served as one of the group’s first vice presidents.
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Apr 11, 1814
Napoleon exiled to Elba
On this day in 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba.
The future emperor was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on August 15, 1769. After attending military school, he fought during the French Revolution of 1789 and rapidly rose through the military ranks, leading French troops in a number of successful campaigns throughout Europe in the late 1700s. By 1799, he had established himself at the top of a military dictatorship. In 1804, he became emperor of France and continued to consolidate power through his military campaigns, so that by 1810 much of Europe came under his rule. Although Napoleon developed a reputation for being power-hungry and insecure, he is also credited with enacting a series of important political and social reforms that had a lasting impact on European society, including judiciary systems, constitutions, voting rights for all men and the end of feudalism. Additionally, he supported education, science and literature. His Code Napoleon, which codified key freedoms gained during the French Revolution, such as religious tolerance, remains the foundation of French civil law.
In 1812, thinking that Russia was plotting an alliance with England, Napoleon launched an invasion against the Russians that eventually ended with his troops retreating from Moscow and much of Europe uniting against him. In 1814, Napoleon's broken forces gave up and Napoleon offered to step down in favor of his son. When this offer was rejected, he abdicated and was sent to Elba. In March 1815, he escaped his island exile and returned to Paris, where he regained supporters and reclaimed his emperor title, Napoleon I, in a period known as the Hundred Days. However, in June 1815, he was defeated at the bloody Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon's defeat ultimately signaled the end of France's domination of Europe. He abdicated for a second time and was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena, in the southern Atlantic Ocean, where he lived out the rest of his days. He died at age 52 on May 5, 1821, possibly from stomach cancer, although some theories contend he was poisoned.
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Apr 12, 1945
President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies
While on a vacation in Warm Springs, Georgia, President Roosevelt suffers a stroke and dies. His death marked a critical turning point in U.S. relations with the Soviet Union, as his successor, Harry S. Truman, decided to take a tougher stance with the Russians.
By April 1945, Roosevelt had been elected president of the United States four times and had served for over 12 years. He had seen the United States through some of its darkest days, from the depths of the Great Depression through the toughest times of World War II. In early 1945, shortly after being sworn in for his fourth term as president, Roosevelt was on the verge of leading his nation to triumph in the Second World War. Germany teetered on the brink of defeat, and the Japanese empire was crumbling under the blows of the American military. In February 1945, Roosevelt traveled to Yalta in the Soviet Union to meet with Russian leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to discuss the postwar world. Roosevelt returned from these intense meetings drawn and sick. He vacationed in Warm Springs, Georgia, but the rest did not lead to recuperation. On April 12, 1945, he suffered a massive stroke and died.
Roosevelt left a controversial legacy in terms of U.S.-Soviet relations. Critics charged that the president had been "soft" on the communists and naive in dealing with Stalin. The meetings at Yalta, they claimed, resulted in a "sellout" that left the Soviets in control of Eastern Europe and half of Germany. Roosevelt's defenders responded that he made the best of difficult circumstances. He kept the Grand Alliance between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain intact long enough to defeat Germany. As for Eastern Europe and Germany, there was little Roosevelt could have done, since the Red Army occupied those areas. Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, decided that a "tougher" policy toward the Soviets was in order, and he began to press the Russians on a number of issues. By 1947, relations between the two former allies had nearly reached the breaking point and the Cold War was in full swing.
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Apr 13, 1997
Tiger Woods wins first major
On this day in 1997, 21-year-old Tiger Woods wins the prestigious Masters Tournament by a record 12 strokes in Augusta, Georgia. It was Woods' first victory in one of golf's four major championships–the U.S. Open, the British Open, the PGA Championship, and the Masters–and the greatest performance by a professional golfer in more than a century.
Eldrick "Tiger" Woods was born in a suburb of Los Angeles, California, on December 30, 1975. The only child of an African-American father and a Thai mother, Woods was encouraged from infancy by his father for a career in golf. At the age of two, he teed off against comedian Bob Hope on television's Mike Douglas Show. At five years old, he was featured on the television show That's Incredible. At age eight, Tiger won his first junior world championship, and in 1991, at age 15, he became the youngest player ever to win the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship. He also captured the 1992 and 1993 Junior Amateur titles, and in 1994 accepted a scholarship to attend Stanford University. That year, he came from six holes behind to win the first of his three consecutive U.S. Amateur championships. He was 18 years old and the youngest Amateur champion in history.
In 1995, Tiger played the Masters, his first professional major championship. The Augusta National Golf Club, which runs the Masters, had not let an African-American join its ranks until 1991. Woods finished 41st in his first Masters appearance. In 1996, he won the collegiate title. By this time, he was already attracting considerable media attention and attracting throngs of new fans to the sport. After claiming his third U.S. Amateur title, Woods left college and turned professional in August 1996. Playing as a pro in eight Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) events in 1996, he won a title and was named the PGA Tour's outstanding rookie. In December 1996, he was celebrated by the magazine Sports Illustrated as its "Sportsman of the Year."
In professional play, most of Woods' opponents were in their late 30s or early 40s. At 6'2" and 155 pounds, he was slender and athletic, and had developed a devastating swing that routinely allowed him to hit drives of more than 300 yards. He also had a reputation for mental toughness and was a superb putter and chipper. In April 1997, all these attributes came together for the most decisive victory in the Masters' 44-year history.
His margin of victory–12 strokes–was the largest in the 20th century, and second only to Old Tom Morris' 13-shot margin at the 1862 British Open. His score of 18-under-par 270 broke Jack Nicklaus' 32-year-old Masters record of 17-under-par 271. He was the youngest golfer by two years to win the Masters and the first person of Asian or African heritage to win a major. Never before had so many spectators come to Augusta National, and never before had so many people watched it on television.
By June 1997, Tiger was ranked number one in the world. In 1999, he won eight PGA tournaments, earned a record $6 million, and began a winning streak that eventually tied Ben Hogan's 1948 streak, the second longest in PGA history. In June 2000, he won his first U.S. Open title, shooting a record 12-under-par 272 to finish 15 strokes ahead of his nearest competitors. It was the greatest professional golf performance in history, surpassing even his 1997 Masters' triumph and Old Tom Morris' 1862 showing. In July 2000, he captured the British Open, and in August the PGA championship. At the age of 24, he was the youngest player ever to win all four major golf titles and just the second to win three majors in a year. On April 10, 2005, he earned his fourth green sport coat at Augusta National, becoming the first person to win four Masters before age 30.
Tiger’s winning pace slowed around 2004, when he devoted time to reworking his swing and rehabilitating his surgically repaired knee. It was also during this period that he married Elin Nordegren, a Swedish former model who would become the mother of his two children. Tiger was back in top form by 2005, winning his 10th major. His performance fluctuated throughout the rest of the decade as he struggled with a torn ACL and personal problems that garnered substantial media attention: In late 2009, in the wake of events surrounding a car accident outside Tiger’s Florida home, several women came forward claiming to have had affairs with the famous golfer. Nordegren divorced him in August 2010, just as Tiger began his first winless season in his career.
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Apr 14, 1865
John Wilkes Booth shoots Abraham Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln is shot in the head at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis! (Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged," as he jumped onto the stage and fled on horseback. Lincoln died the next morning.
Booth was a well-regarded actor who was particularly loved in the South before the Civil War. During the war, he stayed in the North and became increasingly bitter when audiences weren't as enamored of him as they were in Dixie. Along with friends Samuel Arnold, Michael O'Laughlin, and John Surratt, Booth conspired to kidnap Lincoln and deliver him to the South.
On March 17, along with George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Lewis Paine, the group met in a Washington bar to plot the abduction of the president three days later. However, when the president changed his plans, the scheme was scuttled. Shortly afterward, the South surrendered to the Union and the conspirators altered their plan. They decided to kill Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward on the same evening.
When April 14 came around, Atzerodt backed out of his part to kill Johnson. Upset, Booth went to drink at a saloon near Ford's Theatre. At about 10 p.m. he walked into the theater and up to the president's box. Lincoln's guard, John Parker, was not there because he had gotten bored with the play, Our American Cousin, and left his post to get a beer. Booth easily slipped in and shot the president in the back of the head. The president's friend, Major Rathbone, attempted to grab Booth but was slashed by Booth's knife. Booth injured his leg badly when he jumped to the stage to escape, but he managed to hobble outside to his horse.
Meanwhile, Lewis Paine forced his way into William Seward's house and stabbed the secretary of state several times before fleeing. Booth rode to Virginia with David Herold and stopped at the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who placed splints on Booth's legs. They hid in a barn on Richard Garrett's farm as thousands of Union troops combed the area looking for them. The other conspirators were captured, except for John Surratt, who fled to Canada.
When the troops finally caught up with Booth and Herold on April 26, they gave them the option of surrendering before the barn was burned down. Herold decided to surrender, but Booth remained in the barn as it went up in flames. Booth was then shot and killed in the burning barn by Corporal Boston Corbett. On July 7, George Atzerodt, Lewis Paine, David Herold, and John Surratt's mother, Mary, were hanged in Washington. The execution of Mary Surratt is believed by some to have been a miscarriage of justice. Although there was proof of Surratt’s involvement in the original abduction conspiracy,it is clear that her deeds were minor compared to those of the others who were executed.
Her son John was eventually tracked down in Egypt and brought back to trial, but he managed, with the help of clever lawyers, to win an acquittal.
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Apr 15, 1865
President Lincoln dies
President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, dies from an assassin’s bullet. Shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington the night before, Lincoln lived for nine hours before succumbing to the severe head wound he sustained.
Lincoln’s death came just after the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lincoln had just served the most difficult presidency in history, successfully leading the country through civil war. His job was exhausting and overwhelming at times. He had to manage a tremendous military effort, deal with diverse opinions in his own Republican party, counter his Democratic critics, maintain morale on the northern home front, and keep foreign countries such as France and Great Britain from recognizing the Confederacy. He did all of this, and changed American history when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, converting the war goal from reunion of the nation to a crusade to end slavery.
Now, the great man was dead. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said, “Now, he belongs to the ages.” Word spread quickly across the nation, stunning a people who were still celebrating the Union victory. Troops in the field wept, as did General Ulysses S. Grant, the overall Union commander. Perhaps no group was more grief stricken than the freed slaves. Although abolitionists considered Lincoln slow in moving against slavery, many freedmen saw “Father Abraham” as their savior. They faced an uncertain world, and now had lost their most powerful proponent.
Lincoln’s funeral was held on April 19, before a funeral train carried his body back to his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. During the two-week journey, hundreds of thousands gathered along the railroad tracks to pay their respects, and the casket was unloaded for public viewing at several stops. He and his son, Willie, who died in the White House of typhoid fever in 1862, were interred on May 4.
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Apr 16, 1943
Hallucinogenic effects of LSD discovered
In Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumes LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds. After taking the drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide, Dr. Hoffman was disturbed by unusual sensations and hallucinations. In his notes, he related the experience:
"Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away."
After intentionally taking the drug again to confirm that it had caused this strange physical and mental state, Dr. Hoffman published a report announcing his discovery, and so LSD made its entry into the world as a hallucinogenic drug. Widespread use of the so-called "mind-expanding" drug did not begin until the 1960s, when counterculture figures such as Albert M. Hubbard, Timothy Leary, and Ken Kesey publicly expounded on the benefits of using LSD as a recreational drug. The manufacture, sale, possession, and use of LSD, known to cause negative reactions in some of those who take it, were made illegal in the United States in 1965.
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Apr 17, 1790
Benjamin Franklin dies
On April 17, 1790, American statesman, printer, scientist, and writer Benjamin Franklin dies in Philadelphia at age 84.
Born in Boston in 1706, Franklin became at 12 years old an apprentice to his half brother James, a printer and publisher. He learned the printing trade and in 1723 went to Philadelphia to work after a dispute with his brother. After a sojourn in London, he started a printing and publishing press with a friend in 1728. In 1729, the company won a contract to publish Pennsylvania's paper currency and also began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was regarded as one of the better colonial newspapers. From 1732 to 1757, he wrote and published Poor Richard's Almanack, an instructive and humorous periodical in which Franklin coined such practical American proverbs as "God helps those who help themselves" and "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
As his own wealth and prestige grew, Franklin took on greater civic responsibilities in Philadelphia and helped establish the city's first circulating library, police force, volunteer fire company, and an academy that became the University of Pennsylvania. From 1737 to 1753, he was postmaster of Philadelphia and during this time also served as a clerk of the Pennsylvania legislature. In 1753, he became deputy postmaster general, in charge of mail in all the northern colonies.
Deeply interested in science and technology, he invented the Franklin stove, which is still manufactured today, and bifocal eyeglasses, among other practical inventions. In 1748, he turned his printing business over to his partner so he would have more time for his experiments. The phenomenon of electricity fascinated him, and in a dramatic experiment he flew a kite in a thunderstorm to prove that lightning is an electrical discharge. He later invented the lightning rod. Many terms used in discussing electricity, including positive, negative, battery, and conductor, were coined by Franklin in his scientific papers. He was the first American scientist to be highly regarded in European scientific circles.
Franklin was active in colonial affairs and in 1754 proposed the union of the colonies, which was rejected by Britain. In 1757, he went to London to argue for the right to tax the massive estates of the Penn family in Pennsylvania, and in 1764 went again to ask for a new charter for Pennsylvania. He was in England when Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. His initial failure to actively oppose the controversial act drew wide criticism in the colonies, but he soon redeemed himself by stoutly defending American rights before the House of Commons. With tensions between the American colonies and Britain rising, he stayed on in London and served as agent for several colonies.
In 1775, he returned to America as the American Revolution approached and was a delegate at the Continental Congress. In 1776, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and in July signed the final document. Ironically, Franklin's illegitimate son, William Franklin, whom Franklin and his wife had raised, had at the same time emerged as a leader of the Loyalists. In 1776, Congress sent Benjamin Franklin, one of the embattled United States' most prominent statesmen, to France as a diplomat. Warmly embraced, he succeeded in 1778 in securing two treaties that provided the Americans with significant military and economic aid. In 1781, with French help, the British were defeated. With John Jay and John Adams, Franklin then negotiated the Treaty of Paris with Britain, which was signed in 1783.
In 1785, Franklin returned to the United States. In his last great public service, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and worked hard for the document's ratification. After his death in 1790, Philadelphia gave him the largest funeral the city had ever seen.
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Apr 18, 1775
Revere and Dawes ride
In Massachusetts, British troops march out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the Patriot arsenal at Concord and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. As the British departed, Boston Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to warn Adams and Hancock and rouse the Patriot minutemen.
By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against Concord and Lexington.
The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a British military action for some time, and upon learning of the British plan Revere and Dawes set off across the Massachusetts countryside. Taking separate routes in case one of them were captured, Dawes left Boston by the Boston Neck peninsula, and Revere crossed the Charles River to Charlestown by boat. As the two couriers made their way, Patriots in Charlestown waited for a signal from Boston informing them of the British troop movement. As previously agreed, one lantern would be hung in the steeple of Boston's Old North Church, the highest point in the city, if the British were marching out of the city by Boston Neck, and two if they were crossing the Charles River to Cambridge. Two lanterns were hung, and the armed Patriots set out for Lexington and Concord accordingly. Along the way, Revere and Dawes roused hundreds of minutemen, who armed themselves and set out to oppose the British.
Revere arrived in Lexington shortly before Dawes, but together they warned Adams and Hancock and then set out for Concord. Along the way, they were joined by Samuel Prescott, a young Patriot who had been riding home after visiting a friend. Early in the morning of April 19, a British patrol captured Revere, and Dawes lost his horse, forcing him to walk back to Lexington on foot. However, Prescott escaped and rode on to Concord to warn the Patriots there. After being roughly questioned for an hour or two, Revere was released when the patrol heard minutemen alarm guns being fired on their approach to Lexington.
Around 5 a.m., 700 British troops under Major John Pitcairn arrived at the town to find a 77-man-strong colonial militia under Captain John Parker waiting for them on Lexington's common green. Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment's hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the "shot heard around the world" was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.
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Apr 19, 1993
Branch Davidian compound burns
At Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launches a tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound, ending a tense 51-day standoff between the federal government and an armed religious cult. By the end of the day, the compound was burned to the ground, and some 80 Branch Davidians, including 22 children, had perished in the inferno.
On February 28, 1993, agents of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) launched a raid against the Branch Davidian compound as part of an investigation into illegal possession of firearms and explosives by the Christian cult. As the agents attempted to penetrate the complex, gunfire erupted, beginning an extended gun battle that left four ATF agents dead and 15 wounded. Six Branch Davidians were fatally wounded, and several more were injured, including David Koresh, the cult's founder and leader. After 45 minutes of shooting, the ATF agents withdrew, and a cease-fire was negotiated over the telephone. The operation, which involved more than 100 ATF agents, was one of the largest ever mounted by the bureau and resulted in the highest casualties of any ATF operation.
David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell in Houston, Texas, in 1959. In 1981, he joined the Branch Davidians, a sect of the Seventh Day Adventist Church founded in 1934 by a Bulgarian immigrant named Victor Houteff. Koresh, who possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the Bible, rapidly rose in the hierarchy of the small religious community, eventually entering into a power struggle with the Davidians' leader, George Roden.
For a short time, Koresh retreated with his followers to eastern Texas, but in late 1987 he returned to Mount Carmel with seven armed followers and raided the compound, severely wounding Roden. Koresh went on trial for attempted murder, but the charge was dropped after his case was declared a mistrial. By 1990, he was the leader of the Branch Davidians and legally changed his name to David Koresh, with David representing his status as head of the biblical House of David, and Koresh standing for the Hebrew name for Cyrus, the Persian king who allowed the Jews held captive in Babylon to return to Israel.
Koresh took several wives at Mount Carmel and fathered at least 12 children from these women, several of whom were as young as 12 or 13 when they became pregnant. There is also evidence that Koresh may have harshly disciplined some of the 100 or so Branch Davidians living inside the compound, particularly his children. A central aspect of Koresh's religious teachings was his assertion that the apocalyptic events predicted in the Bible's book of Revelation were imminent, making it necessary, he asserted, for the Davidians to stockpile weapons and explosives in preparation.
Following the unsuccessful ATF raid, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took over the situation. A standoff with the Branch Davidians stretched into seven weeks, and little progress was made in the telephone negotiations, as the Davidians had stockpiled years of food and other necessities before the raid.
On April 18, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno approved a tear-gas assault on the compound, and at approximately 6:00 a.m. on April 19 the Branch Davidians were informed of the imminent attack and asked to surrender, which they refused to do. A few minutes later, two FBI combat vehicles began inserting gas into the building and were joined by Bradley tanks, which fired tear-gas canisters through the compound's windows. The Branch Davidians, many with gas masks on, refused to evacuate, and by 11:40 a.m. the last of some 100 tear-gas canisters was fired into the compound. Just after noon, a fire erupted at one or more locations on the compound, and minutes later nine Davidians fled the rapidly spreading blaze. Gunfire was reported but ceased as the compound was completely engulfed by the flames.
Koresh and at least 80 of his followers, including 22 children, died during the federal government's second disastrous assault on Mount Carmel. The FBI and the Justice Department maintained there was conclusive evidence that the Branch Davidian members ignited the fire, citing an eyewitness account and various forensic data. Of the gunfire reported during the fire, the government argued that the Davidians were either killing each other as part of a suicide pact or were killing dissenters who attempted to escape the Koresh-ordered suicide by fire. Most of the surviving Branch Davidians contested this official position, as do some critics in the press and elsewhere, whose charges against the ATF and FBI's handling of the Waco standoff ranged from incompetence to premeditated murder. In 1999, the FBI admitted they used tear-gas grenades in the assault, which have been known to cause fires because of their incendiary properties.
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Apr 20, 1999
Columbine High School massacre
On this day in 1999, two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, south of Denver. At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold, 18, and Eric Harris, 17, dressed in trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage. By 11:35 a.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded another 23 people. Shortly after noon, the two teens turned their guns on themselves and committed suicide.
The crime was the worst school shooting in U.S. history (until 33 people, including the gunman, were killed in the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007) and prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the teen gunmen. In the days immediately following the shootings, it was speculated that Klebold and Harris purposely chose jocks, minorities and Christians as their victims. It was initially reported that one student, Cassie Bernall, was allegedly asked by one of the gunmen if she believed in God. When Bernall said, "Yes," she was shot to death. Her parents later wrote a book titled "She Said Yes," honoring their martyred daughter. Apparently, however, the question was not actually posed to Bernall but to another student who had already been wounded by a gunshot. When that victim replied, "Yes," the shooter walked away. Subsequent investigations also determined that Harris and Klebold chose their victims randomly. Their original plan was for two propane bombs to explode in the school's cafeteria, potentially killing hundreds of people and forcing the survivors outside and into the gunmen's line of fire. When the bombs didn't work, Harris and Klebold went into the school to carry out their murderous rampage.
There was speculation that Harris and Klebold committed the killings because they were members of a group of social outcasts called the "Trenchcoat Mafia" that was fascinated by Goth culture. Violent video games and music were also blamed for influencing the killers. However, none of these theories was ever proven. Columbine High School reopened in the fall of 1999, but the massacre left a scar on the Littleton community. Mark Manes, the man who sold a gun to Harris and bought him 100 rounds of ammunition the day before the murders, was sentenced to six years in prison. In the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, many schools enacted "zero tolerance" rules regarding disruptive behavior and threats of violence from students.
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Apr 21, 753 B.C.
Rome founded
According to tradition, on April 21, 753 B.C., Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated sometime in the fourth century B.C., and the exact date of Rome's founding was set by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century B.C.
According to the legend, Romulus and Remus were the sons of Rhea Silvia, the daughter of King Numitor of Alba Longa. Alba Longa was a mythical city located in the Alban Hills southeast of what would become Rome. Before the birth of the twins, Numitor was deposed by his younger brother Amulius, who forced Rhea to become a vestal virgin so that she would not give birth to rival claimants to his title. However, Rhea was impregnated by the war god Mars and gave birth to Romulus and Remus. Amulius ordered the infants drowned in the Tiber, but they survived and washed ashore at the foot of the Palatine hill, where they were suckled by a she-wolf until they were found by the shepherd Faustulus.
Reared by Faustulus and his wife, the twins later became leaders of a band of young shepherd warriors. After learning their true identity, they attacked Alba Longa, killed the wicked Amulius, and restored their grandfather to the throne. The twins then decided to found a town on the site where they had been saved as infants. They soon became involved in a petty quarrel, however, and Remus was slain by his brother. Romulus then became ruler of the settlement, which was named "Rome" after him.
To populate his town, Romulus offered asylum to fugitives and exiles. Rome lacked women, however, so Romulus invited the neighboring Sabines to a festival and abducted their women. A war then ensued, but the Sabine women intervened to prevent the Sabine men from seizing Rome. A peace treaty was drawn up, and the communities merged under the joint rule of Romulus and the Sabine king, Titus Tatius. Tatius' early death, perhaps perpetrated by Romulus, left the Roman as the sole king again. After a long and successful rule, Romulus died under obscure circumstances. Many Romans believed he was changed into a god and worshipped him as the deity Quirinus. After Romulus, there were six more kings of Rome, the last three believed to be Etruscans. Around 509 B.C., the Roman republic was established.
Another Roman foundation legend, which has its origins in ancient Greece, tells of how the mythical Trojan Aeneas founded Lavinium and started a dynasty that would lead to the birth of Romulus and Remus several centuries later. In the Iliad, an epic Greek poem probably composed by Homer in the eighth century B.C., Aeneas was the only major Trojan hero to survive the Greek destruction of Troy. A passage told of how he and his descendants would rule the Trojans, but since there was no record of any such dynasty in Troy, Greek scholars proposed that Aeneas and his followers relocated.
In the fifth century B.C., a few Greek historians speculated that Aeneas settled at Rome, which was then still a small city-state. In the fourth century B.C., Rome began to expand within the Italian peninsula, and Romans, coming into greater contact with the Greeks, embraced the suggestion that Aeneas had a role in the foundation of their great city. In the first century B.C., the Roman poet Virgil developed the Aeneas myth in his epic poem the Aeneid, which told of Aeneas' journey to Rome. Augustus, the first Roman emperor and emperor during Virgil's time, and Julius Caesar, his great-uncle and predecessor as Roman ruler, were said to be descended from Aeneas.
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Apr 22, 2004
Pat Tillman killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan
Pat Tillman, who gave up his pro football career to enlist in the U.S. Army after the terrorist attacks of September 11, is killed by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. The news that Tillman, age 27, was mistakenly gunned down by his fellow Rangers, rather than enemy forces, was initially covered up by the U.S. military.
Patrick Daniel Tillman was born the oldest of three brothers on November 6, 1976, in San Jose, California. He played linebacker for Arizona State University, where during his senior year he was named Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year. In 1998, Tillman was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals. He became the team’s starting safety as well as one of its most popular players. In 2000, he broke the team record for tackles with 224. In May 2002, Tillman turned down a three-year, multi-million-dollar deal with the Cardinals and instead, prompted by the events of 9/11, joined the Army along with his brother Kevin, a minor-league baseball player. The Tillman brothers were assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment in Fort Lewis, Washington, and did tours in Iraq in 2003, followed by Afghanistan the next year.
On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman was killed by gunfire while on patrol in a rugged area of eastern Afghanistan. The Army initially maintained that Tillman and his unit were ambushed by enemy forces. Tillman was praised as a national hero, awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart medals and posthumously promoted to corporal. Weeks later, Tillman’s family learned his death had been accidental. His parents publicly criticized the Army, saying they had been intentionally deceived by military officials who wanted to use their son as a patriotic poster boy. They believed their son’s death was initially covered up by military officials because it could’ve undermined support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A criminal investigation was eventually launched into the case and in 2007 the Army censured retired three-star general Philip Kensinger, who was in charge of special operations at the time of Tillman’s death, for lying to investigators and making other mistakes. “Memorandums of concern” were also sent to several brigadier generals and lower-ranking officers who the Army believed acted improperly in the case.
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Apr 22, 2004
Pat Tillman killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan
Pat Tillman, who gave up his pro football career to enlist in the U.S. Army after the terrorist attacks of September 11, is killed by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. The news that Tillman, age 27, was mistakenly gunned down by his fellow Rangers, rather than enemy forces, was initially covered up by the U.S. military.
Patrick Daniel Tillman was born the oldest of three brothers on November 6, 1976, in San Jose, California. He played linebacker for Arizona State University, where during his senior year he was named Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year. In 1998, Tillman was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals. He became the team’s starting safety as well as one of its most popular players. In 2000, he broke the team record for tackles with 224. In May 2002, Tillman turned down a three-year, multi-million-dollar deal with the Cardinals and instead, prompted by the events of 9/11, joined the Army along with his brother Kevin, a minor-league baseball player. The Tillman brothers were assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment in Fort Lewis, Washington, and did tours in Iraq in 2003, followed by Afghanistan the next year.
On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman was killed by gunfire while on patrol in a rugged area of eastern Afghanistan. The Army initially maintained that Tillman and his unit were ambushed by enemy forces. Tillman was praised as a national hero, awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart medals and posthumously promoted to corporal. Weeks later, Tillman’s family learned his death had been accidental. His parents publicly criticized the Army, saying they had been intentionally deceived by military officials who wanted to use their son as a patriotic poster boy. They believed their son’s death was initially covered up by military officials because it could’ve undermined support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A criminal investigation was eventually launched into the case and in 2007 the Army censured retired three-star general Philip Kensinger, who was in charge of special operations at the time of Tillman’s death, for lying to investigators and making other mistakes. “Memorandums of concern” were also sent to several brigadier generals and lower-ranking officers who the Army believed acted improperly in the case.
Fucked up story. Dude was a stud.
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Apr 23, 1564
William Shakespeare born
According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. It is impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare's date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years before.
Although few plays have been performed or analyzed as extensively as the 38 plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, there are few surviving details about the playwright's life. This dearth of biographical information is due primarily to his station in life; he was not a noble, but the son of John Shakespeare, a leather trader and the town bailiff. The events of William Shakespeare's early life can only be gleaned from official records, such as baptism and marriage records.
He probably attended the grammar school in Stratford, where he would have studied Latin and read classical literature. He did not go to university but at age 18 married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born six months later, and in 1585 William and Anne had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died 11 years later, and Anne Shakespeare outlived her husband, dying in 1623. Nothing is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare's emergence as a playwright in London in the early 1590s, but unfounded stories have him stealing deer, joining a group of traveling players, becoming a schoolteacher, or serving as a soldier in the Low Countries.
The first reference to Shakespeare as a London playwright came in 1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote derogatorily of him on his deathbed. It is believed that Shakespeare had written the three parts of Henry VI by that point. In 1593, Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare's first published poem, and he dedicated it to the young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton. In 1594, having probably composed, among other plays, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, he became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which became the King's Men after James I's ascension in 1603. The company grew into England's finest, in no small part because of Shakespeare, who was its principal dramatist. It also had the finest actor of the day, Richard Burbage, and the best theater, the Globe, which was located on the Thames' south bank. Shakespeare stayed with the King's Men until his retirement and often acted in small parts.
By 1596, the company had performed the classic Shakespeare plays Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. That year, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, a testament to his son's growing wealth and fame. In 1597, William Shakespeare bought a large house in Stratford. In 1599, after producing his great historical series, the first and second part of Henry IV and Henry V, he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe Theatre.
The beginning of the 17th century saw the performance of the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet. The next play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, was written at the request of Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to see another play that included the popular character Falstaff. During the next decade, Shakespeare produced such masterpieces as Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. In 1609, his sonnets, probably written during the 1590s, were published. The 154 sonnets are marked by the recurring themes of the mutability of beauty and the transcendent power of love and art.
Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1616. Today, nearly 400 years later, his plays are performed and read more often and in more nations than ever before. In a million words written over 20 years, he captured the full range of human emotions and conflicts with a precision that remains sharp today. As his great contemporary the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson said, "He was not of an age, but for all time."
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Apr 24, 1922
Forensic evidence is introduced in Australia
Colin Ross is hanged to death in Australia for the rape and murder of 13-year-old Alma Tirtschke. Ross was one of the first criminals in Australia to be convicted based on forensic evidence. On December 30, 1921, Tirtschke was reported missing in Melbourne. The next day, a constable patrolling Gun Alley, a well-known area for prostitutes, found the young schoolgirl's body bundled up in a blanket. Strangely, despite evidence of a brutal rape, there was no trace of blood found on her body.
Given the scarcity of cars in Melbourne at the time, the police surmised that the perpetrator had to live nearby. Prostitutes' eyewitness accounts led authorities to Colin Ross, who owned a nearby bar. Pretending to be helpful, Ross volunteered that Tirtschke had been at the bar on the day she was killed.
Police soon learned that Ross had previously indicated a predilection for young girls. He had reportedly told someone, "I prefer them without feathers." Although this was enough to convince law enforcement officials of Ross' guilt, additional evidence would be needed for a conviction. Since no evidence would be forthcoming from the obviously cleaned body, police turned their attention to Ross' house.
There they found a blanket that had long red hairs on it. The color and length matched Tirtschke's hair, and new experts in the field identified it as human. Some of the hairs had been pulled out at the roots, suggesting a struggle. At the trial, the defense challenged the forensics expert to distinguish and identify several hair samples. The strategy backfired when the expert did just that, and Ross was convicted. It is now believed, however, that Ross was almost certainly innocent. Recent forensic research has demonstrated that the hair samples were misidentified, either accidentally or at the behest of the police investigator in charge of the case.
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Apr 25, 1983
Andropov writes to U.S. student
On this day in 1983, the Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine, inviting her to visit his country. Andropov's letter came in response to a note Smith had sent him in December 1982, asking if the Soviets were planning to start a nuclear war. At the time, the United States and Soviet Union were Cold War enemies.
President Ronald Reagan, a passionate anti-communist, had dubbed the Soviet Union the "evil empire" and called for massive increases in U.S. defense spending to meet the perceived Soviet threat. In his public relations duel with Reagan, known as the "Great Communicator," Andropov, who had succeeded longtime Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, assumed a folksy, almost grandfatherly approach that was incongruous with the negative image most Americans had of the Soviets.
Andropov's letter said that Russian people wanted to "live in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on the globe, no matter how close or far away they are, and, certainly, with such a great country as the United States of America." In response to Smith's question about whether the Soviet Union wished to prevent nuclear war, Andropov declared, "Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are endeavoring and doing everything so that there will be no war between our two countries, so that there will be no war at all on earth." Andropov also complimented Smith, comparing her to the spunky character Becky Thatcher from "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain.
Smith, born June 29, 1972, accepted Andropov's invitation and flew to the Soviet Union with her parents for a visit. Afterward, she became an international celebrity and peace ambassador, making speeches, writing a book and even landing a role on an American television series. In February 1984, Yuri Andropov died from kidney failure and was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko. The following year, in August 1985, Samantha Smith died tragically in a plane crash at age 13.
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Apr 26, 1986
Maria Shriver marries Arnold Schwarzenegger
Almost a decade after they met at a celebrity tennis tournament, the television news reporter Maria Shriver marries the movie actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger on this day in 1986.
Politically, it seemed an unlikely match: Shriver, then a co-anchor for the CBS Morning News in New York City, was a Democrat and a member of one of the most prominent political families in the country. Her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was the sister of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, while her father, R. Sargent Shriver, had been the Democratic nominee for vice president in 1972. Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria on July 30, 1947, came to the United States in 1968 and became an American citizen in 1983. Soon after that, he began actively campaigning on behalf of Republican candidates; he would later be named chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports by President George H.W. Bush.
Shriver, who was born on November 6, 1955, began her career in journalism in 1977, after graduating from Georgetown University. That same year, the TV newsman Tom Brokaw introduced her to Schwarzenegger at a party the night before the annual Robert F. Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament in Forest Hills, New York. The buff Schwarzenegger had won the first of five Mr. Universe titles at the age of 20. Upon his arrival in Hollywood, he acted in forgettable movies such as Hercules in New York before Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Terminator (1984) made him an A-list star. By then, he and Shriver were involved in a long term bi-coastal relationship, as she worked her way up the ladder at CBS News.
On April 26, 1986, Shriver and Schwarzenegger were married in St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis, Massachusetts, before some 500 guests. The bride’s cousin, Caroline Kennedy, was maid of honor, and the former Mr. Universe Franco Columbu served as best man. The reception was held at the Kennedy compound in nearby Hyannisport.
In the fall of 2003, Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California in a special recall election over the Democratic incumbent Gray Davis. At the time, Shriver was a news correspondent for NBC and a frequent contributor to the network’s Dateline program. In February 2004, she announced she was leaving the network due to the competing interests of her work as California’s first lady. In 2007, Shriver announced she would not be returning to TV news. Shriver has reportedly played an important behind-the-scenes role in her husband’s campaign and administration, helping him gain the support of California’s electorate. Shriver and Schwarzenegger have four children: Katherine, Christina, Patrick and Christopher.
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http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/jun/23/mom-accused-of-leaving-tot-unattended-at-pool/?partner=RSS
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That story is from June 23rd ??? Follow the thread title please :D
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Apr 27, 4977 B.C.
Universe is created, according to Kepler
On this day in 4977 B.C., the universe is created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science. Kepler is best known for his theories explaining the motion of planets.
Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Germany. As a university student, he studied the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus' theories of planetary ordering. Copernicus (1473-1543) believed that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system, a theory that contradicted the prevailing view of the era that the sun revolved around the earth.
In 1600, Kepler went to Prague to work for Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, the imperial mathematician to Rudolf II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Kepler's main project was to investigate the orbit of Mars. When Brahe died the following year, Kepler took over his job and inherited Brahe's extensive collection of astronomy data, which had been painstakingly observed by the naked eye. Over the next decade, Kepler learned about the work of Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who had invented a telescope with which he discovered lunar mountains and craters, the largest four satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, among other things. Kepler corresponded with Galileo and eventually obtained a telescope of his own and improved upon the design. In 1609, Kepler published the first two of his three laws of planetary motion, which held that planets move around the sun in ellipses, not circles (as had been widely believed up to that time), and that planets speed up as they approach the sun and slow down as they move away. In 1619, he produced his third law, which used mathematic principles to relate the time a planet takes to orbit the sun to the average distance of the planet from the sun.
Kepler's research was slow to gain widespread traction during his lifetime, but it later served as a key influence on the English mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and his law of gravitational force. Additionally, Kepler did important work in the fields of optics, including demonstrating how the human eye works, and math. He died on November 15, 1630, in Regensberg, Germany. As for Kepler's calculation about the universe's birthday, scientists in the 20th century developed the Big Bang theory, which showed that his calculations were off by about 13.7 billion years.
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Apr 28, 1945
Benito Mussolini executed
On this day in 1945, "Il Duce," Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland.
The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options. Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the communist partisans, who had been fighting the remnants of roving Italian fascist soldiers and thugs in the north, would try him as a war criminal, he settled on escape to a neutral country.
He and his mistress made it to the Swiss border, only to discover that the guards had crossed over to the partisan side. Knowing they would not let him pass, he disguised himself in a Luftwaffe coat and helmet, hoping to slip into Austria with some German soldiers. His subterfuge proved incompetent, and he and Petacci were discovered by partisans and shot, their bodies then transported by truck to Milan, where they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses.
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Apr 27, 4977 B.C.
Universe is created, according to Kepler
On this day in 4977 B.C., the universe is created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science. Kepler is best known for his theories explaining the motion of planets.
Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Germany. As a university student, he studied the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus' theories of planetary ordering. Copernicus (1473-1543) believed that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system, a theory that contradicted the prevailing view of the era that the sun revolved around the earth.
In 1600, Kepler went to Prague to work for Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, the imperial mathematician to Rudolf II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Kepler's main project was to investigate the orbit of Mars. When Brahe died the following year, Kepler took over his job and inherited Brahe's extensive collection of astronomy data, which had been painstakingly observed by the naked eye. Over the next decade, Kepler learned about the work of Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who had invented a telescope with which he discovered lunar mountains and craters, the largest four satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, among other things. Kepler corresponded with Galileo and eventually obtained a telescope of his own and improved upon the design. In 1609, Kepler published the first two of his three laws of planetary motion, which held that planets move around the sun in ellipses, not circles (as had been widely believed up to that time), and that planets speed up as they approach the sun and slow down as they move away. In 1619, he produced his third law, which used mathematic principles to relate the time a planet takes to orbit the sun to the average distance of the planet from the sun.
Kepler's research was slow to gain widespread traction during his lifetime, but it later served as a key influence on the English mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and his law of gravitational force. Additionally, Kepler did important work in the fields of optics, including demonstrating how the human eye works, and math. He died on November 15, 1630, in Regensberg, Germany. As for Kepler's calculation about the universe's birthday, scientists in the 20th century developed the Big Bang theory, which showed that his calculations were off by about 13.7 billion years.
Created 4977 BC? A mathematician, no less?
What say you, Shaun?
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'ere!..Are you Mussolini?
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Created 4977 BC? A mathematician, no less?
What say you, Shaun?
Read the last paragraph my friend. ;)
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Apr 29, 1992
Riots erupt in Los Angeles
In Los Angeles, California, four Los Angeles police officers that had been caught beating an unarmed African-American motorist in an amateur video are acquitted of any wrongdoing in the arrest. Hours after the verdicts were announced, outrage and protest turned to violence, as rioters in south-central Los Angeles blocked freeway traffic and beat motorists, wrecked and looted numerous downtown stores and buildings, and set more than 100 fires.
On March 3, 1991, paroled felon Rodney King led police on a high-speed chase through the streets of Los Angeles County before eventually surrendering. Intoxicated and uncooperative, King resisted arrest and was brutally beaten by police officers Laurence Powell, Theodore Briseno, and Timothy Wind. Unbeknownst to the police, a citizen with a personal video camera was filming the arrest, and the 89-second video caught the police beating King with their batons and kicking him long after he was capable of resistance. The video, released to the press, caused outrage around the country and triggered a national debate on police brutality.
Rodney King was released without charges, and on March 15 Sergeant Stacey Koon and officers Powell, Wind, and Briseno were indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury in connection with the beating. All four were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force. Though Koon did not actively participate in the beating, as the commanding officer present at the scene he was charged with aiding and abetting. Powell and Koon were also charged with filing false reports.
Because of the uproar in Los Angeles surrounding the incident, the judge, Stanley Weisberg, was persuaded to move the trial outside Los Angeles County to Simi Valley in Ventura County. On April 29, 1992, the 12-person jury, which included 10 whites and no African-Americans, issued its verdicts: not guilty on all counts, except for one assault charge against Powell that ended in a hung jury. The acquittals touched off rioting and looting in Los Angeles that grew into the most destructive U.S. civil disturbance of the 20th century.
Violence first erupted at the intersection of Florence Boulevard and Normandie Avenue in south-central Los Angeles. Traffic was blocked, and rioters beat dozens of motorists, including Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was dragged out of his truck and nearly beaten to death by three African-American men. A news helicopter, hovering over the street, recorded the gruesome event. Los Angeles police were slow to respond, and the violence radiated to areas throughout the city. California Governor Pete Wilson deployed the National Guard at the request of Mayor Tom Bradley, and a curfew was declared. By the morning, hundreds of fires were burning across the city, more than a dozen people had been killed, and hundreds were injured.
Rioting and violence continued during the next 24 hours, and Korean shop owners in African-American neighborhoods defended their businesses with rifles. On May 1, President George Bush ordered military troops and riot-trained federal officers to Los Angeles and by the end of the next day the city was under control. The three days of disorder killed 55 people, injured almost 2,000, led to 7,000 arrests, and caused nearly $1 billion in property damage, including the burnings of nearly 4,000 buildings.
Under federal law, the four officers could also be prosecuted for violating Rodney King's constitutional rights. On April 17, 1993, a federal jury convicted Koon and Powell for violating King's rights by their unreasonable use of force under color of law. Although Wind and Briseno were acquitted, most civil rights advocates considered the mixed verdict a victory. On August 4, Koon and Powell were sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
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Apr 30, 1945
Adolf Hitler commits suicide
On this day in 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler's dreams of a "1,000-year" Reich.
Since at least 1943, it was becoming increasingly clear that Germany would fold under the pressure of the Allied forces. In February of that year, the German 6th Army, lured deep into the Soviet Union, was annihilated at the Battle of Stalingrad, and German hopes for a sustained offensive on both fronts evaporated. Then, in June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed at Normandy, France, and began systematically to push the Germans back toward Berlin. By July 1944, several German military commanders acknowledged their imminent defeat and plotted to remove Hitler from power so as to negotiate a more favorable peace. Their attempts to assassinate Hitler failed, however, and in his reprisals, Hitler executed over 4,000 fellow countrymen.
In January 1945, facing a siege of Berlin by the Soviets, Hitler withdrew to his bunker to live out his final days. Located 55 feet under the chancellery, the shelter contained 18 rooms and was fully self-sufficient, with its own water and electrical supply. Though he was growing increasingly mad, Hitler continued to give orders and meet with such close subordinates as Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and Josef Goebbels. He also married his long-time mistress Eva Braun just two days before his suicide.
In his last will and testament, Hitler appointed Admiral Karl Donitz as head of state and Goebbels as chancellor. He then retired to his private quarters with Braun, where he and Braun poisoned themselves and their dogs, before Hitler then also shot himself with his service pistol.
Hitler and Braun's bodies were hastily cremated in the chancellery garden, as Soviet forces closed in on the building. When the Soviets reached the chancellery, they removed Hitler's ashes, continually changing their location so as to prevent Hitler devotees from creating a memorial at his final resting place. Only eight days later, on May 8, 1945, the German forces issued an unconditional surrender, leaving Germany to be carved up by the four Allied powers.
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May 1, 1931
Empire State Building dedicated
On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City's Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building's lights. Hoover's gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York.
The idea for the Empire State Building is said to have been born of a competition between Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation and John Jakob Raskob of General Motors, to see who could erect the taller building. Chrysler had already begun work on the famous Chrysler Building, the gleaming 1,046-foot skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. Not to be bested, Raskob assembled a group of well-known investors, including former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. The group chose the architecture firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates to design the building. The Art-Deco plans, said to have been based in large part on the look of a pencil, were also builder-friendly: The entire building went up in just over a year, under budget (at $40 million) and well ahead of schedule. During certain periods of building, the frame grew an astonishing four-and-a-half stories a week.
At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102 stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was the world's tallest skyscraper. The Depression-era construction employed as many as 3,400 workers on any single day, most of whom received an excellent pay rate, especially given the economic conditions of the time. The new building imbued New York City with a deep sense of pride, desperately needed in the depths of the Great Depression, when many city residents were unemployed and prospects looked bleak. The grip of the Depression on New York's economy was still evident a year later, however, when only 25 percent of the Empire State's offices had been rented.
In 1972, the Empire State Building lost its title as world's tallest building to New York's World Trade Center, which itself was the tallest skyscraper for but a year. Today the honor belongs to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower, which soars 2,717 feet into the sky.
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Read the last paragraph my friend. ;)
Oops, missed it.
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May 2, 2011
Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. forces
On this day in 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, is killed by U.S. forces during a raid on his compound hideout in Pakistan. The notorious, 54-year-old leader of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network of Islamic extremists, had been the target of a nearly decade-long international manhunt.
The raid began around 1 a.m. local time, when 23 U.S. Navy SEALs in two Black Hawk helicopters descended on the compound in Abbottabad, a tourist and military center north of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. One of the helicopters crash-landed into the compound but no one aboard was hurt. During the raid, which lasted approximately 40 minutes, five people, including bin Laden and one of his adult sons, were killed by U.S. gunfire. No Americans were injured in the assault. Afterward, bin Laden’s body was flown by helicopter to Afghanistan for official identification, then buried at an undisclosed location in the Arabian Sea less than 24 hours after his death, in accordance with Islamic practice.
Just after 11:30 p.m. EST on May 1 (Pakistan’s time zone is 9 hours ahead of Washington, D.C.), President Barack Obama, who monitored the raid in real time via footage shot by a drone flying high above Abbottabad, made a televised address from the White House, announcing bin Laden’s death. “Justice has been done,” the president said. After hearing the news, cheering crowds gathered outside the White House and in New York City’s Times Square and the Ground Zero site.
Based on computer files and other evidence the SEALs collected during the raid, it was later determined that bin Laden was making plans to assassinate President Obama and carry out a series of additional attacks against America, including one on the anniversary of September 11, the largest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, which left nearly 3,000 people dead. Shortly after the 2001 attack, President George W. Bush declared bin Laden, who was born into a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia in 1957 and used his multi-million-dollar inheritance to help establish al Qaeda and fund its activities, would be captured dead or alive. In December of that year, American-backed forces came close to capturing bin Laden in a cave complex in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora region; however, he escaped and would continue to elude U.S. authorities for years.
A break in the hunt for bin Laden came in August 2010, when C.I.A. analysts tracked the terrorist leader’s courier to the Abbottabad compound, located behind tall security walls in a residential neighborhood. (U.S. intelligence officials spent the ensuing months keeping the compound under surveillance; however, they were never certain bin Laden was hiding there until the raid took place.) The U.S. media had long reported bin Laden was believed to be hiding in the remote tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border, so many Americans were surprised to learn the world’s most famous fugitive had likely spent the last five years of his life in a well-populated area less than a mile from an elite Pakistani military academy. After the raid, which the U.S. reportedly carried out without informing the Pakistani government in advance, some American officials suspected Pakistani authorities of helping to shelter bin Laden in Abbottabad, although there was no concrete evidence to confirm this.
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May 3, 1469
Niccolo Machiavelli born
On this day in 1469, the Italian philosopher and writer Niccolo Machiavelli is born. A lifelong patriot and diehard proponent of a unified Italy, Machiavelli became one of the fathers of modern political theory.
Machiavelli entered the political service of his native Florence by the time he was 29. As defense secretary, he distinguished himself by executing policies that strengthened Florence politically. He soon found himself assigned diplomatic missions for his principality, through which he met such luminaries as Louis XII of France, Pope Julius II, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and perhaps most importantly for Machiavelli, a prince of the Papal States named Cesare Borgia. The shrewd and cunning Borgia later inspired the title character in Machiavelli's famous and influential political treatise The Prince (1532).
Machiavelli's political life took a downward turn after 1512, when he fell out of favor with the powerful Medici family. He was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured and temporarily exiled. It was an attempt to regain a political post and the Medici family's good favor that Machiavelli penned The Prince, which was to become his most well-known work.
Though released in book form posthumously in 1532, The Prince was first published as a pamphlet in 1513. In it, Machiavelli outlined his vision of an ideal leader: an amoral, calculating tyrant for whom the end justifies the means. The Prince not only failed to win the Medici family's favor, it also alienated him from the Florentine people. Machiavelli was never truly welcomed back into politics, and when the Florentine Republic was reestablished in 1527, Machiavelli was an object of great suspicion. He died later that year, embittered and shut out from the Florentine society to which he had devoted his life.
Though Machiavelli has long been associated with the practice of diabolical expediency in the realm of politics that was made famous in The Prince, his actual views were not so extreme. In fact, in such longer and more detailed writings as Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy (1517) and History of Florence (1525), he shows himself to be a more principled political moralist. Still, even today, the term "Machiavellian" is used to describe an action undertaken for gain without regard for right or wrong.
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Just ungaying this thread a little bit you, friend shizzo.
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Just ungaying this thread a little bit you, friend shizzo.
Awesome, nothing like a little gay buttsex to lighten the mood.
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Awesome, nothing like a little gay buttsex to lighten the mood.
that would be gay.
these men were simply practicing necessary resuscitation techniques in the event of cardiac arrest or other loss of breathing.
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that would be gay.
these men were simply practicing necessary resuscitation techniques in the event of cardiac arrest or other loss of breathing.
Mouth to ass resuscitation is a popular past time amongst many getbiggers.
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The anal trumpeter in this illustration is actually using his mouth to blow tobacco smoke up the drowned man's arse as a form of popular 18th century cure. Back then, tobacco in all of its forms was used to treat basically anything from colic to vomit, hernia, rheumatic pains, and an excess (or lack of) dignity.
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20726_7-real-and-totally-insane-medical-practices-from-history.html#ixzz30hq5vwVC
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The Formula One world paid their respects to Ayrton Senna on Thursday afternoon to mark the 20th anniversary of his death.
The Brazilian died while leading the 1994 San Mario Grand Prix, when his vehicle hurtled into a concrete wall as he tried to negotiate the Tramburello corner on lap seven.
Thousands of fans attended a memorial service at Imola as part of a four-day tribute to Senna.
Ayrton Senna's Crash (1st May 1994) - YouTube
► 3:19
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekzXk0AQcx8
xxxL
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The Formula One world paid their respects to Ayrton Senna on Thursday afternoon to mark the 20th anniversary of his death.
The Brazilian died while leading the 1994 San Mario Grand Prix, when his vehicle hurtled into a concrete wall as he tried to negotiate the Tramburello corner on lap seven.
Thousands of fans attended a memorial service at Imola as part of a four-day tribute to Senna.
Ayrton Senna's Crash (1st May 1994) - YouTube
► 3:19
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekzXk0AQcx8
xxxL
PTPS
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I have absolutely no idea what ptps means.
This day (well two days ago) in history:
May 2 1536
Anne Boleyn (Henry VIII's wife)
was taken away and arrested on charges of incest, adultery, treason and witchcraft.
Shortly thereafter she was beheaded.
xL
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I have absolutely no idea what ptps means.
This day (well two days ago) in history:
May 2 1536
Anne Boleyn (Henry VIII's wife)
was taken away and arrested on charges of incest, adultery, treason and witchcraft.
Shortly thereafter she was beheaded.
xL
Yeah its this day in history. Not two days ago in history.
Please stop sullying Shizzos thread.
and ptps
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sullying? what big words you use.
Okay, so she was beheaded 578 years ago, that's all, that's history
xL
I was trying to stick to the topic, it seems it's you who sullies. Quite why I bother to respond to wankers like you is beyond my comprehension sometimes, but it's late at night here and you deserve a slap back at ya.
Goodnight
Tomorrow is probably World Pie Day or something, I'll find out
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sullying? what big words you use.
Okay, so she was beheaded 578 years ago, that's all, that's history
xL
I was trying to stick to the topic, it seems it's you who sullies. Quite why I bother to respond to wankers like you is beyond my comprehension sometimes, but it's late at night here and you deserve a slap back at ya.
Goodnight
Tomorrow is probably World Pie Pride Day or something, I'll find out
Im sorry that I spoke to you like that. Do you enjoy eating the "pie"?
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I have absolutely no idea what ptps means.
This day (well two days ago) in history:
May 2 1536
Anne Boleyn (Henry VIII's wife)
was taken away and arrested on charges of incest, adultery, treason and witchcraft.
Shortly thereafter she was beheaded.
xL
What tu said, cuckoo pants. But please don't.
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May 4, 1990
An inhumane execution
Jesse Tafero is executed in Florida after his electric chair malfunctions three times, causing flames to leap from his head. Tafero's death sparked a new debate on humane methods of execution. Several states ceased use of the electric chair and adopted lethal injection as their means of capital punishment.
As the 20th century came to an end, some states were having difficulty finding experienced executioners while others were unable to find technicians who could repair electric chairs. The move toward lethal injection was also problematic since there were few qualified people who knew how to construct a proper system. If done incorrectly, an injection containing a combination of a paralytic drug and a lethal dose of potassium chloride can paralyze an inmate and result in a painful death.
Tafero's botched execution was far from an anomaly. In Alabama, Horace F. Dunkins' execution was prolonged 19 long minutes while sitting in a broken electric chair. In July 1998, Florida inmate Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis, who weighed 344 pounds, screamed in pain during his electrocution while blood poured down his shirt. Authorities later claimed that the blood was a result of a bloody nose.
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May 5, 1862
Cinco de Mayo
During the French-Mexican War, a poorly supplied and outnumbered Mexican army under General Ignacio Zaragoza defeats a French army attempting to capture Puebla de Los Angeles, a small town in east-central Mexico. Victory at the Battle of Puebla represented a great moral victory for the Mexican government, symbolizing the country's ability to defend its sovereignty against threat by a powerful foreign nation.
In 1861, the liberal Mexican Benito Juarez became president of a country in financial ruin, and he was forced to default on his debts to European governments. In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, ruled by Napoleon III, decided to use the opportunity to carve a dependent empire out of Mexican territory. Late in 1861, a well-armed French fleet stormed Veracruz, landing a large French force and driving President Juarez and his government into retreat.
Certain that French victory would come swiftly in Mexico, 6,000 French troops under General Charles Latrille de Lorencez set out to attack Puebla de Los Angeles. From his new headquarters in the north, Juarez rounded up a rag-tag force of loyal men and sent them to Puebla. Led by Texas-born General Zaragoza, the 2,000 Mexicans fortified the town and prepared for the French assault. On the fifth of May, 1862, Lorencez drew his army, well-provisioned and supported by heavy artillery, before the city of Puebla and began their assault from the north. The battle lasted from daybreak to early evening, and when the French finally retreated they had lost nearly 500 soldiers to the fewer than 100 Mexicans killed.
Although not a major strategic victory in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza's victory at Puebla tightened Mexican resistance, and six years later France withdrew. The same year, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who had been installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon in 1864, was captured and executed by Juarez' forces. Puebla de Los Angeles, the site of Zaragoza's historic victory, was renamed Puebla de Zaragoza in honor of the general. Today, Mexicans celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla as Cinco de Mayo, a national holiday in Mexico.
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May 6, 1937
Hindenburg explodes in New Jersey
On this day in 1937, the German airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built, explodes as it arrives in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people died in the fiery accident that has since become iconic, in part because of the live radio broadcast of the disaster.
The dirigible was built to be the fastest, largest and most luxurious flying vessel of its time. It was more than 800 feet long, had a range of 8,000 miles, could carry 97 passengers and had a state-of-the-art Mercedes-Benz engine. It was filled with 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen, even though helium was known to be far safer, because it made the flying ship more maneuverable.
The Hindenburg had made 10 successful ocean crossings the year before and was held up by Germany's Nazi government as a symbol of national pride. Flying at a speed of 85 miles per hour, the Hindenburg was scheduled to arrive in New Jersey at 5 a.m. on May 6. However, weather conditions pushed the arrival back to the late afternoon and then rain further delayed the docking at Lakehurst. When the dirigible was finally cleared to dock, Captain Max Pruss brought the ship in too fast and had to order a reverse engine thrust. At 7:20 p.m., a gas leak was noticed. Within minutes, the tail blew up, sending flames hundreds of feet in the air and as far down as the ground below.
A chain reaction caused the entire vessel to burn instantly. The nearly 1,000 spectators awaiting the Hindenburg's arrival felt the heat from a mile away. Some on the blimp attempted to jump for the landing cables at the docking station but most died when they missed. Others waited to jump until the blimp was closer to the ground as it fell. Those who were not critically injured from burns often suffered broken bones from the jump. Fifty-six people managed to survive.
On WLS radio, announcer Herbert Morrison gave an unforgettably harrowing live account of the disaster, "Oh, oh, oh. It's burst into flames. Get out of the way, please . . . this is terrible . . . it's burning, bursting into flames, and is falling . . . Oh! This is one of the worst . . . it's a terrific sight . . .oh, the humanity."
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May 6, 1954
60 years ago today, Roger Bannister made history as the first man to run a mile in under four minutes.
xL
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5/5/55
A very old friend of mine was born, Michael. He has been my best male friend forever, like a father or uncle or brother.
(I'm meeting him in Amsterdam in a few weeks. He lives in Toronto, Canada, me in London England. Can't wait. He's mad fun.
xxxLinda
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5/5/55
A very old friend of mine was born, Michael. He has been my best male friend forever, like a father or uncle or brother.
(I'm meeting him in Amsterdam in a few weeks. He lives in Toronto, Canada, me in London England. Can't wait. He's mad fun.
xxxLinda
Today is 5/6 Linda.
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Seems your thread has taken an interesting turn.
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Seems your thread has taken an interesting turn.
NO SHIT!
I am ok with this dumb thread popping up once in my unreads.
Not multiple times a day.
Shizzo has the monopoly on the "daily post threads that suck major cock" category.
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NO SHIT!
I am ok with this dumb thread popping up once in my unreads.
Not multiple times a day.
Shizzo has the monopoly on the "daily post threads that suck major cock" category.
Guess who you can thank for that?
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May 7, 1995
Reggie Miller leads Pacers to victory over Knicks
Indiana Pacers guard Reggie Miller scores eight points in 11 seconds to lead his team over the New York Knicks 107-105 on this day in 1995. Miller was famous throughout his career for what became known as "Miller Time," clutch performances to finish games. This 1995 Eastern Conference semifinal playoff was Miller’s greatest late-game display, and one of the most shocking endings to a game in NBA history.
Miller came to the Indiana Pacers in 1987, the 11th pick in the first round, in spite of local enthusiasm for Indiana native and Indiana University hero Steve Alford. That season, Miller set a rookie record for three-point field goals with 61; the record had formerly been held by Indianan Larry Bird.
Miller and the Pacers announced themselves as NBA contenders in 1994, when they advanced to the Eastern Conference finals for a playoff series against the Knicks. After losing the first two games in New York, the Pacers won two in Indiana. In the fifth game, Miller, a famous trash talker, began a running courtside dialogue with passionate Knick fan and renowned filmmaker Spike Lee. Despite the distractions, Miller was magnificent, going 5 for 5 from behind the arc and scoring 25 points in the fourth quarter for a total of 39 and a 93-86 Pacers victory. However, New York went on to win Games 6 and 7, and the series.
In Game 1 of the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinal series, the Pacers trailed the Knicks by six points with 18.7 seconds to play. Miller hit a three-pointer with 16 seconds left, then stole the inbounds pass from Knick point guard Greg Anthony, dribbled backwards behind the three-point line and made another three. After Knicks guard John Starks missed two foul shots, Miller grabbed a Patrick Ewing miss, was fouled and calmly sank his two free throws (not surprising, as Miller shot .888 from the line for his career). Miller scored eight points in 11 seconds to end the game, shocking Spike Lee and the rest of Knicks fandom. This time, Indiana won the series in seven games, only to lose to Orlando in the conference finals.
In the 1999 Eastern Conference finals, the Pacers had another shot to beat the Knicks and play for the NBA title, but this time Miller let them down. He shot 3 for 18 in the deciding Game 6, including 1 for 8 from the three-point line, scoring only eight points while New York’s Allan Houston poured in 32 to lead the Knicks to the Eastern Conference title.
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May 8, 1541
De Soto reaches the Mississippi
On May 8, 1541, south of present-day Memphis, Tennessee, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River, one of the first European explorers to ever do so. After building flatboats, de Soto and his 400 ragged troops crossed the great river under the cover of night, in order to avoid the armed Native Americans who patrolled the river daily in war canoes. From there the conquistadors headed into present-day Arkansas, continuing their fruitless two-year-old search for gold and silver in the American wilderness.
Born in the last years of the 15th century, de Soto first came to the New World in 1514. By then, the Spanish had established bases in the Caribbean and on the coasts of the American mainland. A fine horseman and a daring adventurer, de Soto explored Central America and accumulated considerable wealth through the Indian slave trade. In 1532, he joined Francisco Pizarro in the conquest of Peru. Pizarro, de Soto, and 167 other Spaniards succeeding in conquering the Inca empire, and de Soto became a rich man. He returned to Spain in 1536 but soon grew restless and jealous of Pizarro and Hernando Cortes, whose fame as conquistadors overshadowed his own. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V responded by making de Soto governor of Cuba with a right to conquer Florida, and thus the North American mainland.
In late May 1539, de Soto landed on the west coast of Florida with 600 troops, servants, and staff, 200 horses, and a pack of bloodhounds. From there, the army set about subduing the natives, seizing any valuables they stumbled upon, and preparing the region for eventual Spanish colonization. Traveling through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, across the Appalachians, and back to Alabama, de Soto failed to find the gold and silver he desired, but he did seize a valuable collection of pearls at Cofitachequi, in present-day Georgia. Decisive conquest eluded the Spaniards, as what would become the United States lacked the large, centralized civilizations of Mexico and Peru.
As was the method of Spanish conquest elsewhere in the Americas, de Soto ill-treated and enslaved the natives he encountered. For the most part, the Indian warriors they met were intimidated by the Spanish horsemen and kept their distance. In October 1540, however, the tables were turned when a confederation of Indians attacked the Spaniards at the fortified Indian town of Mabila, near present-day Mobile, Alabama. All the Indians were killed along with 20 of de Soto's men. Several hundred Spaniards were wounded. In addition, the Indian conscripts they had come to depend on to bear their supplies fled with the baggage.
De Soto could have marched south to reconvene with his ships along the Gulf Coast, but instead he ordered his expedition northwest in search of America's elusive riches. In May 1541, the army reached and crossed the Mississippi River, probably the first Europeans ever to do so. From there, they traveled through present-day Arkansas and Louisiana, still with few material gains to show for their efforts. Turning back to the Mississippi, de Soto died of a fever on its banks on May 21, 1542. In order that Indians would not learn of his death, and thus disprove de Soto's claims of divinity, his men buried his body in the Mississippi River.
The Spaniards, now under the command of Luis de Moscoso, traveled west again, crossing into north Texas before returning to the Mississippi. With nearly half of the original expedition dead, the Spaniards built rafts and traveled down the river to the sea, and then made their way down the Texas coast to New Spain, finally reaching Veracruz, Mexico, in late 1543.
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Today is 5/6 Linda.
Oh Darlin' this is your thread, so sorry...
I'm 5 hours ahead of TO/NY/Fla East Coast time and 8 hours ahead of Cali. So sometimes I'm out of sync, a bit too far ahead of myself?
I did manage to talk to Michael in YYZ on his birthday, so all's good. I just thought his birthdate, 5/5/55 was rather special.
forgive me, I'll stick to big important news in future.
>>>Today is World Red Cross Day, but I've not bothered to google that.
And we all missed Audrey Hepburn's birthday recently, but google did a nice page for her, so it's all good
xL
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8 May
Victory in Europe (VE) Day, it marked the formal conclusion of Hitler's war.
xxxL
celebrated on 8 May 1945 (May 7th in Commonwealth realms)
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xL
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May 9, 1950
L. Ron Hubbard publishes Dianetics
On this day in 1950, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1911-1986) publishes Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. With this book, Hubbard introduced a branch of self-help psychology called Dianetics, which quickly caught fire and, over time, morphed into a belief system boasting millions of subscribers: Scientology.
Hubbard was already a prolific and frequently published writer by the time he penned the book that would change his life. Under several pseudonyms in the 1930s, he published a great amount of pulp fiction, particularly in the science fiction and fantasy genres. In late 1949, having returned from serving in the Navy in World War II, Hubbard began publishing articles in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction, a magazine that published works by the likes of Isaac Asimov and Jack Williamson. Out of these grew the elephantine text known as Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.
In Dianetics, Hubbard explained that phenomena known as "engrams" (i.e. memories) were the cause of all psychological pain, which in turn harmed mental and physical health. He went on to claim that people could become "clear," achieving an exquisite state of clarity and mental liberation, by exorcising their engrams to an "auditor," or a listener acting as therapist.
Though discredited by the medical and scientific establishment, over 100,000 copies of Dianetics were sold in the first two years of publication, and Hubbard soon found himself lecturing across the country. He went on to write six more books in 1951, developing a significant fan base, and establishing the Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Despite his fast-growing popularity from books and touring, strife within his organization and Hubbard's own personal troubles nearly crippled his success. Several of his research foundations had to be abandoned due to financial troubles and he went through a divorce from his second wife.
By 1953, however, Hubbard was able to rebound from the widespread condemnation beginning to be heaped upon him, and introduced Scientology. Scientology expanded on Dianetics by bringing Hubbard's popular version of psychotherapy into the realm of philosophy, and ultimately, religion. In only a few years, Hubbard found himself at the helm of a movement that captured the popular imagination. As Scientology grew in the 1960s, several national governments became suspicious of Hubbard, accusing him of quackery and brainwashing his followers. Nonetheless, Hubbard built his religion into a multi-million dollar movement that continues to have a considerable presence in the public eye, due in part to its high profile in Hollywood.
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May 10, 1924
J. Edgar Hoover begins his legacy with the FBI
J. Edgar Hoover is named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) on this day in 1924. By the end of the year he was officially promoted to director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century.
Hoover first became involved in law enforcement as a special assistant to the attorney general, overseeing the mass roundups and deportations of suspected communists during the Red Scare abuses of the late 1910s. After taking over the FBI in 1924, Hoover began secretly monitoring any activities that did not conform to his American ideal.
Hoover approved of illegally infiltrating and spying on the American Civil Liberties Union. His spies could be found throughout the government, even in the Supreme Court. He also collected damaging information on the personal lives of civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr.
While Hoover's success at legitimate crime fighting was modest, his hold over many powerful people and organizations earned him respect and kept him in power. He was extremely successful at attracting attention and favorable press to the FBI. It wasn't until after his death in 1972, right before the beginning of the Watergate scandal, that Hoover's corruption became known.
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May 11, 1981
Bob Marley dies
In what would prove to be the next to the last concert of his tragically short life, Bob Marley shared the bill at Madison Square Garden with the hugely popular American funk band The Commodores. With no costumes, no choreography and no set design to speak of, "The reggae star had the majority of his listeners on their feet and in the palm of his hand," according to New York Times critic Robert Palmer. "After this show of strength, and Mr. Marley's intense singing and electric stage presence, the Commodores were a letdown." Only days after his triumphant shows in New York City, Bob Marley collapsed while jogging in Central Park and later received a grim diagnosis: a cancerous growth on an old soccer injury on his big toe had metastasized and spread to Marley's brain, liver and lungs. Less than eight months later, on May 11, 1981, Bob Marley, the soul and international face of reggae music, died in a Miami, Florida, hospital. He was only 36 years old.
Nesta Robert Marley was born on February 6, 1945, in rural St. Ann Parish, Jamaica, the son of a middle-aged white Jamaican Marine officer and an 18-year-old black Jamaican girl. At the age of nine, Marley moved to Trench Town, a tough West Kingston ghetto where he would meet and befriend Neville "Bunny" Livingston (later Bunny Wailer) and Peter McIntosh (later Peter Tosh) and drop out of school at age 14 to make music. Jamaica at the time was entering a period of incredible musical creativity. As transistor radios became available on an island then served only by a staid, BBC-style national radio station, the music of America suddenly became accessible via stateside radio stations. From a mix of New Orleans-style rhythm and blues and indigenous, African-influenced musical traditions arose first ska, then rock steady—precursor styles to reggae, which did not take shape as a recognizable style of its own until the late 1960s.
Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer performed together as The Wailers throughout this period, coming into their own as a group just as reggae became the dominant sound in Jamaica. Thanks to the international reach of Island Records, the Wailers came to the world's attention in the early 1970s via their albums Catch a Fire (1972) and Burnin' (1973). Eric Clapton spread the group's name even wider by recording a pop-friendly version of "I Shot The Sheriff" from the latter album. With the departure of Tosh and Wailer in 1974, Marley took center stage in the group, and by the late 70s he had turned out a string of albums— Exodus (1977), featuring "Jamming," "Waiting In Vain" and "One Love/People Get Ready;" Kaya (1978), featuring "Is This Love" and "Sun Is Shining"; and Uprising (1980), featuring "Could You Be Loved" and "Redemption Song."
While none of the aforementioned songs was anything approaching a hit in the United States during Bob Marley's lifetime, they constitute a legacy that has only increased his fame in the years since his death on this day in 1981.
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May 12, 1932
Body of Lindbergh baby found
The body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found on this day in 1932, more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, New Jersey, mansion.
Lindbergh, who became the first worldwide celebrity five years earlier when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic, and his wife Anne discovered a ransom note in their 20-month-old child's empty room on March 1. The kidnapper had used a ladder to climb up to the open second-floor window and had left muddy footprints in the room. The ransom note demanded $50,000 in barely literate English.
The crime captured the attention of the entire nation. The Lindbergh family was inundated by offers of assistance and false clues. Even Al Capone offered his help from prison, though it of course was conditioned on his release. For three days, investigators had found nothing and there was no further word from the kidnappers. Then, a new letter showed up, this time demanding $70,000.
It wasn't until April 2 that the kidnappers gave instructions for dropping off the money. When the money was finally delivered, the kidnappers indicated that little baby Charles was on a boat called Nelly off the coast of Massachusetts. However, after an exhaustive search of every port, there was no sign of either the boat or the child.
On May 12, a renewed search of the area near the Lindbergh mansion turned up the baby's body. He had been killed the night of the kidnapping and was found less than a mile from the home. The heartbroken Lindberghs ended up donating the home to charity and moved away.
The kidnapping looked like it would go unsolved until September 1934, when a marked bill from the ransom turned up. Suspicious of the driver who had given it to him, the gas station attendant who had accepted the bill wrote down his license plate number. It was tracked back to a German immigrant, Bruno Hauptmann. When his home was searched, detectives found $13,000 of Lindbergh ransom money.
Hauptmann claimed that a friend had given him the money to hold and that he had no connection to the crime. The resulting trial again was a national sensation. Famous writers Damon Runyan and Walter Winchell covered the trial. The prosecution's case was not particularly strong. The main evidence, apart from the money, was testimony from handwriting experts that the ransom note had been written by Hauptmann and his connection with the type of wood that was used to make the ladder.
Still, the evidence and intense public pressure was enough to convict Hauptmann. In April 1935 he was executed in the electric chair.
Kidnapping was made a federal crime in the aftermath of this high-profile crime.
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May 13, 1607
Jamestown founded
Some 100 English colonists arrive along the west bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Dispatched from England by the London Company, the colonists had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery.
Upon landing at Jamestown, the first colonial council was held by seven settlers whose names had been chosen and placed in a sealed box by King James I. The council, which included Captain John Smith, an English adventurer, chose Edward Wingfield as its first president. After only two weeks, Jamestown came under attack from warriors from the local Algonquian Native American confederacy, but the Indians were repulsed by the armed settlers. In December of the same year, John Smith and two other colonists were captured by Algonquians while searching for provisions in the Virginia wilderness. His companions were killed, but he was spared, according to a later account by Smith, because of the intercession of Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's daughter.
During the next two years, disease, starvation, and more Native American attacks wiped out most of the colony, but the London Company continually sent more settlers and supplies. The severe winter of 1609 to 1610, which the colonists referred to as the "starving time," killed most of the Jamestown colonists, leading the survivors to plan a return to England in the spring. However, on June 10, Thomas West De La Warr, the newly appointed governor of Virginia, arrived with supplies and convinced the settlers to remain at Jamestown. In 1612, John Rolfe cultivated the first tobacco at Jamestown, introducing a successful source of livelihood. On April 5, 1614, Rolfe married Pocahontas, thus assuring a temporary peace with Chief Powhatan.
The death of Powhatan in 1618 brought about a resumption of conflict with the Algonquians, including an attack led by Chief Opechancanough in 1622 that nearly wiped out the settlement. The English engaged in violent reprisals against the Algonquians, but there was no further large-scale fighting until 1644, when Opechancanough led his last uprising and was captured and executed at Jamestown. In 1646, the Algonquian Confederacy agreed to give up much of its territory to the rapidly expanding colony, and, beginning in 1665, its chiefs were appointed by the governor of Virginia.
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May 12, 1932
Body of Lindbergh baby found
The body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found on this day in 1932, more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, New Jersey, mansion.
Lindbergh, who became the first worldwide celebrity five years earlier when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic, and his wife Anne discovered a ransom note in their 20-month-old child's empty room on March 1. The kidnapper had used a ladder to climb up to the open second-floor window and had left muddy footprints in the room. The ransom note demanded $50,000 in barely literate English.
The crime captured the attention of the entire nation. The Lindbergh family was inundated by offers of assistance and false clues. Even Al Capone offered his help from prison, though it of course was conditioned on his release. For three days, investigators had found nothing and there was no further word from the kidnappers. Then, a new letter showed up, this time demanding $70,000.
It wasn't until April 2 that the kidnappers gave instructions for dropping off the money. When the money was finally delivered, the kidnappers indicated that little baby Charles was on a boat called Nelly off the coast of Massachusetts. However, after an exhaustive search of every port, there was no sign of either the boat or the child.
On May 12, a renewed search of the area near the Lindbergh mansion turned up the baby's body. He had been killed the night of the kidnapping and was found less than a mile from the home. The heartbroken Lindberghs ended up donating the home to charity and moved away.
The kidnapping looked like it would go unsolved until September 1934, when a marked bill from the ransom turned up. Suspicious of the driver who had given it to him, the gas station attendant who had accepted the bill wrote down his license plate number. It was tracked back to a German immigrant, Bruno Hauptmann. When his home was searched, detectives found $13,000 of Lindbergh ransom money.
Hauptmann claimed that a friend had given him the money to hold and that he had no connection to the crime. The resulting trial again was a national sensation. Famous writers Damon Runyan and Walter Winchell covered the trial. The prosecution's case was not particularly strong. The main evidence, apart from the money, was testimony from handwriting experts that the ransom note had been written by Hauptmann and his connection with the type of wood that was used to make the ladder.
Still, the evidence and intense public pressure was enough to convict Hauptmann. In April 1935 he was executed in the electric chair.
Kidnapping was made a federal crime in the aftermath of this high-profile crime.
Shoot, thought they never found that baby.
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May 14, 1948
A brutal murder begins an unusual investigation
Three-year-old June Devaney, recovering from pneumonia at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, England, is kidnapped from her bed. Nurses discovered her missing at 1:20 a.m. the next day, and police were immediately summoned to investigate. Two hours later, her body was found with multiple skull fractures. The medical examiner determined that Devaney had been raped and then swung headfirst into a wall.
Two significant clues were found in the children's ward that would prove helpful in catching the killer: footprints on the freshly cleaned floor and a water bottle that had been moved. Although there were several fingerprints on the bottle, police were able to account for all but one set. These prints also failed to match any of those in the police's database of known criminals.
Investigators fingerprinted over 2,000 people who had access to the hospital. Still, they couldn't find a match. Detective Inspector John Capstick then went even further: He decided that every man in the town of Blackburn, a city with more than 25,000 homes, would be fingerprinted.
A procedure such as this would be impossible in the United States where Fourth Amendment protections prevent searches without probable cause. But the plan went into effect in Blackburn on May 23, with police assurances that the collected prints would be destroyed afterward. Two months later, the police had collected over 40,000 sets of prints yet still had not turned up a match. Checking against every registry they could find, authorities determined that there were still a few men in town who hadn't provided their prints.
On August 11, police caught up with one of these men, Peter Griffiths. His footprints matched the ones found at the scene. When his fingerprints also came back a match, he confessed to the awful crime, blaming it on alcohol.
Griffiths was found guilty of murder and was executed on November 19, 1948.
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May 15, 1988
Soviets begin withdrawal from Afghanistan
More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
In December 1979, Soviet troops first entered Afghanistan in an attempt to bolster the communist, pro-Soviet government threatened by internal rebellion. In a short period of time, thousands of Russian troops and support materials poured into Afghanistan. Thus began a frustrating military conflict with Afghan Muslim rebels, who despised their own nation's communist government and the Soviet troops supporting it. During the next eight years, the two sides battled for control in Afghanistan, with neither the Soviets nor the rebels ever able to gain a decisive victory.
For the Soviet Union, the intervention proved extraordinarily costly in a number of ways. While the Soviets never released official casualty figures for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence sources estimated that as many as 15,000 Russian troops died in Afghanistan, and the economic cost to the already struggling Soviet economy ran into billions of dollars. The intervention also strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States nearly to the breaking point. President Jimmy Carter harshly criticized the Russian action, stalled talks on arms limitations, issued economic sanctions, and even ordered a boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow.
By 1988, the Soviets decided to extricate itself from the situation. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev saw the Afghan intervention as an increasing drain on the Soviet economy, and the Russian people were tired of a war that many Westerners referred to as "Russia's Vietnam." For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the fighting, however. The Muslim rebels eventually succeeded in establishing control over Afghanistan in 1992.
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May 16, 1975
A nurse steals another woman's unborn baby
Norma Jean Armistead checks herself into Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles, California, with a newborn that she claims to have given birth to at home. Some staff members were already aware that Armistead, a nurse at the hospital, had a pregnancy listed on her medical charts the previous year, but dismissed it as a mistake because they didn't believe the 44-year-old woman was still capable of getting pregnant.
Examining doctors were even more confused when it appeared that Armistead hadn't actually given birth. The mystery was soon solved when a 28-year-old woman turned up dead in her Van Nuys apartment. The baby she was carrying, and expected to give birth to shortly, had been cut from her body. Doctors quickly pieced the evidence together and Armistead was arrested for murder.
Armistead had planned the strange and horrific crime almost nine months earlier. In October, she managed to sneak into her medical records to create a false report of her pregnancy. Then, in May, she used the hospital's files to find a woman who was due to give birth. Armistead went to the woman's apartment and stabbed her to death before ripping the baby from her womb to pass off as her own.
Armistead, unsuccessfully pleading insanity, was convicted of murder and sent to prison for life.
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May 17, 2004
First legal same-sex marriage performed in Massachusetts
Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, of Malden, Massachusetts, marry at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts, becoming the first legally married same-sex partners in the United States. Over the course of the day, 77 other same-sex couples tied the knot across the state, and hundreds more applied for marriage licenses. The day was characterized by much celebration and only a few of the expected protests materialized.
On November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Court found the state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, ruling that the state could not deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry. The decision cited the state constitution's ban on the creation of second-class citizens. The court then gave the state 180 days in which to change the law. Efforts by some legislators to introduce an amendment to the state's constitution banning same-sex marriage, but recognizing civil unions, were defeated.
As of late 2005, Massachusetts remained the only state to recognize same-sex marriage. California, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and New Jersey recognize same-sex civil unions, giving partners similar legal rights to those enjoyed by married couples within their states. The couples do not have legal rights on a federal level or within states that do not recognize civil unions. Sixteen states have constitutional amendments that explicitly make same-sex marriage illegal. Twenty-seven states legally define marriage as the union of two people of opposite sexes.
Some national politicians, including President George W. Bush, have publicly broached the idea of a national constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and woman. Other groups, such as the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Christian Coalition, as well as many Republicans in Congress, continue to oppose same-sex marriage.
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1694 - Johann Michael Bach, German composer, dies at 46
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May 18, 2012
Facebook raises $16 billion in largest tech IPO in U.S. history
On this day in history, Facebook, the world's largest social network, holds its initial public offering (IPO) and raises $16 billion. It was the largest technology IPO in American history to that date, and the third-largest IPO ever in the United States, after those of Visa and General Motors. At the time it went public, Facebook was valued at $104 billion and had some 900 million registered users worldwide.
Facebook was founded as TheFacebook in February 2004 by Harvard University sophomore Mark Zuckerberg and fellow classmates Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskovitz. The site originally was only for students at Harvard; however, it soon opened up to other universities. In June 2004, Zuckerberg moved Facebook to Palo Alto, California, and by the end of the year several Silicon Valley entrepreneurs had invested in the business and it had almost a million registered users. In 2005, Facebook (as it officially became known that year when "the" was dropped from its name) spread to American high schools and foreign schools, and the following year, anyone who was at least 13 years old was allowed to sign up. (Facebook always has been free to join; at the time of its IPO, the bulk of the company's revenues came from advertising.)
As the site's user base grew rapidly and its functionality expanded (the "news feed" was added in 2006 and the "like" feature in 2009), Facebook helped change how people communicate and share information. During the 2008 U.S. presidential race, Barack Obama used Facebook to build a following, especially among young voters, a constituency that helped him win the White House. Additionally, during the political uprisings in the Middle East that began in late 2010 and came to be called the Arab Spring, activists used Facebook (and other social media tools, notably Twitter) to share photos and videos of atrocities their governments were committing against citizens, and also to organize protest events. (As of late June 2012, more than 80 percent of Facebook's monthly active users were outside of America and Canada.)
In 2010, "The Social Network," a feature film about the founding of Facebook, made its debut. The movie, which earned eight Academy Award nominations, chronicled the 2004 lawsuit filed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, Harvard students at the same time as Zuckerberg, who claimed he stole the original idea for Facebook from them. Facebook countersued, and in 2008, the Winklevosses and Narendra agreed to a $65 million settlement from the company.
Facebook made the Dobbs Ferry, New York, native Zuckerberg, the son of a dentist, a billionaire. At the time of the company's much-anticipated IPO on May 18, 2012, Zuckerberg was worth some $19 billion. However, despite all the fanfare surrounding Facebook's IPO, its shares closed the first day of trading at $38.23, only slightly above the $38 IPO price, which many investors considered a disappointing performance.
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May 19, 1935
Lawrence of Arabia dies
T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, dies as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author, and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before.
Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in Tremadoc, Wales, in 1888. In 1896, his family moved to Oxford. Lawrence studied architecture and archaeology, for which he made a trip to Ottoman (Turkish)-controlled Syria and Palestine in 1909. In 1911, he won a fellowship to join an expedition excavating an ancient Hittite settlement on the Euphrates River. He worked there for three years and in his free time traveled and learned Arabic. In 1914, he explored the Sinai, near the frontier of Ottoman-controlled Arabia and British-controlled Egypt. The maps Lawrence and his associates made had immediate strategic value upon the outbreak of war between Britain and the Ottoman Empire in October 1914.
Lawrence enlisted in the war and because of his expertise in Arab affairs was assigned to Cairo as an intelligence officer. He spent more than a year in Egypt, processing intelligence information and in 1916 accompanied a British diplomat to Arabia, where Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, had proclaimed a revolt against Turkish rule. Lawrence convinced his superiors to aid Hussein's rebellion, and he was sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein's son Faisal as a liaison officer.
Under Lawrence's guidance, the Arabians launched an effective guerrilla war against the Turkish lines. He proved a gifted military strategist and was greatly admired by the Bedouin people of Arabia. In July 1917, Arabian forces captured Aqaba near the Sinai and joined the British march on Jerusalem. Lawrence was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In November, he was captured by the Turks while reconnoitering behind enemy lines in Arab dress and was tortured and sexually abused before escaping. He rejoined his army, which slowly worked its way north to Damascus, which fell in October 1918.
Arabia was liberated, but Lawrence's hope that the peninsula would be united as a single nation was dashed when Arabian factionalism came to the fore after Damascus. Lawrence, exhausted and disillusioned, left for England. Feeling that Britain had exacerbated the rivalries between the Arabian groups, he appeared before King George V and politely refused the medals offered to him.
After the war, he lobbied hard for independence for Arab countries and appeared at the Paris peace conference in Arab robes. He became something of a legendary figure in his own lifetime, and in 1922 he gave up higher-paying appointments to enlist in the Royal Air Force (RAF) under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. He had just completed writing his monumental war memoir, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and he hoped to escape his fame and acquire material for a new book. Found out by the press, he was discharged, but in 1923 he managed to enlist as a private in the Royal Tanks Corps under another assumed name, T.E. Shaw, a reference to his friend, Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. In 1925, Lawrence rejoined the RAF and two years later legally changed his last name to Shaw.
In 1927, an abridged version of his memoir was published and generated tremendous publicity, but the press was unable to locate Lawrence (he was posted to a base in India). In 1929, he returned to England and spent the next six years writing and working as an RAF mechanic. In 1932, his English translation of Homer's Odyssey was published under the name of T.E. Shaw. The Mint, a fictionalized account of Royal Air Force recruit training, was not published until 1955 because of its explicitness.
In February 1935, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF and returned to his simple cottage at Clouds Hill, Dorset. On May 13, he was critically injured while driving his motorcycle through the Dorset countryside. He had swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles. On May 19, he died at the hospital of his former RAF camp. All of Britain mourned his passing.
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May 19, 1935
Lawrence of Arabia dies
T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, dies as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author, and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before.
Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in Tremadoc, Wales, in 1888. In 1896, his family moved to Oxford. Lawrence studied architecture and archaeology, for which he made a trip to Ottoman (Turkish)-controlled Syria and Palestine in 1909. In 1911, he won a fellowship to join an expedition excavating an ancient Hittite settlement on the Euphrates River. He worked there for three years and in his free time traveled and learned Arabic. In 1914, he explored the Sinai, near the frontier of Ottoman-controlled Arabia and British-controlled Egypt. The maps Lawrence and his associates made had immediate strategic value upon the outbreak of war between Britain and the Ottoman Empire in October 1914.
Lawrence enlisted in the war and because of his expertise in Arab affairs was assigned to Cairo as an intelligence officer. He spent more than a year in Egypt, processing intelligence information and in 1916 accompanied a British diplomat to Arabia, where Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, had proclaimed a revolt against Turkish rule. Lawrence convinced his superiors to aid Hussein's rebellion, and he was sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein's son Faisal as a liaison officer.
Under Lawrence's guidance, the Arabians launched an effective guerrilla war against the Turkish lines. He proved a gifted military strategist and was greatly admired by the Bedouin people of Arabia. In July 1917, Arabian forces captured Aqaba near the Sinai and joined the British march on Jerusalem. Lawrence was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In November, he was captured by the Turks while reconnoitering behind enemy lines in Arab dress and was tortured and sexually abused before escaping. He rejoined his army, which slowly worked its way north to Damascus, which fell in October 1918.
Arabia was liberated, but Lawrence's hope that the peninsula would be united as a single nation was dashed when Arabian factionalism came to the fore after Damascus. Lawrence, exhausted and disillusioned, left for England. Feeling that Britain had exacerbated the rivalries between the Arabian groups, he appeared before King George V and politely refused the medals offered to him.
After the war, he lobbied hard for independence for Arab countries and appeared at the Paris peace conference in Arab robes. He became something of a legendary figure in his own lifetime, and in 1922 he gave up higher-paying appointments to enlist in the Royal Air Force (RAF) under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. He had just completed writing his monumental war memoir, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and he hoped to escape his fame and acquire material for a new book. Found out by the press, he was discharged, but in 1923 he managed to enlist as a private in the Royal Tanks Corps under another assumed name, T.E. Shaw, a reference to his friend, Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. In 1925, Lawrence rejoined the RAF and two years later legally changed his last name to Shaw.
In 1927, an abridged version of his memoir was published and generated tremendous publicity, but the press was unable to locate Lawrence (he was posted to a base in India). In 1929, he returned to England and spent the next six years writing and working as an RAF mechanic. In 1932, his English translation of Homer's Odyssey was published under the name of T.E. Shaw. The Mint, a fictionalized account of Royal Air Force recruit training, was not published until 1955 because of its explicitness.
In February 1935, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF and returned to his simple cottage at Clouds Hill, Dorset. On May 13, he was critically injured while driving his motorcycle through the Dorset countryside. He had swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles. On May 19, he died at the hospital of his former RAF camp. All of Britain mourned his passing.
Peter O'Toole died December 14th, bro.
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May 20, 1873
Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans
On this day in 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world's most famous garments: blue jeans.
Born Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829, the young Strauss immigrated to New York with his family in 1847 after the death of his father. By 1850, Loeb had changed his name to Levi and was working in the family dry goods business, J. Strauss Brother & Co. In early 1853, Levi Strauss went west to seek his fortune during the heady days of the Gold Rush.
In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business under his own name and worked as the West Coast representative of his family's firm. His new business imported clothing, fabric and other dry goods to sell in the small stores opening all over California and other Western states to supply the rapidly expanding communities of gold miners and other settlers. By 1866, Strauss had moved his company to expanded headquarters and was a well-known businessman and supporter of the Jewish community in San Francisco.
Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss' regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter to Strauss about his method of making work pants with metal rivets on the stress points--at the corners of the pockets and the base of the button fly--to make them stronger. As Davis didn't have the money for the necessary paperwork, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, and the patent for "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings"--the innovation that would produce blue jeans as we know them--was granted to both men on May 20, 1873.
Strauss brought Davis to San Francisco to oversee the first manufacturing facility for "waist overalls," as the original jeans were known. At first they employed seamstresses working out of their homes, but by the 1880s, Strauss had opened his own factory. The famous 501 brand jean--known until 1890 as "XX"--was soon a bestseller, and the company grew quickly. By the 1920s, Levi's denim waist overalls were the top-selling men's work pant in the United States. As decades passed, the craze only grew, and now blue jeans are worn by men and women, young and old, around the world.
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suspend this thread immediately.
way more pressing issues.
fuck the nigerians whores as well, we need to bring back our Halo
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May 16, 1975
A nurse steals another woman's unborn baby
Norma Jean Armistead checks herself into Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles, California, with a newborn that she claims to have given birth to at home. Some staff members were already aware that Armistead, a nurse at the hospital, had a pregnancy listed on her medical charts the previous year, but dismissed it as a mistake because they didn't believe the 44-year-old woman was still capable of getting pregnant.
Examining doctors were even more confused when it appeared that Armistead hadn't actually given birth. The mystery was soon solved when a 28-year-old woman turned up dead in her Van Nuys apartment. The baby she was carrying, and expected to give birth to shortly, had been cut from her body. Doctors quickly pieced the evidence together and Armistead was arrested for murder.
Armistead had planned the strange and horrific crime almost nine months earlier. In October, she managed to sneak into her medical records to create a false report of her pregnancy. Then, in May, she used the hospital's files to find a woman who was due to give birth. Armistead went to the woman's apartment and stabbed her to death before ripping the baby from her womb to pass off as her own.
Armistead, unsuccessfully pleading insanity, was convicted of murder and sent to prison for life.
holy shit .
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May 21, 1542
De Soto dies in the American wilderness
On the banks of the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto dies, ending a three-year journey for gold that took him halfway across what is now the United States. In order that Indians would not learn of his death, and thus disprove de Soto's claims of divinity, his men buried his body in the Mississippi River.
In late May 1539, de Soto landed on the west coast of Florida with 600 troops, servants, and staff, 200 horses, and a pack of bloodhounds. From there, the army set about subduing the natives, seizing any valuables they stumbled upon, and preparing the region for eventual Spanish colonization. Traveling through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, across the Appalachians, and back to Alabama, de Soto failed to find the gold and silver he desired, but he did seize a valuable collection of pearls at Cofitachequi, in present-day Georgia. Decisive conquest also eluded the Spaniards, as what would become the United States lacked the large, centralized civilizations of Mexico and Peru.
As was the method of Spanish conquest elsewhere in the Americas, de Soto ill-treated and enslaved the natives he encountered. For the most part, the Indian warriors they encountered were intimidated by the Spanish horsemen and kept their distance. In October 1540, however, the tables were turned when a confederation of Indians attacked the Spaniards at the fortified Indian town of Mabila, near present-day Mobile, Alabama. All the Indians were killed, along with 20 of de Soto's men. Several hundred Spaniards were wounded. In addition, the Indian conscripts they had come to depend on to bear their supplies had all fled with baggage.
De Soto could have marched south to reconvene with his ships along the Gulf Coast, but instead he ordered his expedition north-westward in search of America's elusive riches. In May 1541, the army reached and crossed the Mississippi River, probably the first Europeans ever to do so. From there, they traveled through Arkansas and Louisiana, still with few material gains to show for their efforts. Turning back to the Mississippi, de Soto died of a fever on its banks on May 21, 1542.
The Spaniards, now under the command of Luis de Moscoso, traveled west again, crossing into north Texas before returning to the Mississippi. With nearly half of the original expedition dead, the Spaniards built rafts and traveled down the river to the sea, and then made their way down the Texas coast to New Spain, finally reaching Veracruz, Mexico, in late 1543.
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Keep up thegood work shizzo
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May 22, 1981
Atlanta child murderer is questioned
Police staking out a bridge over the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta, Georgia, hear a loud splash, and begin chasing Wayne Williams as he attempts to drive away in a station wagon. After questioning him about his involvement in the unprecedented string of child murders in Atlanta over the two previous years, Williams was released. However, he was arrested two days later when the body of Nathaniel Cater was found in the river near the bridge.
In a spree that began in July 1979, 29 black children and young men disappeared or were killed in the Atlanta area. The only clue detectives had to go on was that many of the bodies had the same rare yellow-green nylon fiber on them, leading investigators to believe that all of the killings were connected.
As they desperately searched for the manufacturer of the fiber, a newspaper reported on the significance of the fiber evidence. Fearing that he was on the verge of being discovered, the killer then began dumping the bodies of his victims in the Chattahoochee River. This, in turn, inspired the police surveillance that ensnared Williams on May 22.
The rare fiber was eventually identified as a yarn that was sold to a Georgia carpet company, West Point Pepperell, which used it to make a line called Luxaire. The color of the fibers found on the bodies, including Nathaniel Cater, matched Luxaire English Olive; this was the type of carpet found in Williams' home.
Experts estimated that one in approximately 8,000 Atlanta area homes contained Luxaire English Olive carpet. Prosecutors used this probability, along with fiber and hair evidence from Williams' car and dog, to establish the fact that it was an extremely small chance that anyone other than Williams could be the killer. Adding to the already damning evidence against him, the killings immediately stopped after Williams was arrested.
On February 27, 1982, the jury found Wayne Williams guilty of the murders of Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, and he was sentenced to life in prison. After the verdict, the Atlanta police department closed 22 other cases, but Williams was never tried, or charged, for those crimes. Since that time, some conspiracy theorists have advanced the idea that it was members of the Ku Klux Klan, not Wayne Williams, who was responsible for the killings in the hopes of starting a race war. Though this theory has not been accepted by the courts, an investigation into five of the murders for which Williams was not convicted was reopened in 2005. It was closed again in 2006 after police dropped an unpromising probe into the Ku Klux Klan's possible involvement.
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May 23, 1934
Police kill famous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde
On this day in 1934, notorious criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police while driving a stolen car near Sailes, Louisiana.
Bonnie Parker met the charismatic Clyde Barrow in Texas when she was 19 years old and her husband (she married when she was 16) was serving time in jail for murder. Shortly after they met, Barrow was imprisoned for robbery. Parker visited him every day, and smuggled a gun into prison to help him escape, but he was soon caught in Ohio and sent back to jail. When Barrow was paroled in 1932, he immediately hooked up with Parker, and the couple began a life of crime together.
After they stole a car and committed several robberies, Parker was caught by police and sent to jail for two months. Released in mid-1932, she rejoined Barrow. Over the next two years, the couple teamed with various accomplices to rob a string of banks and stores across five states--Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico and Louisiana. To law enforcement agents, the Barrow Gang--including Barrow's childhood friend, Raymond Hamilton, W.D. Jones, Henry Methvin, Barrow's brother Buck and his wife Blanche, among others--were cold-blooded criminals who didn't hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, especially police or sheriff's deputies. Among the public, however, Parker and Barrow's reputation as dangerous outlaws was mixed with a romantic view of the couple as "Robin Hood"-like folk heroes.
Their fame was increased by the fact that Bonnie was a woman--an unlikely criminal--and by the fact that the couple posed for playful photographs together, which were later found by police and released to the media. Police almost captured the famous duo twice in the spring of 1933, with surprise raids on their hideouts in Joplin and Platte City, Missouri. Buck Barrow was killed in the second raid, and Blanche was arrested, but Bonnie and Clyde escaped once again. In January 1934, they attacked the Eastham Prison Farm in Texas to help Hamilton break out of jail, shooting several guards with machine guns and killing one.
Texan prison officials hired a retired Texas police officer, Captain Frank Hamer, as a special investigator to track down Parker and Barrow. After a three-month search, Hamer traced the couple to Louisiana, where Henry Methvin's family lived. Before dawn on May 23, Hamer and a group of Louisiana and Texas lawmen hid in the bushes along a country road outside Sailes. When Parker and Barrow appeared, the officers opened fire, killing the couple instantly in a hail of bullets.
All told, the Barrow Gang was believed responsible for the deaths of 13 people, including nine police officers. Parker and Barrow are still seen by many as romantic figures, however, especially after the success of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.
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May 24, 1844
What hath God wrought?
In a demonstration witnessed by members of Congress, American inventor Samuel F.B. Morse dispatches a telegraph message from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in Baltimore, Maryland. The message--"What Hath God Wrought?"--was telegraphed back to the Capitol a moment later by Vail. The question, taken from the Bible (Numbers 23:23), had been suggested to Morse by Annie Ellworth, the daughter of the commissioner of patents.
Morse, an accomplished painter, learned of a French inventor's idea of an electric telegraph in 1832 and then spent the next 12 years attempting to perfect a working telegraph instrument. During this period, he composed the Morse code, a set of signals that could represent language in telegraph messages, and convinced Congress to finance a Washington-to-Baltimore telegraph line. On May 24, 1844, he inaugurated the world's first commercial telegraph line with a message that was fitting given the invention's future effects on American life.
Just a decade after the first line opened, more than 20,000 miles of telegraph cable crisscrossed the country. The rapid communication it enabled greatly aided American expansion, making railroad travel safer as it provided a boost to business conducted across the great distances of a growing United States.
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May 25, 1977
Star Wars opens
On this day in 1977, Memorial Day weekend opens with an intergalactic bang as the first of George Lucas' blockbuster Star Wars movies hits American theaters.
The incredible success of Star Wars--it received seven Oscars, and earned $461 million in U.S. ticket sales and a gross of close to $800 million worldwide--began with an extensive, coordinated marketing push by Lucas and his studio, 20th Century Fox, months before the movie's release date. "It wasn't like a movie opening," actress Carrie Fisher, who played rebel leader Princess Leia, later told Time magazine. "It was like an earthquake." Beginning with--in Fisher's words--"a new order of geeks, enthusiastic young people with sleeping bags," the anticipation of a revolutionary movie-watching experience spread like wildfire, causing long lines in front of movie theaters across the country and around the world.
With its groundbreaking special effects, Star Wars leaped off screens and immersed audiences in "a galaxy far, far away." By now everyone knows the story, which followed the baby-faced Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) as he enlisted a team of allies--including hunky Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and the robots C3PO and R2D2--on his mission to rescue the kidnapped Princess Leia from an Evil Empire governed by Darth Vader. The film made all three of its lead actors overnight stars, turning Fisher into an object of adoration for millions of young male fans and launching Ford's now-legendary career as an action-hero heartthrob.
Star Wars was soon a bona-fide pop culture phenomenon. Over the years it has spawned five more feature films, five TV series and an entire industry's worth of comic books, toys, video games and other products. Two big-screen sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and The Return of the Jedi (1983), featured much of the original cast and enjoyed the same success--both critical and commercial--as the first film. In 1999, Lucas stretched back in time for the fourth installment, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, chronologically a prequel to the original movie. Two other prequels, Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005) followed.
The latter Star Wars movies featured a new cast--including Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen--and have generally failed to earn the same amount of critical praise as the first three films. They continue to score at the box office, however, with Revenge of the Sith becoming the top-grossing film of 2005 in the United States and the second worldwide.
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May 26, 1897
Bram Stoker's novel Dracula goes on sale in London
Horror writer Bram Stoker's classic vampire tale, Dracula, is first offered for sale in London on this day.
Through fictional journal entries and letters written by the novel's principal characters, Dracula tells the story of a Transylvanian vampire and his English victims. Stoker had been publishing horror stories since 1875 and published his first novel, Snake's Pass, in 1890. The horror genre, which was born of folk tales and legends, had received a boost in 18th century England through the Gothic movement. It persisted in the 19th century thanks to works like Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein.
Stoker was born in Dublin and bedridden for his first seven years of life. However, he later distinguished himself as an athlete at the University of Dublin. He worked in civil service for a decade while writing drama reviews. In 1878, he became the manager of Sir Henry Irving, an actor he admired. He managed Irving for 27 years. Stoker wrote several other novels before his death in London in 1912, but none equaled the popularity of Dracula.
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May 27, 1703
St. Petersburg founded by Peter the Great
After winning access to the Baltic Sea through his victories in the Great Northern War, Czar Peter I founds the city of St. Petersburg as the new Russian capital.
The reign of Peter, who became sole czar in 1696, was characterized by a series of sweeping military, political, economic, and cultural reforms based on Western European models. Peter the Great, as he became known, led his country into major conflicts with Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Sweden. Russian victories in these wars greatly expanded Peter's empire, and the defeat of Sweden won Russia direct access to the Baltic Sea, a lifelong obsession of the Russian leader. With the founding of St. Petersburg, Russia was now a major European power--politically, culturally, and geographically. In 1721, Peter abandoned the traditional Russian title of czar in favor of the European-influenced title of emperor. Four years later, he died and was succeeded by his wife, Catherine.
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Where's Linda with all the exes? Layne Staleyed up in a London apartment somewhere, dozens of cats feeding off her decomposing corpse?
Linda?
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May 28, 1754
First blood of the French and Indian War
In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeats a French reconnaissance party in southwestern Pennsylvania. In a surprise attack, the Virginians killed 10 French soldiers from Fort Duquesne, including the French commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and took 21 prisoners. Only one of Washington's men was killed.
The French and Indian War was the last and most important of a series of colonial conflicts between the British and the American colonists on one side, and the French and their broad network of Native American allies on the other. Fighting began in the spring of 1754, but Britain and France did not officially declare war against each other until May 1756 and the outbreak of the Seven Years War in Europe.
In November 1752, at the age of 20, George Washington was appointed adjutant in the Virginia colonial militia, which involved the inspection, mustering, and regulation of various militia companies. In November 1753, he first gained public notice when he volunteered to carry a message from Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie to the French moving into the Ohio Valley, warning them to leave the territory, which was claimed by the British crown. Washington succeeded in the perilous wilderness journey and brought back an alarming message: The French intended to stay.
In 1754, Dinwiddie appointed Washington a lieutenant colonel and sent him out with 160 men to reinforce a colonial post at what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Before Washington could reach it, however, it was given up without bloodshed to the French, who renamed it Fort Duquesne. Washington moved within about 40 miles of the French position and set about building a new post at Great Meadows, which he named Fort Necessity. From this base, he ambushed an advance detachment of about 30 French, striking the first blow of the French and Indian War. For the victory, Washington was appointed a full colonel and reinforced with several hundred Virginia and North Carolina troops.
On July 3, the French descended on Fort Necessity with their full force, and after an all-day fight Washington surrendered to their superior numbers. The disarmed colonials were allowed to march back to Virginia, and Washington was hailed as a hero despite his surrender of the fort. The story of the campaign was written up in a London gazette, and Washington was quoted as saying, "I have heard the bullets whistle; and believe me, there is something charming in the sound." Reading this, King George II remarked, "He would not say so if he had been used to hear many."
In October 1754, Washington resigned his commission in protest of the British underpayment of colonial offices and policy of making them subordinate to all British officers, regardless of rank. In early 1755, however, British General Edward Braddock and his army arrived to Virginia, and Washington agreed to serve as Braddock's personal aide-de-camp, with the courtesy title of colonel. The subsequent expedition against Fort Duquesne was a disaster, but Washington fought bravely and succeeded in bringing the survivors back after Braddock and 1,000 others were killed.
With the western frontier of Virginia now dangerously exposed, Governor Dinwiddie appointed Washington commander in chief of all Virginia forces in August 1755. During the next three years, Washington struggled with the problems of frontier defense but participated in no major engagements until he was put in command of a Virginia regiment participating in a large British campaign against Fort Duquesne in 1758. The French burned and abandoned the fort before the British and Americans arrived, and Fort Pitt was raised on its site. With Virginia's strategic objective attained, Washington resigned his commission with the honorary rank of brigadier general. He returned to a planter's life and took a seat in Virginia's House of Burgesses.
The French and Indian War raged on elsewhere in North America for several years. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in February 1763, France lost all claims to the mainland of North America east of the Mississippi and gave up Louisiana, including New Orleans, to Spain. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of their North American empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots, despite the fact that the Patriots were led by one of France's old enemies, George Washington.
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May 29, 1979
Woody Harrelson's father is arrested for murder
Judge John Wood, known as "Maximum John," is assassinated outside his San Antonio, Texas, home as he bent down to look at a flat tire on his car. Actor Woody Harrelson's father, Charles Harrelson, was charged with the murder after evidence revealed that drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, whose case was about to come up before "Maximum John," had paid him $250,000.
Chagra, worried about the sentence that was soon to be imposed by Judge Wood, apparently conspired with his wife and brother to hire Harrelson to carry out the murder. Shattered bullet fragments found at the scene were traced to a .240 Wetherby Mark V rifle—the type recently purchased by Harrelson's wife, Jo Ann. Harrelson, who had a prior conviction for murder in 1968, was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences in prison. Jo Ann, convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and perjufy, was later paroled. Woody Harrelson funded his father's appeals, enlisting the aid of famed attorney Alan Dershowitz.
Charles Harrelson died on March 15, 2007, at age 69 of a heart attack in his cell at Colorado's Supermax federal prison.
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May 29, 1979
Woody Harrelson's father is arrested for murder
Judge John Wood, known as "Maximum John," is assassinated outside his San Antonio, Texas, home as he bent down to look at a flat tire on his car. Actor Woody Harrelson's father, Charles Harrelson, was charged with the murder after evidence revealed that drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, whose case was about to come up before "Maximum John," had paid him $250,000.
Chagra, worried about the sentence that was soon to be imposed by Judge Wood, apparently conspired with his wife and brother to hire Harrelson to carry out the murder. Shattered bullet fragments found at the scene were traced to a .240 Wetherby Mark V rifle—the type recently purchased by Harrelson's wife, Jo Ann. Harrelson, who had a prior conviction for murder in 1968, was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences in prison. Jo Ann, convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and perjufy, was later paroled. Woody Harrelson funded his father's appeals, enlisting the aid of famed attorney Alan Dershowitz.
Charles Harrelson died on March 15, 2007, at age 69 of a heart attack in his cell at Colorado's Supermax federal prison.
Trivia: In No Country for Old Men, Sheriff Bell says, "Here a while back in San Antonio they shot and killed a federal judge." Cormac McCarthy was referring to Howland, who Harrelson killed. Later, Woody appeared in the film.
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May 30, 1431
Joan of Arc martyred
At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy.
Joan was born in 1412, the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domremy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine. In 1415, the Hundred Years War between England and France entered a crucial phase when the young King Henry V of England invaded France and won a series of decisive victories against the forces of King Charles VI. By the time of Henry's death in August 1422, the English and their French-Burgundian allies controlled Aquitaine and most of northern France, including Paris. Charles VI, long incapacitated, died one month later, and his son, Charles, regent from 1418, prepared to take the throne. However, Reims, the traditional city of French coronation, was held by the Anglo-Burgundians, and the Dauphin (heir apparent to the French throne) remained uncrowned. Meanwhile, King Henry VI of England, the infant son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, the daughter of Charles VI, was proclaimed king of France by the English.
Joan's village of Domremy lay on the frontier between the France of the Dauphin and that of the Anglo-Burgundians. In the midst of this unstable environment, Joan began hearing "voices" of three Christian saints—St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. When she was about 16, these voices exhorted her to aid the Dauphin in capturing Reims and therefore the French throne. In May 1428, she traveled to Vaucouleurs, a stronghold of the Dauphin, and told the captain of the garrison of her visions. Disbelieving the young peasant girl, he sent her home. In January 1429, she returned, and the captain, impressed by her piety and determination, agreed to allow her passage to the Dauphin at Chinon.
Dressed in men's clothes and accompanied by six soldiers, she reached the Dauphin's castle at Chinon in February 1429 and was granted an audience. Charles hid himself among his courtiers, but Joan immediately picked him out and informed him of her divine mission. For several weeks, Charles had Joan questioned by theologians at Poitiers, who concluded that, given his desperate straits, the Dauphin would be well-advised to make use of this strange and charismatic girl.
Charles furnished her with a small army, and on April 27, 1429, she set out for Orleans, besieged by the English since October 1428. On April 29, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of Orleans, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate. She brought greatly needed supplies and reinforcements and inspired the French to a passionate resistance. She personally led the charge in several battles and on May 7 was struck by an arrow. After quickly dressing her wound, she returned to the fight, and the French won the day. On May 8, the English retreated from Orleans.
During the next five weeks, Joan and the French commanders led the French into a string of stunning victories over the English. On July 16, the royal army reached Reims, which opened its gates to Joan and the Dauphin. The next day, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan standing nearby holding up her standard: an image of Christ in judgment. After the ceremony, she knelt before Charles, joyously calling him king for the first time.
On September 8, the king and Joan attacked Paris. During the battle, Joan carried her standard up to the earthworks and called on the Parisians to surrender the city to the king of France. She was wounded but continued to rally the king's troops until Charles ordered an end to the unsuccessful siege. That year, she led several more small campaigns, capturing the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moitier. In December, Charles ennobled Joan, her parents, and her brothers.
In May 1430, the Burgundians laid siege to Compiegne, and Joan stole into the town under the cover of darkness to aid in its defense. On May 23, while leading a sortie against the Burgundians, she was captured. The Burgundians sold her to the English, and in March 1431 she went on trial before ecclesiastical authorities in Rouen on charges of heresy. Her most serious crime, according to the tribunal, was her rejection of church authority in favor of direct inspiration from God. After refusing to submit to the church, her sentence was read on May 24: She was to be turned over to secular authorities and executed. Reacting with horror to the pronouncement, Joan agreed to recant and was condemned instead to perpetual imprisonment.
Ordered to put on women's clothes, she obeyed, but a few days later the judges went to her cell and found her dressed again in male attire. Questioned, she told them that St. Catherine and St. Margaret had reproached her for giving in to the church against their will. She was found to be a relapsed heretic and on May 29 ordered handed over to secular officials. On May 30, Joan, 19 years old, was burned at the stake at the Place du Vieux-Marche in Rouen. Before the pyre was lit, she instructed a priest to hold high a crucifix for her to see and to shout out prayers loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames.
As a source of military inspiration, Joan of Arc helped turn the Hundred Years War firmly in France's favor. By 1453, Charles VII had reconquered all of France except for Calais, which the English relinquished in 1558. In 1920, Joan of Arc, one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Her feast day is May 30.
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May 31, 1964
A killer who can't keep his mouth shut
Fifteen-year-old Alleen Rowe is killed by Charles Schmid in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona. Earlier in the night, Schmid allegedly had said to his friends, "I want to kill a girl! I want to do it tonight. I think I can get away with it!" Schmid went on to kill three other teenage girls before being caught by police.
Constantly trying to compensate for his short stature, Charles Schmid wore oversized cowboy boots stuffed with rags to boost up his natural 5-foot, 3-inch stance. He was also a well-known pathological liar, telling girls that he had terminal diseases and that he had connections to the mafia. To his friends, he constantly bragged about his sexual exploits.
When Schmid was 22, he enlisted John Saunders and Mary French to assist in killing Alleen Rowe. They lured the girl out to the desert where Schmid raped her and then smashed her head with a rock before they each took turns digging a shallow grave in which to bury her. Providing alibis for each other, the threesome allowed police to write off Rowe's disappearance as a runaway case. Most of Tuscon's teen community had already heard rumors that Schmid, Saunders, and French were responsible, but no one came forward.
The following year, 17-year-old Gretchen Fritz, who had been secretly dating Schmid, disappeared, along with her younger sister Wendy. Schmid, who had killed the sisters in the desert, couldn't resist telling someone, so he enlisted Richard Bruns' help in burying the bodies. Schmid went on to kill two other teenaged girls. He later bragged about killing four people, but if there was a fourth, it was a teenaged boy that he killed before he met Rowe. When Bruns soon began to fear that Schmid would kill his own girlfriend, and he therefore told the police about the Fritz murders about three months later.The subsequent trial gained national attention as an example of the depravity of young people in the 1960s. Schmid was convicted and sentenced to death, but he survived because the Supreme Court invalidated most death sentences in 1972. Later that year, he escaped from state prison, only to be caught a few days later.
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Jun 1, 2004
Opening statements begin in Scott Peterson murder trial
On this day in 2004, opening statements begin in the trial of Scott Peterson, accused of murdering his wife Laci and the couple's unborn son. On Christmas Eve 2002, the pregnant Laci had disappeared from Modesto, California. The case captivated millions across America and saturated national media coverage for nearly two years.
When initially questioned about his wife's whereabouts, Peterson claimed that Laci had disappeared sometime after leaving the house to walk their dog and after he left on a fishing trip to nearby San Francisco Bay. About one month later, Amber Frey, a 28-year-old massage therapist from Fresno, California, came forward to tell police that she'd had an affair with Scott Peterson, shattering his image as a devoted husband to his pretty and pregnant wife. As police continued to search for Laci and clues that might explain her disappearance, Scott Peterson sold her sports-utility vehicle, leading to suspicions that he might be trying to get rid of evidence.
The bodies of Laci and her baby were found washed up on shore near the marina where Scott Peterson kept his boat on April 13 and 14, 2003. Within a week, Scott Peterson was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with the special circumstance of double homicide, which opened the door for prosecutors to seek the death penalty. He was arrested in San Diego carrying large amounts of cash and his brother's passport, and with a new hair color and cut, seemingly on the verge of running from police.
Soon after pleading not guilty to the charges, Peterson retained the legal services of well-known celebrity attorney Mark Geragos. His trial began on June 1, 2004. Over the course of the next 19 weeks, prosecutors introduced 174 witnesses and hundreds of pieces of evidence designed to paint Scott Peterson as a cold and heartless man who continued to lie and cheat on his wife even as he appeared on television feigning despair over her disappearance. They pointed out how he referred to himself as a "widower" even before his wife's body had been found. The prosecution's case was hampered, however, by the fact that they had no eyewitness to the crime and had not found a weapon. Meanwhile, Geragos worked to convince the jury of an alternate scenario in which someone else had murdered Laci while she was walking the dog, then framed Scott after learning of his alibi from the news. Peterson did not take the stand.
Finally, on November 12, 2004, after seven days of deliberation that involved the replacement of two jurors, Scott Peterson was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife and the second-degree murder of his unborn son. He was unemotional during the reading of the verdict, which was greeted with cheers and celebration by Laci's friends in the audience and the hundreds of supporters waiting outside the courthouse.
On March 16, 2005, Scott Peterson was formally sentenced to death by lethal injection. He remains on death row in California's San Quentin prison
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Jun 2, 1985
English football clubs banned from Europe
On June 2, 1985, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) bans English football (soccer) clubs from competing in Europe. The ban followed the death of 39 Italian and Belgian football fans at Brussels’ Heysel Stadium in a riot caused by English football hooligans at that year’s European Cup final.
The 1985 European Cup final pitted two of the most successful and storied clubs in Europe against each other: Juventus from Turin, Italy, and Liverpool, an English team that was the defending European champion. At 7 p.m., right before the start of the match, a group of Liverpool fans, drunk from a day spent at the bars in Brussels, charged after a group of Juventus fans. In the melee, a stadium wall collapsed, crushing some spectators. Others were trampled in the ensuing rush to flee the stadium. In all, 32 Juventus fans were killed, as well as seven bystanders. Hundreds of other people were injured. To avoid further rioting from the unruly crowd, the game went on as scheduled. Juventus won 1–0.
In the aftermath, all English clubs were banned for five years from competing in Champions League and UEFA Cup play. Liverpool’s ban, at first indefinite, was eventually set at 10 years and then later reduced to six. From 1977 to 1984, English clubs had captured seven of eight European Cups, and their banishment from play was a blow to the country and the sport as a whole. Still, when the ban was announced, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave it her full support: "We have to get the game cleaned up from this hooliganism at home and then perhaps we shall be able to go overseas again." The consequences did not end with the ban. Liverpool saw 14 of its fans found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Belgium in 1989 after a five-month trial. The fans were given three-year jail sentences, with half of the terms suspended.
English teams were finally readmitted to the UEFA after the 1990 World Cup. Fifteen years later, on April 5, 2005, Liverpool beat Juventus 2-1 in the first leg of the European Champions League quarterfinals. It was the first match the two clubs had played since the Heysel Stadium disaster. Fans stood still for a moment of silence at the beginning of the game, remembering the 39 dead from the 1985 tragedy. A rematch was played nine days later on April 14, 2005, in Turin, where Liverpool played Juventus to a 0-0 tie, putting Liverpool in the European championship semifinal game. They went on to win their fifth European championship.
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Jun 3, 2010
Van der Sloot arrested for murder in South America
On this day in 2010, Joran van der Sloot, a longtime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba, is arrested in Chile in connection with the slaying of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, in Lima, Peru. Flores was murdered on May 30, 2010, exactly five years to the day after Holloway went missing while on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island. In January 2012, Van der Sloot pleaded guilty to Flores’ murder.
In May 2010, Van der Sloot, who was born in the Netherlands in 1987 and raised in Dutch-speaking Aruba, was in the Peruvian capital for a poker tournament. He reportedly met Flores, a college student and daughter of a prominent Peruvian businessman, at a Lima casino. The two were seen entering Van der Sloot’s room at Hotel TAC around 5 a.m. on May 30. Approximately four hours later, surveillance video captured Van der Sloot leaving the room alone and carrying his bags. After Flores’ family reported her missing, she was found dead in the hotel room on June 2, beaten and with a broken neck. Her money and credit cards were missing.
After Peruvian officials reviewed the hotel surveillance video, Van der Sloot emerged as the prime suspect in the murder investigation. Police believed he had fled in Flores’ car and later abandoned it in another part of Lima, before traveling south to Chile. On June 3, Van der Sloot was arrested in Chile, and deported to Peru soon afterward. On June 7, the Dutchman admitted to Peruvian authorities he had killed Flores during an argument after she used his computer without permission (authorities suggested she might have discovered he was linked to the Holloway case). Van der Sloot stated he beat and strangled Flores then suffocated her with his shirt. The Dutchman later retracted this confession, saying he was frightened and confused when he made it.
On the day Van der Sloot was arrested in South America, U.S. authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with a plot to extort $250,000 from Holloway’s family in exchange for revealing the location of her remains. Holloway, an 18-year-old from Mountain Brook, Alabama, was last seen leaving an Aruban bar and restaurant with Van der Sloot and two of his friends in the early hours of May 30, 2005. Her disappearance generated widespread media coverage in the United States. Despite an extensive search, Holloway’s body was never found. Van der Sloot was arrested twice in Aruba in conjunction with her disappearance but never charged.
On January 11, 2012, Van der Sloot, who has been behind bars in Peru since his June 2010 arrest, pleaded guilty in a Lima courtroom to Flores’ murder. Two days later, a panel of judges sentenced him to 28 years in prison and ordered him to pay $75,000 in reparation to Flores’ family.
One day before Van der Sloot was sentenced, a judge in Birmingham, Alabama, signed an order declaring Natalee Holloway legally dead. The judge made the ruling at the request of Holloway’s father, so that he could settle his daughter’s estate.
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Jun 4, 1986
Pollard admits to selling top-secret information to Israel
Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top-secret U.S. military intelligence information to Israel. The former Navy intelligence analyst sold enough classified documents to fill a medium-sized room.
Pollard was arrested in November 1985 after authorities learned that he had been meeting with Israeli agents every two weeks for the last year. He was paid approximately $50,000 for the highly sensitive documents and expected to receive as much as $300,000 in a secret Swiss bank account. The top-secret information included satellite photos and data on Soviet weapons.
Pollard was sentenced to life in prison while his wife Anne received a five-year sentence for being an accessory to the crimes. The discovery of his betrayal put a chill on the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Viewing the U.S. as its ally, Israel believed that the information should have been passed along anyway. But the fact that some Israeli agents remained in high positions despite their involvement in the espionage angered the United States.
Israel has since stuck by Pollard. During peace negotiations mediated by President Clinton in the late 1990s, the nation made Pollard's release from prison a key point. Though Israel continues to work toward Pollard's release, the United States has declined to work out such a deal.
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Jun 5, 1968
Bobby Kennedy is assassinated
Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by the 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He died a day later.
The summer of 1968 was a tempestuous time in American history. Both the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were peaking. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in the spring, igniting riots across the country. In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election. Robert Kennedy, John's younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support.
Kennedy was perceived by many to be the only person in American politics capable of uniting the people. He was beloved by the minority community for his integrity and devotion to the civil rights cause. After winning California's primary, Kennedy was in the position to receive the Democratic nomination and face off against Richard Nixon in the general election.
As star athletes Rafer Johnson and Roosevelt Grier accompanied Kennedy out a rear exit of the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward with a rolled up campaign poster, hiding his .22 revolver. He was only a foot away when he fired several shots at Kennedy. Grier and Johnson wrestled Sirhan to the ground, but not before five bystanders were wounded. Grier was distraught afterward and blamed himself for allowing Kennedy to be shot.
Sirhan, who was born in Palestine, confessed to the crime at his trial and received a death sentence on March 3, 1969. However, since the California State Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty sentences in 1972, Sirhan has spent the rest of his life in prison. According to the New York Times, he has since said that he believed Kennedy was "instrumental" in the oppression of Palestinians. Hubert Humphrey ended up running for the Democrats in 1968, but lost by a small margin to Nixon.
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June 5, 2014
Shizzo is a faggot.
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I think the cats are probably done feeding by now. But no one noticed the smell?
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Jun 6, 1981
Train avoids cow, but kills 600
More than 500 passengers are killed when their train plunges into the Baghmati River in India on this day in 1981. The rail accident—the worst in India to that date—was caused by an engineer who was reverential of cows.
The nine-car train, filled with approximately 1,000 passengers, was traveling through the northeastern state of Bihar about 250 miles from Calcutta. Outside, monsoon-like conditions were battering the region. Extremely hard rains were swelling the rivers and making the tracks slick. When a cow and a Hindu engineer—who believed that cows are sacred animals—entered the picture, the combination led to tragedy.
As the train approached the bridge over the Baghmati River, a cow crossed the tracks. Seeking to avoid harming the cow at all costs, the engineer braked too hard. The cars slid on the wet rails and the last seven cars derailed straight into the river. With the river far above normal levels, the cars sank quickly in the murky waters.
Rescue help was hours away and, by the time it arrived, nearly 600 people had lost their lives. After a multi-day search, 286 bodies were recovered but more than 300 missing people were never found. The best estimate is that close to 600 passengers were killed by the engineer's decision.
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Jun 7, 1893
Gandhi's first act of civil disobedience
In an event that would have dramatic repercussions for the people of India, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a young Indian lawyer working in South Africa, refuses to comply with racial segregation rules on a South African train and is forcibly ejected at Pietermaritzburg.
Born in India and educated in England, Gandhi traveled to South Africa in early 1893 to practice law under a one-year contract. Settling in Natal, he was subjected to racism and South African laws that restricted the rights of Indian laborers. Gandhi later recalled one such incident, in which he was removed from a first-class railway compartment and thrown off a train, as his moment of truth. From thereon, he decided to fight injustice and defend his rights as an Indian and a man.
When his contract expired, he spontaneously decided to remain in South Africa and launch a campaign against legislation that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. He formed the Natal Indian Congress and drew international attention to the plight of Indians in South Africa. In 1906, the Transvaal government sought to further restrict the rights of Indians, and Gandhi organized his first campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience. After seven years of protest, he negotiated a compromise agreement with the South African government.
In 1914, Gandhi returned to India and lived a life of abstinence and spirituality on the periphery of Indian politics. He supported Britain in the First World War but in 1919 launched a new satyagraha in protest of Britain's mandatory military draft of Indians. Hundreds of thousands answered his call to protest, and by 1920 he was leader of the Indian movement for independence. Always nonviolent, he asserted the unity of all people under one God and preached Christian and Muslim ethics along with his Hindu teachings. The British authorities jailed him several times, but his following was so great that he was always released.
After World War II, he was a leading figure in the negotiations that led to Indian independence in 1947. Although hailing the granting of Indian independence as the "noblest act of the British nation," he was distressed by the religious partition of the former Mogul Empire into India and Pakistan. When violence broke out between Hindus and Muslims in India in 1947, he resorted to fasts and visits to the troubled areas in an effort to end India's religious strife. On January 30, 1948, he was on one such prayer vigil in New Delhi when he was fatally shot by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist who objected to Gandhi's tolerance for the Muslims.
Known as Mahatma, or "the great soul," during his lifetime, Gandhi's persuasive methods of civil disobedience influenced leaders of civil rights movements around the world, especially Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States.
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Jun 8, 632
Founder of Islam dies
In Medina, located in present-day Saudi Arabia, Muhammad, one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, dies in the arms of Aishah, his third and favorite wife.
Born in Mecca of humble origins, Muhammad married a wealthy widow at 25 years old and lived the next 15 years as an unremarkable merchant. In 610, in a cave in Mount Hira north of Mecca, he had a vision in which he heard God, speaking through the angel Gabriel, command him to become the Arab prophet of the "true religion." Thus began a lifetime of religious revelations, which he and others collected as the Qur'an. These revelations provided the foundation for the Islamic religion. Muhammad regarded himself as the last prophet of the Judaic-Christian tradition, and he adopted the theology of these older religions while introducing new doctrines. His inspired teachings also brought unity to the Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia, an event that had sweeping consequences for the rest of the world.
By the summer of 622, Muhammad had gained a substantial number of converts in Mecca, leading the city's authorities, who had a vested interest in preserving the city's pagan religion, to plan his assassination. Muhammad fled to Medina, a city some 200 miles north of Mecca, where he was given a position of considerable political power. At Medina, he built a model theocratic state and administered a rapidly growing empire. In 629, Muhammad returned to Mecca as a conqueror. During the next two and a half years, numerous disparate Arab tribes converted to his religion. By his death on June 8, 632, he was the effective ruler of all southern Arabia, and his missionaries, or legates, were active in the Eastern Empire, Persia, and Ethiopia.
During the next century, vast conquests continued under Muhammad's successors and allies, and the Muslim advance was not halted until the Battle of Tours in France in 732. By this time, the Muslim empire, among the largest the world had ever seen, stretched from India across the Middle East and North Africa, and up through Western Europe's Iberian peninsula. The spread of Islam continued after the end of the Arab conquest, and many cultures in Africa and Asia voluntarily adopted the religion. Today, Islam is the world's second-largest religion.
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Jun 8, 632
Founder of Islam dies
In Medina, located in present-day Saudi Arabia, Muhammad, one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, dies in the arms of Aishah, his third and favorite wife.
Born in Mecca of humble origins, Muhammad married a wealthy widow at 25 years old and lived the next 15 years as an unremarkable merchant. In 610, in a cave in Mount Hira north of Mecca, he had a vision in which he heard God, speaking through the angel Gabriel, command him to become the Arab prophet of the "true religion." Thus began a lifetime of religious revelations, which he and others collected as the Qur'an. These revelations provided the foundation for the Islamic religion. Muhammad regarded himself as the last prophet of the Judaic-Christian tradition, and he adopted the theology of these older religions while introducing new doctrines. His inspired teachings also brought unity to the Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia, an event that had sweeping consequences for the rest of the world.
By the summer of 622, Muhammad had gained a substantial number of converts in Mecca, leading the city's authorities, who had a vested interest in preserving the city's pagan religion, to plan his assassination. Muhammad fled to Medina, a city some 200 miles north of Mecca, where he was given a position of considerable political power. At Medina, he built a model theocratic state and administered a rapidly growing empire. In 629, Muhammad returned to Mecca as a conqueror. During the next two and a half years, numerous disparate Arab tribes converted to his religion. By his death on June 8, 632, he was the effective ruler of all southern Arabia, and his missionaries, or legates, were active in the Eastern Empire, Persia, and Ethiopia.
During the next century, vast conquests continued under Muhammad's successors and allies, and the Muslim advance was not halted until the Battle of Tours in France in 732. By this time, the Muslim empire, among the largest the world had ever seen, stretched from India across the Middle East and North Africa, and up through Western Europe's Iberian peninsula. The spread of Islam continued after the end of the Arab conquest, and many cultures in Africa and Asia voluntarily adopted the religion. Today, Islam is the world's second-largest religion.
(http://images.wikia.com/glee/images/archive/8/81/20110708043103!5b71073bd590a33d_nye2007_fireworks_gif.gif)
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Jun 9, 1973
Secretariat wins Triple Crown
On this day in 1973, Secretariat wins the Belmont Stakes to become the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948. Secretariat ran the mile-and-a-half race in 2:24, a world record that many believe will never be broken.
Secretariat, the son of Bold Ruler and Somethingroyal, was raised in Doswell, Virginia, at Meadow Stable by owner Penny Tweedy. He won seven of nine races started as a two-year-old and was the first horse of his age to be named Horse of the Year. After winning the first two races of his three-year-old career, he lost the third, which was also the final tune-up before that year’s Kentucky Derby. Afterward, a painful abscess was found under the horse’s lip, which supporters hoped was the reason for his unexpectedly slow performance. Secretariat did not disappoint at the 1973 Kentucky Derby, where he set a track record of just over 1:59 to beat Sham by two-and-a-half lengths. Secretariat then won the Preakness, and though unofficial timers and spectators insisted the horse had also set a new record there, the official time keeper clocked Secretariat a few seconds slower.
Secretariat came into the Belmont Stakes in Long Island, New York, at 1-to-10 odds, making him the overwhelming favorite. Secretariat’s jockey Ron Turcotte, however, expected a close race with Sham at the longer Belmont. At the beginning of the race, Sham and jockey Laffit Pincay kept pace with the so-called "super horse" but expended too much energy in the process and eventually faded to last place, while Secretariat pulled away from the pack. Secretariat crossed the finish line an amazing 31 lengths ahead of My Gallant and Twice a Prince in a show of speed and endurance horse enthusiasts had never seen. Turcotte later said of the race, "I know this sounds crazy, but the horse did it by himself. I was along for the ride."
Years later, Secretariat’s dominance as a race horse was attributed to the size of his heart, which was found to weigh 22 pounds, more than twice that of a typical thoroughbred.
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Jun 10, 1692
First Salem witch hanging
In Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Bridget Bishop, the first colonist to be tried in the Salem witch trials, is hanged after being found guilty of the practice of witchcraft.
Trouble in the small Puritan community began in February 1692, when nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece, respectively, of the Reverend Samuel Parris, began experiencing fits and other mysterious maladies. A doctor concluded that the children were suffering from the effects of witchcraft, and the young girls corroborated the doctor's diagnosis. Under compulsion from the doctor and their parents, the girls named those allegedly responsible for their suffering.
On March 1, Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados, became the first Salem residents to be charged with the capital crime of witchcraft. Later that day, Tituba confessed to the crime and subsequently aided the authorities in identifying more Salem witches. With encouragement from adults in the community, the girls, who were soon joined by other "afflicted" Salem residents, accused a widening circle of local residents of witchcraft, mostly middle-aged women but also several men and even one four-year-old child. During the next few months, the afflicted area residents incriminated more than 150 women and men from Salem Village and the surrounding areas of satanic practices.
In June 1692, the special Court of Oyer and Terminer ["to hear and to decide"] convened in Salem under Chief Justice William Stoughton to judge the accused. The first to be tried was Bridget Bishop of Salem, who was accused of witchcraft by more individuals than any other defendant. Bishop, known around town for her dubious moral character, frequented taverns, dressed flamboyantly (by Puritan standards), and was married three times. She professed her innocence but was found guilty and executed by hanging on June 10. Thirteen more women and five men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows, and one man, Giles Corey, was executed by crushing. Most of those tried were condemned on the basis of the witnesses' behavior during the actual proceedings, characterized by fits and hallucinations that were argued to have been caused by the defendants on trial.
In October 1692, Governor William Phipps of Massachusetts ordered the Court of Oyer and Terminer dissolved and replaced with the Superior Court of Judicature, which forbade the type of sensational testimony allowed in the earlier trials. Executions ceased, and the Superior Court eventually released all those awaiting trial and pardoned those sentenced to death. The Salem witch trials, which resulted in the executions of 19 innocent women and men, had effectively ended.
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Jun 11, 1982
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial released
Then 34-year-old director Steven Spielberg reportedly drew on his own experiences as an unusually imaginative, often-lonely child of divorce for his science-fiction classic E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, which is released on this day in 1982.
For Spielberg, E.T. marked a return to territory he had first visited with the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), in which Richard Dreyfuss plays a man who comes face to face with a fearsome alien force that eventually proves to be human-friendly. With E.T., Spielberg would create an even more appealing vision of alien life, in the form of a diminutive creature with wrinkled skin and a glowing belly. Spielberg worked closely with the screenwriter, Melissa Mathison (future wife of Harrison Ford, the star of Spielberg’s Indiana Jones films) to capture on film the story of the wise, kind and cuddly alien botanist who is stranded on Earth and needs the help of a sensitive little boy, Elliott (Henry Thomas) to get back home. Elliott and his siblings, played by Robert MacNaughton and a seven-year-old Drew Barrymore, hide E.T. (as the alien dubs himself) in a closet to keep him out of sight from prying adults, including their mother, who is distracted by her painful separation from her husband. Before long, a special link develops between E.T. and Elliott, who will eventually risk his own safety to return E.T. to his planet.
From the time that E.T. had its first showing, on closing night at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, the film’s buzz was overwhelmingly positive. Richard Corliss raved in TIME magazine: “[E.T.] is a perfectly poised mixture of sweet comedy and ten-speed melodrama, of death and resurrection, of a friendship so pure and powerful it seems like an idealized love.” TIME also included the fictional alien in its list of candidates for Man of the Year--the first film character to receive that honor. Nominated in nine categories at the 1983 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, the film won four Oscars, for Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Original Score and Best Sound.
E.T. had stupendous success at the box office, eventually raking in some $435 million (it was re-released in 1985 and a special 20th-anniversary edition was issued in 2002). As of 2008, it stood at No. 5 on the list of the highest-earning films of all time.
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http://www.history.com/news/scotland-fights-its-way-to-freedom-700-years-ago
Scotland Fights Its Way to Freedom, 700 Years Ago
During eight previous years of warfare with the English, Scottish King Robert the Bruce had never engaged his numerically superior foes in a major pitched battle. But on June 24, 1314, he finally stood his ground near the present-day town of Bannockburn, using tightly packed formations of pikemen to send the English into a wild retreat. From that point forward, Scotland was on the offensive, and in 1328 it officially won its independence.
In 1291, following a century of peace between the two kingdoms, English King Edward I pronounced himself the feudal overlord of Scotland, and he cemented his authority five years later with a successful invasion. Although a Scottish rebellion then broke out led by William Wallace, Edward I once again emerged victorious. He let most of the Scottish leaders opposed to him off the hook with little punishment, except for Wallace, who was captured and tortured to death.
Robert the Bruce, a noble who believed himself the heir to the Scottish throne, sat out much of this fighting. But in 1306 he stabbed a political rival inside a church and left him bleeding at the high altar for two of his men to finish off. Subsequently declared an outlaw by Edward I and excommunicated by the pope, Robert crowned himself king of the Scots in a desperate bid to take power. Immediate defeats at the hands of his English and Scottish enemies forced him to take refuge on a small island near Ireland. His wife was placed under house arrest, three of his brothers were captured and brutally executed, his sister was displayed in a cage like an animal at the zoo and his daughter was sent off to a nunnery.
Nonetheless, Robert gained a toehold on the mainland through the use of guerilla warfare and then gradually extended his dominion, making new allies, holding a series of parliaments and even raiding northern England. By 1314 every province in Scotland had accepted him as king, and English forces essentially all had disappeared with the exception of a garrison at Stirling Castle. Early that year, England’s Edward II, who had succeeded his father, began mobilizing a massive army to put down the uprising. Historians roughly estimate that he had about 15,000 infantrymen and archers and at least 2,000 heavily armed cavalry at his disposal when he crossed into Scotland on June 17, 1314. By comparison, Robert’s army consisted of approximately 6,000 poorly equipped troops, including perhaps 500 on horseback.
After a couple of days of hard marching, Edward II’s troops reached the city of Edinburgh, from where they followed an ancient Roman road northwest toward Stirling Castle. They soon found themselves blocked by Robert’s men, who had positioned themselves along a section of the road surrounded by nearly impenetrable bogs, thickly wooded hills and tidal streams. To make the terrain even more difficult to navigate, the Scots dug small hidden pits and built barricades out of felled trees. Meeting with Edward II, the English governor of Stirling Castle warned that a direct attack would be difficult. Yet the king decided to press ahead anyway.
On June 23, front-line English knights came across a group of Scots withdrawing into the woods. Recognizing one of the Scots as Robert the Bruce himself, Sir Henry de Bohun charged with his lance extended. Rather than flee, Robert turned his horse to meet the challenge, swerved to avoid Bohun’s lance, raised himself up on his stirrups and then cleaved Bohun’s head in two with a powerful swing of his axe. Having witnessed this duel, the rest of the Scots rushed out and forced the English to retreat. Later that day, on a different section of the battlefield, other English knights were similarly unsuccessful. Unable to penetrate the tightly packed formation of pikemen known as a schiltron, some ended up fleeing toward Stirling Castle, whereas others galloped in the opposite direction toward the main body of English soldiers.
That evening, Robert is believed to have considered withdrawing until a defector appeared in his camp. In addition to relaying tactical information about the English, he told Robert that Edward II’s men had lost heart. “Sir, if you ever intend to reconquer Scotland now is the time,” the defector purportedly said before pledging his life that Robert would win the battle easily. Meanwhile, many English troops spent a largely sleepless night moving across the Bannock Burn, a stream that shares a name with the town and battle, so that their horses could be watered.
As the opposing armies assembled on the morning of June 24, Robert told his men that they had right on their side. “Our enemies are moved only by desire for dominion, but we are fighting for our lives, our children, our wives and the freedom of our country,” he said, according to a 14th century Scottish poet who chronicled the battle. After archers briefly exchanged fire, the English cavalry charged, only to be repulsed. The Scottish schiltrons then went on the attack, penning the English cavalry into a cramped space surrounded by water on three sides. English archers, so devastating in the defeat of William Wallace’s schiltrons at the 1298 Battle of Falkirk, this time had trouble getting into position. And when they finally did start shooting arrows into the Scottish flanks, Robert’s 500 or so cavalrymen drove them off. Trapped in the rear, the large English infantry played almost no role in the fighting at all.
At first, the English fell back slowly. But when Edward II was coaxed into leaving along with his 500 bodyguards, the orderly retreat turned into a panicked rout. “On them! On them! They fail!” the Scots yelled as lightly armed camp followers jumped into the fray, possibly prompting the English to believe a second Scottish army had arrived. Hundreds of English soldiers either drowned or were trampled to death in the Bannock Burn and the River Forth, and others fled to Stirling Castle, which would surrender hours later. In addition to capturing numerous English nobles, who were ransomed back for a price, the Scots seized a huge cache of supplies, weapons and food. They even chased Edward II for about 60 miles, killing one of his horses and capturing his royal shield.
Though Scotland was now entirely outside of his control, Edward II refused to make peace, even after Robert launched invasions into both northern England and Ireland (controlled by the English at the time.) Finally, after Edward II’s deposal and the renewal of a Scottish-French alliance, England agreed to the 1328 Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, which recognized Scotland’s independence and Robert’s claim to the throne. Despite periodic fighting between the two sides, Scotland would retain its independence until 1707, when it combined with England to form Great Britain. This September, Scottish residents will vote in a referendum on whether the country should once again be independent.
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Jul 23, 1885
Former President Ulysses S. Grant dies
On this day in 1885, just after completing his memoirs, Civil War hero and former President Ulysses S. Grant dies of throat cancer.
The son of a tanner, Grant showed little enthusiasm for joining his father's business, so the elder Grant enrolled his son at West Point in 1839. Though Grant later admitted in his memoirs that he had no interest in the military apart from honing his equestrian skills, he graduated in 1843 and went on to serve first in the Mexican-American War, which he opposed on moral grounds, and then in California and Oregon, tours of duty that forced him to leave behind his beloved wife and children. The loneliness and sheer boredom of duty in the West drove Grant to binge drinking. By 1854, Grant's alcohol consumption so alarmed his superiors that he was asked to resign from the Army. He did, and returned to Ohio to try his hand at farming and land speculation. Although he kicked the alcohol habit, he failed miserably at both vocations and was forced to take a job as a clerk in his father's tanning business.
If it were not for the Civil War, Grant might have slipped quickly into obscurity. Instead, he re-enlisted in the Army in 1861 and embarked on a stellar military career, although his tendency to binge-drink re-emerged and he developed another unhealthy habit: chain cigar-smoking, which probably caused the throat cancer that eventually killed him. In 1862, Grant led troops in the captures of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee, and forced the Confederate Army to retreat back into Mississippi after the Battle of Shiloh. After the Donelson campaign, Grant received over 10,000 boxes of congratulatory cigars from a grateful citizenry.
In 1863, after leading the Union Army to victory at Vicksburg, Grant caught President Abraham Lincoln's attention. The Union Army had suffered under the service of a series of incompetent generals and Lincoln was in the market for a new Union supreme commander. In March 1864, Lincoln revived the rank of lieutenant general—a rank that had previously been held only by George Washington in 1798--and gave it to Grant. As supreme commander of Union forces, Grant led troops in a series of epic and bloody battles against Confederate General Robert E. Lee. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House. The victory solidified Grant's status as national hero and, in 1869, he began his first of two terms as president.
Grant's talent as political leader paled woefully in comparison to his military prowess. He was unable to stem the rampant corruption that plagued his administration and failed to combat a severe economic depression in 1873. However, successes of Grant's tenure include passage of the Enforcement Act in 1870, which temporarily curtailed the political influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the post-Civil War South, and the 1875 Civil Rights Act, which attempted to desegregate public places such as restrooms, "inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement." In addition, Grant helped to improve U.S. and British diplomatic relations, which had been damaged by the British offer to supply the Confederate Army with tools to break the Union naval blockade during the Civil War. He also managed to stay sober during his two terms in office.
Upon leaving office, Grant's fortunes again declined. Although he and his wife Julia traveled to Europe between 1877 and 1879 amid great fanfare, the couple came home to bankruptcy caused by Grant's unwise investment in a scandal-prone banking firm. Grant spent the last few years of his life writing a detailed account of the Civil War and, after he died of throat cancer in 1885, Julia managed to scrape by on the royalties earned from his memoirs.
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Jul 24, 1567
Mary Queen of Scots deposed
During her imprisonment at Lochleven Castle in Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son, later crowned King James VI of Scotland.
In 1542, while just six days old, Mary ascended to the Scottish throne upon the death of her father, King James V. Her mother sent her to be raised in the French court, and in 1558 she married the French dauphin, who became King Francis II of France in 1559 but died the following year. After Francis' death, Mary returned to Scotland to assume her designated role as the country's monarch.
In 1565, she married her English cousin Lord Darnley in order to reinforce her claim of succession to the English throne after Elizabeth's death. In 1567, Darnley was mysteriously killed in an explosion at Kirk o' Field, and Mary's lover, the Earl of Bothwell, was the key suspect. Although Bothwell was acquitted of the charge, his marriage to Mary in the same year enraged the nobility, and Bothwell and Mary were imprisoned. Mary was held on the tiny island of Loch Leven, where she was forced to abdicate in favor of her son by Darnley, James.
In 1568, she escaped from captivity and raised a substantial army but was defeated and fled to England. Queen Elizabeth initially welcomed Mary but was soon forced to put her friend under house arrest after Mary became the focus of various English Catholic and Spanish plots to overthrow Elizabeth. Nineteen years later, in 1586, a major plot to murder Elizabeth was reported, and Mary was brought to trial. She was convicted for complicity and sentenced to death.
On February 8, 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for treason. Her son, King James VI of Scotland, calmly accepted his mother's execution, and upon Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603 he became king of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
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Jul 25, 1988
A young man turns the death of his parents into a game
Police responding to an emergency call in Washington, North Carolina, find Lieth and Bonnie Von Stein stabbed and beaten in their home. Lieth was dead, but Bonnie, barely clinging to life, somehow survived. Angela, Bonnie's 18-year-old daughter, was found in the next room; she said that she had slept through the brutal attack.
Investigators were immediately distrustful of the crime scene, which appeared to have been staged as though to suggest a robbery. Detectives caught a lucky break when a hog farmer happened to spot a fire in the woods around the time of the murder. A hunting knife, some clothing, and a scrap of paper with a map of the Von Stein's neighborhood were recovered from the remains of the fire.
Detectives assigned to the case learned that Lieth had had a poor relationship with his two stepchildren, Angela and her older brother, Chris, both of whom were known drug users. The police also found out that Lieth had inherited over a million dollars shortly before he was killed. As the investigation dragged on into 1989, police turned their attention to Chris, who refused to take a polygraph test (which his mother and sister had passed).
A devotee of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, Chris often vented his frustration to his fellow players at North Carolina State University. Reportedly, Chris was bitter toward his stepfather for not spending more of the inheritance on him. When pressured, some of Chris' friends revealed that James Upchurch and Neal Henderson, other D&D players on campus, may have been involved in some sort of plot with Chris.
After turning Henderson, who accompanied Upchurch to the Von Stein home, into a state witness, prosecutors persuaded Chris to plead guilty to aiding and abetting the murder. Chris testified that he had supplied a key and the map to the house where Upchurch had killed Lieth Von Stein. Although Henderson's testimony was not entirely compatible, and there was no physical evidence tying him to the murder, Upchurch was convicted of murder in 1990 and sentenced to death.
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Jul 26, 1984
Real-life Psycho Ed Gein dies
On July 26, 1984, Ed Gein, a serial killer infamous for skinning human corpses, dies of complications from cancer in a Wisconsin prison at age 77. Gein served as the inspiration for writer Robert Bloch's character Norman Bates in the 1959 novel "Psycho," which in 1960 was turned into a film starring Anthony Perkins and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Edward Theodore Gein was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, on July 27, 1906, to an alcoholic father and domineering mother, who taught her son that women and sex were evil. Gein was raised, along with an older brother, on an isolated farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin. After Gein's father died in 1940, the future killer's brother died under mysterious circumstances during a fire in 1944 and his beloved mother passed away from health problems in 1945. Gein remained on the farm by himself.
In November 1957, police found the headless, gutted body of a missing store clerk, Bernice Worden, at Gein's farmhouse. Upon further investigation, authorities discovered a collection of human skulls along with furniture and clothing, including a suit, made from human body parts and skin. Gein told police he had dug up the graves of recently buried women who reminded him of his mother. Investigators found the remains of 10 women in Gein's home, but he was ultimately linked to just two murders: Bernice Worden and another local woman, Mary Hogan.
Gein was declared mentally unfit to stand trial and was sent to a state hospital in Wisconsin. His farm attracted crowds of curiosity seekers before it burned down in 1958, most likely in a blaze set by an arsonist. In 1968, Gein was deemed sane enough to stand trial, but a judge ultimately found him guilty by reason of insanity and he spent the rest of his days in a state facility.
In addition to "Psycho," films including "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Silence of the Lambs" were said to be loosely based on Gein's crimes.
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Jul 27, 1981
Adam Walsh is abducted
Adam John Walsh, age six, is abducted from a mall in Hollywood, Florida, and later found murdered. In the aftermath of the crime, Adam's father, John Walsh, became a leading victims' rights activist and host of the long-running television show America's Most Wanted.
Early in the afternoon on July 27, Adam entered a Sears department store with his mother, Reve. She allowed him to watch a group of older boys play video games in the toy department while she shopped nearby. When she returned for him less than 10 minutes later, he was gone. Investigators learned a teenage security guard had asked the older children to leave because they were causing trouble. Adam, reportedly a timid child who might have been afraid to speak up, followed one of the older boys out and didn't tell the guard his mother was in the store. He was likely kidnapped outside the store after the other child left. Adam's parents launched a massive hunt for their son; however, on August 10, 1981, his severed head was discovered by two fishermen in a drainage canal in Vero Beach, Florida, some 100 miles from Hollywood. His body was never found.
In October 1983, career criminal Ottis Ellwood Toole, then an inmate at a Raiford, Florida, prison, confessed to Adam's abduction and murder and also implicated serial killer Henry Lee Lucas in the crime. However, investigators soon discovered that Lucas couldn't have been involved because he was in jail in Virginia when Adam was kidnapped. Toole then admitted he had carried out the crime on his own and police announced they had found Adam's killer. However, investigators were unable to locate Adam's body where Toole claimed to have buried it and without any physical evidence the Florida state attorney couldn't prosecute the case. Several months later, Toole recanted his confession. In the years that followed, Toole repeatedly confessed to killing Adam Walsh and then took back his story. He died of cirrhosis of the liver and AIDS in 1996 in a Florida prison, where he was on Death Row for another murder. Years later, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who was living in Florida at the time of Adam's abduction, was considered a possible suspect in the case. Dahmer died in a Wisconsin prison in 1994. On December 16, 2008, the police department in Hollywood, Florida, announced that the case against Toole was strong enough to close the investigation into Adam's death.
John Walsh channeled his grief into advocacy work for crime victims. He was a founder in 1984 of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and in 1988 he became host of America's Most Wanted, a show that has since helped law enforcement officials track down hundreds of fugitives. On July 27, 2006, 25 years after Adam went missing, President George W. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act into law, which created a national database of convicted child sex offenders, strengthened federal penalties for crimes against children and provided funding and training for law enforcement to fight crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children via the Internet.
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Jul 28, 1990
A soft drink containing liquid cocaine sickens an unsuspecting drinker
Maximo Menendez falls into a coma immediately after drinking a Colombian soft drink, Pony Malta de Bavaria, in Miami, Florida. Drinking half the bottle before heading off to his job at a pet shop, Menendez remarked, "This is poisoned--it's bad stuff," before going into convulsions. The next day, officials at the Food and Drug Administration learned that the soft drink had been laced with a lethal dose of liquid cocaine.
After pulling every bottle of Pony Malta off the local store shelves, authorities discovered that another 45 bottles of the thick, sweet beverage contained cocaine by using a dielectrometer, a piece of equipment usually used by engineers to locate imperfections in building materials. Apparently, a smuggling operation had gone awry; smugglers had planned to reclaim bottles and transform the liquid cocaine back to a sellable crystal form.
Menendez, who had escaped from Cuba only six months earlier, never regained consciousness and died in August. Finally, in June 1993, a federal grand jury indicted Hugo Rios and Alberto Gamba for their role in tampering with the Pony Malta bottles.
The late 1980s and 1990s featured all kinds of innovative smuggling schemes. In 1999, a Ghanian man sued U.S. customs over surgery to remove heroin-filled balloons from his stomach a year earlier. His claim was thrown out of court. Another man entering Puerto Rico had rubber-wrapped packages of cocaine implanted under the skin on his thighs. Earlier, authorities found a shipment of yams had been hollowed out and filled with cocaine.
In 1991, customs officers found that dog carriers from Colombia were actually made of cocaine and fiberglass. That same year, a cast iron pita oven from Turkey had 700 kilos of hashish welded inside: It was discovered when investigators realized there was no way to turn the oven on.
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Jul 29, 1976
Son of Sam terrorizes New York
The so-called "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag and fires five shots at Donna Lauria and Jody Valenti of the Bronx while they are sitting in a car, talking. Lauria died and Valenti was seriously wounded in the first in a series of shootings by the serial killer, who terrorized New York City over the course of the next year.
Once dubbed the ".44 Caliber Killer," the Son of Sam eventually got his name from letters he sent to both the police and famed newspaper writer Jimmy Breslin that said, "...I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam. I love to hunt, prowling the streets looking for fair game. The weman are prettyist of all [sic]..."
The second attack came on October 23, 1976, when a couple was shot as they sat in a car in Queens. A month later, two girls were talking on a stoop outside a home when the serial killer approached, asked for directions, and then suddenly pulled a gun out and fired several shots. Joanne Lomino was paralyzed from a bullet that struck her spine, but her friend was not seriously injured.
The Son of Sam attacked again in January and March of 1977. In the latter attack, witnesses provided a description of the killer: an unattractive white man with black hair. After yet another shooting in the Bronx in April, the publicity hit a fever pitch. Women, particularly those with dark hair, were discouraged from traveling at night in the city.
When the Son of Sam missed his intended victims in another murder attempt in June, vigilante groups formed across New York City looking for the killer. His last two victims were shot on July 31, 1977, in Brooklyn; one died. Then, police following up on a parking ticket that had been given out that night discovered a machine gun in a car belonging to David Berkowitz of Yonkers, New York.
When questioned, Berkowitz explained that "Sam" was his neighbor Sam Carr--an agent of the devil. Sam transmitted his orders through his pet black Labrador. Years earlier, Berkowitz had shot the dog, complaining that its barking was keeping him from sleeping. After the dog recovered, Berkowitz claimed that it began speaking to him and demanding that he kill people.
In an unusual sequence of events, Berkowitz was allowed to plead guilty before claiming insanity and was sentenced to over 300 years in prison. In prison, he later claimed to be a born-again Christian.
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Jul 30, 1999
Blair Witch Project released
On this day in 1999, The Blair Witch Project, a low-budget, independent horror film that will become a massive cult hit, is released in U.S. theaters.
Shot with shaky, handheld cameras, the documentary-style movie told the story of three student filmmakers who disappeared into the woods and were never heard from again, although their footage was later discovered. With the help of a Web-based viral marketing strategy--a relatively new concept at the time--The Blair Witch Project generated huge buzz over the question of whether or not it was based on a true story. In fact, the story was entirely fake. Fake or not, it didn’t matter at the box office: The Blair Witch Project grossed some $250 million worldwide and was featured on the covers of Newsweek and Time magazines.
The Blair Witch Project followed the young filmmakers as they went into the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, to make a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The filmmakers got lost and experienced a series of scary events and unexplained phenomena, such as strange noises and piles of stones being inexplicably re-arranged. The trio never returned to civilization, but their film equipment was supposedly found and the footage they shot became The Blair Witch Project. Unlike other horror films that featured bloody scenes and special effects, The Blair Witch Project scared moviegoers through implied terror and violence.
Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, who met as film students at the University of Central Florida, wrote and directed The Blair Witch Project. The two filmmakers had their lead actors--Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard--improvise their lines based on private messages each actor received during filming. To make The Blair Witch Project seem more realistic and heighten the psychological tension, Sanchez and Myrick reportedly did things to agitate the actors during production, such as shaking their tent and cutting back on their food supply. They also had the actors do their own filming, and the resulting grainy, black-and-white footage became a Blair Witch trademark.
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Jul 31, 1975
Jimmy Hoffa vanishes
Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing in Detroit, Michigan. He was last seen alive in a parking lot outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant the previous afternoon. To this day, Hoffa's fate remains a mystery, although many believe that he was murdered by organized crime figures.
By the time of his disappearance, Hoffa had a long and murky career in union politics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he became the main focus of government investigations into corruption. In 1962, Hoffa faced misdemeanor charges in Tennessee. He managed to get a mistrial but was convicted two years later for obstruction of justice by tampering with the jury, receiving an eight-year sentence.
In Chicago, Hoffa was tried for fraud in handling Teamster pension funds, convicted, and sentenced to five years in prison. That sentence was commuted by President Richard Nixon in 1971, and despite his criminal record, Hoffa remained a key Teamster figure until his disappearance.
All types of theories have circulated about what became of him. One popular scenario had Hoffa buried beneath a football field at the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey. One man even claimed credit for his murder in the mid-1980s, saying that he had dumped Hoffa's body in the Au Sable River after killing him. Authorities have never been able to confirm what really happened to Hoffa. He was declared legally dead in 1982.
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Aug 1, 1966
An ex-Marine goes on a killing spree at the University of Texas
Charles Whitman takes a stockpile of guns and ammunition to the observatory platform atop a 300-foot tower at the University of Texas and proceeds to shoot 46 people, killing 14 people and wounding 31. A fifteenth died in 2001 because of his injuries. Whitman, who had killed both his wife and mother the night before, was eventually shot to death after courageous Austin police officers, including Ramiro Martinez, charged up the stairs of the tower to subdue the attacker.
Whitman, a former Eagle Scout and Marine, began to suffer serious mental problems after his mother left his father in March 1966. On March 29, he told a psychiatrist that he was having uncontrollable fits of anger. He purportedly even told this doctor that he was thinking about going up to the tower with a rifle and shooting people. Unfortunately, the doctor didn't follow up on this red flag.
On July 31, Whitman wrote a note about his violent impulses, saying, "After my death, I wish an autopsy on me be performed to see if there's any mental disorders." The note then described his hatred for his family and his intent to kill them. That night, Whitman went to his mother's home, where he stabbed and shot her. Upon returning to his own home, he then stabbed his wife to death.
The following morning, Whitman headed for the tower with several pistols and a rifle after stopping off at a gun store to buy boxes of ammunition and a carbine. Packing food and other supplies, he proceeded to the observation platform, killing the receptionist and two tourists before unpacking his rifle and telescope and hunting the people below.
An expert marksman, Whitman was able to hit people as far away as 500 yards. For 90 minutes, he continued firing while officers searched for a chance to get a shot at him. By the end of his rampage, 16 people were dead and another 30 were injured.
The University of Texas tower remained closed for 25 years before reopening in 1999.
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Aug 2, 1939
Einstein urges U.S. atomic action
From his home on Long Island, New York, German-born physicist Albert Einstein writes to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging "watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action" on the part of the United States in atomic research. Einstein, a lifelong pacifist, feared that Nazi Germany had begun work on an atomic bomb.
Einstein's theories of special and general relativity drastically altered man's understanding of the universe, and his work in particle and energy theory helped make possible quantum mechanics and early atomic research. As a German-born Jew, Einstein fled Germany for the United States after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler seized power in 1934.
In the summer of 1939, fellow expatriate physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller, profoundly disturbed by the lack of American atomic action, enlisted the aid of Einstein, hoping that a letter from such a renowned scientist would help attract Roosevelt's attention. Einstein agreed to the venture because of his fear of sole Nazi possession of the deadly weapon, a possibility that became especially troubling after Germany ceased the sale of uranium ore from occupied Czechoslovakia. After reading Einstein's letter, Roosevelt created the Uranium Committee, and in 1942 the highly secret U.S. and British atomic program became known as the Manhattan Project. Einstein had no role in the Allied atomic bomb program.
On July 16, 1945, an international team of scientists successfully tested the world's first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Three weeks later, two U.S. atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, one on August 6 and one on August 9, resulting in the eventual deaths of more than 200,000 people. Albert Einstein deplored the use of the deadly weapon against the population centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and after the war he urged international control of atomic weapons.
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Aug 3, 1982
Sodomy arrest sparks controversy
Michael Hardwick is arrested for sodomy after a police officer observes him having sex with another man in his own bedroom in Georgia. Although the district attorney eventually dropped the charges, Hardwick decided to challenge the constitutionality of Georgia's law.
"John and Mary Doe," who joined in Hardwick's suit against Michael Bowers, the attorney general of Georgia, maintained that the Georgia law "chilled and deterred" them from engaging in certain types of sex in their home. But in 1986, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, ruling by a 5-4 vote that states could continue to treat certain types of consensual sex as criminal acts.
Apparently, Justice Byron White had characterized the issue not as the right to privacy in one's own bedroom, but rather as the right to commit sodomy. Viewed in this narrow manner, it was no surprise that he was unable to find such a clause in the Constitution. Justice Lewis Powell, who also voted to uphold the law, later called his vote a mistake.
In June 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Texas law under which two men had been arrested for having consensual sex at home. The 6-3 Lawrence v. Texas decision reversed the infamous 1986 Bowers decision and finally dealt a death blow to sodomy laws throughout the country.
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Aug 4, 1892
Lizzie Borden took an axe...
Andrew and Abby Borden, elderly residents of Fall River, Massachusetts, are found bludgeoned to death in their home. Lying in a pool of blood on the living room couch, Andrew's face had been nearly split in two. Abby, Lizzie's stepmother, was found upstairs with her head smashed to pieces.
The Bordens, who were considerably wealthy, lived with their two unmarried daughters, Emma and Lizzie. Since Lizzie was the only other person besides the housekeeper who was present when the bodies were found, suspicion soon fell upon her. Because of the sensational nature of the murders, the trial attracted attention from around the nation.
Despite the fact that fingerprint testing was already becoming commonplace in Europe at the time, the police were wary of its reliability, and refused to test for prints on the murder weapon—a hatchet—found in the Borden's basement. The prosecution tried to prove that Lizzie had burned a dress similar to the one she was wearing on the day of the murders and had purchased a small axe the day before. But Lizzie was a sweet-looking Christian woman and the jury took only 90 minutes to decide that she could never commit such a heinous crime.
Although she was now an orphaned heiress rather than a convicted murderess, the media continued to portray Lizzie as the perpetrator. Her story is still remembered today mostly because of the infamous rhyme:
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
Ignoring the taunts, Lizzie lived the high life until her death in 1927. She was buried in the family plot next to her parents.
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Aug 5, 1858
First transatlantic telegraph cable completed
After several unsuccessful attempts, the first telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean is completed, a feat accomplished largely through the efforts of American merchant Cyrus West Field.
The telegraph was first developed by Samuel F. B. Morse, an artist-turned-inventor who conceived of the idea of the electric telegraph in 1832. Several European inventors had proposed such a device, but Morse worked independently and by the mid 1830s had built a working telegraph instrument. In the late 1830s, he perfected Morse Code, a set of signals that could represent language in telegraph messages. In May 1844, Morse inaugurated the world's first commercial telegraph line with the message "What hath God wrought," sent from the U.S. Capitol to a railroad station in Baltimore. Within a decade, more than 20,000 miles of telegraph cable crisscrossed the country. The rapid communication it made possible greatly aided American expansion, making railroad travel safer as it provided a boost to business conducted across the great distances of a growing United States.
In 1854, Cyrus West Field conceived the idea of the telegraph cable and secured a charter to lay a well-insulated line across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Obtaining the aid of British and American naval ships, he made four unsuccessful attempts, beginning in 1857. In July 1858, four British and American vessels--the Agamemnon, the Valorous, the Niagara, and the Gorgon--met in mid-ocean for the fifth attempt. On July 29, the Niagara and the Gorgon, with their load of cable, departed for Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, while the Agamemnon and the Valorous embarked for Valentia, Ireland. By August 5, the cable had been successfully laid, stretching nearly 2,000 miles across the Atlantic at a depth often of more than two miles. On August 16, President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanged formal introductory and complimentary messages. Unfortunately, the cable proved weak and the current insufficient and by the beginning of September had ceased functioning.
Field later raised new funds and made new arrangements. In 1866, the British ship Great Eastern succeeded in laying the first permanent telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean. Cyrus West Field was the object of much praise on both sides of the Atlantic for his persistence in accomplishing what many thought to be an impossible undertaking. He later promoted other oceanic cables, including telegraph lines that stretched from Hawaii to Asia and Australia.
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Aug 6, 1890
First execution by electric chair
At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution in history is carried out against William Kemmler, who had been convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe.
Electrocution as a humane means of execution was first suggested in 1881 by Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist. Southwick had witnessed an elderly drunkard "painlessly" killed after touching the terminals of an electrical generator in Buffalo, New York. In the prevalent form of execution at the time--death by hanging--the condemned were known to hang by their broken necks for up to 30 minutes before succumbing to asphyxiation.
In 1889, New York's Electrical Execution Law, the first of its kind in the world, went into effect, and Edwin R. Davis, the Auburn Prison electrician, was commissioned to design an electric chair. Closely resembling the modern device, Davis' chair was fitted with two electrodes, which were composed of metal disks held together with rubber and covered with a damp sponge. The electrodes were to be applied to the criminal's head and back.
On August 6, 1890, William Kemmler became the first person to be sent to the chair. After he was strapped in, a charge of approximately 700 volts was delivered for only 17 seconds before the current failed. Although witnesses reported smelling burnt clothing and charred flesh, Kemmler was far from dead, and a second shock was prepared. The second charge was 1,030 volts and applied for about two minutes, whereupon smoke was observed coming from the head of Kemmler, who was clearly deceased. An autopsy showed that the electrode attached to his back had burned through to the spine.
Dr. Southwick applauded Kemmler's execution with the declaration, "We live in a higher civilization from this day on," while American inventor George Westinghouse, an innovator of the use of electricity, remarked, "They would have done better with an axe."
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Aug 7, 1869
Astronomer impresses Indians with eclipse
George Davidson, a prominent astronomer and explorer, impresses Alaskan Native Americans with his ability to predict a total solar eclipse.
A native of Nottingham, England, Davidson immigrated to the United States in 1832. He went to school in Philadelphia, where he proved to be a brilliant student and eventually earned a doctorate in astronomy. In 1845, he joined the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and for two decades, he studied the large-scale geography of California, Oregon, and Washington.
In 1867, Davidson traveled north to the still relatively unexplored territory of Alaska. The United States government was in the midst of concluding negotiations to purchase the area from Russia, and American leaders were eager to learn more about the new territory. Davidson made initial surveys at Sitka, Chilkat, Kodiak, and the Unalaksa Islands. Much work remained to be done, though, and Davidson planned to return to the territory two years later.
In 1869, Davidson began preparations for another scientific trip, to the Chilkat Valley. He was warned, however, that the Chilkat Indians had been angered by some American provocation and might welcome him with guns and spears rather than open arms. Undaunted, Davidson proceeded with his mission. His initial meeting with the Chilkat on August 6 was tense. Davidson explained that he had come for purely scientific reasons, and he meant them no harm. He told the Chilkat that he was especially anxious to observe a total eclipse of the sun that he predicted would occur the following day. The Indians scoffed at Davidson's prediction, but they left the party in peace for the time being.
On this day in 1869, the sky grew dark over the Chilkat Valley as the moon eclipsed the sun, as Davidson had predicted. Apparently dismayed by this frightening display of power--some may have believed Davidson actually caused the eclipse rather than merely predicting it--the Chilkat fled to the woods. Thereafter, they left Davidson and his party alone, leading one historian to speculate that the astronomer's prediction may have saved the entire team from attack.
Davidson continued to be a prominent member of the scientific community until his death in 1911. Several geographic features in Alaska were named in his honor.
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Aug 8, 1974
Nixon resigns
On this day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigns in the wake of the Watergate burglary scandal. He was the first president in American history to resign.
In a televised address, Nixon, flanked by his family, announced to the American public that he would step down rather than endure a Senate impeachment trial for obstruction of justice. Since 1972, Nixon had battled increasing vociferous allegations that he knew of, and may have authorized, a botched burglary in which several men were arrested for attempting to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Between 1972 and 1974, the press, and later a Senate investigation committee, revealed disturbing details that revealed that Nixon had indeed attempted to cover up the crime committed by key members of his administration and re-election committee. The most damning evidence came from subpoenaed tape recordings of Nixon's White House conversations. Nixon fought the release of the tapes, which led the House of Representatives in 1973 to initiate impeachment charges against the president for obstruction of justice.
During the televised address, Nixon stated that he had never been a "quitter" and that choosing to resign went against his instincts. He refused to confess to committing the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors of which he was accused. He claimed his decision was encouraged by his political base and was in the best interests of the country and said that he hoped it would heal the political and social division caused by the Watergate scandal.
A report by the Washington Post on August 9 revealed the drama that had unfolded in the White House cabinet room an hour before Nixon's resignation speech. After saying goodbye to 46 members of Congress, including his staunchest supporters, the president told them that the "country could not operate with a half-time President," broke into tears and left the room.
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Aug 9, 378
Romans routed at Adrianople
In one of the most decisive battles in history, a large Roman army under Valens, the Roman emperor of the East, is defeated by the Visigoths at the Battle of Adrianople in present-day Turkey. Two-thirds of the Roman army, including Emperor Valens himself, were overrun and slaughtered by the mounted barbarians.
Crowned in 364, Emperor Valens initiated warfare against the semi-civilized Visigoths in 364 and by 369 had defeated them. Visigoths under Fritigern were given permission to settle south of the Danube in the Roman Empire but, subjected to oppressive measures by Roman officials, they soon rose in revolt. In 378, Valens marched a Roman army against Fritigern, and 10 miles from Adrianople the Romans came upon the massed barbarians. As the Visigoth cavalry was off on a forging mission, Valens ordered a hasty attack on August 9. The Romans initially drove the barbarians back, but then the Visigoth cavalry suddenly returned, routing the Romans and forcing them into retreat. The horsemen then rode down and slaughtered the fleeing Roman infantry. Some 20,000 of 30,000 men were killed, including Emperor Valens.
The decisive Visigoth victory at the Battle of Adrianople left the Eastern Roman Empire nearly defenseless and established the supremacy of cavalry over infantry that would last for the next millennium. Emperor Valens was succeeded by Theodosius the Great, who struggled to repel the hordes of Visigoth barbarians plundering the Balkan Peninsula.
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Aug 10, 2003
Temperatures in UK top 100 F for first time during European heat wave
On this day in 2003, the United Kingdom records its first-ever temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Throughout the month, an intense heat wave scorched the European continent, claiming more than 35,000 lives.
August 2003 was the hottest August ever recorded in the northern hemisphere and broke all previous records for heat-related deaths. France was the worst hit, with almost 15,000 victims, followed by Germany, where approximately 7,000 people died. Thousands also died in Spain and Italy. A majority of the victims were elderly, very young, or chronically ill.
When a person experiences extreme heat, their bodies can struggle to cool themselves—which can prove especially dangerous in the very old, very young or already ill. If a person's internal body temperature reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit, the organs can began to fail and the person can eventually die. The Washington, D.C.-based Earth Policy Institute estimates that more people die every year from heat than floods, tornadoes and hurricanes combined.
In addition to directly causing deaths, the extreme heat also caused massive fires. In Portugal, 10 percent of the country's forests were destroyed and 18 people were killed in the fires. The heat also caused glacial melt, flash floods and avalanches in Switzerland.
Scientists project that, because of global warming, the earth's average temperature will continue to rise, reaching 42.44 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, a gain of 2.5 degrees. Because of this, the World Meteorological Organization predicts that the number of annual heat-related deaths might double by 2023. Most researchers agree that the only way to stop the slow rise in global temperatures is to reduce levels of the carbon-dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
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Aug 11, 1994
Major leaguers walk off the job
On August 11, 1994, the longest work stoppage in major league history begins. Because of the strike, the 1994 World Series was cancelled; it was the first time baseball did not crown a champion in 89 years.
During the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement, tensions between owners and players had arisen over the owners’ desire to institute a cap on player salaries. Claiming financial hardship, owners argued that player salaries, which had risen exponentially since the 1970s, had become unsustainable and, if not contained, would bankrupt the teams. The players, led by union head Donald Fehr, refused to agree to a cap; they pointed out that they had been underpaid for most of the sport’s history and called salary caps just the latest form of exploitation by owners.
Until 1975, players were subject to a reserve clause that tied each player to one team for their career, destroying any free market and keeping player salaries artificially low. After the reserve clause was abolished in arbitration, free agency drove salaries up, as owners were forced to bid against one another for players’ services. After the 1985 season, owners agreed in secret not to sign one another’s players, and all 28 major league teams sat idly by during the next three off-seasons. Upon discovering the conspiracy, the players’ union sued and won a $280 million judgment.
When the collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and the Players Association expired in 1994, bad blood remained and negotiations over a new deal soon turned sour. On August 12, the day after the players walked off the job, the owners locked the players out, and cancelled the rest of the 1994 season. Long-suffering fans in Montreal and Yankee fans in New York were especially disappointed, as their teams led the National League and American League, respectively, at the time of the lock-out.
In December 1994, President Clinton met with the lead negotiators of both sides, to no avail. Toward the end of March, on the eve of the new baseball season, 28 of 30 owners voted to field replacement teams, but on March 31, Judge Sonia Sontomayor stepped in, issuing an injunction against the owners. Finally, on April 2, 1995, the players returned to work.
Baseball’s fans were not forgiving. Attendance in 1995 was the lowest in years, dropping from an average 31,000 per game in 1993 to just 25,000. Fans picketed at opening day games, angry at players and owners alike. Thankfully for baseball, "The Iron Man" Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s streak for consecutive games played on September 6, 1995, which finally broke the ice. Ripken’s incredible work ethic and commitment to the game is said to have saved baseball’s place in the hearts of fans.
The collective bargaining agreement between players and owners was not renewed until 1996. When that agreement expired in 2002, owners and players, having learned the unforgiving nature of their fans in 1995, were quick to ratify a new deal.
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Aug 12, 2000
Russian sub sinks with 118 onboard
A Russian nuclear submarine sinks to the bottom of the Barents Sea on this day in 2000; all 118 crew members are later found dead. The exact cause of the disaster remains unknown.
The Kursk left port on August 10 to take part in war games with the Russian military. Russian ships, planes and submarines met up in the Barents Sea, which is above the Arctic Circle, to practice military maneuvers. On August 12, the Kursk was scheduled to fire a practice torpedo; at 11:29 a.m., before doing so, two explosions spaced shortly apart occurred in the front hull of the submarine and it plunged toward the bottom of the sea.
The Kursk was 500 feet long and weighed 24,000 tons. It had two nuclear reactors and could reach speeds of 28 knots. It was the largest attack submarine in the world, approximately three times the size of the largest subs in the United States Navy.
With the fate of the 118 Russian soldiers onboard the Kursk unknown, several nations offered to contribute to the rescue effort, but the Russian government refused any assistance. When divers finally reached the Kursk a week later, they found no signs of life. Under a great deal of pressure, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to raise the submarine from the sea bottom for an investigation, although no ship or object that size had ever before been recovered from the ocean floor. Furthermore, given that the Barents Sea is frozen for most of the year, the operation had only a small window in which to work.
Using $100 million, the best available technology and an international team of experts, the Kursk was raised on September 26, 2001, about a year after the accident. Unfortunately, however, the team was forced to cut off the front hull from the rest of the sub in order to bring it to the surface, leaving the best evidence of what caused the explosions at the bottom of the sea.
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Aug 13, 1995
Yankee legend dies
Former New York Yankees star Mickey Mantle dies of liver cancer at the age of 63. While "The Mick" patrolled center field and batted clean-up between 1951 and 1968, the Yankees won 12 American League pennants and seven World Series championships.
Mantle was born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, on October 20, 1931. He grew up in nearby Commerce, and played baseball and football as a youth. With the help of his father, Mutt, and grandfather, Charlie, Mantle developed into a switch-hitter. Mutt pitched to Mantle right-handed and Charlie pitched to him left-handed every day after school. With the family’s tin barn as a backstop, Mantle perfected his swing, which his father helped model so it would be identical from either side of the plate. Mantle had natural speed and athleticism and gained strength working summers with his father in Oklahoma’s lead mines. "The Commerce Comet" eventually won a scholarship to play football for the University of Oklahoma. However, baseball was Mantle’s first love, so when the New York Yankees came calling, Mantle moved to the big city.
Mantle made his debut for the Yankees in 1951 at age 19, playing right field alongside aging center fielder Joe DiMaggio. That year, in Game 2 of the World Series, Willie Mays of the New York Giants hit a pop fly to short center, and Mantle sprinted toward the ball. DiMaggio called him off, and while slowing down, Mantle’s right shoe caught the rubber cover of a sprinkler head. "There was a sound like a tire blowing out, and my right knee collapsed," Mantle remembered in his memoir, All My Octobers. Mantle returned the next season, but by then his blazing speed had begun to deteriorate, and he ran the bases with a limp for the rest of his career.
Still, Mantle dominated the American League for more than a decade. In 1956, he won the Triple Crown, leading his league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in. His output was so great that he led both leagues in 1956, hitting .353 with 52 home runs and 130 runs batted in. He was also voted American League MVP that year, and again in 1957 and 1962. After years of brilliance, Mantle’s career began to decline by 1967, and he was forced to move to first base. The next season would be his last. Mantle was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974 in his first year of eligibility.
Mantle’s father and son both died in their 30s, the result of Hodgkin’s disease. Mantle was sure the same fate would befall him, and joked he would have taken better care of himself if he knew he would live. In 1994, after years of alcoholism, Mantle was diagnosed with liver cancer, and urged his fans to take care of their health, saying "Don’t be like me." Although he received a liver transplant, by then the cancer had spread to his lungs, and he died at just after 2 a.m. on August 13, 1995, at the Baylor University Cancer Center in Dallas.
At the time of his death Mantle held many of the records for World Series play, including most home runs (18), most RBIs (40) and most runs (42).
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Aug 14, 1985
Michael Jackson takes control of the Beatles' publishing rights
It was during their collaboration on 1983's "Say Say Say" that former Beatle Paul McCartney is said to have advised King of Pop Michael Jackson to invest some of his enormous wealth in music publishing. It was sound financial advice that McCartney may have come to regret giving on this day in 1985, when Michael Jackson purchased the publishing rights to the vast majority of the Beatles' catalog for $47 million, outbidding McCartney himself.
To understand the sound business reasoning behind Jackson's move to take control of the publishing rights to some 251 Beatles' compositions, one must first understand some basic music-industry economics: Every time a copyrighted recording is exploited for commercial purposes—played on the radio, for instance, or used in a movie or television commercial—the party that uses that recording is required to pay a licensing fee. A portion of that fee will be paid out to the record label that issued the recording, and the record label, in turn, will pay a portion of its share to the performer. Separately, a portion of the licensing fee is due to the writer of the song in question. Songwriters—even those who are also performers—tend to enter into agreements with professional music-publishing companies to manage the collection of their songwriting royalties. In a typical arrangement, a publisher might take 50 percent of a songwriter's royalties in exchange for handling collections and for actively promoting the commercial use of his songs.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the Beatles' primary songwriters, did something slightly more complicated. The publishing agreement they signed was with a company of which they were also part owners. That company, called Northern Songs, Ltd., was formed in 1964 expressly to generate revenues from the growing catalog of Lennon-McCartney compositions. In this way, every sale or other commercial use of the song "Yesterday" earned Lennon and McCartney a songwriting royalty that they split with Northern Songs. And part of Northern Songs' share would then come back to Lennon and McCartney as part owners of the company.
In 1969, the British company Associated TeleVision completed a messy and contentious takeover of Northern Songs, which in turn led Lennon and McCartney to pull out of their contract for future compositions and to sell off their own shares in the company. More than 15 years later, in 1985, as ATV prepared to sell its entire publishing catalog, Paul McCartney anticipated purchasing it himself, only to be thwarted by Michael Jackson, who was then at the peak of his financial power.
In the years afterward, that catalog—now estimated to be worth in excess of $1 billion—allowed Jackson to remain solvent by serving as collateral for several enormous personal loans that funded his extravagant lifestyle through years of low earnings and legal difficulties. In 2008, however, Jackson gave up his remaining interest in the catalog to Sony, one of his primary creditors.
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Aug 15, 1961
Berlin Wall built
Two days after sealing off free passage between East and West Berlin with barbed wire, East German authorities begin building a wall--the Berlin Wall--to permanently close off access to the West. For the next 28 years, the heavily fortified Berlin Wall stood as the most tangible symbol of the Cold War--a literal "iron curtain" dividing Europe.
The end of World War II in 1945 saw Germany divided into four Allied occupation zones. Berlin, the German capital, was likewise divided into occupation sectors, even though it was located deep within the Soviet zone. The future of Germany and Berlin was a major sticking point in postwar treaty talks, and tensions grew when the United States, Britain, and France moved in 1948 to unite their occupation zones into a single autonomous entity--the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). In response, the USSR launched a land blockade of West Berlin in an effort to force the West to abandon the city. However, a massive airlift by Britain and the United States kept West Berlin supplied with food and fuel, and in May 1949 the Soviets ended the defeated blockade.
By 1961, Cold War tensions over Berlin were running high again. For East Germans dissatisfied with life under the communist system, West Berlin was a gateway to the democratic West. Between 1949 and 1961, some 2.5 million East Germans fled from East to West Germany, most via West Berlin. By August 1961, an average of 2,000 East Germans were crossing into the West every day. Many of the refugees were skilled laborers, professionals, and intellectuals, and their loss was having a devastating effect on the East German economy. To halt the exodus to the West, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev recommended to East Germany that it close off access between East and West Berlin.
On the night of August 12-13, 1961, East German soldiers laid down more than 30 miles of barbed wire barrier through the heart of Berlin. East Berlin citizens were forbidden to pass into West Berlin, and the number of checkpoints in which Westerners could cross the border was drastically reduced. The West, taken by surprise, threatened a trade embargo against East Germany as a retaliatory measure. The Soviets responded that such an embargo be answered with a new land blockade of West Berlin. When it became evident that the West was not going to take any major action to protest the closing, East German authorities became emboldened, closing off more and more checkpoints between East and West Berlin. On August 15, they began replacing barbed wire with concrete. The wall, East German authorities declared, would protect their citizens from the pernicious influence of decadent capitalist culture.
The first concrete pilings went up on the Bernauer Strasse and at the Potsdamer Platz. Sullen East German workers, a few in tears, constructed the first segments of the Berlin Wall as East German troops stood guarding them with machine guns. With the border closing permanently, escape attempts by East Germans intensified on August 15. Conrad Schumann, a 19-year-old East German soldier, provided the subject for a famous image when he was photographed leaping over the barbed-wire barrier to freedom.
During the rest of 1961, the grim and unsightly Berlin Wall continued to grow in size and scope, eventually consisting of a series of concrete walls up to 15 feet high. These walls were topped with barbed wire and guarded with watchtowers, machine gun emplacements, and mines. By the 1980s, this system of walls and electrified fences extended 28 miles through Berlin and 75 miles around West Berlin, separating it from the rest of East Germany. The East Germans also erected an extensive barrier along most of the 850-mile border between East and West Germany.
In the West, the Berlin Wall was regarded as a major symbol of communist oppression. About 5,000 East Germans managed to escape across the Berlin Wall to the West, but the frequency of successful escapes dwindled as the wall was increasingly fortified. Thousands of East Germans were captured during attempted crossings and 191 were killed.
In 1989, East Germany's communist regime was overwhelmed by the democratization sweeping across Eastern Europe. On the evening of November 9, 1989, East Germany announced an easing of travel restrictions to the West, and thousands demanded passage though the Berlin Wall. Faced with growing demonstrations, East German border guards opened the borders. Jubilant Berliners climbed on top of the Berlin Wall, painted graffiti on it, and removed fragments as souvenirs. The next day, East German troops began dismantling the wall. In 1990, East and West Germany were formally reunited.
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Aug 16, 1958
Madonna born
On this day in 1958, Madonna Louise Ciccone, the entertainment icon later known around the world by her first name only, is born near Detroit, Michigan. After rising to stardom as a pop singer and dancer in the 1980s, Madonna added acting to her resume, with roles in such films as Desperately Seeking Susan, Dick Tracy, A League of Their Own and Evita. The provocative performer, who often tackled sexual and religious themes in her work, also became famous for her ever-changing hairstyles and fashion sense as well as her personal life, which remains an ongoing source of fascination to the tabloid media.
Madonna was raised in a Catholic family in the suburbs of Detroit. After dropping out of the University of Michigan in 1978, the future “Material Girl” moved to New York City to become a dancer. She burst onto the music scene in 1982 with her dance single “Everybody,” which was followed by her self-titled debut album in 1983. She performed the title track of her second album, Like a Virgin, at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984, wearing her trademark “Boy Toy” belt. Like a Virgin, Madonna’s first album to reach the No. 1 spot on the music charts, was followed by True Blue (1986) and Like a Prayer (1989), both of which also reached the top of the charts and helped establish her as one of the best-selling artists of the 1980s. Other albums have included Bedtime Stories (1994), Ray of Light (1998), Music (2000), American Life (2003), Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005) and Hard Candy (2008). In March 2008, the chameleonic hitmaker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Madonna made her acting debut in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), which was followed by Shanghai Surprise (1986), co-starring her first husband, Sean Penn, and Who’s That Girl (1987). In Dick Tracy (1990), Madonna acted opposite Warren Beatty, with whom she became romantically involved during filming. In 1991, she starred in Madonna: Truth or Dare?, a behind-the-scenes documentary about her “Blonde Ambition” tour. In 1992, Madonna caused a scandal with her Erotica album as well as a controversial, adult-themed book of photos titled Sex. Also that year, she appeared on the big-screen in A League of Their Own, a well-received movie about an all-female baseball league, co-starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Rosie O’Donnell.
In 1996, Madonna took on her most ambitious role yet, playing Eva Peron, the celebrated former first lady of Argentina, in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Evita. She received a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the performance. In 2000, Madonna appeared in the critically derided The Next Best Thing, playing a woman who has a child with her gay best friend (Rupert Everett). In 2002, she starred in another bomb, Swept Away, directed by her second husband, Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch).
In addition to her acting credits, Madonna’s music has been included on numerous movie soundtracks, including Die Another Day (2002) and Get Smart (2008). She made her directorial debut in 2008 with a film titled Filth and Wisdom.
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Aug 17, 1984
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
A serial rapist strikes in England
The serial burglar and rapist known as "the Fox" breaks into a house and physically assaults a girl, her boyfriend and the girl's brother near the village of Brampton, England. After raping the woman, the attacker proceeded to remove any traces of evidence from both his victim's body and the surrounding area.The attack turned out to be a part of a crime spree had had begun in the spring of 1984 when a hooded burglar broke into several houses in an area north of London. A few months later, the thief turned to rape.
Despite the attacker's efforts, detectives called to the scene near Brampton found fresh tire tracks in a field next to the victim's home and a tiny flake of yellow paint on a nearby tree. A shotgun that the Fox had stolen from a previous victim was also found, hidden under some leaves. Police staked out the site, hoping that the Fox might return for the gun, but he never did. Fortunately, the paint flake turned out to be an essential clue; apparently, the color had been used only on a single model of a particular car manufacturer, Leyland, and that the car was produced in 1973 and 1974.
The victims also reported that the Fox had a northern accent. When investigators checked their records, they found more than 3,000 known burglars who were from northern England but had moved south. Detectives sent to investigate each of these men found a man washing a yellow Leyland in front of his house on September 11. Upon closer inspection, they noticed that a bit of paint was missing from the back of the car.
Malcolm Fairley confessed to the crimes after his arrest and received six life sentences in 1985.
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Aug 18, 1992
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/larry-bird-hangs-it-up (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/larry-bird-hangs-it-up)
Larry Bird hangs it up
On August 18, 1992, celebrated Boston Celtics forward Larry Bird retires.
Bird was a high school basketball star in his native Indiana. After graduation, he received a scholarship to play for legendary coach Bobby Knight at Indiana University, one of the finest teams in the country. However, Bird was homesick and uncomfortable in the spotlight in Bloomington and left the school after one month. He returned to French Lick, his hometown, and eventually enrolled at the smaller Indiana State, far from a basketball powerhouse. There, Bird was a one-man offense, averaging 30 points per game as a sophomore, junior and senior. He led the Sycamores to an undefeated record in his senior season (1978-79) before losing to Earvin "Magic" Johnson's Michigan State Spartans in the most viewed NCAA title game ever.
Bird entered the NBA in 1979 and had an immediate impact on the league, winning Rookie of the Year after leading the Celtics to a 61-21 record and first place in the Atlantic Division just one year after they went 29-53 and finished in last place. In his second season, Bird, playing alongside fellow future Hall of Famers Kevin McHale at forward and Robert Parrish at center, led the Celtics to an NBA title. They would win the championship again in 1984 and 1986, with Bird winning the Finals MVP each of those two years. He was the NBA regular season MVP three years in a row, from 1984 to 1986, and a first-team NBA All-Star nine times. In the process, he won legions of loyal fans in Boston and throughout the country. Bird was also recognized for his versatility on the court: He could pass, rebound, shoot from the outside and play tough defense. As his career progressed, though, Bird began to suffer from chronic back pain that, by the 1990s, limited both his playing time and his effectiveness.
The final triumph of Bird's career came at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, his first Olympics and the first in which professional players were allowed to participate. The much-hyped U.S. "Dream Team," which also included his good friend and rival Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley among other NBA greats, may have been the best basketball team ever assembled. They wowed the world with their amazing play, easily brought home the gold and appeared to have a spectacularly good time in the process.
In 1992, at the age of 35, Bird's back condition finally rendered him unable to play. At an emotional press conference in Boston to announce his retirement, Bird explained, "The last couple of years have been very tough on me, on my back and on my body. It was very hard to deal with, day in and day out." NBA commissioner David Stern released a statement that read in part "Quite simply, Larry Bird has helped to define the way a generation of basketball fans has come to view and appreciate the N.B.A. In the future, great players will be judged against the standards he has set, but there will never be another Larry Bird."
Bird did not disappear from the NBA after his retirement from the court. He remained in Boston, working as a special assistant in the Celtics' front office until 1997, when he was hired as head coach of the Indiana Pacers. In 1998–the same year he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame–he led the Pacers to a 58-24 record, the best in team history, and was named NBA Coach of the Year. Bird later became the team's president of basketball operations.
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Aug 19, 1991
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-jewish-youth-is-killed-by-a-mob (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-jewish-youth-is-killed-by-a-mob)
A Jewish youth is killed by a mob
Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, is stabbed to death by an angry mob in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. The crowd, consisting of young black men, had been intent on seeking revenge against Jewish people for the death of seven-year-old Gavin Cato, who had been struck by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew three hours earlier. Following Rosenbaum's murder, rioting continued against Jews for four days in Crown Heights, while many complained that the response by police and Mayor David Dinkins was inadequate.
In October, 16-year-old Lemrick Nelson was charged with the murder of Rosenbaum but was acquitted after a racially charged trial the following year. But the case did not end there. Due in part to lobbying by the victim's brother, Norman Rosenbaum, the federal government charged Nelson with violating Rosenbaum's civil rights in 1994. In the meantime, a state report criticized Mayor Dinkins and the police for their lack of action during the riots—a claim that helped Rudolph Giuliani defeat Dinkins in the next mayoral election.
In 1996, a videotape of the Crown Heights incident came to light, showing Charles Price inciting a mob to assault Jews in retaliation for Cato's death. He shouted, "Kill the Jews!" and, "An eye for an eye!" In February 1997, a jury convicted both Nelson and Price for their roles in Rosenbaum's murder. Nelson was sentenced to 19 years in prison, while Price received 21 years, despite his claim that he had been exercising his right to freedom of speech.
Later, Mayor Giuliani apologized and blamed his predecessor for the city's lack of action and offered a $1.1 million settlement from the City of New York to Jews who claimed they were unprotected during the riots. Norman Rosenbaum continued to push Attorney General Janet Reno to reopen the case and go after the others in the mob, but no further arrests were made.
The driver of the car that killed Gavin Cato was cleared of any wrongdoing, and he returned to Israel.
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Aug 20, 1989
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-menendez-brothers-murder-their-parents (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-menendez-brothers-murder-their-parents)
The Menendez brothers murder their parents
Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their parents, Jose and Kitty, to death in the den of the family's Beverly Hills, California, home. They then drove up to Mulholland Drive, where they dumped their shotguns before continuing to a local movie theater to buy tickets as an alibi. When the pair returned home, Lyle called 911 and cried, "Somebody killed my parents!" The Menendez murders became a national sensation when the new television network, Court TV, broadcast the trial in 1993.
Although the Menendez brothers were not immediately suspected, Erik couldn't take the guilt and confessed his involvement to his psychotherapist, Dr. L. Jerome Oziel. Ignoring his own ethical responsibilities, Dr. Oziel taped the sessions with his new patient in an apparent attempt to impress his mistress. But the woman ended up going to the police with her information and, in March 1990, Lyle, 22, and Erik, 19, were arrested.
For the next three years, a legal battle was fought over the admissibility of Dr. Oziel's tapes. Finally, the California Supreme Court ruled that the tapes could be played. When the trial began in the summer of 1993, the Menendez brothers put on a spirited defense. In compelling testimony lasting over a month, they emotionally described years of sexual abuse by Jose and Kitty Menendez. They insisted that they had shot their parents in self-defense because they believed that Jose would kill them rather than have the abuse be exposed.
The first two juries (one for each brother) deadlocked, and a mistrial had to be called. For the most part, the lack of a conviction was considered a travesty. At the retrial, which began in October 1995, the judge was much more restrictive in allowing the defense attorneys to focus on the alleged sexual abuse. In March 1996, both Lyle and Erik were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Lyle Menendez married his pen-pal girlfriend, Anna Eriksson, in a telephone conference call from jail on July 2, 1996, the day he was sentenced, but the marriage didn't last; Eriksson found out that Menendez began corresponding with another woman. A few years later, Erik married Tammi Ruth Saccoman.
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Aug 21, 1911
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/theft-of-mona-lisa-is-discovered (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/theft-of-mona-lisa-is-discovered)
Theft of Mona Lisa is discovered
An amateur painter sets up his easel near Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, only to discover that the masterpiece is missing. The day before, in perhaps the most brazen art theft of all time, Vincenzo Perugia had walked into the Louvre, removed the famed painting from the wall, hid it beneath his clothes, and escaped. While the entire nation of France was stunned, theories abounded as to what could have happened to the invaluable artwork. Most believed that professional thieves could not have been involved because they would have realized that it would be too dangerous to try to sell the world's most famous painting. A popular rumor in Paris was that the Germans had stolen it to humiliate the French.
Investigators and detectives searched for the painting for more than two years without finding any decent leads. Then, in November 1913, Italian art dealer Alfredo Geri received a letter from a man calling himself Leonardo. It indicated that the Mona Lisa was in Florence and would be returned for a hefty ransom. When Perugia attempted to receive the ransom, he was captured. The painting was unharmed.
Perugia, a former employee of the Louvre, claimed that he had acted out of a patriotic duty to avenge Italy on behalf of Napoleon. But prior robbery convictions and a diary with a list of art collectors led most to think that he had acted solely out of greed. Perugia served seven months of a one-year sentence and later served in the Italian army during the First World War. The Mona Lisa is back in the Louvre, where improved security measures are now in place to protect it.
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Aug 22, 1898
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hired-killer-jim-miller-joins-texas-rangers (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hired-killer-jim-miller-joins-texas-rangers)
Hired killer Jim Miller joins Texas Rangers
The hired assassin Jim Miller briefly joins the Texas Rangers, demonstrating how thin the line between outlaw and lawmen often was in the West.
Many lawmen in the Old West had never been on the wrong side of the law themselves, but more than a few moved easily between the worlds of lawbreaker and law enforcer. James Brown Miller was one of the latter. During his 47 years, Miller worked as a deputy sheriff, a city marshal, and Texas Ranger. He was also a gambler, a swindler, and one of the deadliest professional killers in Texas.
As a young man, Miller was accused of committing several murders-including the double killing of his own grandparents-but the charges never stuck. By age 27, he was living in Alpine, Texas, where he reportedly offered to kill a local judge for $200. That offer was apparently rejected, but thereafter he became a professional killer, charging between $50 to $2,000, depending on the victim and the client's ability to pay. By his own account, he committed more than 50 murders.
Although Miller was arrested on several occasions, he proved hard to convict. The wealthier clients who hired him often provided expert legal counsel, and he was a careful killer who took pains to cover his tracks. Law enforcement agencies also found men like Miller useful, and they often were willing to overlook his checkered past if they needed help in capturing or killing a dangerous outlaw. The famous Texas Rangers even hired Miller, temporarily appointing him a Special Ranger on this day in 1898.
Miller's luck eventually ran out. In 1909, two Ada, Oklahoma, ranchers paid Miller $2,000 to kill August Bobbitt, with the promise of an additional $3,000 to pay for his defense in the event Miller was arrested. Miller killed Bobbitt with a shotgun, his favored weapon for assassinations. This time, however, Miller's victim was a well-liked man who left a widow with four children. Local citizens were outraged by the cold-blooded murder and demanded action. Miller and his two clients were quickly arrested and jailed, but none of them had a chance to mount a legal defense. A mob of Ada vigilantes stormed the jail, extracted the men, and lynched them in a nearby barn. Miller was 47 years old.
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Aug 23, 1939
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-hitler-stalin-pact (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-hitler-stalin-pact)
The Hitler-Stalin Pact
On this day in 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies. But the dictators were, despite appearances, both playing to their own political needs.
After Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia, Britain had to decide to what extent it would intervene should Hitler continue German expansion. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, at first indifferent to Hitler's capture of the Sudetenland, the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia, suddenly snapped to life when Poland became threatened. He made it plain that Britain would be obliged to come to the aid of Poland in the event of German invasion. But he wanted, and needed, an ally. The only power large enough to stop Hitler, and with a vested interest in doing so, was the Soviet Union. But Stalin was cool to Britain after its effort to create a political alliance with Britain and France against Germany had been rebuffed a year earlier. Plus, Poland's leaders were less than thrilled with the prospect of Russia becoming its guardian; to them, it was simply occupation by another monstrous regime.
Hitler believed that Britain would never take him on alone, so he decided to swallow his fear and loathing of communism and cozy up to the Soviet dictator, thereby pulling the rug out from the British initiative. Both sides were extremely suspicious of the other, trying to discern ulterior motives. But Hitler was in a hurry; he knew if he was to invade Poland it had to be done quickly, before the West could create a unified front. Agreeing basically to carve up parts of Eastern Europe—and leave each other alone in the process—Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, flew to Moscow and signed the non-aggression pact with his Soviet counterpart, V.M. Molotov (which is why the pact is often referred to as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). Supporters of bolshevism around the world had their heretofore romantic view of "international socialism" ruined; they were outraged that Stalin would enter into any kind of league with the fascist dictator.
But once Poland was German-occupied territory, the alliance would not last for long.
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Aug 24, 2012
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/killer-in-norway-massacre-is-sentenced (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/killer-in-norway-massacre-is-sentenced)
Killer in Norway massacre is sentenced
On this day in 2012, the man who killed 77 people in a July 22, 2011, bombing and shooting attack in Norway is sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum allowed under Norwegian law. Anders Behring Breivik, a 33-year-old right-wing extremist with anti-Muslim views, carried out attacks in Oslo, the nation’s capital, and at a youth camp on the nearby island of Utoya because he wanted to call attention to what he referred to as the “Islamic colonization” of Europe and inspire an uprising against it. The attacks were the deadliest the nation of 5 million residents had experienced since World War II.
The massacre began around 3:25 p.m. when Breivik detonated a van packed with explosives outside government offices in central Oslo, leaving eight people dead and more than 200 others injured. Approximately two hours later, Breivik, dressed as a police officer, arrived on Utoya Island, about 25 miles northwest of Oslo, at a summer camp for hundreds of teenagers organized by Norway’s governing Labour Party (whose liberal immigration policies Breivik opposed). There, he methodically shot and killed 69 people, many of them teens. Some of Breivik’s victims were trying to swim to safety when he gunned them down. More than an hour after the shooting rampage began, law enforcement officers arrived and Breivik surrendered.
Authorities later discovered that shortly before the deadly twin attacks Breivik had posted a 1,500-page manifesto online railing against multiculturalism and Islam, which he considered dangers to Europe. It also was learned that Breivik, who was raised in a middle-class Norwegian family, spent at least several years preparing for the attacks, setting up an agricultural business so he could buy chemicals to build explosives and playing computer war games, among other activities.
During Breivik’s 10-week trial in the spring of 2012, he admitted to carrying out the attacks but said his victims were complicit in their deaths because they supported multiculturalism and Muslim immigration, thereby putting Norway at risk, in his opinion. On August 24, 2012, Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed in Norway, which does not have the death penalty. However, his sentence can be extended as long as he is considered a threat to society. Prosecutors had argued Breivik was insane and should be sent to a psychiatric institution rather than prison, but the court ruled he was sane, a decision that pleased Breivik, who wanted his attacks to be viewed as a political statement rather than dismissed as the actions of a mentally ill person.
A week before Breivik was sentenced, Norway’s national police commissioner resigned after a damaging report issued by an independent commission concluded police should have responded faster to the attacks and could have done more to prevent them.
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Aug 25, 1939
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-wizard-of-oz-debuts (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-wizard-of-oz-debuts)
The Wizard of Oz debuts
On this day in 1939, The Wizard of Oz, which will become one of the best-loved movies in history, opens in theaters around the United States.
Based on the 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), the film starred Judy Garland as the young Kansas farm girl Dorothy, who, after being knocked unconscious in a tornado, dreams about following a yellow brick road, alongside her dog Toto, to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard of Oz. Along the way, Dorothy encounters a cast of characters, including the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Wicked Witch of the West. Though the scenes in Kansas were shot in traditional black and white, Oz appears in vivid Technicolor, a relatively new film process at the time. Nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture category, The Wizard of Oz lost to the Civil War-era epic Gone With the Wind. The Wizard of Oz won a Best Song Oscar for “Over the Rainbow,” which became one of Garland’s signature hits. Garland won a special award at that year’s Oscar ceremony, for Best Juvenile Performer.
Filmed at MGM Studios in Culver City, California, The Wizard of Oz was a modest box-office success when it was first released, but its popularity continued to grow after it was televised for the first time in 1956. An estimated 45 million people watched that inaugural broadcast, and since then The Wizard of Oz has aired on TV countless times. Today, some of the film’s famous lines, including “There’s no place like home” and “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” are well-known to several generations of moviegoers.
The Wizard of Oz spawned two sequels, Journey Back to Oz (1974), an animated film featuring the voice of Judy Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli, and Return to Oz (1985). A remake with an African American cast, The Wiz, starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, was released in 1978 with music arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones. The Wizard of Oz was one of the first 25 films to be put on the National Film Registry, which is reserved for culturally or historically significant movies.
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Aug 26, 1986
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/preppy-murder-stuns-new-york (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/preppy-murder-stuns-new-york)
"Preppy Murder" stuns New York
On this day in 1986, 18-year-old Jennifer Levin is found dead in New York City’s Central Park less than two hours after she was seen leaving a bar on the city’s Upper East Side with 19-year-old Robert Chambers. The tall, handsome Chambers was soon arrested and charged with murder. The tabloid media dubbed Chambers, who had attended Manhattan private schools, the “Preppy Killer.” The case shocked the city and raised questions about underage drinking, drug use and casual sex among New York’s privileged youth.
In the early hours of August 26, Levin, a graduate of a Manhattan private school, was with friends at Dorrian’s Red Hand, a bar popular with prep-school students, where she encountered Chambers, with whom she was casually acquainted. Chambers, a college dropout, had grown up on Manhattan’s mostly affluent Upper East Side, although his family was not wealthy. A former altar boy, he became involved in drinking and drugs as a teenager—allegedly stealing to pay for his drug habit—and was kicked out of several private schools he attended.
After meeting up at Dorrian’s on August 26, Levin and Chambers left there together around 4:30 a.m. and headed to Central Park. Levin’s lifeless body, badly bruised and partially clothed, was discovered under a tree in the park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art around 6:15 a.m. by a cyclist. When police arrived, one eyewitness later recalled spotting a man who would fit Chamber’s description standing in the vicinity observing the scene. That afternoon, after speaking with Levin’s friends, police questioned Chambers, who denied any knowledge of the crime and claimed the scratches on his face were from a cat. However, later that day, he made videotaped and written statements to police indicating he might have accidentally killed Levin because she hurt him during rough sex in the park. An autopsy report concluded that Levin died from asphyxia by strangulation.
A highly publicized court trial followed, and on March 25, 1988, with the jury at an impasse on its ninth day of deliberations, Chambers withdrew his plea of not guilty and agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter. He was sentenced to five to 15 years in prison.
During his time behind bars, Chambers proved to be a less-than-model prisoner. He committed numerous drug and weapons infractions, and spent nearly five years in solitary confinement. In 2003, after serving his full sentence, Chambers was released. However, in 2008, he was convicted of selling drugs and sentenced to 19 years in prison.
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Aug 27, 1982
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/henderson-steals-his-way-to-a-record (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/henderson-steals-his-way-to-a-record)
Henderson steals his way to a record
Oakland Athletics outfielder Rickey Henderson steals his 119th base of the year, breaking Hall of Famer Lou Brock's 1979 record for stolen bases in a season.
Rickey Henley Henderson was born on Christmas Day, 1958. When he was seven years old, his family moved to Oakland, where the gregarious boy befriended Charles O. Finley, the owner of the Oakland Athletics. Henderson played youth baseball in Oakland with pitcher Dave Stewart, later his teammate on the 1989 Oakland A's and 1993 Toronto Blue Jays World Championship teams. According to Stewart, Henderson had the same outgoing, energetic personality as a boy that he did when he became a baseball star: "Rickey was always the life of the party."
Henderson was drafted by the A's in the fourth round of the 1976 amateur draft. In the minor leagues he stole bases at a tremendous clip, including 95 at Double-A Modesto as an 18 year old in 1977. He broke in with Oakland in the 1979 season, but initially struggled to find his game. Then, in 1980, under a new manager, the pugnacious Billy Martin, Henderson broke the American League record for stolen bases in a season, swiping 100 bags.
Henderson stole bases in 1982 at an unprecedented pace. By August 27, when the A's visited Milwaukee, Henderson had already racked up 118 steals, tying Brock's major league record. In the third inning, Henderson walked on four pitches to reach first base. The Brewers knew he would look to steal, so they pitched out to catcher Ted Simmons, who threw to shortstop Robin Yount. Henderson had indeed taken off, and he proved too fast for the Brewers' battery, stealing his 119th base on the year. The game was stopped and Brock and American League President Lee MacPhail joined the teams on the field to congratulate the new record-holder.
Henderson, however, was not done for the day. After a walk in the sixth inning, he stole second again. In the eighth inning, after his third walk, he stole second and third base, giving him 122 steals on the year at the end of the game. Henderson finished the season with 130 stolen bases, a single-season record that still stands.
When his major league career ended in 2003, Henderson was baseball's all-time leader in stolen bases and lead-off home runs, as well as the all-time leader in bases on balls (walks) with 2,190 (Barry Bonds later broke this record) and the all-time runs leader, with 2,295. Henderson left the majors at age 45 and ended his career playing independent minor league baseball, still getting on base and still scoring runs. In a sport where the point of the offensive player is to score runs, Henderson did it more than anyone in history. He was inducted into the Baeball Hall of Fame in 2009.
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Aug 28, 1990
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/murdered-students-are-discovered-at-the-university-of-florida (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/murdered-students-are-discovered-at-the-university-of-florida)
Murdered students are discovered at the University of Florida
The bodies of Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada are discovered at the Gatorwood Apartments, near the campus of the University of Florida. Their murders came two days after the discovery that three young female students had been killed and mutilated in two separate locations near the campus. The serial killer was known for positioning his victims' bodies in a lewd manner before he left. Authorities determined that all five murders were connected, and the Gainesville student community panicked.
While the first murders spawned a massive investigation including 75 state and federal agents, Florida's governor sent an additional 50 state troopers and investigators to assist after the bodies of Paules and Taboada were found.
University of Florida officials offered all students temporary on-campus housing to those afraid for their safety. Nearby Santa Fe Community College allowed its students to return home for two weeks with no adverse affect on their grades. In the wake of the crimes, people flooded the sheriff's office to obtain concealed weapons permit applications, while stores ran out of mace.
The desperation to calm the community led police to arrest Ed Humphrey as a suspect, and students began to return to campus. However, with no real evidence against him, authorities continued their search, while keeping Humphrey in jail with a conviction on an unrelated charge.
The case was finally cracked when investigators found an abandoned campsite on the campus with a cassette recorded by the killer, admitting to the murders. Surrounding evidence eventually led police to Danny Rolling, who had been arrested in Ocala for armed robbery.
Apparently, Rolling had also killed a family in Shreveport, Louisiana, the previous November. He then shot his own father in the face before moving on to Florida. Rolling was convicted of the murders in April 1994, and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Ed Humphrey was released from prison, and his family bitterly denounced the police for their investigation and erroneous conclusions. Rolling was executed in October 2006.
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Aug 29, 2007
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hero-security-guard-wrongly-accused-as-bombing-suspect-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hero-security-guard-wrongly-accused-as-bombing-suspect-dies)
Hero security guard wrongly accused as bombing suspect dies
Richard Jewell, the hero security guard turned Olympic bombing suspect, dies at age 44 of natural causes at his Georgia home.
On July 27, 1996, during the Summer Games in Atlanta, a pipe bomb with nails went off in crowded Centennial Olympic Park, killing one woman and injuring 111 other people. Shortly before the explosion, Richard Jewell, who was working as a temporary security guard in the area, discovered a suspicious-looking backpack abandoned beneath a park bench. Jewell alerted police to the backpack, which held a bomb, and moved people out of harm’s way before it exploded. In the aftermath of the bombing, Jewell was praised as a hero for his actions. However, three days later, the media reported that Jewell was being investigated as a suspect in the case. Although he was never arrested or charged with any crime, for the next three months, Jewell faced intense scrutiny from both law enforcement officials and the media, who combed through his background and tracked his movements. Even after the Justice Department officially cleared Jewell of any involvement in the bombing in late October 1996, some people still viewed him with suspicion.
Jewell later filed libel lawsuits against several major media companies and reached settlements with CNN and NBC, among others. Before his death on August 29, 2007, Jewell, who suffered from diabetes and other health problems, worked as a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia. In 2006, during the 10-year anniversary of the Atlanta Olympics, Georgia governor Sonny Perdue publicly commended Jewell for saving lives at Centennial Park.
In May 2003, police in North Carolina captured Eric Rudolph, the real person responsible for the Olympic bombing, as well as the bombings of several abortion clinics and a gay bar. Rudolph, who eluded law enforcement authorities for years by living in the Appalachian wilderness, eventually pled guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to life in prison.
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(http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/b7/16/4a/b7164a3f02e5cad055c481b142fe7dee.jpg)
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Aug 30, 2003
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/movie-tough-guy-charles-bronson-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/movie-tough-guy-charles-bronson-dies)
Movie tough guy Charles Bronson dies
On this day in 2003, the actor Charles Bronson, best known for his tough-guy roles in such films as The Dirty Dozen and the Death Wish franchise, dies at the age of 81 in Los Angeles.
Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky on November 3, 1921, in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, to Lithuanian immigrants. The 11th of 15 children, he worked in the Pennsylvania coal mines as a teenager and later served in the Army during World War II. After the war, he worked a series of odd jobs and took acting lessons. He had an uncredited part in the 1951 film You’re in the Navy Now, starring Gary Cooper, and a small part (credited as Charles Buchinsky) in 1952’s Pat and Mike, with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. In the mid-1950s, he changed his name to Bronson because he believed it wasn’t smart for an actor to have a Russian-sounding last name at a time when there was a strong anti-Communist sentiment in America.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Bronson was cast as a tough character in a slew of TV shows and such films as The Magnificent Seven (1960), a Western directed by John Sturges that co-starred Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen; The Great Escape (1963), a World War II drama also directed by Sturges and co-starring McQueen; The Dirty Dozen (1967), another World War II-era story featuring Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine; and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), a spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Leone that co-starred Henry Fonda.
The craggy-faced Bronson achieved fame in Europe--in Italy he was known as Il Brutto or “The Ugly One”--before he became a full-fledged Hollywood star in the 1970s. In 1974’s action thriller Death Wish, Bronson played the New York City architect Paul Kersey, who becomes a vigilante and goes after street criminals following attacks on his wife and daughter. Although the film was criticized for its graphic violence, it was a box-office success and spawned four sequels from 1982 to 1994. Bronson’s last starring movie role came in 1994’s Death Wish V: The Face of Death.
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30 BC
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt committed suicide.
Read more: This Day in History: August 30 | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory#ixzz3BuQVVpUY
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30 BC
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt committed suicide.
Read more: This Day in History: August 30 | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory#ixzz3BuQVVpUY
I posted this last year sweetheart. ;)
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burp. just goes to show that history repeats....
1941
The two-year siege of Leningrad during World War II began.
Read more: This Day in History: August 30 | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory#ixzz3BvAXC9w9
madly
xL
gimme credit for showing up, okay Darlin?
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I wonder how many families chipped in to have this done? :'(
All info courtesy of History.com
July 22nd - 1991
Cannibal and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is caught.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, police officers spot Tracy Edwards running down the street in handcuffs, and upon investigation, they find one of the grisliest scenes in modern history-Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment.
Edwards told the police that Dahmer had held him at his apartment and threatened to kill him. Although they initially thought the story was dubious, the officers took Edwards back to Dahmer's apartment. Dahmer calmly explained that the whole matter was simply a misunderstanding and the officers almost believed him. However, they spotted a few Polaroid photos of dismembered bodies, and Dahmer was arrested.
When Dahmer's apartment was fully searched, a house of horrors was revealed. In addition to photo albums full of pictures of body parts, the apartment was littered with human remains: Several heads were in the refrigerator and freezer; two skulls were on top of the computer; and a 57-gallon drum containing several bodies decomposing in chemicals was found in a corner of the bedroom. There was also evidence to suggest that Dahmer had been eating some of his victims.
Neighbors told both detectives and the press that they had noticed an awful smell emanating from the apartment but that Dahmer had explained it away as expired meat. However, the most shocking revelation about how Dahmer had managed to conceal his awful crimes in the middle of a city apartment building would come a few days later.
Apparently, police had been called two months earlier about a naked and bleeding 14-year-old boy being chased down an alley by Dahmer. The responding officers actually returned the boy, who had been drugged, to Dahmer's apartment–where he was promptly killed. The officers, who said that they believed it to be a domestic dispute, were later fired.
A forensic examination of the apartment turned up 11 victims–the first of whom disappeared in March 1989, just two months before Dahmer successfully escaped a prison sentence for child molestation by telling the judge that he was desperately seeking to change his conduct. Dahmer later confessed to 17 murders in all, dating back to his first victim in 1978.
The jury rejected Dahmer's insanity defense, and he was sentenced to 15 life terms. He survived one attempt on his life in July 1994, but was killed by another inmate on November 28, 1994.
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Aug 31, 1985
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/los-angeles-mob-attacks-night-stalker (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/los-angeles-mob-attacks-night-stalker)
Los Angeles mob attacks Night Stalker
Richard Ramirez, the notorious "Night Stalker," is captured and nearly killed by a mob in East Los Angeles, California, after being recognized from a photograph shown both on television and in newspapers. Recently identified as the serial killer, Ramirez was pulled from the enraged mob by police officers.
During the summer of 1985, the city of Los Angeles was panic-stricken by a killer who crept into his victims' homes at night. The Night Stalker, as the press dubbed the murderer, first turned his attention on the men in the house, usually shot any men in the house with a .22 caliber handgun before raping, stabbing, and mutilating his female victims. He cut out one of his victim's eyes, and sometimes carved satanic pentagrams on the bodies before he left.
By August, the Night Stalker has murdered at least a dozen people, and law enforcement officials were desperate to stop him. One witness, who managed to note the license plate of the car in which Ramirez fled, led police to a single, partial fingerprint left in the vehicle.
Apparently, the task force looking for the Night Stalker had already received information that someone named Ramirez was involved, so only the records for men with that name were checked against the fingerprint. Although the Los Angeles Police Department's new multimillion-dollar computer database of fingerprints only contained the records of criminals born after January 1960, Richard Ramirez, who had a record of petty crimes, had been born in February 1960.
When Ramirez was identified as the chief suspect, authorities debated whether to release his name and picture to the public, fearing that it might give him the chance to escape. Nonetheless, they decided to take the risk, and Ramirez, who was actually traveling back to Los Angeles at the time, arrived to find his face and name on the front of every newspaper.
Ramirez turned his trial into a circus by drawing pentagrams on his palms and making devil's horns with his fingers. When he was convicted, he shouted at the jury, "You make me sick. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells within all of us." After the judge imposed a death sentence, Ramirez said, "Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland."
Ramirez married a female admirer and penpal while incarcerated at California's San Quentin Prison in 1996. In 2006, his first appeals were denied and he died in prison on June 7, 2013.
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Sep 1, 1981
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-teenage-boy-murders-his-father (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-teenage-boy-murders-his-father)
A teenage boy murders his father
Fifteen-year-old Eric Witte shoots his father, 43-year-old volunteer firefighter Paul Witte, in the family's Indiana home. Although Eric admitted to shooting his father, he claimed that the gun had accidentally gone off when he tripped on a rug. The bullet hit his father, who was lying on a couch across the room, in the head. The shooting was ruled an accident, and Eric was released.
Three years later, Eric's grandmother, Elaine Witte, 74, was killed with a crossbow. A few months after the murder, the entire family was arrested in California for forging Elaine's signature on her Social Security checks. In the subsequent trial, the bizarre story behind the murders came to light.
Eric's mother, Hilma Marie Witte, had tried to kill her husband, Paul, by lacing his food with rat poison and Valium. When this proved unsuccessful, she convinced her son to shoot his father by telling him that Paul was going to divorce her and that they would end up living in the streets. She later persuaded John "Butch" Witte, Eric's younger brother, to kill his grandmother by convincing him that Elaine planned to kick them out of the house. John, who witnessed his father's murder at the age of 11, was 14 when he killed Elaine Witte. At the trial, John stated, "My mom said I could strangle her or use my crossbow. It was up to me."
A few hours after killing his grandmother, John went to court with his mother to inquire about receiving disability benefits from his father's death. When they returned home that night, they began cutting up Elaine's body with a knife and a chainsaw. Marie and her two boys then scattered the dismembered body throughout California.
John and Eric were given 20- and five-year sentences, respectively, and were released in 1996. Hilma Marie Witte received a 90-year sentence.
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(http://www.szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/asp_970px_612.jpg)
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(http://www.szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/asp_970px_612.jpg)
Whats the point Skorp? Please keep it on topic if you are going to post.
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Sep 2, 31 B.C.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-battle-of-actium (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-battle-of-actium)
The Battle of Actium
At the Battle of Actium, off the western coast of Greece, Roman leader Octavian wins a decisive victory against the forces of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Before their forces suffered final defeat, Antony and Cleopatra broke though the enemy lines and fled to Egypt, where they would commit suicide the following year.
With the assassination of Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., Rome fell into civil war. To end the fighting, a coalition--the Second Triumvirate--was formed by three of the strongest belligerents. The triumvirate was made up of Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew and chosen heir; Mark Antony, a powerful general; and Lepidus, a Roman statesman. The empire was divided among the three, and Antony took up the administration of the eastern provinces. Upon arriving in Asia Minor, he summoned Queen Cleopatra to answer charges that she had aided his enemies. Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt since 51 B.C., had once been Julius Caesar's lover and had borne him a child, who she named Caesarion, meaning "little Caesar."
Cleopatra sought to seduce Antony as she had Caesar before him, and in 41 B.C. arrived at Tarsus on a magnificent river barge, dressed as Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Successful in her efforts, Antony returned with her to Alexandria, where they spent the winter in debauchery. In 40 B.C., Antony returned to Rome and married Octavian's sister Octavia in an effort to mend his increasingly strained relationship with Octavian. The triumvirate, however, continued to deteriorate. In 37 B.C. Antony separated from Octavia and traveled to the East, arranging for Cleopatra to join him in Syria. In their time apart, Cleopatra had borne him twins, a son and a daughter. According to Octavian's propagandists, the lovers were then married, which violated the Roman law restricting Romans from marrying foreigners.
Antony's disastrous military campaign against Parthia in 36 B.C. further reduced his prestige, but in 34 B.C. he was more successful against Armenia. To celebrate the victory, he staged a triumphal procession through the streets of Alexandria, in which Antony and Cleopatra sat on golden thrones, and their children were given imposing royal titles. Many in Rome, spurred on by Octavian, interpreted the spectacle as a sign that Antony intended to deliver the Roman Empire into alien hands.
After several more years of tension and propaganda attacks, Octavian declared war against Cleopatra, and therefore Antony, in 31 B.C. Enemies of Octavian rallied to Antony's side, but Octavian's brilliant military commanders gained early successes against his forces. On September 2, 31 B.C., their fleets clashed at Actium in Greece. After heavy fighting, Cleopatra broke from the engagement and set course for Egypt with 60 of her ships. Antony then broke through the enemy line and followed her. The disheartened fleet that remained surrendered to Octavian. One week later, Antony's land forces surrendered.
Although they had suffered a decisive defeat, it was nearly a year before Octavian reached Alexandria and again defeated Antony. In the aftermath of the battle, Cleopatra took refuge in the mausoleum she had had built for herself. Antony, informed that Cleopatra was dead, stabbed himself with his sword. Before he died, another messenger arrived, saying Cleopatra still lived. Antony was carried to Cleopatra's retreat, where he died after bidding her to make her peace with Octavian. When the triumphant Roman arrived, she attempted to seduce him, but he resisted her charms. Rather than fall under Octavian's domination, Cleopatra committed suicide on August 30, 31 B.C., possibly by means of an asp, a poisonous Egyptian serpent and symbol of divine royalty.
Octavian then executed Cleopatra's son, Caesarion, annexed Egypt into the Roman Empire, and used Cleopatra's treasure to pay off his veterans. In 27 B.C., Octavian became Augustus, the first and arguably most successful of all Roman emperors. He ruled a peaceful, prosperous, and expanding Roman Empire until his death in 14 A.D. at the age of 75.
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Whats the point Skorp? Please keep it on topic if you are going to post.
Ok:
September 3rd
1855 – in Nebraska, 700 soldiers under United States General William S. Harney avenge the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village and killing 100 men, women and children.
September 3rd 1965 Charlioe Sheen was born
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Ok:
September 3rd
1855 – in Nebraska, 700 soldiers under United States General William S. Harney avenge the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village and killing 100 men, women and children.
September 3rd 1965 Charlioe Sheen was born
Why don't you give us some U.K. history? If not here, then make a thread on the UK board.
Sounds like a good idea. Many people love world history.
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British history? You could fill a thread daily with all of that... The other day was the anniversary of Diana's death and it wasn't even mentioned on the BBC news. At the moment it's all WW1 1914 memories? That and Syria Iraq Palestine & Russia?
This day in history it turns out that London is top of the list for the likelihood of terrorism, it's all red alert they say... I'm not going near public transport or a big shopping centre, especially on a Friday?
Yesterday was the 10th year I remembered the anniversary of my Dad's death, I'm sobbing and I'm still not over it.
madly xLinda
in London
where's that UK board? gimme strength
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Why don't you give us some U.K. history? If not here, then make a thread on the UK board.
Sounds like a good idea. Many people love world history.
UK history is simple and straight forward:
Look at a world map, pick all the countries who barely mastered fire and yet to invent the wheel....go invade them, steal their curry and spices and precious metals. As soon as one of them wakes up, sharpens a mango stone and runs towards you, pack up and leave.
(http://www.britishbattles.com/zulu-war/isandlwana/death-neville-coghill.jpg)
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Sep 3, 1855
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/us-army-avenges-the-grattan-massacre (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/us-army-avenges-the-grattan-massacre)
U.S. Army avenges the Grattan Massacre
On this day in 1885, General William Harney and 700 soldiers take revenge for the Grattan Massacre with a brutal attack on a Sioux village in Nebraska that left 100 men, women, and children dead.
The path to Harney's bloody revenge began a year before near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, when a brash young lieutenant named John Grattan and 30 of his men were killed while attempting to arrest a Teton Sioux brave accused of shooting a white man's cow. Despite the many eyewitness reports that Lieutenant Grattan had foolishly threatened the Sioux and practically forced them to attack, the incident quickly gained infamy around the nation as the "Grattan Massacre." Americans demanded swift vengeance, and the army turned to the celebrated Indian fighter, General William Harney, to lead a punitive attack against the Sioux. Harney decided an appropriate target for retribution was a village of 250 Sioux led by Chief Little Thunder encamped near Ash Hollow, Nebraska. Refusing to accept Little Thunder's offer of immediate surrender, Harney ordered a full-scale attack that completely destroyed the village and killed more than 100 Sioux.
After later learning more about what had really happened at the Grattan Massacre, Harney softened his attitude toward the Sioux and eventually convened a successful peace council that temporarily calmed tensions. But for the rest of his life the general was plagued with the nickname of "Squaw Killer Harney," while the unfortunate pattern of revenge and punishment his attack began would only grow more vicious on both sides of the conflict. One Sioux boy who witnessed the brutal massacre would never forget or forgive and would take his own revenge 21 years later at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. His name was Crazy Horse.
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Sep 4, 1886
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-last-american-indian-warrior-surrenders (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-last-american-indian-warrior-surrenders)
The last American Indian warrior surrenders
For almost 30 years he had fought the whites who invaded his homeland, but Geronimo, the wiliest and most dangerous Apache warrior of his time, finally surrenders in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, on this day in 1886.
Known to the Apache as Goyalkla, or "One Who Yawns," most non-Indians knew him by his Spanish nickname, Geronimo. When he was a young man, Mexican soldiers had murdered his wife and children during a brutal attack on his village in Chihuahua, Mexico. Though Geronimo later remarried and fathered other children, the scars of that early tragedy left him with an abiding hatred for Mexicans.
Operating in the border region around Mexico's Sierra Madre and southern Arizona and New Mexico, Geronimo and his band of 50 Apache warriors succeeded in keeping white settlers off Apache lands for decades. Geronimo never learned to use a gun, yet he armed his men with the best modern rifles he could obtain and even used field glasses to aid reconnaissance during his campaigns. He was a brilliant strategist who used the Apache knowledge of the arid desert environment to his advantage, and for years Geronimo and his men successfully evaded two of the U.S. Army's most talented Indian fighters, General George Crook and General Nelson A. Miles. But by 1886, the great Apache warrior had grown tired of fighting and further resistance seemed increasingly pointless: there were just too many whites and too few Apaches. On September 4, 1886, Geronimo turned himself over to Miles, becoming the last American Indian warrior in history to formally surrender to the United States.
After several years of imprisonment, Geronimo was given his freedom, and he moved to Oklahoma where he converted to Christianity and became a successful farmer. He even occasionally worked as a scout and adviser for the U.S. army. Transformed into a safe and romantic symbol of the already vanishing era of the Wild West, he became a popular celebrity at world's fairs and expositions and even rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade in 1905. He died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1909, still on the federal payroll as an army scout.
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Sep 5, 1666
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/londoners-desperately-attempt-to-halt-fire (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/londoners-desperately-attempt-to-halt-fire)
Londoners desperately attempt to halt fire
Firefighters in London begin blowing up homes in a desperate attempt to halt the spread of a great fire through the city on this day in 1666. All other attempts to stop the progress of the flames over the previous three days had failed. By the time the fire was finally snuffed out the following day, more than 100,000 people had been left homeless.
London in the 17th century was no stranger to large fires. In one incident, a gunpowder fire killed 27 people and, in another, the homes on London Bridge were consumed in a blaze. Just outside of London, hundreds of houses burned in Oxford, Marlborough, Southwold and Newport in the years leading up to 1666. Still, the city had not established an official fire department.
In 1666, London was one of the largest cities in the world, with 400,000 residents spread out over 458 acres within the city's walls. At about 2 a.m. on Sunday, September 2, a fire broke out in the home of Thomas Farynor, one of the king's bakers. Most of Farynor's family escaped the flames by climbing out a window and onto a neighbor's roof. However, a servant in the house did not use this exit because he was afraid of heights; he died in the fire.
The tightly packed houses on London's narrow streets were susceptible to fire because of their wood frames. Also, most homes contained supplies of flammable materials such as oils, tallow and resin. A strong westerly wind toward the city center helped to fan the flames. At 3 a.m., the mayor was awakened to alert him of the spreading blaze, but he determined that the fire was not seriously threatening and did not take action.
Despite his optimism, the fire continued to spread during the day on Sunday, outpaced only by the rumors that it had been set by foreigners. Mobs began assaulting immigrants throughout the city. King Charles II showed up and directly supervised the firefighting efforts. Meanwhile, looting was rampant and entrepreneurs from outside the city took the opportunity to charge residents outrageous prices to haul their belongings out of the fire's range. By Sunday night, the fire had advanced more than a half mile west.
On Monday, the king took steps to restore civil order to the city and brought in the militia. The militia, however, was powerless to stop the fire from destroying the high-end business section of the city. The Royal Exchange, where commodities were traded, was consumed, but Leadenhall, a large marketplace to the north, was saved. On Tuesday, September 4, the fire picked up strength. The residents of Oxford, 60 miles away, could see and smell the smoke. St. Paul's Cathedral, the most prominent building in the city, burned, along with the thousands of valuable books stored inside. The Tower of London was spared only because the surrounding buildings were demolished and torn down to prevent them from burning. The fire even managed to jump the city's walls and spread to the suburbs.
Finally, on September 5, weakening winds allowed the fire to be contained, although it was not fully brought under control until the morning of Thursday, September 6. Remarkably, although a good portion of the city had been devastated, only eight people lost their lives to the blaze. The ground remained too hot to walk on for a day and ash clogged the streets. King Charles II ordered that bread be brought to the city to feed the displaced people. He also addressed the refugees and told them that it was not the French or Dutch who were responsible for the fire but, instead, that it was God's will. His words did not stop his citizens from hanging a French watchmaker who had been coerced into confessing.
The following week, a royal proclamation mandated that any rebuilding of the city be done with brick and stone and that any land that was not rebuilt within three years of the fire would be seized by the government. The first major set of building codes was established and a special court was charged with the resolution of all disputes involving the fire. Possibly because of these new regulations, London did not replace all the homes lost in the blaze until nearly 30 years had passed. Other reforms that came out of the Great Fire were the advent of fire insurance and the formation of dedicated firefighting squads.
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Sep 6, 1997
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/some-25-billion-tv-viewers-watch-princess-dianas-funeral (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/some-25-billion-tv-viewers-watch-princess-dianas-funeral)
Some 2.5 billion TV viewers watch Princess Diana’s funeral
On this day in 1997, an estimated 2.5 billion people around the globe tune in to television broadcasts of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, who died at the age of 36 in a car crash in Paris the week before. During her 15-year marriage to Prince Charles, the son of Queen Elizabeth II and the heir to the British throne, Diana became one of the most famous, most photographed people on the planet. Her life story was fodder for numerous books, television programs and movies and her image appeared on countless magazine covers, including those of People and Vanity Fair. After her death, she remained an iconic figure and a continual source of fascination to the media and entertainment world.
Diana Spencer was born on July 1, 1961, in Norfolk, England. On July 29, 1981, at the age of 20, “Shy Di”--as the voracious British media dubbed her--married Prince Charles at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, in a ceremony that was watched by hundreds of millions of TV viewers around the world. On June 21, 1982, Diana gave birth to Prince William. A second son, Prince Harry, was born September 15, 1984. Charles and Diana separated in 1992, amidst allegations of infidelities on both sides, and the couple was officially divorced on August 28, 1996. After her divorce, Diana continued the humanitarian work she’d begun as a member of the royal family, campaigning to raise awareness of the deadly AIDS epidemic and to ban the use of landmines, or explosive devices planted on or in the ground that often cause death or injury to civilians.
In the early morning hours of August 31, 1997, the driver of Diana’s car lost control of the vehicle while trying to elude paparazzi and crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Diana’s companion, Dodi al-Fayed, was also killed in the crash, as was the driver, Henri Paul, who was later determined to be speeding and under the influence of alcohol.
England experienced an unprecedented outpouring of public grief over Diana’s death. On September 6, 1997, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of London to watch the former princess’s coffin being transported to Westminster Abbey, where politicians, celebrities and royalty gathered for her funeral. Elton John performed a re-worked version of his song “Candle in the Wind,” which he and Bernie Taupin had originally written about Marilyn Monroe. Diana’s brother, Lord Spencer, spoke at the funeral and blamed the media for his sister’s death, calling her the “most hunted person of the modern age.” Diana was buried at Althorp, her family’s estate in Northamptonshire, England.
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Sep 7, 1776
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/worlds-first-submarine-attack (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/worlds-first-submarine-attack)
World's first submarine attack
On this day in 1776, during the Revolutionary War, the American submersible craft Turtle attempts to attach a time bomb to the hull of British Admiral Richard Howe's flagship Eagle in New York Harbor. It was the first use of a submarine in warfare.
Submarines were first built by Dutch inventor Cornelius van Drebel in the early 17th century, but it was not until 150 years later that they were first used in naval combat. David Bushnell, an American inventor, began building underwater mines while a student at Yale University. Deciding that a submarine would be the best means of delivering his mines in warfare, he built an eight-foot-long wooden submersible that was christened the Turtle for its shape. Large enough to accommodate one operator, the submarine was entirely hand-powered. Lead ballast kept the craft balanced.
Donated to the Patriot cause after the outbreak of war with Britain in 1775, Ezra Lee piloted the craft unnoticed out to the 64-gun HMS Eagle in New York Harbor on September 7, 1776. As Lee worked to anchor a time bomb to the hull, he could see British seamen on the deck above, but they failed to notice the strange craft below the surface. Lee had almost secured the bomb when his boring tools failed to penetrate a layer of iron sheathing. He retreated, and the bomb exploded nearby, causing no harm to either the Eagle or the Turtle.
During the next week, the Turtle made several more attempts to sink British ships on the Hudson River, but each time it failed, owing to the operator's lack of skill. Only Bushnell was really able to competently execute the submarine's complicated functions, but because of his physical frailty he was unable to pilot the Turtle in any of its combat missions. During the Battle of Fort Lee, the Turtle was lost when the American sloop transporting it was sunk by the British.
Despite the failures of the Turtle, General George Washington gave Bushnell a commission as an Army engineer, and the drifting mines he constructed destroyed the British frigate Cereberus and wreaked havoc against other British ships. After the war, he became commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stationed at West Point.
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September 7, 1963
The Pro Football Hall of Fame is the hall of fame for professional American football in the United States with an emphasis on the National Football League (NFL). Opened in Canton, Ohio, on September 7, 1963, with 17 charter enshrinees,.[3] The Pro Football Hall of Fame is unique among North American major league sports halls of fame in that officials are not inducted. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and Hockey Hall of Fame have each inducted game officials.
Canton, Ohio was selected as the location for the Hall of Fame for three reasons: First, the NFL was founded in Canton in 1920 (at that time it was known as the American Professional Football Association); second, the now-defunct Canton Bulldogs were a successful NFL team based in Canton during the first few years of the league; and finally, the community of Canton successfully lobbied the NFL to have the Hall built in their city.[3] Groundbreaking for the building was held on August 11, 1962. The original building contained just two rooms, and 19,000 square feet (1,800 m2) of interior space.[3]
The Hall is made up of several sections, at heart is the display of inductees.
In April 1970, ground was broken for the first of many expansions. This first expansion cost $620,000, and was completed in May 1971. The size was increased to 34,000 square feet (3,200 m2) by adding another room. The pro shop opened with this expansion. This was also an important milestone for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as yearly attendance passed the 200,000 mark for the first time. This was at least in some part due to the increase in popularity of professional football caused by the advent of the American Football League and its success in the final two AFL-NFL World Championship games.[3]
By the way, chaos thinks this thread sucks, bro.
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Nice addition Ugly. I like how you bolded the date, it makes it look better.
Could you provide a link to your post sir?
The mods said that we should provide links to the content.
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Nice addition Ugly. I like how you bolded the date, it makes it look better.
Could you provide a link to your post sir?
The mods said that we should provide links to the content.
Wikipedia, bro. My work is done.
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Sep 8, 2003
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/riaa-begins-suing-individual-sharers-of-copyrighted-mp3-files (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/riaa-begins-suing-individual-sharers-of-copyrighted-mp3-files)
RIAA begins suing individual sharers of copyrighted mp3 files
"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on this day in 2003, "but when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action." The product in question was music—music in the form of digital mp3 files being transmitted among users of Internet file-sharing applications in violation of copyright laws. And while the RIAA's idea of "appropriate action" in response to digital music piracy had previously meant efforts to shut down the operators of Internet file-sharing systems, the industry group announced a new and controversial strategy on September 8, 2003: the filing of lawsuits against individual users of those systems, some of them children.
"We've been telling people for a long time that file-sharing copyrighted music is illegal, that you are not anonymous when you do it, and that engaging in it can have real consequences," said Mr. Sherman in announcing the RIAA's new enforcement strategy. By September 2003, having undertaken a massive anti-piracy public-education campaign in the months since Napster was shut down by court order in 2001, and while still pursuing a case against the Dutch operators of a "peer-to-peer" (P2P) file-sharing system called Grokster, the RIAA had decided to back up its public threats with direct legal action against individuals.
The RIAA's announcement of their first lawsuits against individuals was accompanied by statements of support from music-industry players large and small, including legendary Motown songwriter Lamond Dozier, whose plea to end digital piracy asked those who engaged in illegal file-sharing to "step into the shoes of [music professionals] who have families and children." But in fact, some of the 261 defendants sued in the first round of RIAA lawsuits were families with children—in many cases, minor children whose parents had no idea about their kids' music-downloading habits.
Federal law allowed the RIAA to seek damages as high as $150,000 per illegally shared song per defendant, but in practice the RIAA offered defendants the option of establishing a "Clean Slate" by destroying all of their illegally acquired files and paying a settlement of approximately $3 per illegal song. A little more than three weeks after announcing its new legal strategy on this day in 2003, the RIAA announced that 52 of the 261 individuals named in the initial round of lawsuits had reached such cash settlements. Within the next 20 months, the RIAA sued a further 11,195 individuals, reaching financial settlements with 2,484. None of the RIAA's cases against individual file-sharers has yet gone to trial.
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Sep 9, 1971
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/riot-at-attica-prison (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/riot-at-attica-prison)
Riot at Attica prison
Prisoners riot and seize control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York. Later that day, state police retook most of the prison, but 1,281 convicts occupied an exercise field called D Yard, where they held 39 prison guards and employees hostage for four days. After negotiations stalled, state police and prison officers launched a disastrous raid on September 13, in which 10 hostages and 29 inmates were killed in an indiscriminate hail of gunfire. Eighty-nine others were seriously injured.
By the summer of 1971, the state prison in Attica, New York, was ready to explode. Inmates were frustrated with chronic overcrowding, censorship of letters, and living conditions that limited them to one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper each month. Some Attica prisoners, adopting the radical spirit of the times, began to perceive themselves as political prisoners rather than convicted criminals.
On the morning of September 9, the eruption came when inmates on the way to breakfast overpowered their guards and stormed down a prison gallery in a spontaneous riot. They broke through a faulty gate and into a central area known as Times Square, which gave them access to all the cellblocks. Many of the prison's 2,200 inmates then joined in the rioting, and prisoners rampaged through the facility beating guards, acquiring makeshift weapons, and burning down the prison chapel. One guard, William Quinn, was severely beaten and thrown out a second-story window. Two days later, he died in a hospital from his injuries.
Using tear gas and submachine guns, state police regained control of three of the four cellblocks held by the rioters without loss of life. By 10:30 a.m., the inmates were only in control of D Yard, a large, open exercise field surrounded by 35-foot walls and overlooked by gun towers. Thirty-nine hostages, mostly guards and a few other prison employees, were blindfolded and held in a tight circle. Inmates armed with clubs and knives guarded the hostages closely.
Riot leaders put together a list of demands, including improved living conditions, more religious freedom, an end to mail censorship, and expanded phone privileges. They also called for specific individuals, such as U.S. Representative Herman Badillo and New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, to serve as negotiators and civilian observers. Meanwhile, hundreds of state troopers arrived at Attica, and New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller called in the National Guard.
In tense negotiations, New York Correction Commissioner Russell Oswald agreed to honor the inmates' demands for improved living conditions. However, talks bogged down when the prisoners called for amnesty for everyone in D Yard, along with safe passage to a "non-imperialist country" for anyone who desired it. Observers pleaded with Governor Rockefeller to come to Attica as a show of good faith, but he refused and instead ordered the prison to be retaken by force.
On the rainy Monday morning of September 13, an ultimatum was read to the inmates, calling on them to surrender. They responded by putting knives against the hostages' throats. At 9:46 a.m., helicopters flew over the yard, dropping tear gas as state police and correction officers stormed in with guns blazing. The police fired 3,000 rounds into the tear gas haze, killing 29 inmates and 10 of the hostages and wounding 89. Most were shot in the initial indiscriminate barrage of gunfire, but other prisoners were shot or killed after they surrendered. An emergency medical technician recalled seeing a wounded prisoner, lying on the ground, shot several times in the head by a state trooper. Another prisoner was shot seven times and then ordered to crawl along the ground. When he didn't move fast enough, an officer kicked him. Many others were savagely beaten.
In the aftermath of the bloody raid, authorities said the inmates had killed the slain hostages by slitting their throats. One hostage was said to have been castrated. However, autopsies showed that these charges were false and that all 10 hostages had been shot to death by police. The attempted cover-up increased public condemnation of the raid and prompted a Congressional investigation.
The Attica riot was the worst prison riot in U.S. history. A total of 43 people were killed, including the 39 killed in the raid, guard William Quinn, and three inmates killed by other prisoners early in the riot. In the week after its conclusion, police engaged in brutal reprisals against the prisoners, forcing them to run a gauntlet of nightsticks and crawl naked across broken glass, among other tortures. The many injured inmates received substandard medical treatment, if any.
In 1974, lawyers representing the 1,281 inmates filed a $2.8 billion class-action lawsuit against prison and state officials. It took 18 years before the suit came to trial, and five more years to reach the damages phase, delays that were the fault of a lower-court judge opposed to the case. In January 2000, New York State and the former and current inmates settled for $8 million, which was divided unevenly among about 500 inmates, depending on the severity of their suffering during the raid and the weeks following.
Families of the slain correction officers lost their right to sue by accepting the modest death-benefit checks sent to them by the state. The hostages who survived likewise lost their right to sue by cashing their paychecks. Both groups attest that no state officials apprised them of their legal rights, and they were denied compensation that New York should have paid to them.
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Sep 10, 1977
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-guillotine-falls-silent (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-guillotine-falls-silent)
The guillotine falls silent
At Baumetes Prison in Marseille, France, Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant convicted of murder, becomes the last person executed by guillotine.
The guillotine first gained fame during the French Revolution when physician and revolutionary Joseph-Ignace Guillotin won passage of a law requiring all death sentences to be carried out by "means of a machine." Decapitating machines had been used earlier in Ireland and England, and Guillotin and his supporters viewed these devices as more humane than other execution techniques, such as hanging or firing squad. A French decapitating machine was built and tested on cadavers, and on April 25, 1792, a highwayman became the first person in Revolutionary France to be executed by this method.
The device soon became known as the "guillotine" after its advocate, and more than 10,000 people lost their heads by guillotine during the Revolution, including Louis XVI and Mary Antoinette, the former king and queen of France.
Use of the guillotine continued in France in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the last execution by guillotine occurred in 1977. In September 1981, France outlawed capital punishment altogether, thus abandoning the guillotine forever. There is a museum dedicated to the guillotine in Liden, Sweden.
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Sep 11, 1985
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pete-rose-hits-into-the-record-books (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pete-rose-hits-into-the-record-books)
Pete Rose hits into the record books
On this day in 1985, Cincinnati Reds player-manager Pete Rose gets the 4,192nd hit of his career, breaking Ty Cobb’s major league record for career hits. Rose was a folk hero in Cincinnati, a homegrown talent known as "Charlie Hustle" for his relentless work ethic.
Pete Rose was just 5 feet 10 inches tall and 140 pounds when he graduated from Cincinnati’s Western Hills High School. Despite his slight build, the switch-hitter was drafted by the Reds in 1960. Determined to improve after an unremarkable debut season in the minors, Rose committed to an intense weight-lifting regimen, long before such training became de rigueur in baseball. By the time he reached the majors, Rose was 5’ 11" and 205 pounds of muscle, with 27-inch thighs. In 1963, he hit .273 and scored 101 runs and was named Rookie of the Year. Rose went on to hit .312 in 1965, and then over .300 in 15 of the next 17 seasons, leading the National League in hitting three times. On "The Big Red Machine," as the impressive Reds teams of the 1970s were called, Rose was the spark plug, leading the team to back-to-back World Series victories in 1975 and 1976. Rose signed with the Philadelphia Phillies as a free agent in 1979, then led the Phillies to the first World Series championship in their 97-year history in 1980. On August 10, 1981, Rose broke Stan Musial’s career record for hits as a National Leaguer when he collected his 3,631st hit.
In 1984, Rose returned to the Reds after a stint with the Montreal Expos. On September 8, 1985, he tied Cobb’s 57-year-old record for career hits (4,191) with two hits against the Chicago Cubs. Three days later on September 11, Rose came to the plate in the first inning of a game against the San Diego Padres in front of a home crowd at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. Rose watched the first pitch to gauge pitcher Eric Show’s speed, fouled off the second pitch and then laid off the third pitch. With the count at 2-1, Rose lined a hanging slider into left-center field for a single. The Reds rushed out of the dugout to surround the new hits king and Rose’s longtime teammate Tony Perez lifted him in the air in celebration. The Cincinnati crowd of 47,237 stood and applauded for a full seven minutes as their hometown hero wiped tears from his eyes. (Show started to take warm-up tosses with the catcher during the tribute, and then sat down on the mound to wait, a move many in baseball found in appropriate.)
Pete Rose retired as a player during the 1986 season, but remained in his position as Reds manager until August 24, 1989, when he was banned from baseball for life for gambling on Reds games.
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Sep 11, 1985
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pete-rose-hits-into-the-record-books (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pete-rose-hits-into-the-record-books)
Pete Rose hits into the record books
On this day in 1985, Cincinnati Reds player-manager Pete Rose gets the 4,192nd hit of his career, breaking Ty Cobb’s major league record for career hits. Rose was a folk hero in Cincinnati, a homegrown talent known as "Charlie Hustle" for his relentless work ethic.
Pete Rose was just 5 feet 10 inches tall and 140 pounds when he graduated from Cincinnati’s Western Hills High School. Despite his slight build, the switch-hitter was drafted by the Reds in 1960. Determined to improve after an unremarkable debut season in the minors, Rose committed to an intense weight-lifting regimen, long before such training became de rigueur in baseball. By the time he reached the majors, Rose was 5’ 11" and 205 pounds of muscle, with 27-inch thighs. In 1963, he hit .273 and scored 101 runs and was named Rookie of the Year. Rose went on to hit .312 in 1965, and then over .300 in 15 of the next 17 seasons, leading the National League in hitting three times. On "The Big Red Machine," as the impressive Reds teams of the 1970s were called, Rose was the spark plug, leading the team to back-to-back World Series victories in 1975 and 1976. Rose signed with the Philadelphia Phillies as a free agent in 1979, then led the Phillies to the first World Series championship in their 97-year history in 1980. On August 10, 1981, Rose broke Stan Musial’s career record for hits as a National Leaguer when he collected his 3,631st hit.
In 1984, Rose returned to the Reds after a stint with the Montreal Expos. On September 8, 1985, he tied Cobb’s 57-year-old record for career hits (4,191) with two hits against the Chicago Cubs. Three days later on September 11, Rose came to the plate in the first inning of a game against the San Diego Padres in front of a home crowd at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. Rose watched the first pitch to gauge pitcher Eric Show’s speed, fouled off the second pitch and then laid off the third pitch. With the count at 2-1, Rose lined a hanging slider into left-center field for a single. The Reds rushed out of the dugout to surround the new hits king and Rose’s longtime teammate Tony Perez lifted him in the air in celebration. The Cincinnati crowd of 47,237 stood and applauded for a full seven minutes as their hometown hero wiped tears from his eyes. (Show started to take warm-up tosses with the catcher during the tribute, and then sat down on the mound to wait, a move many in baseball found in appropriate.)
Pete Rose retired as a player during the 1986 season, but remained in his position as Reds manager until August 24, 1989, when he was banned from baseball for life for gambling on Reds games.
I used to go watch the Big Red Machine at Riverfront Stadium. I have saved the newspaper that went out the day after he broke the record.
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Sep 12, 2002
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tyco-execs-indicted (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tyco-execs-indicted)
Tyco execs indicted
Three former executives from Tyco International, including the CEO and CFO, are indicted in New York on charges that they stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the company. Two of the men, CEO Dennis Kozlowski and CFO Mark Swartz, were later convicted and given lengthy prison sentences. The case became symbolic of the era's corporate corruption and greed.
Kozlowski and Swartz were charged with using Tyco, a manufacturer of industrial products, as their private bank and looting $150 million while pulling in another $430 million by secretly selling large shares of company stock after its value had been artificially inflated. Among other things, the men took unauthorized loans from the company's coffers and gave themselves enormous, unauthorized bonuses. In June 2002, three months before the indictments, Kozlowski resigned as Tyco's chief just before he was charged with evading sales taxes on expensive paintings he'd purchased. At his Tyco trial in 2004, the former CEO's lavish lifestyle was put on public display and the media had a field day with revelations of his conspicuous consumption. He once spent $6,000 on a shower curtain and $2 million--some of it Tyco money--on an extravagant birthday party for his wife. In April 2004, the case ended in a mistrial after a jury member holding out for an acquittal received a coercive letter from a stranger.
At a second trial in June 2005, the jury deliberated for 11 days before convicting Kozlowski and Swartz on multiple counts of grand larceny, securities fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records. Each man was later sentenced to 8 1/3 years to 25 years in prison, while Kozlowski, 58, was ordered to pay $170 million in fines and restitution and Swartz, 45, was ordered to pay $72 million.
The summer of 2005 also saw other corporate executives pay a steep price for their white-collar crimes: Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison for spearheading an $11 billion fraud that brought down the telecommunications giant, while Adelphia Communications chief John Rigas received a 15-year sentence for stealing hundreds of millions from the cable company. Among the companies that came to represent the corporate scandal and excess of the 1990s--Enron, Adelphia, Tyco and WorldCom--only Tyco survived. It was reorganized under new management and is now a global organization.
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Sep 13, 1996
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tupac-shakur-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tupac-shakur-dies)
Tupac Shakur dies
Hip hop star Tupac Shakur dies on September 13, 1996 of gunshot wounds suffered in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting.
More than a decade after his death on this day in 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur remains one of the most recognizable faces and voices in hip-hop. A steady stream of posthumous album releases has kept his name near the top of lifetime sales rankings, and artistic efforts like the 2003 film Tupac: Resurrection have kept his image and music current among fans who were far too young to have seen and heard him perform while he was still alive. His recording career came to an end with his death at the age of 25, but like another famous rapper with whom his story is intertwined, Shakur has only grown in stature with each passing year since his still-unsolved murder.
The story of Shakur's death on September 13, 1996, begins with a failed attempt on his life two years earlier. On November 30, 1994, Tupac Shakur was shot and seriously wounded during a robbery committed by two armed men in the lobby of a midtown Manhattan office building that housed a recording studio where he'd been working on his third album, Me Against the World (1995). For reasons that have been detailed obsessively in works such as Nick Broomfield's 2002 documentary Biggie and Tupac, Shakur blamed the attack on producer Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs and rival rapper Christopher Wallace—a.k.a. "The Notorious B.I.G." Shakur's charges, and his subsequent move to the L.A.-based record label Death Row Records, sparked the so-called "East Coast vs. West Coast" feud that defined the hip-hop scene through the mid-1990s.
In Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, for the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon boxing match, Shakur and others in his entourage were captured on tape in the lobby of the MGM Grand hotel engaging in a violent scuffle with a man later identified as a member of the Los Angeles-based Bloods street gang. Hours later, Shakur was riding as a passenger in a car driven by Death Row Records head Marian "Suge" Knight when a white Cadillac pulled up alongside them at a stoplight on Flamingo Road and opened fire. At least 12 shots were fired, four of which struck Shakur and one of which grazed the head of Suge Knight. Emergency surgery at University Medical Center saved Shakur's life that night, and in the days following, doctors announced that his chances of recovery had improved. On September 13, 1996. however, Tupac Shakur died of his wounds.
Six months later, Shakur's rap rival, Christopher Wallace, was murdered in similar circumstances in Los Angeles. No arrest has been made to date in connection with either murder.
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Sep 14, 1975
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-canonized-as-saint (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-canonized-as-saint)
American canonized as saint
Elizabeth Ann Seton is canonized by Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in Rome, becoming the first American-born Catholic saint.
Born in New York City in 1774, Elizabeth Bayley was the daughter of an Episcopalian physician. She devoted much of her time to charity work with the poor and in 1797 founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children in New York. She married William Seton, and in 1803 she traveled with him to Italy, where she was exposed to the Roman Catholic Church. After she herself was widowed and left with five children in 1803, she converted to Catholicism and in 1808 went to Baltimore to establish a Catholic school for girls.
In 1809, she founded the United States' first religious order, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. A few months later, Mother Seton and the sisters of the order moved to a poor parish where they provided free education to poor children. Mother Seton's order grew rapidly, and she continued to teach until her death in 1821. In 1856, Seton Hall University was named for her. She was canonized in 1975.
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Sep 15, 1963
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/four-black-schoolgirls-killed-in-birmingham (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/four-black-schoolgirls-killed-in-birmingham)
Four black schoolgirls killed in Birmingham
On this day in 1963, a bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls.
With its large African-American congregation, the 16th Street Baptist Church served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who once called Birmingham a "symbol of hardcore resistance to integration." Alabama's governor, George Wallace, made preserving racial segregation one of the central goals of his administration, and Birmingham had one of the most violent and lawless chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
The church bombing was the third in Birmingham in 11 days after a federal order came down to integrate Alabama's school system. Fifteen sticks of dynamite were planted in the church basement, underneath what turned out to be the girls' restroom. The bomb detonated at 10:19 a.m., killing Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins--all 14 years old--and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Immediately after the blast, church members wandered dazed and bloodied, covered with white powder and broken stained glass, before starting to dig in the rubble to search for survivors. More than 20 other members of the congregation were injured in the blast.
When thousands of angry black protesters assembled at the crime scene, Wallace sent hundreds of police and state troopers to the area to break up the crowd. Two young black men were killed that night, one by police and another by racist thugs. Meanwhile, public outrage over the bombing continued to grow, drawing international attention to Birmingham. At a funeral for three of the girls (one's family preferred a separate, private service), King addressed more than 8,000 mourners.
A well-known Klan member, Robert Chambliss, was charged with murder and with buying 122 sticks of dynamite. In October 1963, Chambliss was cleared of the murder charge and received a six-month jail sentence and a $100 fine for the dynamite. Although a subsequent FBI investigation identified three other men--Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Cash and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr.--as having helped Chambliss commit the crime, it was later revealed that FBI chairman J. Edgar Hoover blocked their prosecution and shut down the investigation without filing charges in 1968. After Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the case, Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison.
Efforts to prosecute the other three men believed responsible for the bombing continued for decades. Though Cash died in 1994, Cherry and Blanton were arrested and charged with four counts of murder in 2000. Blanton was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry's trial was delayed after judges ruled he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. This decision was later reversed. On May 22, 2002, Cherry was convicted and sentenced to life, bringing a long-awaited victory to the friends and families of the four young victims.
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Sep 16, 2013
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gunman-kills-12-in-dc-navy-yard-massacre (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gunman-kills-12-in-dc-navy-yard-massacre)
Gunman kills 12 in D.C. Navy Yard massacre
On this day in 2013, a 34-year-old man goes on a rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., killing 12 people and wounding several others over the course of an hour before he is fatally shot by police. Investigators later determined that the gunman, Aaron Alexis, a computer contractor for a private information technology firm, had acted alone.
Shortly after 8 a.m., Alexis used his security pass to enter Building 197 at the Navy Yard, a former shipyard, dating to the early 1800s, and weapons plant that now serves as an administrative center for the Navy. At approximately 8:16 a.m., Alexis, armed with a sawed-off Remington 870 shotgun and dressed in a short-sleeve polo shirt and pants, shot his first victim. Over the course of the next hour, he moved through the 630,000-square-foot, multi-level Building 197, the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command, gunning down more victims and exchanging fire with law enforcement officials. Alexis was shot and killed by police at 9:25 a.m. The shooting spree caused officials to put part of Washington on lockdown due to initial suspicions that other gunmen might have been involved in the incident; however, by the end of the day, authorities determined that Alexis had acted alone.
A Navy reservist from 2007 to 2011, Alexis began work as a computer technician at the Navy Yard on September 9, 2013. Five days later, at a gun store in Virginia, he purchased the Remington 870 and ammunition used in the attack. Investigators found no evidence that any specific event triggered the deadly massacre, and they believed Alexis shot his victims at random. The shotgun he used (he also took a handgun from one of his victims) was etched with several phrases, including “Better off this way” and “My ELF weapon,” and the FBI announced there was a variety of evidence indicating Alexis was under the “delusional belief” he was being controlled by extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic waves. In August 2013, Alexis told police in Rhode Island, where he was working, that he was hearing voices. The private IT contracting firm employing Alexis took him off his assignment for a few days then let him back on the job; weeks later, he went to work at the Navy Yard.
The 12 men and women murdered during the September 16th rampage ranged in age from 46 to 73. They were memorialized by President Barack Obama at a September 22, 2013, ceremony in which he remembered them and also issued a call to tighten America’s gun laws.
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Sep 17, 1868
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cheyenne-and-sioux-decimate-frontiersmen-at-beechers-island (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cheyenne-and-sioux-decimate-frontiersmen-at-beechers-island)
Cheyenne and Sioux decimate frontiersmen at Beecher's Island
Early in the morning on this day in 1868, a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux stage a surprise attack on Major George A. Forsyth and a volunteer force of 50 frontiersmen in Colorado.
Retreating to a small sandbar in the Arikaree River that thereafter became known as Beecher's Island, Forsyth and his men succeeded in repulsing three massed Indian charges. Thanks to the rapid fire capability of their seven-shot Spencer rifles, Forsyth's volunteers were able to kill or wound many of the Indian attackers, including the war chief Roman Nose. But as evening came and the fighting temporarily halted, Forsyth found he had 22 men either dead or wounded, and he estimated the survivors were surrounded by a force of 600 Indians. The whites faced certain annihilation unless they could somehow bring help. Two men-Jack Stilwell and Pierre Trudeau-volunteered to attempt a daring escape through the Indian lines and silently melted into the night.
The battle raged for five more days. Forsyth's effective fighting force was reduced to ten men before the Indians finally withdrew, perhaps reasoning that they had inflicted enough damage. Miles from help and lacking wagons and horses, Forsyth knew that many of his wounded would soon be dead if they didn't get help. Fortunately, on September 25, the 10th Cavalry-one of the Army's two African-American units nicknamed the "Buffalo Soldiers"-came riding to their rescue with a field ambulance and medical supplies. Miraculously, Stilwell and Trudeau had managed to make it through the Sioux and Cheyenne and bring help. Thanks to their bravery and the timely arrival of the Buffalo Soldiers, the lives of many men were saved.
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Sep 13, 1996
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tupac-shakur-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tupac-shakur-dies)
Tupac Shakur dies
Hip hop star Tupac Shakur dies on September 13, 1996 of gunshot wounds suffered in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting.
More than a decade after his death on this day in 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur remains one of the most recognizable faces and voices in hip-hop. A steady stream of posthumous album releases has kept his name near the top of lifetime sales rankings, and artistic efforts like the 2003 film Tupac: Resurrection have kept his image and music current among fans who were far too young to have seen and heard him perform while he was still alive. His recording career came to an end with his death at the age of 25, but like another famous rapper with whom his story is intertwined, Shakur has only grown in stature with each passing year since his still-unsolved murder.
The story of Shakur's death on September 13, 1996, begins with a failed attempt on his life two years earlier. On November 30, 1994, Tupac Shakur was shot and seriously wounded during a robbery committed by two armed men in the lobby of a midtown Manhattan office building that housed a recording studio where he'd been working on his third album, Me Against the World (1995). For reasons that have been detailed obsessively in works such as Nick Broomfield's 2002 documentary Biggie and Tupac, Shakur blamed the attack on producer Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs and rival rapper Christopher Wallace—a.k.a. "The Notorious B.I.G." Shakur's charges, and his subsequent move to the L.A.-based record label Death Row Records, sparked the so-called "East Coast vs. West Coast" feud that defined the hip-hop scene through the mid-1990s.
In Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, for the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon boxing match, Shakur and others in his entourage were captured on tape in the lobby of the MGM Grand hotel engaging in a violent scuffle with a man later identified as a member of the Los Angeles-based Bloods street gang. Hours later, Shakur was riding as a passenger in a car driven by Death Row Records head Marian "Suge" Knight when a white Cadillac pulled up alongside them at a stoplight on Flamingo Road and opened fire. At least 12 shots were fired, four of which struck Shakur and one of which grazed the head of Suge Knight. Emergency surgery at University Medical Center saved Shakur's life that night, and in the days following, doctors announced that his chances of recovery had improved. On September 13, 1996. however, Tupac Shakur died of his wounds.
Six months later, Shakur's rap rival, Christopher Wallace, was murdered in similar circumstances in Los Angeles. No arrest has been made to date in connection with either murder.
Just read about this in Tyson's book. He was friends with this guy and was gonna meet him later that night, after he took a nap. Someone woke him up to tell him about the shooting.
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Sep 18, 1987
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/accidental-poisoning-in-brazil (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/accidental-poisoning-in-brazil)
Accidental poisoning in Brazil
On this day in 1987, cesium-137 is removed from an abandoned cancer-therapy machine in Brazil. Hundreds of people were eventually poisoned by radiation from the substance, highlighting the danger that even relatively small amounts of radiation can pose.
In 1985, the Goiania Institute of Radiotherapy moved to a new location and left behind an obsolete Cesium-137 teletherapy unit in their abandoned headquarters. The institute failed to inform the authorities of the existence of the outdated device and the machine sat in the building in downtown Goiania, 600 miles from Sao Paulo, for over a year before two criminally enterprising men removed the machine.
The men sold it to a local junkyard on September 13. Five days later, workers at the junkyard dismantled the machine, releasing the Cesium-137 that was still inside. Fascinated by the glowing blue stone and completely unaware of its dangers, they distributed pieces to friends, relatives and neighbors. The cesium was spread around so much that contamination was later found 100 miles away.
Days later, the junkyard owner's wife began noticing that her friends and relatives were getting sick. When she sought medical assistance, doctors found that they were suffering from acute radiation poisoning. Four people eventually died from exposure, including one child. Scores were hospitalized and more than 100,000 people in the city had to be monitored for contamination.
More than 40 homes in the city were found to have high levels of contamination and had to be demolished. The after-effects were also serious. Many of the citizens suffered psychologically from their fear of contamination. In fact, fear was so widespread that other cities shunned the people and products of Goiania following the incident.
Following this disaster, Brazil completely overhauled their laws regarding the storage of radiation sources.
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Sep 19, 1995
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/newspaper-publishes-unabomber-manifesto (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/newspaper-publishes-unabomber-manifesto)
Newspaper publishes Unabomber manifesto
The Washington Post publishes a 35,000-word manifesto written by the Unabomber, who since the late 1970s had eluded authorities while carrying out a series of bombings across the United States that killed 3 people and injured another 23. After reading the manifesto, David Kaczynski realized the writing style was similar to that of his brother, Theodore Kaczynski, and notified the F.B.I. On April 3, 1996, Ted Kaczynski was arrested at his isolated cabin near Lincoln, Montana, where investigators found evidence linking him to the Unabomber crimes.
Theodore John Kaczynski was born May 22, 1942, in Chicago. A talented math student, he entered Harvard University at age 16. In 1967, after receiving a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Kaczynski was hired as an assistant professor at University of California, Berkeley. However, he resigned abruptly in 1969 and eventually began living as a hermit in a small Montana cabin that lacked electricity and running water. Kaczynski received occasional financial support from his family.
From 1978 to 1995, the Unabomber carried out 16 bombings and mail bombings across the U.S. and became the subject of a massive F.B.I. manhunt. The F.B.I. code named him UNABOM because his targets included universities and airlines. Over the years, his victims included professors, scientists, corporate executives and a computer store owner, among others.
In June 1995, the Unabomber sent a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto to The New York Times and Washington Post and said if it wasn't published he would continue his bombing campaign. On September 19 of that year, after discussions with the F.B.I. and Attorney General Janet Reno, the Post, in collaboration with the Times, published the manifesto, which railed against industrialized society. David Kaczynski suspected his older brother might be the Unabomber after comparing the manifesto to some documents written by Ted that David found in their mother's home.
In 1998, Kaczynski agreed to plead guilty and received four life sentences without the possibility of parole. He is serving his sentence at the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
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It is a travesty that I do not have a single pic, in any of the 6 volumes.
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Sep 20, 2012
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/amish-convicted-in-beard-cutting-attacks (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/amish-convicted-in-beard-cutting-attacks)
Amish convicted in beard cutting attacks
On this day in 2012, 16 members of a dissident Amish group in Ohio are convicted of federal hate crimes and conspiracy for forcibly cutting the beards and hair of fellow Amish with whom they had religious differences. The government classified the ruthless attacks as hate crimes because beards and long hair have important religious symbolism to the Amish, who are known for their pacifism, plain style of dress and refusal to use many forms of modern technology.
The men and women convicted in the attacks belonged to a group of about 18 families who lived on an 800-acre farm owned by their leader, Samuel Mullet Sr., near Bergholz, Ohio, 100 miles southeast of Cleveland. Mullet, an Amish bishop and father of 18, masterminded the 2011 attacks against fellow Amish whom he viewed as enemies of his ultraconservative splinter sect. The five separate assaults involved nine people and spread fear through Amish communities in Ohio, home to an Amish population of roughly 60,000. The perpetrators—sometimes wielding shears meant for horse manes—restrained victims and in some cases hurt those who came to their aid. Afterwards, the attackers took photographs in order to further humiliate the injured parties.
The Amish typically resolve disputes on their own, without involving law enforcement; however, several beard cutting victims reported the attacks to police out of concern that Mullet was operating a cult. Mullet (who did not participate directly in the attacks) and a group of his followers were arrested in late 2011, and their case went to trial in late August 2012. It was the first case in Ohio that applied a landmark 2009 federal law—the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act—which gave the government increased powers to prosecute crimes motivated by bigotry.
During the trial, prosecutors argued that Mullet believed he was above the law and kept tight control over his followers with a kind of cult-like domination. Among other things, he censored their mail and imposed punishments on adults such as paddling and confinement in chicken coops. The prosecution also presented witness testimony that Mullet had pressured married female followers to have sex with him under the guise of marital counseling. Defense lawyers, who called no witnesses, did not dispute that the beard and hair cuttings took place. However, they said the acts were simple assaults that did not meet the definition of hate crimes because they were based on personal feuds rather than religious motives. The defense also contended that the shearings were performed out of compassion in order to convince the recipients to return to a stricter Amish lifestyle.
On September 20, 2012, the 66-year-old Mullet was convicted along with three of his sons, one of his daughters and 11 other followers. On February 8, 2013, a federal judge in Cleveland sentenced Mullet to 15 years in prison. His co-defendants received sentences ranging from one to seven years behind bars.
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Sep 21, 1983
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-13-year-olds-dead-body-turns-up (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-13-year-olds-dead-body-turns-up)
A 13-year-old's dead body turns up
The mutilated body of 13-year-old paperboy Danny Joe Eberle is found in his hometown of Bellevue, Nebraska. Eberle had been stabbed multiple times, bound with rope and tortured to death.
FBI investigators called in to help catch the vicious killer found only one clue that could help them: The rope that had been used to tie up the victim was so unusual that the FBI had no records of similar ropes made by any domestic manufacturers. As they began looking into international rope manufacturers, the body of another 12-year-old boy, Christopher Walden, was found deep in the woods near Bellevue, covered with snow.
With no leads as to the origin of the rope, the FBI concentrated on a witness who claimed to have seen Walden with a young man shortly before his disappearance. The witness, who agreed to be hypnotized to try to provide a description of the man, couldn't produce a vivid picture, but managed to remember a tan sedan and seven digits, in no particular order, from the license plate. Unfortunately, Nebraska had over 1,000 license plates with these digits.
The break in the case finally came on January 11, 1984, when the operator of a Bellevue day care center noticed that a suspicious man was cruising the street outside, and reported the license plate number to the police. Detectives traced the car to a dealership that told them that the car was on loan to John Joubert, a 20-year-old radar technician. Joubert's car, which was being fixed at the dealership, was a tan sedan that had a license plate containing two of the seven digits that had been recalled by the witness earlier.
When police caught up with Joubert, he had a duffel bag with a hunting knife and a length of rope inside. The rope turned out to be identical to the one found on Danny Joe Eberle, and Joubert was charged with multiple counts of murder. Apparently, the unusual rope had been especially made for the military in the Far East and brought back to the United States by one of Joubert's friends.
Delving deeper into his background, investigators found that Joubert was also responsible for an earlier murder of an 11-year-old boy in Maine. After being convicted of the two murders in Nebraska and sentenced to death in 1984, he was convicted of murder in Maine as well and executed in 1996.
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Sep 22, 1828
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/shaka-zulu-assassinated (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/shaka-zulu-assassinated)
Shaka Zulu assassinated
Shaka, founder of the Zulu Kingdom of southern Africa, is murdered by his two half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, after Shaka's mental illness threatened to destroy the Zulu tribe.
When Shaka became chief of the Zulus in 1816, the tribe numbered fewer than 1,500 and was among the smaller of the hundreds of other tribes in southern Africa. However, Shaka proved a brilliant military organizer, forming well-commanded regiments and arming his warriors with assegais, a new type of long-bladed, short spear that was easy to wield and deadly. The Zulus rapidly conquered neighboring tribes, incorporating the survivors into their ranks. By 1823, Shaka was in control of all of present-day Natal. The Zulu conquests greatly destabilized the region and resulted in a great wave of migrations by uprooted tribes.
In 1827, Shaka's mother, Nandi, died, and the Zulu leader lost his mind. In his grief, Shaka had hundreds of Zulus killed, and he outlawed the planting of crops and the use of milk for a year. All women found pregnant were murdered along with their husbands. He sent his army on an extensive military operation, and when they returned exhausted he immediately ordered them out again. It was the last straw for the lesser Zulu chiefs: On September 22, 1828, his half-brothers murdered Shaka. Dingane, one of the brothers, then became king of the Zulus.
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Sep 23, 1875
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/billy-the-kid-is-arrested-for-the-first-time (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/billy-the-kid-is-arrested-for-the-first-time)
Billy the Kid is arrested for the first time
On this day in 1875, 15-year-old Billy the Kid is arrested for the first time.
An older acquaintance of Billy's had stolen a bag of clothes from a Chinese laundryman as a joke and convinced the always affable Billy to hide it for him. When Billy was literally caught holding the bag, a Silver City policeman threw him in the local jail to teach him a lesson. Languishing in a cramped cell for this petty offense, Billy discovered a deep-seated terror of confinement. After enduring his imprisonment for two days, he took advantage of his diminutive frame to worm his way up a chimney and escape. From that day forward Billy would be on the wrong side of the law, though he would soon be guilty of crimes far more serious than hiding a stolen bag of laundry.
Born in New York City in either 1859 or 1860, the boy who would later achieve an almost inexplicable level of worldwide fame as Billy the Kid, was at various times known as Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William Bonney, reflecting the uncertain identity of his real father. The young Billy's home life was equally uncertain and perhaps even abusive, and he had a rootless childhood that took him to Indiana, Kansas, and finally Silver City, New Mexico, where his mother settled down and ran a boarding house. Although she was plagued by tuberculosis, Billy's mother, Catherine, was reportedly "a jolly Irish lady, full of life and mischief." She died when Billy was just 14, leaving the boy to eke out a meager existence on his own.
Unquestionably, Billy's childhood was a hard and difficult one, but no more so than that of thousands of other young orphans. For a time the boy even seemed to be headed for an unremarkable life as a hard-working, honest, and unusually friendly young man. The owner of a hotel where Billy worked for his room and board later even praised his young employee as "the only kid who ever worked here who never stole anything." Only after his unjust arrest and imprisonment for hiding a bag of dirty laundry did the good-natured and hardworking William Bonney start down the road to becoming the ruthless murdering outlaw Billy the Kid.
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Sep 24, 622
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/muhammad-completes-hegira (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/muhammad-completes-hegira)
Muhammad completes Hegira
On this day in 622, the prophet Muhammad completes his Hegira, or "flight," from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution. In Medina, Muhammad set about building the followers of his religion--Islam--into an organized community and Arabian power. The Hegira would later mark the beginning (year 1) of the Muslim calendar.
Muhammad, one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, was born in Mecca around 570. His father died before he was born, and Muhammad was put under the care of his grandfather, head of the prestigious Hashim clan. His mother died when he was six, and his grandfather when he was eight, leaving him under the care of his uncle Abu Talib, the new head of the clan. When he was 25, Muhammad married a wealthy widow 15 years his senior. He lived the next 15 years as a merchant, and his wife gave birth to six children: two sons, who died in childhood, and four daughters.
From time to time, Muhammad spent nights in a cave in Mount Hira north of Mecca, ruminating on the social ills of the city. Around 610, he had a vision in the cave in which he heard the voice of a majestic being, later identified as the angel Gabriel, say to him, "You are the Messenger of God." Thus began a lifetime of religious revelations, which he and others collected as the Qur'an, or Koran. Muhammad regarded himself as the last prophet of the Judaic-Christian tradition, and he adopted aspects of these older religions' theologies while introducing new doctrines. Muhammad's monotheistic religion came to be called Islam, meaning "surrender [to God]," and its followers were Muslims, meaning "those who have surrendered." His inspired teachings would bring unity to the Arabian peninsula, an event that had sweeping consequences for the rest of the world.
By 615, Muhammad had gained about 100 converts in Mecca. He spoke out against rich merchants, who he criticized as immoral in their greed, and he denounced the worshipping of idols and multiple gods, saying, "There is no god but God." City leaders became hostile to him, and in 619 his uncle Abu Talib died and was succeeded as head of the Hashim clan by another one of Muhammad's uncles, Abu Lahib. Abu Lahib refused to protect Muhammad, and persecution of the prophet and his Muslims increased.
In the summer of 621, an entourage of 12 men came to Mecca from Medina, an oasis community 200 miles to the north. They were ostensibly making a pilgrimage to Mecca's pagan shrines, but they had actually come to meet with Muhammad and profess themselves as Muslims. In 622, a larger group of converts from Medina came to Mecca and took an oath to Muhammad to defend him as their own kin. Muhammad immediately encouraged his Meccan followers to make their way to Medina in small groups. When city authorities learned that the Muslims had begun an exodus, they plotted to have the prophet killed. Under this threat, Muhammad slipped away unnoticed with a chief disciple and made his way to Medina, using unfrequented paths. He completed the celebrated Hegira (Hijrah in uncorrupted Arabic) on September 24, 622. The history of Islam had begun.
At Medina, Muhammad built a theocratic state and led raids on trading caravans from Mecca. Attempts by Meccan armies to defeat the Muslim forces failed, and several leading Meccans immigrated to Medina and became Muslims. Muhammad later become more conciliatory to Mecca, and in 629 he was allowed to lead a pilgrimage there in exchange for a peace treaty. Shortly after, he was attacked by allies of the Meccans, and Muhammad denounced the treaty. In January 630, he returned to his birthplace with 10,000 men, and the Meccans swore allegiance to its Muslim conquerors. He was now the strongest man in Arabia. During the next few years, most of the peninsula's disparate Arab tribes came to him to ask for alliance and to convert to his religion. By his death, on June 8, 632, Muhammad was the effective ruler of most of Arabia, and his rapidly growing empire was poised for expansion into Syria and Iraq.
Within 20 years, the Byzantine and Persian empires had fallen to the prophet's successors, and during the next two centuries vast Arab conquests continued. The Islamic empire grew into one of the largest the world has ever seen, stretching from India, across the Middle East and Africa, and up through Western Europe's Iberian peninsula. The spread of Islam continued after the fragmentation of the Arab empire, and many societies in Africa and Asia voluntarily adopted Muhammad's religion. Today, Islam is the world's second-largest religion.
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Sep 25, 2005
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ira-officially-disarms (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ira-officially-disarms)
IRA officially disarms
Two months after announcing its intention to disarm, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) gives up its weapons in front of independent weapons inspectors. The decommissioning of the group s substantial arsenal took place in secret locations in the Republic of Ireland. One Protestant and one Catholic priest as well as officials from Finland and the United States served as witnesses to the historic event. Automatic weapons, ammunition, missiles and explosives were among the arms found in the cache, which the head weapons inspector described as "enormous."
Originally founded in 1919 to militarily oppose British rule in Ireland, the IRA had operated since about the 1960s as the military arm of Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist political party. The IRA (and splinter groups using various derivatives of the name) had used terrorist tactics and assassinations for more than 30 years in their struggle to free Northern Ireland from British rule.
In April 1998, after more than 22 months of negotiating, a 67-page peace accord called the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement was finally signed. Endorsed by the British and Irish governments, eight of Northern Ireland s ten political parties, and the region s voters, the agreement included power-sharing among Catholics and Protestants in government, a commitment to peace and democracy, and a pledge by paramilitary groups on both sides to decommission their weapons within two years. A ceasefire had been in place since 1997, and although they continued to abide by it, the IRA initially refused to give up their weapons. This stalled the peace process for almost six years.
Although many Northern Irish Protestants did not trust that the IRA was truly giving up all of its weapons, the disarmament represented an important step toward lasting peace in the long-troubled region. In the aftermath of the disarmament, IRA splinter groups threatened to continue the violence.
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Sep 26, 1820
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-famous-frontiersman-daniel-boone-dies-in-missouri (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-famous-frontiersman-daniel-boone-dies-in-missouri)
The famous frontiersman Daniel Boone dies in Missouri
On this day in 1820 the great pioneering frontiersman Daniel Boone dies quietly in his sleep at his son's home near present-day Defiance, Missouri. The indefatigable voyager was 86.
Boone was born in 1734 to Quaker parents living in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Following a squabble with the Pennsylvania Quakers, Boone's family decided to head south and west for less crowded regions, and they eventually settled in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. There the young Daniel Boone began his life-long love for wilderness, spending long days exploring the still relatively unspoiled forests and mountains of the region. An indifferent student who never learned to write more than a crude sentence or two, Boone's passion was for the outdoors, and he quickly became a superb marksman, hunter and woodsman.
Never satisfied to stay put for very long, Boone soon began making ever longer and more ambitious journeys into the relatively unexplored lands to the west. In May of 1769, Boone and five companions crossed over the Cumberland Gap and explored along the south fork of the Kentucky River. Impressed by the fertility and relative emptiness of the land--although the native inhabitants hardly considered it to be empty--Boone returned in 1773 with his family, hoping to establish a permanent settlement. An Indian attack prevented that first attempt from succeeding, but Boone returned two years later to open the route that became known as Boone's Trace (or the Wilderness Road) between the Cumberland Gap and a new settlement along the Kentucky River called Fortress Boonesboro. After years of struggles against both Native Americans and British soldiers, Boonesboro eventually became one of the most important gateways for the early American settlement of the Trans-Appalachian West.
Made a legend in his own time by John Filson's "Boone Autobiography" and Lord Byron's depiction of him as the quintessential frontiersman in the book Don Juan, Boone became a symbol of the western pioneering spirit for many Americans. Ironically, though, Boone's fame and his success in opening the Trans-Appalachian West to large-scale settlement later came to haunt him. Having lost his Kentucky land holdings by failing to properly register them, Boone moved even further west in 1799, trying to escape the civilized regions he had been so instrumental in creating. Finally settling in Missouri--though he never stopped dreaming of continuing westward--he lived out the rest of his life doing what he loved best: hunting and trapping in a fertile wild land still largely untouched by the Anglo pioneers who had followed the path he blazed to the West.
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Sep 27, 1869
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sheriff-wild-bill-hickok-proves-too-wild-for-kansas (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sheriff-wild-bill-hickok-proves-too-wild-for-kansas)
Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok proves too wild for Kansas
Just after midnight on this day in 1869, Ellis County Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok and his deputy respond to a report that a local ruffian named Samuel Strawhun and several drunken buddies were tearing up John Bitter's Beer Saloon in Hays City, Kansas. When Hickok arrived and ordered the men to stop, Strawhun turned to attack him, and Hickok shot him in the head. Strawhun died instantly, as did the riot.
Such were Wild Bill's less-than-restrained law enforcement methods. Famous for his skill with a pistol and steely-calm under fire, James Butler Hickok initially seemed to be the ideal man for the sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas. The good citizens of Hays City, the county seat, were tired of the wild brawls and destructiveness of the hard-drinking buffalo hunters and soldiers who took over their town every night. They hoped the famous "Wild Bill" could restore peace and order, and in the late summer of 1869, elected him as interim county sheriff.
Tall, athletic, and sporting shoulder-length hair and a sweeping mustache, Hickok cut an impressive figure, and his reputation as a deadly shot with either hand was often all it took to keep many potential lawbreakers on the straight and narrow. As one visiting cowboy later recalled, Hickok would stand "with his back to the wall, looking at everything and everybody under his eyebrows--just like a mad old bull." But when Hickok applied more aggressive methods of enforcing the peace, some Hays City citizens wondered if their new cure wasn't worse than the disease. Shortly after becoming sheriff, Hickok shot a belligerent soldier who resisted arrest, and the man died the next day. A few weeks later Hickok killed Strawhun. While his brutal ways were indisputably effective, many Hays City citizens were less than impressed that after only five weeks in office he had already found it necessary to kill two men in the name of preserving peace.
During the regular November election later that year, the people expressed their displeasure, and Hickok lost to his deputy, 144-89. Though Wild Bill Hickok would later go on to hold other law enforcement positions in the West, his first attempt at being a sheriff had lasted only three months.
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Sep 28, 48 B.C.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pompey-the-great-assassinated (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pompey-the-great-assassinated)
Pompey the Great assassinated
Upon landing in Egypt, Roman general and politician Pompey is murdered on the orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt.
During his long career, Pompey the Great displayed exceptional military talents on the battlefield. He fought in Africa and Spain, quelled the slave revolt of Spartacus, cleared the Mediterranean of pirates, and conquered Armenia, Syria, and Palestine. Appointed to organize the newly won Roman territories in the East, he proved a brilliant administrator.
In 60 B.C., he joined with his rivals Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus to form the First Triumvirate, and together the trio ruled Rome for seven years. Caesar's successes aroused Pompey's jealousy, however, leading to the collapse of the political alliance in 53 B.C. The Roman Senate supported Pompey and asked Caesar to give up his army, which he refused to do. In January 49 B.C., Caesar led his legions across the Rubicon River from Cisalpine Gaul to Italy, thus declaring war against Pompey and his forces.
Caesar made early gains in the subsequent civil war, defeating Pompey's army in Italy and Spain, but he was later forced into retreat in Greece. In August 48 B.C., with Pompey in pursuit, Caesar paused near Pharsalus, setting up camp at a strategic location. When Pompey's senatorial forces fell upon Caesar's smaller army, they were entirely routed, and Pompey fled to Egypt.
Pompey hoped that King Ptolemy, his former client, would assist him, but the Egyptian king feared offending the victorious Caesar. On September 28, Pompey was invited to leave his ships and come ashore at Pelusium. As he prepared to step onto Egyptian soil, he was treacherously struck down and killed by an officer of Ptolemy.
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Sep 29, 2006
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/school-principal-murdered-by-student-in-wisconsin (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/school-principal-murdered-by-student-in-wisconsin)
School principal murdered by student in Wisconsin
ohn Klang, the principal of Weston High School in Cazenovia, Wisconsin, is shot and killed by 15-year-old student Eric Hainstock on September 29, 2006. The incident takes place amidst a spate of school violence across North America, including a shooting rampage at a Canadian college on September 13 and a hostage situation at a Colorado high school on September 27.
Hainstock, who had recently had been given a disciplinary warning by his principal for bringing tobacco to school, took guns from his parents’ home in the small Wisconsin farming community of Cazenovia and brought the weapons to school. Before classes began on the morning of September 29, Hainstock pointed a gun at a teacher, but the weapon was grabbed away by a janitor. The student then ran into the hallway where he encountered the principal and shot him several times. Klang, who managed to wrestle Hainstock to the floor and move the gun away, died a few hours later. Hainstock was detained by other students and school personnel. He was apparently upset by a disciplinary warning he’d received from Klang the day before the shooting for bringing tobacco to school and also angered that teachers hadn’t stopped other students from bullying him. In August 2007, Hainstock was found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
On September 13, two weeks before the violence in Cazenovia, Kimveer Gill, 25, went on a shooting rampage at Dawson College in Quebec, Canada. One female student was killed and 19 others were injured before Gill turned the gun on himself after being shot by police. Then, on September 27, drifter Duane Morrison, 53, took six female students hostage at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado. Morrison sexually assaulted some of the students and later shot and killed 16-year-old Emily Keyes when a SWAT team burst into the room where he was holding her and another student. Morrison then shot himself in the head and died at the scene. School violence continued when less than a week later, on October 2, milk-truck driver Charles Roberts, 32, killed five girls at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Roberts turned his gun on himself and committed suicide when police arrived.
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Sep 30, 2005
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisner-resigns-as-disney-ceo (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisner-resigns-as-disney-ceo)
Eisner resigns as Disney CEO
On this day in 2005, Michael Eisner resigns as the chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company. During Eisner’s 21-year tenure with Disney, he helped transform it into an entertainment industry giant whose properties included films, theme parks and a cruise line, television networks and sports teams. Eisner also presided over a “golden age” of animation, during which Disney produced such blockbuster films as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King and became a merchandising powerhouse.
Michael Eisner was born on March 7, 1942, in New York. After graduating from Denison University in 1964, he worked his way up through the programming ranks in network television. In 1976, the chairman of the board of Paramount Pictures, Barry Diller, hired Eisner as the company’s president and CEO. During Eisner’s time at Paramount in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the studio produced such hit films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flashdance, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Footloose, Ordinary People, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Terms of Endearment and An Officer and a Gentleman.
In 1984, Eisner joined Disney as chairman and CEO. Under Eisner’s leadership, Disney produced a number of animated films--some of which later became blockbuster Broadway productions--and acquired Miramax Films and Capital Cities (which owns ABC, A&E, ESPN and The History Channel, among other TV networks). In 1993, Disney founded the Anaheim Ducks, a professional ice hockey team.
Amidst all his success, Eisner became involved with a lawsuit concerning the former Disney movie studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg and a multi-million dollar severance package given to Michael Ovitz, who briefly served as Disney president under Eisner. In 2004, Roy Disney, nephew of the company’s founder, resigned his board seat to protest what he reportedly perceived as Eisner’s mismanagement. At the time, Disney’s stock was down and its ABC TV network was doing poorly in the ratings. At a March 2004 meeting, 43 percent of the voting shareholders expressed their lack of confidence in Eisner, and a new chairman of the board was appointed. Eisner stayed on as the company’s CEO for the next year and a half, until formally stepping down on September 30, 2005. His former second-in-command, Robert Iger, succeeded him.
Since 2006, Eisner has hosted his own cable talk show on CNBC, Conversations with Michael Eisner.
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Oct 1, 1944
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/experiments-begin-on-homosexuals-at-buchenwald (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/experiments-begin-on-homosexuals-at-buchenwald)
Experiments begin on homosexuals at Buchenwald
On this day in 1944, the first of two sets of medical experiments involving castration are performed on homosexuals at the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany.
Buchenwald was one of the first concentration camps established by the Nazi regime. Constructed in 1937, it was a complement to camps north (Sachsenhausen) and south (Dachau), and was built to hold slave laborers, who worked in local munitions factories 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts. Although not technically a death camp, in that it had no gas chambers, nevertheless hundreds of prisoners died monthly, from malnutrition, beatings, disease, and executions.
The camp boasted a sophisticated-sounding facility on its grounds called the Division for Typhus and Virus Research of the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS. In truth, it was a chamber of horrors where medical experiments of the cruelest kind were carried out on prisoners against their will. Victims were often intentionally infused with various infections to test out vaccines. Euthanasia was also performed regularly on Jews, Gypsies, and mentally ill prisoners.
Among the cruelest of Buchenwald's overseers was the infamous Ilsa Koch, wife of SS commandant Karl Koch and known as the "Witch of Buchenwald." Among her fetishistic tendencies was her penchant for lampshades, gloves, and other items made from the tattooed skin of dead inmates. She also had a reputation for forcing prisoners to participate in orgies. She was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for her sadism, but she hanged herself after 16 years behind bars.
Buchenwald was liberated by the Allies on April 11, 1945, one day before the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. It was later used by the Soviet Union as a concentration camp for the enemies of East Germany.
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Oct 2, 1985
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rock-hudson-dies-of-aids (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rock-hudson-dies-of-aids)
Rock Hudson dies of AIDS
On this day in 1985, Rock Hudson, a quintessential tall, dark and handsome Hollywood leading man during the 1950s and 1960s who made more than 60 movies during his career, dies at the age of 59 from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Beverly Hills, California. Earlier that same year, Hudson announced through a press release that he was suffering from the disease, becoming the first major celebrity to go public with such a diagnosis. The first cases of AIDS, a condition caused by a virus that attacks and destroys the human immune system, were reported in homosexual men in the United States in the early 1980s. At the time of Hudson’s death, AIDS was not fully understood by the medical community and was stigmatized by the general public as a condition affecting only gay men, intravenous drug users and people who received contaminated blood transfusions.
Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., on November 17, 1925, in Winnetka, Illinois. He rose to fame in the 1950s, starring in such films as Giant (1956), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, and A Farewell to Arms (1957). Hudson’s good looks and charm were on full display in 1959’s Pillow Talk and several other romantic comedies he made with Doris Day in the early 1960s. In the 1970s, Hudson co-starred in the popular TV series McMillan and Wife. Early in the next decade, he began experiencing health problems and underwent heart bypass surgery. His final TV role was a recurring part on Dynasty from 1984 to 1985.
In July 1985, Hudson was hospitalized while in Paris. Some media reports indicated that he was suffering from liver cancer. However, on July 25, Hudson issued a press release stating he had AIDS and was in France for treatment. Hudson, who had a three-year marriage during the 1950s to a woman who had been his agent’s secretary, never spoke publicly about his sexuality.
Hudson’s death was credited with bringing attention to an epidemic that would go on to kill millions of men, women and children of all backgrounds from around the world. Hudson’s friend and former Giant co-star Elizabeth Taylor became an AIDS activist and rallied the Hollywood community to raise millions for research. In 1993, Tom Hanks received a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the director Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, the first major Hollywood movie to focus on AIDS.
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Oct 3, 2011
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/amanda-knox-murder-conviction-overturned-in-italy (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/amanda-knox-murder-conviction-overturned-in-italy)
Amanda Knox murder conviction overturned in Italy
On this day in 2011, in a decision that makes international headlines, an Italian appeals court overturns the murder conviction of Amanda Knox, an American exchange student who two years earlier was found guilty in the 2007 murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy. At the time of her 2009 conviction, Knox, then 22 years old, received a 26-year prison sentence, while her ex-boyfriend, Italian college student Raffaelle Sollecito, who also was convicted in the slaying, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. The sensational, high-profile case raised questions in the United States about the Italian justice system and whether Knox, who always maintained her innocence, was unfairly convicted.
On November 2, 2007, the 21-year-old Kercher of Coulsdon, England, was found fatally stabbed in the bedroom of the home she shared with Knox and two other women in Perugia, the capital city of the Umbria region in central Italy. Investigators said the British exchange student had been slain the previous night. After questioning by police, Knox, a Seattle native and University of Washington student doing her junior year abroad in Italy, was arrested. She denied any wrongdoing, saying she was at computer science student Sollecito’s house the night the killing occurred. Police claimed Knox later gave them conflicting statements about her whereabouts at the time of the crime, and said she also accused her boss at the bar where she worked, who turned out to have a solid alibi, of Kercher’s murder. The American student, who was first questioned without an attorney or professional interpreter, said police coerced her into making the accusation as well as other incriminating statements. (The false accusation would later result in an extra year tacked on to Knox’s prison sentence.)
During the nearly yearlong trial that followed in 2009, Italian prosecutors charged that Knox, along with Sollecito and another man, Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native, had viciously attacked Kercher in a sex game gone wrong. (Guede was convicted for his role in Kercher’s death in a separate, fast-track trial in 2008. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which was reduced to 16 years on appeal.) The prosecution’s main evidence against Knox included tiny traces of her DNA and that of Kercher’s on a knife discovered at Sollecito’s home. Traces of Knox’s DNA were also found on a bra clasp belonging to Kercher. Knox’s attorneys argued the bra clasp was found over a month after the murder at a contaminated crime scene, and that the knife blade couldn’t have made the wounds on the victim.
The case received extensive media coverage in the United States and Europe, where the attractive Knox was dubbed “Angel Face” and “Foxy Knoxy” by the tabloids. In the Italian and British press, Knox was painted as a promiscuous party girl. However, in America, she was often portrayed in the media as an innocent abroad, a young woman who had worked several jobs to earn money to study in Perugia, where she had been railroaded by an overzealous prosecutor.
Knox and Sollecito appealed their convictions, and at their subsequent trial court-appointed experts testified the original DNA evidence was unreliable and did not definitively link the young American and her former boyfriend to the crime. On October 3, 2011, an appellate court jury of two judges and six civilians in Perugia acquitted the two defendants of murder. (The court upheld Knox’s conviction on a charge of defamation for accusing her former boss at the bar of murdering Kercher. Knox was given time served along with a fine.) The 24-year-old Knox, who been jailed in Italy since her 2007 arrest, flew home to the United States the following day.
In March 2013, in a new twist in the case, Italy's highest court overturned the acquittals of Knox and Sollecito and ordered that they be retried. In January 2014, the two were re-convicted in Kercher's death. Knox, who remained in America during the trial, was sentenced to 28 1/2 years years behind bars, while her former boyfriend received a 25-year prison sentence. Lawyers for the two vowed to appeal the convictions. If Knox's conviction is upheld, she's unlikely to return to Italy unless extradited.
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Oct 4, 1988
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jim-bakker-is-indicted-on-federal-charges (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jim-bakker-is-indicted-on-federal-charges)
Jim Bakker is indicted on federal charges
Televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted on federal charges of mail and wire fraud and of conspiring to defraud the public. The case against the founder of Praise the Lord (PTL) Ministries and three of his aides exploded in the press when it was revealed that Bakker had sex with former church secretary Jessica Hahn.
On December 6, 1980, Bakker and Hahn had a sexual encounter in a Florida hotel room. Although they each told different stories of what had happened, Bakker eventually paid Hahn over $350,000 to remain silent. When the arrangement became public, the scandal helped to bring down the entire PTL ministry.
Hahn, who claimed that she didn't want to be in the spotlight, became an overnight celebrity. She posed for Playboy magazine, wrote a book about her relationship with Bakker, and even briefly lived in the Playboy mansion. Hahn, a radio announcer in Phoenix, Arizona, at the time of Bakker's indictment, soon became a regular on Howard Stern's radio show and appeared in rock music videos, as well.
Jim and his wife, Tammy Faye, were on top of the world before the scandal first broke. They were enormously successful at raising money for their televised religious programs, and after its 1974 debut, their cable show became the highest rated religious show in the country. The Bakkers then added talk-show elements to standard preaching, often featuring celebrities, music, and comedy. With all of the money they made from their programming, the Bakkers built a 2,200-acre resort, Heritage USA, which featured a studio large enough to seat 1,800 people. Six million people visited the park in 1986, placing it behind only Disney World and Disneyland in terms of attendance.
When the Hahn scandal was leaked, other televangelists were outraged. Jimmy Swaggart, in particular, went out of his way to condemn Bakker. Tammy Faye responded to their critics by singing "The Ballad of Jim and Tammy Faye" to the tune of "Harper Valley PTA" on their show. Still, Tammy Faye could not defend the ministry against federal charges that the funding for Heritage USA had been acquired by defrauding their viewers and donors.
Although the evidence was not particularly strong, Jim Bakker was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to 45 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to eight years, and he was released in 1994. Tammy Faye divorced Jim while he was in prison; she died in 2007.
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Oct 5, 2011
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/apple-founder-steve-jobs-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/apple-founder-steve-jobs-dies)
Apple founder Steve Jobs dies
On this day in 2011, Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Inc., which revolutionized the computer, music and mobile communications industries with such devices as the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad, dies at age 56 of complications from pancreatic cancer.
Born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, to unmarried graduate students Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian immigrant, Jobs was adopted as a baby by Paul Jobs, a Silicon Valley machinist, and his wife Clara. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, California, in 1972, Jobs attended Reed College, a liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon, for a single semester before dropping out. He later worked briefly for pioneering video game maker Atari in California, traveled to India and studied Zen Buddhism.
In 1976, Jobs and his computer engineer friend Stephen Wozniak founded Apple Computer in Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California. As Bloomberg News would later note about Jobs: “He had no formal technical training and no real business experience. What he had instead was an appreciation of technology's elegance and a notion that computers could be more than a hobbyist's toy or a corporation's workhorse. These machines could be indispensable tools.” In 1977, Jobs and Wozniak launched the Apple II, which became the first popular personal computer. In 1980, Apple went public and Jobs, then in his mid-20s, became a multimillionaire. Four years later, Apple debuted the Macintosh, one of the first personal computers to feature a graphical user interface, which allowed people to navigate by pointing and clicking a mouse rather than typing commands.
In 1985, Jobs left the company following a power struggle with Apple’s board of directors. That same year, he established NeXT, a business that developed high-performance computers. The machines proved too pricey to gain a wide consumer audience; however, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web using a NeXT workstation. In 1986, Jobs acquired a small computer-graphics studio founded by filmmaker George Lucas and rechristened it Pixar Animation Studios. In 1995, Pixar released its first film, “Toy Story,” the first-ever feature-length, computer-animated movie. It became a huge box-office success and was followed by such award-winning hits as “Finding Nemo” (2003) and “The Incredibles” (2004). In 2006, Walt Disney Company purchased Pixar for more than $7 billion, making Jobs the largest Disney shareholder.
In late 1996, Apple, which had floundered without Jobs, announced it would buy NeXT and hire Jobs as an advisor. The following year, he became Apple’s interim CEO (the “interim” was dropped in 2000), and under his leadership a nearly bankrupt Apple was transformed into one of the planet’s most valuable corporations. A charismatic, demanding perfectionist, Jobs was said to possess the ability to intuit what customers wanted before they knew it themselves. In his trademark jeans and black mock turtleneck, the tech titan turned product launches into highly anticipated events, and Apple introduced a series of innovative digital devices, including the iPod portable music player in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad tablet computer in 2010, that became part of everyday modern life. (In early 2007, Jobs announced that Cupertino-based Apple was dropping “Computer” from its official moniker to reflect the fact the company’s focus had shifted from computers-only to mobile electronic devices).
Despite a series of medical issues, including surgery in 2004 to remove a pancreatic tumor and a 2009 liver transplant, Jobs continued to lead Apple until August 24, 2011, when he stepped down as the company’s chief executive. Six weeks later, he passed away at his Palo Alto, California, home. At the time of his death, Jobs, a father of four, had a net worth estimated at more than $7 billion. According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs “was the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now. History will place him in the pantheon right next to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford."
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Oct 6, 1973
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/yom-kippur-war-begins (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/yom-kippur-war-begins)
Yom Kippur War begins
Hoping to win back territory lost to Israel during the third Arab-Israeli war, Egyptian and Syrian forces launch a coordinated attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Taking the Israeli Defense Forces by surprise, Egyptian troops swept deep into the Sinai Peninsula, while Syria struggled to throw occupying Israeli troops out of the Golan Heights.
Israel's stunning victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 left the Jewish nation in control of territory four times its previous size. Egypt lost the 23,500-square-mile Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, Jordan the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Syria the strategic Golan Heights. When Anwar el-Sadat became president of Egypt in 1970, he found himself leader of an economically troubled nation that could ill afford to continue its endless crusade against Israel. He wanted to make peace and thereby achieve stability and recovery of the Sinai, but after Israel's 1967 victory it was unlikely that Israel's peace terms would be favorable to Egypt. So Sadat conceived of a daring plan to attack Israel again, which, even if unsuccessful, might convince the Israelis that peace with Egypt was necessary.
In 1972, Sadat expelled 20,000 Soviet advisers from Egypt and opened new diplomatic channels with Washington, which, as Israel's key ally, would be an essential mediator in any future peace talks. He formed a new alliance with Syria, and a concerted attack on Israel was planned.
When the fourth Arab-Israeli war began on October 6, 1973, many of Israel's soldiers were away from their posts observing Yom Kippur, and the Arab armies made impressive advances with their up-to-date Soviet weaponry. Iraqi forces soon joined the war, and Syria received support from Jordan. After several days, Israel was fully mobilized, and the Israel Defense Forces began beating back the Arab gains at a heavy cost to soldiers and equipment. A U.S. airlift of arms aided Israel's cause, but President Richard Nixon delayed the emergency military aid for seven days as a tacit signal of U.S. sympathy for Egypt. In late October, an Egyptian-Israeli cease-fire was secured by the United Nations.
Although Egypt had again suffered military defeat at the hands of its Jewish neighbor, the initial Egyptian successes greatly enhanced Sadat's prestige in the Middle East and provided him with an opportunity to seek peace. In 1974, the first of two Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreements providing for the return of portions of the Sinai to Egypt were signed, and in 1979 Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the first peace agreement between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors. In 1982, Israel fulfilled the 1979 peace treaty by returning the last segment of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.
For Syria, the Yom Kippur War was a disaster. The unexpected Egyptian-Israeli cease-fire exposed Syria to military defeat, and Israel seized even more territory in the Golan Heights. In 1979, Syria voted with other Arab states to expel Egypt from the Arab League. On October 6, 1981, Sadat was assassinated by Muslim extremists in Cairo while viewing a military parade commemorating the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.
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Oct 7, 2001
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/us-led-attack-on-afghanistan-begins (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/us-led-attack-on-afghanistan-begins)
U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan begins
On this day in 2001, a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States "war on terrorism" and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
Dubbed "Operation Enduring Freedom" in U.S. military parlance, the invasion of Afghanistan was intended to target terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization, which was based in the country, as well as the extreme fundamentalist Taliban government that had ruled most of the country since 1996 and supported and protected al-Qaida. The Taliban, which had imposed its extremist version of Islam on the entire country, also perpetrated countless human rights abuses against its people, especially women, girls and ethnic Hazaras. During their rule, large numbers of Afghans lived in utter poverty, and as many as 4 million Afghans are thought to have suffered from starvation.
In the weeks prior to the invasion, both the United States and the U.N. Security Council had demanded that the Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden for prosecution. After deeming the Taliban's counteroffers unsatisfactory—among them to try bin Laden in an Islamic court—the invasion began with an aerial bombardment of Taliban and al-Qaida installations in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Konduz and Mazar-e-Sharif. Other coalition planes flew in airdrops of humanitarian supplies for Afghan civilians. The Taliban called the actions "an attack on Islam." In a taped statement released to the Arabic al-Jazeera television network, Osama bin Laden called for a war against the entire non-Muslim world.
After the air campaign softened Taliban defenses, the coalition began a ground invasion, with Northern Alliance forces providing most of the troops and the U.S. and other nations giving air and ground support. On November 12, a little over a month after the military action began, Taliban officials and their forces retreated from the capital of Kabul. By early December, Kandahar, the last Taliban stronghold, had fallen and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar went into hiding rather than surrender. Al-Qaida fighters continued to hide out in Afghanistan's mountainous Tora Bora region, where they were engaged by anti-Taliban Afghan forces, backed by U.S. Special Forces troops. Al-Qaida soon initiated a truce, which is now believed to have been a ploy to allow Osama bin Laden and other key al-Qaida members time to escape into neighboring Pakistan. By mid-December, the bunker and cave complex used by al-Qaida at Tora Bora had been captured, but there was no sign of bin Laden.
After Tora Bora, a grand council of Afghan tribal leaders and former exiles was convened under the leadership of Hamid Karzai, who first served as interim leader before becoming the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan on December 7, 2004. Even as Afghanistan began to take the first steps toward democracy, however, with more than 10,000 U.S. troops in country, al-Qaida and Taliban forces began to regroup in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They continue to engage U.S. and Afghan troops in guerilla-style warfare and have also been responsible for the deaths of elected government officials and aid workers and the kidnapping of foreigners. Hundreds of American and coalition soldiers and thousands of Afghans have been killed and wounded in the fighting.
Afghans continue to make up the largest refugee population in the world, though nearly 3 million have returned to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, further straining the country's war-ravaged economy.
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Oct 8, 2009
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/self-help-gurus-sweat-lodge-ceremony-turns-deadly (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/self-help-gurus-sweat-lodge-ceremony-turns-deadly)
Self-help guru's sweat lodge ceremony turns deadly
On this day in 2009, two people die and more than a dozen others are hospitalized following a botched sweat lodge ceremony at a retreat run by motivational speaker and author James Arthur Ray near Sedona, Arizona. A third participant in the ceremony died nine days later.
The sweat lodge exercise was part of a five-day “Spiritual Warrior” event held at a rented retreat center located six miles from Sedona. Participants paid more than $9,000 each to attend the retreat. At the time, Ray, who was born in 1957 and raised in Oklahoma, was known for such books as his 2008 best-seller “Harmonic Wealth: The Secret to Attracting the Life You Want,” and had appeared as a guest on a number of TV programs, including “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Ray’s sweat lodge ceremony, modeled after a Native American custom intended to purify the body and spirit, was held in a wood-frame structure covered with tarpaulins and blankets. Inside the enclosed space, water was poured over heated rocks to create steam and the temperature became dangerously high, causing many of the more than 50 participants (who had been encouraged to fast for 36 hours prior to the event) to develop breathing trouble and become disoriented. Witnesses later reported Ray had urged people to remain inside and endure the intense heat as a form of personal challenge.
Two people, Kirby Brown, 38, and James Shore, 40, fainted but were left inside the sweat lodge and perished from heat stroke. More than a dozen other people were hospitalized for dehydration and other medical issues. On October 17, a third ceremony participant, Liz Neuman, 49, died.
In February 2010, Ray was indicted on manslaughter charges. When his case went to trial the following year, the prosecution argued that the self-help guru had acted carelessly and shown no regard for the people who got sick during the ceremony. The defense claimed the participants were free to leave the sweat lodge at any time, and said the deaths were an accident and might have been caused by unknown toxins in the ground. During the four-month trial, witnesses claimed that people had become ill or injured at previous retreats run by Ray, and Native American groups expressed outrage over his misuse of their sacred sweat lodge tradition.
On June 22, 2011, a jury in Camp Verde, Arizona, found Ray guilty of three counts of negligent homicide. On November 18 of that same year, he was sentenced to three two-year prison terms, to run concurrently, and ordered to pay some $57,000 in restitution to the victims’ families.
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You don't even interact with anyone here, guy. Folks rarely comment. How can this possibly be a fun thread for you?
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You don't even interact with anyone here, guy. Folks rarely comment. How can this possibly be a fun thread for you?
I don't see why you should care either way. It's for people to have something interesting to read.
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Oct 9, 1942
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-chicago-bootlegger-escapes-from-prison (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-chicago-bootlegger-escapes-from-prison)
A Chicago bootlegger escapes from prison
Chicago bootlegger Roger "The Terrible" Touhy escapes from Illinois' Stateville Prison by climbing the guard's tower. Touhy, who had been framed for kidnapping by his bootlegging rivals with the help of corrupt Chicago officials, was serving a 99-year sentence for a kidnapping he did not commit. He was recaptured a couple of months later.
The son of a police officer, Touhy had served in the Navy during World War I and later set up a trucking business in the Chicago suburbs. But when business faltered during Prohibition, Touhy realized he could earn a better living through bootlegging. Along with his partner, Matt Kolb, Touhy began brewing his own beer and shipping it to speakeasies all over the state. His beer was widely considered the finest available at the time.
When organized crime leader Al Capone heard about Touhy's operation, he wanted to get in on the action, but since Capone was not really familiar with the environment outside of the city, Touhy had an advantage. Touhy shouted orders to his fictional gang over the telephone when Capone's henchmen showed up. Capone's men reported back that Touhy was not someone to mess with, but Capone was undeterred. He kidnapped Matt Kolb, forcing Touhy to cough up $50,000 for his release. When he ordered Kolb's murder in 1931 anyway, the feud escalated. Capone helped to orchestrate a fake kidnapping, which he pinned on Touhy. In 1933, with assistance from Daniel "Tubbo" Gilbert, a Chicago police officer known as "the richest cop in the world." Touhy was convicted for abducting con man Jake Factor and sent to prison.
Shortly after his escape in 1942, Touhy was returned to prison. But his attorneys successfully persuaded an appeals court that the Factor kidnapping was a hoax, and Touhy was finally released in 1959. Three weeks later, as he was entering his sister's home, Touhy was hit by several shotgun blasts. Before he died, he was reported to have said, "I've been expecting it. The bastards never forget." No arrests were made.
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I don't see why you should care either way. It's for people to have something interesting to read.
Just a question, fella. I've commented on stuff here before. I check in once in a while. Know how much you like the back and forth is all, and it rarely happens here. But knock yourself out.
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Just a question, fella. I've commented on stuff here before. I check in once in a while. Know how much like the back and forth is all, and it rarely happens here. But knock yourself out.
Thats cool. My point was that I didn't make this thread hoping that I would get a bunch of comments.
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Thats cool. My point was that I didn't make this thread hoping that I would get a bunch of comments.
Ok, I'll just read 'em from now on.
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Oct 10, 1991
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-former-postal-worker-commits-mass-murder (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-former-postal-worker-commits-mass-murder)
A former postal worker commits mass murder
Former U.S. postal worker Joseph Harris shoots two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, New Jersey. The night before, Harris had killed his former supervisor, Carol Ott, with a three-foot samurai sword, and shot her fiance, Cornelius Kasten, in their home. After a four-hour standoff with police at the post office, Harris was arrested. His violent outburst was one of several high-profile attacks by postal workers that resulted in the addition of the phrase "going postal" to the American lexicon.
Harris, who was born in prison and had a lifetime of psychiatric problems, was fired from his job in April 1990. Harboring a grudge against his ex-employer, he began to stockpile automatic weapons, grenades, and ninja swords. Two years later, he learned that he had lost as much as $10,000 by investing it with broker Roy Edwards. Dressed in a black ninja costume, Harris entered Edwards' Montville, New Jersey, home and handcuffed the family. After sexually assaulting Edwards' wife and two daughters, he shot Edwards to death. Since hundreds of investors had lost money while dealing with Edwards, police never even considered Harris a suspect in his death until after the mass slaying on October 10.
Arguing that he was insane, Harris' lawyers said that he had told psychiatrists that he was driven by the "ninja spirit" to commit the crimes. In 1992, Harris was convicted of both the Montville and Ridgewood attacks and was sent to death row. But in September 1996, two days before a New Jersey State Supreme Court battle to overturn its death-penalty law was to start, he died of natural causes.
From 1983 to 1993, there were 11 murderous rampages in U.S. post offices. On August 20, 1986, the worst of these incidents took place in Edmond, Oklahoma. Pat Sherrill, who was about to be fired, killed 14 mail workers, wounded another five, and then shot himself to death as the SWAT team arrived.
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Oct 11, 2008
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/blind-driver-breaks-land-speed-record (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/blind-driver-breaks-land-speed-record)
Blind driver breaks land-speed record
On this day in 2008, a man from Belgium named Luc Costermans sets a new world speed record for blind drivers: 192 mph. Costermans set the record in a borrowed Lamborghini Gallardo on a long, straight stretch of airstrip near Marseilles, France. He was accompanied by a carload of sophisticated navigational equipment as well as a human co-pilot, who gave directions from the Lamborghini's passenger seat.
The record Costermans broke had been set exactly three years before by the British driver Mike Newman. On that day, Newman had coaxed his 507-horsepower BMW M5 to a top speed of 178.5 mph. (Over a measured mile, Newman's speed averaged 167.32 mph.) For his part, Newman had smashed a 2-year-old record—144.7 mph—that he had set himself in a borrowed Jaguar, just three days after he learned to drive. Unlike Costermans, Newman did not race with a co-pilot or a navigator. Instead, he got his father-in-law to zoom around the track behind him, shouting directions over the radio.
Both of these blind record-setters were all-around daredevils who raced all sorts of vehicles. In 2001, for example, Newman became the fastest blind motorcycle driver in the world (his record speed was 89 mph) just four days after learning to ride; five years later, Costermans flew a small airplane all around France. (He was joined by an instructor and a navigator.) Another record-setter, an Englishman named Steve Cunningham, had set the land-speed record himself in 1999 (147 mph, while driving a £70,000 Chrysler Viper) at the same time that he held the sea-speed record for a blind sailor. In 2004, guided by sophisticated talking navigational software, Cunningham became the first blind pilot to circumnavigate the United Kingdom by air.
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Oct 12, 2007
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/al-gore-wins-nobel-prize-in-the-wake-of-an-inconvenient-truth (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/al-gore-wins-nobel-prize-in-the-wake-of-an-inconvenient-truth)
Al Gore wins Nobel Prize in the wake of An Inconvenient Truth
On this day in 2007, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to increase public knowledge about man-made climate change. In 2006, Gore had starred in the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which was credited with raising international awareness about the global warming crisis.
Gore, a former senator from Tennessee who served as President Bill Clinton’s vice president from 1993 to 2001, is considered one of the first politicians to recognize the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions, a cause of human-induced global warming. Gore became interested in the topic of global warming during a college course he took at Harvard University. As a congressman, he held hearings on climate change in the late 1970s, a time when most Americans had little or no knowledge of the issue. After losing the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, Gore embarked on a new campaign—the fight against man-made climate change—and gave slide-show presentations around the world in an effort to educate the public. An Inconvenient Truth chronicled Gore’s efforts to educate audiences with his “traveling global warming road show.” In the film, he details the facts and falsehoods surrounding this “planetary emergency” and describes the events in his own life that led him to become an environmental crusader.
An Inconvenient Truth debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2006, and opened in limited release across the United States in May of that same year. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, the film went on to win numerous awards, including an Oscar for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards on February 25, 2007. Melissa Etheridge also received an Oscar for Best Original Song, for “I Need to Wake Up.”
One of the highest-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, An Inconvenient Truth played in theaters around the planet. It was credited with helping to spur the “green movement” that spread across the United States in 2007, as the media focused more attention on the problems associated with climate change. In Hollywood, actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio began driving hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius and generally promoting a more eco-friendly lifestyle, while various film companies pledged to become “carbon-neutral.”
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Oct 13, 1999
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/grand-jury-dismissed-in-jonbenet-ramsey-murder-case (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/grand-jury-dismissed-in-jonbenet-ramsey-murder-case)
Grand jury dismissed in JonBenet Ramsey murder case
The Colorado grand jury investigating the case of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, who was murdered in December 1996, is dismissed and the Boulder County district attorney announces no indictments will be made due to insufficient evidence.
On the morning of December 26, 1996, Patsy Ramsey discovered her 6-year-old daughter was missing after finding a ransom note in the family’s Boulder home. Patsy, a former Miss West Virginia, and her husband John, a wealthy business executive, called police and JonBenet’s body was discovered in the basement later that day. The coroner determined the girl had died of asphyxia strangulation and an autopsy later revealed she had been bound and struck violently in the head, causing bleeding and an 8.5-inch fracture to her skull.
Police questioned various people, including a man who had played Santa Claus at the Ramsey home several days before the murder; however, John and Patsy Ramsey eventually emerged as the primary suspects in the case. After being formally interviewed by investigators on April 30, 1997, the couple held a news conference the next day proclaiming their innocence. They believed the murder was committed by an intruder. The case generated an enormous media frenzy but no arrests and the Boulder police and prosecutors received criticism for their handling of the investigation. In September 1998, a grand jury was convened to investigate the murder. The following year, on October 13, 1999, Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter announced that the grand jury had been dismissed and no indictments would be made due to lack of evidence.
John and Patsy Ramsey continued to face intense public scrutiny. In March 2000, the couple released a book about the case titled The Death of Innocence. On June 24, 2006, Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer at age 49. In August of that year, U.S. law enforcement officials in Thailand arrested 41-year-old John Mark Karr, an American schoolteacher, in connection with child pornography charges in California. Karr stated he was with JonBenet Ramsey when she was killed but her death had been an accident. He was charged with murder, kidnapping and sexual assault on a child. However, on August 28, 2006, all charges against Karr were dropped after DNA tests failed to link him to the crime. To date, the murder of JonBenet Ramsey remains unsolved.
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Oct 14, 1975
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/trial-begins-in-amityville-murders (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/trial-begins-in-amityville-murders)
Trial begins in Amityville murders
Ronald DeFeo Jr. goes on trial for the killings of his parents and four siblings in their Amityville, New York, home on October 14, 1975. The family’s house was later said to be haunted and served as the inspiration for the Amityville Horror book and movies.
On the evening of November 13, 1974, Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. entered an Amityville bar and told people his parents had been shot inside their home. Several bar patrons accompanied DeFeo back to his family’s home, at 112 Ocean Avenue, where a man named Joe Yeswit called Suffolk Country police to report the crime. When officers arrived, they found the bodies of Ronald DeFeo Sr., age 43, his wife Louise, 42, and their children Dawn, 18, Allison, 13, Marc, 11, and John, 9. The victims had been shot dead in their beds. Ronald DeFeo Jr., 22, initially tried to say the murders were a mob hit; however, by the next day he confessed to committing the crimes himself.
One aspect of the case that puzzled investigators was the fact that all six victims appeared to have died in their sleep, without struggle, and neighbors didn’t hear any gunshots, despite the fact that the rifle DeFeo used didn’t have a silencer. When DeFeo’s trial began in October 1975, his attorney argued for an insanity defense; however, that November, he was found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder and later sentenced to six consecutive sentences of 25 years to life in prison. DeFeo, who gave conflicting accounts of his story over the years, later claimed his sister Dawn and two other accomplices were involved in the murders.
The DeFeo house was sold to George Lutz, who moved in with his wife and three children in December 1975. The new owners resided in the house for 28 days, before they fled, claiming it was haunted by the spirits of the DeFeo family. Critics accused George Lutz of concocting the story to make money, but he maintained he was telling the truth. In 1977, Jay Anson published a novel titled The Amityville Horror. The book became a best-seller and inspired a 1979 movie of the same name, as well as a 2005 remake.
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Oct 9, 1942
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-chicago-bootlegger-escapes-from-prison (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-chicago-bootlegger-escapes-from-prison)
A Chicago bootlegger escapes from prison
Chicago bootlegger Roger "The Terrible" Touhy escapes from Illinois' Stateville Prison by climbing the guard's tower. Touhy, who had been framed for kidnapping by his bootlegging rivals with the help of corrupt Chicago officials, was serving a 99-year sentence for a kidnapping he did not commit. He was recaptured a couple of months later.
The son of a police officer, Touhy had served in the Navy during World War I and later set up a trucking business in the Chicago suburbs. But when business faltered during Prohibition, Touhy realized he could earn a better living through bootlegging. Along with his partner, Matt Kolb, Touhy began brewing his own beer and shipping it to speakeasies all over the state. His beer was widely considered the finest available at the time.
When organized crime leader Al Capone heard about Touhy's operation, he wanted to get in on the action, but since Capone was not really familiar with the environment outside of the city, Touhy had an advantage. Touhy shouted orders to his fictional gang over the telephone when Capone's henchmen showed up. Capone's men reported back that Touhy was not someone to mess with, but Capone was undeterred. He kidnapped Matt Kolb, forcing Touhy to cough up $50,000 for his release. When he ordered Kolb's murder in 1931 anyway, the feud escalated. Capone helped to orchestrate a fake kidnapping, which he pinned on Touhy. In 1933, with assistance from Daniel "Tubbo" Gilbert, a Chicago police officer known as "the richest cop in the world." Touhy was convicted for abducting con man Jake Factor and sent to prison.
Shortly after his escape in 1942, Touhy was returned to prison. But his attorneys successfully persuaded an appeals court that the Factor kidnapping was a hoax, and Touhy was finally released in 1959. Three weeks later, as he was entering his sister's home, Touhy was hit by several shotgun blasts. Before he died, he was reported to have said, "I've been expecting it. The bastards never forget." No arrests were made.
is it just me or did a lot of people used to escape from prison?
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Oct 15, 1945
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/vichy-leader-executed-for-treason (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/vichy-leader-executed-for-treason)
Vichy leader executed for treason
Pierre Laval, the puppet leader of Nazi-occupied Vichy France, is executed by firing squad for treason against France.
Laval, originally a deputy and senator of pacifist tendencies, shifted to the right in the 1930s while serving as minister of foreign affairs and twice as the French premier. A staunch anti-communist, he delayed the Soviet-Franco pact of 1935 and sought to align France with Fascist Italy. Hostile to the declaration of war against Germany in 1939, Laval encouraged the antiwar faction in the French government, and with the German invasion in 1940 he used his political influence to force an armistice with Germany. Henri Pétain took over the new Vichy state, and Laval served as minister of state. Laval was dismissed by PÉtain in December 1940 for negotiating privately with Germany.
By 1942, Laval had won the trust of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and the elderly Pétain became merely a figurehead in the Vichy regime. As the premier of Vichy France, Laval collaborated with the Nazi programs of oppression and genocide, and increasingly became a puppet of Hitler. After the Allied liberation of France, he was forced to flee east for German protection. With the defeat of Germany in May 1945, he escaped to Spain but was expelled and went into hiding in Austria, where he finally surrendered to American authorities in late July. Extradited to France, Laval was convicted of treason by the High Court of Justice in a sensational trial. Condemned to death, he attempted suicide by poison but was nursed back to health in time for his execution, on October 15, 1945.
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Oct 16, 1854
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincoln-speaks-out-against-slavery (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincoln-speaks-out-against-slavery)
Lincoln speaks out against slavery
On this day in 1854, an obscure lawyer and Congressional hopeful from the state of Illinois named Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech regarding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which Congress had passed five months earlier. In his speech, the future president denounced the act and outlined his views on slavery, which he called "immoral."
Under the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, two new territories—Kansas and Nebraska—would be allowed into the Union and each territory's citizens would be given the power to determine whether slavery would be allowed within the territory's borders. It was believed that the act would set a precedent for determining the legality of slavery in other new territories. Controversy over the act influenced political races across the country that fall. Abolitionists, like Lincoln, hoped to convince lawmakers in the new territories to reject slavery.
Lincoln, who was practicing law at the time, campaigned on behalf of abolitionist Republicans in Illinois and attacked the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He denounced members of the Democratic Party for backing a law that "assumes there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another." He believed that the law went against the founding American principle that "all men are created equal." Lincoln was an abolitionist at heart, but he realized that the outlawing of slavery in states where it already existed might lead to civil war. Instead, he advocated outlawing the spread of slavery to new states. He hoped this plan would preserve the Union and slowly eliminate slavery by confining it to the South, where, he believed, "it would surely die a slow death."
Lincoln and his fellow abolitionists were dismayed when Kansans voted a pro-slavery candidate into Congress in November. As Lincoln's political career picked up momentum over the next several years, he continually referred to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the seeming inevitability that Kansas should become a slave state as "a violence...it was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence."
Lincoln continued to actively campaign against slavery in Kansas and helped to raise money to support anti-slavery candidates in that state. Meanwhile he continued his law practice and ran for the U.S. Senate in 1859. Although he lost to Democrat Stephen Douglas, Lincoln began to make a name for himself in national politics and earned increasing support from the North and abolitionists across the nation. It was this constituency that helped him win the presidency in 1860.
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Oct 17, 1777
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/americans-win-more-than-a-battle-at-saratoga (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/americans-win-more-than-a-battle-at-saratoga)
Americans win more than a battle at Saratoga
British general and playwright John Burgoyne surrenders 5,000 British and Hessian troops to American General Horatio Gates at Saratoga, New York, on this day in 1777.
In the summer of 1777, General Burgoyne led an army of 8,000 men south through New York in an effort to join forces with British General Sir William Howe's troops along the Hudson River. After capturing several forts, Burgoyne's force camped near Saratoga while a larger Patriot army under General Gates gathered just four miles away. On September 19, a British advance column marched out and engaged the Patriot force at the Battle of Freeman's Farm, or the First Battle of Saratoga. Failing to break through the American lines, Burgoyne's force retreated. On October 7, another British reconnaissance force was repulsed by an American force under General Benedict Arnold in the Battle of Bemis Heights, also known as the Second Battle of Saratoga.
Gates retreated north to the village of Saratoga with his 5,000 surviving troops. By October 13, some 20,000 Americans had surrounded the British, and four days later Burgoyne was forced to agree to the first large-scale surrender of British forces in the Revolutionary War.
Burgoyne successfully negotiated that his surviving men would be returned to Britain by pledging that they would never again serve in North America. The nearly 6,000-man army was kept in captivity at great expense to the Continental Congress until the end of the war.
Soon after word of the Patriot victory at Saratoga reached France, King Louis XVI agreed to recognize the independence of the United States and French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, Count de Vergennes, made arrangements with U.S. Ambassador Benjamin Franklin to begin providing formal French aid to the Patriot cause. This assistance was crucial to the eventual American victory in the Revolutionary War.
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Oct 18, 1931
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/edison-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/edison-dies)
Edison dies
Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, dies in West Orange, New Jersey, at the age of 84.
Born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, Edison received little formal schooling, which was customary for most Americans at the time. He developed serious hearing problems at an early age, and this disability provided the motivation for many of his inventions. At age 16, he found work as a telegraph operator and soon was devoting much of his energy and natural ingenuity toward improving the telegraph system itself. By 1869, he was pursuing invention full-time and in 1876 moved into a laboratory and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
Edison's experiments were guided by his remarkable intuition, but he also took care to employ assistants who provided the mathematical and technical expertise he lacked. At Menlo Park, Edison continued his work on the telegraph, and in 1877 he stumbled on one of his great inventions—the phonograph—while working on a way to record telephone communication. Public demonstrations of the phonograph made the Yankee inventor world famous, and he was dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park."
Although the discovery of a way to record and play back sound ensured him a place in the annals of history, it was just the first of several Edison creations that would transform late 19th-century life. Among other notable inventions, Edison and his assistants developed the first practical incandescent lightbulb in 1879, and a forerunner of the movie camera and projector in the late 1880s. In 1887, he opened the world's first industrial research laboratory at West Orange, where he employed dozens of workers to systematically investigate a given subject.
Perhaps his greatest contribution to the modern industrial world came from his work in electricity. He developed a complete electrical distribution system for light and power, set up the world's first power plant in New York City, and invented the alkaline battery, the first electric railroad, and a host of other inventions that laid the basis for the modern electric world. He continued to work into his 80s and acquired 1,093 patents in his lifetime. He died at his home in New Jersey on October 18, 1931.
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Oct 18, 1931
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/edison-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/edison-dies)
Edison dies
Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, dies in West Orange, New Jersey, at the age of 84.
Born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, Edison received little formal schooling, which was customary for most Americans at the time. He developed serious hearing problems at an early age, and this disability provided the motivation for many of his inventions. At age 16, he found work as a telegraph operator and soon was devoting much of his energy and natural ingenuity toward improving the telegraph system itself. By 1869, he was pursuing invention full-time and in 1876 moved into a laboratory and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
Edison's experiments were guided by his remarkable intuition, but he also took care to employ assistants who provided the mathematical and technical expertise he lacked. At Menlo Park, Edison continued his work on the telegraph, and in 1877 he stumbled on one of his great inventions—the phonograph—while working on a way to record telephone communication. Public demonstrations of the phonograph made the Yankee inventor world famous, and he was dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park."
Although the discovery of a way to record and play back sound ensured him a place in the annals of history, it was just the first of several Edison creations that would transform late 19th-century life. Among other notable inventions, Edison and his assistants developed the first practical incandescent lightbulb in 1879, and a forerunner of the movie camera and projector in the late 1880s. In 1887, he opened the world's first industrial research laboratory at West Orange, where he employed dozens of workers to systematically investigate a given subject.
Perhaps his greatest contribution to the modern industrial world came from his work in electricity. He developed a complete electrical distribution system for light and power, set up the world's first power plant in New York City, and invented the alkaline battery, the first electric railroad, and a host of other inventions that laid the basis for the modern electric world. He continued to work into his 80s and acquired 1,093 patents in his lifetime. He died at his home in New Jersey on October 18, 1931.
We should be writing our monthly electricity checks to the Tesla Co. Edison raped the dude's brain, plain and simple. Then shut him down with big money.
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Oct 19, 1781
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cornwallis-surrenders-at-yorktown (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cornwallis-surrenders-at-yorktown)
Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown
On this day in 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis formally surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing the American Revolution to a close.
Previously, Cornwallis had driven General George Washington's Patriot forces out of New Jersey in 1776, and led his Recoats in victory over General Horatio Gates and the Patriots at Camden, South Carolina, in 1780. His subsequent invasion of North Carolina was less successful, however, and in April 1781, he led his weary and battered troops toward the Virginia coast, where he could maintain seaborne lines of communication with the large British army of General Henry Clinton in New York City. After conducting a series of raids against towns and plantations in Virginia, Cornwallis settled in Yorktown in August. The British immediately began fortifying the town and the adjacent promontory of Gloucester Point across the York River
Washington instructed the Marquis de Lafayette, who was in Virginia with an American army of around 5,000 men, to block Cornwallis' escape from Yorktown by land. In the meantime, Washington's 2,500 troops in New York were joined by a French army of 4,000 men under the Count de Rochambeau. Washington and Rochambeau made plans to attack Cornwallis with the assistance of a large French fleet under the Count de Grasse, and on August 21 they crossed the Hudson River to march south to Yorktown. Covering 200 miles in 15 days, the allied force reached the head of Chesapeake Bay in early September.
Meanwhile, a British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves failed to break French naval superiority at the Battle of Virginia Capes on September 5, denying Cornwallis his expected reinforcements. Beginning September 14, de Grasse transported Washington and de Rochambeau's men down the Chesapeake to Virginia, where they joined Lafayette and completed the encirclement of Yorktown on September 28. De Grasse landed another 3,000 French troops carried by his fleet. During the first two weeks of October, the 14,000 Franco-American troops gradually overcame the fortified British positions with the aid of de Grasse's warships. A large British fleet carrying 7,000 men set out to rescue Cornwallis, but it was too late.
On October 19, General Cornwallis surrendered 7,087 officers and men, 900 seamen, 144 cannons, 15 galleys, a frigate and 30 transport ships. Pleading illness, he did not attend the surrender ceremony, but his second-in-command, General Charles O'Hara, carried Cornwallis' sword to the American and French commanders. As the British and Hessian troops marched out to surrender, the British band played the song "The World Turned Upside Down."
Although the war persisted on the high seas and in other theaters, the Patriot victory at Yorktown effectively ended fighting in the American colonies. Peace negotiations began in 1782, and on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, formally recognizing the United States as a free and independent nation after eight years of war.
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Oct 20, 2011
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/libyan-dictator-moammar-gadhafi-is-killed (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/libyan-dictator-moammar-gadhafi-is-killed)
Libyan Dictator Moammar Gadhafi is Killed
On this day in 2011, Moammar Gadhafi, the longest-serving leader in Africa and the Arab world, is captured and killed by rebel forces near his hometown of Sirte. The eccentric 69-year-old dictator, who came to power in a 1969 coup, headed a government that was accused of numerous human rights violations against its own people and was linked to terrorist attacks, including the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Gadhafi, who was born into a Bedouin family in June 1942, attended the Royal Military Academy in Benghazi as a young man and briefly received additional military training in Great Britain. On September 1, 1969, he led a bloodless coup that overthrew Libya's pro-Western monarch, King Idris, who was out of the country at the time. Gadhafi emerged as the head of the new revolutionary government, which soon forced the closing of American and British military bases in Libya, took control of much of the nation's oil industry, and tortured and killed political dissenters. It also made unsuccessful attempts to merge Libya with other Arab nations. Gadhafi began funding terrorist and guerilla groups around the globe, including the Irish Republican Army and the Red Army Faction in West Germany. Additionally, in the mid-1970s, Gadhafi, whose followers referred to him by such titles as "Brother Leader" and "Guide of the Revolution," published his political philosophy, which combined socialist and Islamic theories. Known as the Green Book, the manifesto became required reading in Libyan schools.
During the 1980s, tensions increased between Gadhafi and the West. Libya was linked the April 1986 bombing of a West Berlin, Germany, nightclub frequented by American military personnel. Two people, including a U.S. soldier, were killed in the attack, while some 155 others were wounded. The United States swiftly retaliated by bombing targets in Libya, including Gadhafi"s compound in Tripoli, the nation"s capital. President Ronald Reagan called Gadhafi "the mad dog of the Middle East."
On December 22, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, traveling from London to New York, was blown up over Lockerbie, killing 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground. The U.S. and Britain indicted two Libyans in the attack, but Gadhafi initially refused to turn over the suspects. He also declined to surrender a group of Libyans suspected in the 1989 bombing of a French passenger jet over guy that killed 170 people. Subsequently, in 1992, the United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Libya. These sanctions were removed in 2003, after the country formally accepted responsibility for the bombings (but admitted no guilt) and agreed to pay a $2.7 billion settlement to the victims' families. (Gadhafi's government had turned over the Lockerbie suspects in 1999; one was eventually acquitted and the other convicted.) Also in 2003, Gadhafi agreed to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction. Diplomatic relations with the West were restored by the following year.
Gadhafi remained a controversial and eccentric figure, who traveled with a contingent of female bodyguards, wore colorful robes and hats or military uniforms covered with medals, and on trips abroad set up a Bedouin-style tent to receive guests.
After more than 40 years in power, Gadhafi saw his regime begin to unravel in February 2011, when anti-government protests broke out in Libya following the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia earlier that year. Gadhafi vowed to crush the revolt and ordered a violent crackdown against the demonstrators. However, by August, rebel forces, with assistance from NATO, had gained control of Tripoli and established a transitional government. Gadhafi went into hiding, but on October 20, 2011, he was captured and shot by rebel forces.
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Oct 21, 1941
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-massacre-men-women-and-children-in-yugoslavia (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-massacre-men-women-and-children-in-yugoslavia)
Germans massacre men, women, and children in Yugoslavia
On this day in 1941, German soldiers go on a rampage, killing thousands of Yugoslavian civilians, including whole classes of schoolboys.
Despite attempts to maintain neutrality at the outbreak of World War II, Yugoslavia finally succumbed to signing a "friendship treaty" with Germany in late 1940, finally joining the Tripartite "Axis" Pact in March 1941. The masses of Yugoslavians protested this alliance, and shortly thereafter the regents who had been trying to hold a fragile confederacy of ethnic groups and regions together since the creation of Yugoslavia at the close of World War I fell to a coup, and the Serb army placed Prince Peter into power. The prince-now the king--rejected the alliance with Germany-and the Germans retaliated with the Luftwaffe bombing of Belgrade, killing about 17,000 people.
With Yugoslavian resistance collapsing, King Peter removed to London, setting up a government-in-exile. Hitler then began to carve up Yugoslavia into puppet states, primarily divided along ethnic lines, hoping to win the loyalty of some-such as the Croats-with the promise of a postwar independent state. (In fact, many Croats did fight alongside the Germans in its battle against the Soviet Union.) Hungary, Bulgaria, and Italy all took bites out of Yugoslavia, as Serb resisters were regularly massacred. On October 21, in Kragujevac, 2,300 men and boys were murdered; Kraljevo saw 7,000 more killed by German troops, and in the region of Macva, 6,000 men, women, and children were murdered.
Serb partisans, fighting under the leadership of the socialist Josef "Tito" Brozovich, won support from Britain and aid from the USSR in their battle against the occupiers. "The people just do not recognize authority...they follow the Communist bandits blindly," complained one German official reporting back to Berlin.
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Oct 22, 2012
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cyclist-lance-armstrong-is-stripped-of-his-seven-tour-de-france-titles (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cyclist-lance-armstrong-is-stripped-of-his-seven-tour-de-france-titles)
Cyclist Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France titles
On this day in 2012, Lance Armstrong is formally stripped of the seven Tour de France titles he won from 1999 to 2005 and banned for life from competitive cycling after being charged with systematically using illicit performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions as well as demanding that some of his Tour teammates dope in order to help him win races. It was a dramatic fall from grace for the onetime global cycling icon, who inspired millions of people after surviving cancer then going on to become one of the most dominant riders in the history of the grueling French race, which attracts the planet's top cyclists.
Born in Texas in 1971, Armstrong became a professional cyclist in 1992 and by 1996 was the number-one ranked rider in the world. However, in October 1996 he was diagnosed with Stage 3 testicular cancer, which had spread to his lungs, brain and abdomen. After undergoing surgery and chemotherapy, Armstrong resumed training in early 1997 and in October of that year joined the U.S. Postal Service cycling team. Also in 1997, he established a cancer awareness foundation. The organization would famously raise millions of dollars through a sales campaign, launched in 2004, of yellow Livestrong wristbands.
In July 1999, to the amazement of the cycling world and less than three years after his cancer diagnosis, Armstrong won his first Tour de France. He was only the second American ever to triumph in the legendary, three-week race, established in 1903. (The first American to do so was Greg LeMond, who won in 1986, 1989 and 1990.) Armstrong went on to win the Tour again in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. In 2004, he became the first person ever to claim six Tour titles, and on July 24, 2005, Armstrong won his seventh straight title and retired from pro cycling. He made a comeback to the sport in 2009, finishing third in that year's Tour and 23rd in the 2010 Tour, before retiring for good in 2011 at age 39.
Throughout his career, Armstrong, like many other top cyclists of his era, was dogged by accusations of performance-boosting drug use, but he repeatedly and vigorously denied all allegations against him and claimed to have passed hundreds of drug tests. In June 2012, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), following a two-year investigation, charged the cycling superstar with engaging in doping violations from at least August 1998, and with participating in a conspiracy to cover up his misconduct. After losing a federal appeal to have the USADA charges against him dropped, Armstrong announced on August 23 that he would stop fighting them. However, calling the USADA probe an "unconstitutional witch hunt," he continued to insist he hadn't done anything wrong and said the reason for his decision to no longer challenge the allegations was the toll the investigation had taken on him, his family and his cancer foundation. The next day, USADA announced Armstrong had been banned for life from competitive cycling and disqualified of all competitive results from August 1, 1998, through the present.
On October 10, 2012, USADA released hundreds of pages of evidence—including sworn testimony from 11 of Armstrong's former teammates, as well as emails, financial documents and lab test results—that the anti-doping agency said demonstrated Armstrong and the U.S. Postal Service team had been involved in the most sophisticated and successful doping program in the history of cycling. A week after the USADA report was made public, Armstrong stepped down as chairman of his cancer foundation and was dumped by a number of his sponsors, including Nike, Trek and Anheuser-Busch.
On October 22, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the cycling's world governing body, announced that it accepted the findings of the USADA investigation and officially was erasing Armstrong's name from the Tour de France record books and upholding his lifetime ban from the sport. In a press conference that day, the UCI president stated: "Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling, and he deserves to be forgotten in cycling."
After years of denials, Armstrong finally admitted publicly, in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired on January 17, 2013, he had doped for much of his cycling career, beginning in the mid-1990s through his final Tour de France victory in 2005. He admitted to using a performance-enhancing drug regimen that included testosterone, human growth hormone, the blood booster EPO and cortisone.
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Oct 23, 1921
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/unknown-soldier-is-selected (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/unknown-soldier-is-selected)
Unknown Soldier is selected
On October 23, 1921, in the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne, an American officer selects the body of the first "Unknown Soldier" to be honored among the approximately 77,000 United States servicemen killed on the Western Front during World War I.
According to the official records of the Army Graves Registration Service deposited in the U.S. National Archives in Washington, four bodies were transported to Chalons from the cemeteries of Aisne-Marne, Somme, Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel. All were great battlegrounds, and the latter two regions were the sites of two offensive operations in which American troops took a leading role in the decisive summer and fall of 1918. As the service records stated, the identity of the bodies was completely unknown: "The original records showing the internment of these bodies were searched and the four bodies selected represented the remains of soldiers of which there was absolutely no indication as to name, rank, organization or date of death."
The four bodies arrived at the Hotel de Ville in Chalons-sur-Marne on October 23, 1921. At 10 o’clock the next morning, French and American officials entered a hall where the four caskets were displayed, each draped with an American flag. Sergeant Edward Younger, the man given the task of making the selection, carried a spray of white roses with which to mark the chosen casket. According to the official account, Younger "entered the chamber in which the bodies of the four Unknown Soldiers lay, circled the caskets three times, then silently placed the flowers on the third casket from the left. He faced the body, stood at attention and saluted."
Bearing the inscription "An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War," the chosen casket traveled to Paris and then to Le Havre, France, where it would board the cruiser Olympia for the voyage across the Atlantic. Once back in the United States, the Unknown Soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.
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Oct 24, 1992
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/toronto-blue-jays-finally-win-a-world-series-for-canada (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/toronto-blue-jays-finally-win-a-world-series-for-canada)
Toronto Blue Jays finally win a World Series for Canada
On October 24, 1992, the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Atlanta Braves in the sixth game of the World Series to win the championship. It was the first time a Canadian team had ever won the trophy, and it was a truly international victory—the Blue Jays’ 25-man roster included several players of Puerto Rican descent, a Jamaican, three Dominicans and no actual Canadians.
The series itself was a bit of a nail-biter: Four of the six games were decided by a single run, and three were won in the last at-bat. The Braves won the first game relatively handily (that is, by two runs). The Jays won the second 5-4 (they were trailing 4-3 when they came to bat in the ninth), the third 3-2 (thanks to a bases-loaded single at the bottom of the last inning) and the fourth 2-1. The Braves won Game 5 easily, as John Smoltz and Mike Stanton pitched to a 7-2 victory.
In Game 6, the Braves were losing by one run at the beginning of the ninth inning. They put runners on first and second, and then pinch-hitter Francisco Cabrera scorched a line drive to left that, if Candy Maldonado hadn’t made an impossible catch at the last minute, would have scored at least two runs. As it happened, the next batter singled to tie the game and force it into extra innings.
At the top of the 11th, with two out and two on, 41-year-old Blue Jay Dave Winfield cranked a 3-2 pitch low down the left-field line, sending two of his teammates home. At the bottom of the inning, the Braves managed to score once and even got the tying run to third, but it wasn’t enough. Toronto reliever Mike Timlin got Otis Nixon to bunt, then charged the blooper and tossed the ball to first in plenty of time. It was a rather anti-climactic ending to a highly climactic series, but it did the job: The Blue Jays were the champions. "No one can say we choke anymore," Toronto’s Roberto Alomar told reporters in the locker room after the game. "This is a great club. We won like champions."
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Oct 25, 1994
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/susan-smith-reports-a-false-carjacking-to-cover-her-murder (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/susan-smith-reports-a-false-carjacking-to-cover-her-murder)
Susan Smith reports a false carjacking to cover her murder
Susan Smith reports that she was carjacked in South Carolina by a man who took her two small children in the backseat of her car. Although authorities immediately began searching for three-year-old Michael and one-year-old Alex, they could find no trace of them or of Smith's car. After nine days of intense national media attention, Smith finally confessed that the carjacking tale was false and that she had driven her Mazda into the John D. Long Lake in order to drown her children.
Both Susan and her husband, David Smith, who had had multiple affairs during their on-and-off relationship, had used their children as pawns in their tempestuous marriage. Apparently, Susan was involved with another man who did not want children, and she thought that killing her children was the only way to continue the relationship.
Ironically, Smith's murder came to light because she had covered her tracks too well. While believing that the car and children would be discovered in the lake shortly after the search was started, she never anticipated that the authorities might not be able to find the car. After living under the pressure of the media's scrutiny day after day, Smith buckled. She was convicted on two counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In a book David Smith later wrote about the death of his children, Beyond All Reason, he expressed an ambiguous wish to see Susan on death row because he would never be able to relax and live a full life with her in prison.
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Oct 26, 1984
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/infant-receives-baboon-heart (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/infant-receives-baboon-heart)
Infant receives baboon heart
At Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, California, Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performs the first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing a 14-day-old infant girl's defective heart with the healthy, walnut-sized heart of a young baboon.
The infant, known as "Baby Fae," was born with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a deformity that is almost fatal and is found in newborns in which parts or all of the left side of the heart is missing. A few days after Baby Fae's birth, Loma Linda heart surgeon Dr. Bailey convinced Baby Fae's mother to allow him to try the experimental baboon-heart transplant. Three other humans had received animal-heart transplants, the last in 1977, but none survived longer than 3 1/2 days. Bailey argued that an infant with an underdeveloped immune system would be less likely to reject alien tissue than an adult.
Baby Fae survived the operation, and her subsequent struggle for life received international attention. After living longer than any other human recipient of an animal heart, Baby Fae's body made a concerted effort to reject the alien transplant. Doctors were forced to increase dosages of an immuno-suppressive drug, leading to kidney failure. Ultimately, doctors were defeated by the swift onset of heart failure, and on November 15 Baby Fae died after holding on for 20 days.
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Oct 27, 2004
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/red-sox-win-first-championship-since-1918 (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/red-sox-win-first-championship-since-1918)
Red Sox win first championship since 1918
On October 27, 2004, the Boston Red Sox win the World Series for the first time since 1918, finally vanquishing the so-called "Curse of the Bambino" that had plagued them for 86 years. "This is for anyone who has ever rooted for the Red Sox," the team’s GM told reporters after the game. "This is for all of Red Sox Nation, past and present."
Ever since team owner and Broadway producer Harry Frazee sold the great Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920—he got $125,000 and a $300,000 loan, which he used to pay Fenway’s mortgage and put on the musical No, No, Nannette—the Sox had been tragically unable to win the World Series. People said that the team was cursed. Before 1920, the Sox had won five championships and the Yanks hadn’t won any; after the Babe left, Boston’s well ran dry. The Yankees, meanwhile, won a record 26 times after 1920.
Over and over, the hapless Sox almost won—and over and over, they didn’t. In 1946, they were winning Game 7 with two outs in the eighth—until shortstop Johnny Pesky held onto a relay throw just long enough for Enos Slaughter to score the winning run (from first base). They lost in 1967 and 1975. Three years after that, in a one-game playoff for the AL championship, they lost when Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent, not exactly a reliable slugger, cranked one over the Green Monster with two men on base. (The Bombers won the game and went on to win their 22nd World Series.) And in the sixth game of the 1986 series against the Mets, just one out away from the championship, the Sox defense managed to bungle a series of easy plays so badly that they lost the game—and the next one, and the series. The Curse of the Bambino, it seemed, would never die.
But in 2004, the team’s luck changed. The Yanks had been three games up in the American League Championship Series, but Boston made a miraculous comeback and swept the last four. After that, it turned out, the Series itself was pretty dull. The St. Louis Cardinals were the NL champs and they had the best regular-season record in the majors, but in the series, their pitching was weak and their batting was worse. The Sox won the first three games handily. By the fourth, the Sox were playing like they won the Series every year. Johnny Damon led off with a homer that smashed into the St. Louis bullpen; Trot Nixon’s bases-loaded double in the third scored two more; pitcher Derek Lowe gave up just three hits in seven innings. The game’s end was as mundane as the rest of the series had been: Edgar Renteria plunked an easy grounder to closer Keith Foulke, who tossed the ball to first baseman Doug Mientkeiwicz in plenty of time for the out. The team mobbed the field; the crowd went wild. "This," wrote a columnist for the Globe, "is what it must have felt like in 1918."
In the 2007 World Series, the Sox did it again—they swept the Rockies for another easy victory. For now, they’ve won more championships in the 21st century than any other team.
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Oct 27, 2004
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/red-sox-win-first-championship-since-1918 (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/red-sox-win-first-championship-since-1918)
Red Sox win first championship since 1918
On October 27, 2004, the Boston Red Sox win the World Series for the first time since 1918, finally vanquishing the so-called "Curse of the Bambino" that had plagued them for 86 years. "This is for anyone who has ever rooted for the Red Sox," the team’s GM told reporters after the game. "This is for all of Red Sox Nation, past and present."
Ever since team owner and Broadway producer Harry Frazee sold the great Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920—he got $125,000 and a $300,000 loan, which he used to pay Fenway’s mortgage and put on the musical No, No, Nannette—the Sox had been tragically unable to win the World Series. People said that the team was cursed. Before 1920, the Sox had won five championships and the Yanks hadn’t won any; after the Babe left, Boston’s well ran dry. The Yankees, meanwhile, won a record 26 times after 1920.
Over and over, the hapless Sox almost won—and over and over, they didn’t. In 1946, they were winning Game 7 with two outs in the eighth—until shortstop Johnny Pesky held onto a relay throw just long enough for Enos Slaughter to score the winning run (from first base). They lost in 1967 and 1975. Three years after that, in a one-game playoff for the AL championship, they lost when Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent, not exactly a reliable slugger, cranked one over the Green Monster with two men on base. (The Bombers won the game and went on to win their 22nd World Series.) And in the sixth game of the 1986 series against the Mets, just one out away from the championship, the Sox defense managed to bungle a series of easy plays so badly that they lost the game—and the next one, and the series. The Curse of the Bambino, it seemed, would never die.
But in 2004, the team’s luck changed. The Yanks had been three games up in the American League Championship Series, but Boston made a miraculous comeback and swept the last four. After that, it turned out, the Series itself was pretty dull. The St. Louis Cardinals were the NL champs and they had the best regular-season record in the majors, but in the series, their pitching was weak and their batting was worse. The Sox won the first three games handily. By the fourth, the Sox were playing like they won the Series every year. Johnny Damon led off with a homer that smashed into the St. Louis bullpen; Trot Nixon’s bases-loaded double in the third scored two more; pitcher Derek Lowe gave up just three hits in seven innings. The game’s end was as mundane as the rest of the series had been: Edgar Renteria plunked an easy grounder to closer Keith Foulke, who tossed the ball to first baseman Doug Mientkeiwicz in plenty of time for the out. The team mobbed the field; the crowd went wild. "This," wrote a columnist for the Globe, "is what it must have felt like in 1918."
In the 2007 World Series, the Sox did it again—they swept the Rockies for another easy victory. For now, they’ve won more championships in the 21st century than any other team.
Shit, it's been ten years, wow. I was in grad school and we were all watching it on our laptops, pretending to be taking notes. Amazing series, the curse overcome.
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Oct 28, 1998
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-bill-clinton-signs-the-digital-millennium-copyright-act-into-law (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-bill-clinton-signs-the-digital-millennium-copyright-act-into-law)
President Bill Clinton signs the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law
According to an ABC news report, it was none other than the pop icon Prince himself who happened upon a 29-second home video of a toddler cavorting to a barely audible background soundtrack of his 1984 hit "Let's Go Crazy" and subsequently instigated a high-profile legal showdown involving YouTube, the Universal Music Group and a Pennsylvania housewife named Stephanie Lenz. Like the lawsuits that eventually shut down Napster, the case involved a piece of federal legislation that has helped establish a legal minefield surrounding the use of digital music in the age of the Internet. That legislation, called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on this day in 1998.
The DMCA bill was heavily supported by the content industries—Hollywood, the music business and book publishers—during its legislative journey through the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The DMCA was written in order to strengthen existing federal copyright protections against new threats posed by the Internet and by the democratization of high technology. But included in the legislation as it was eventually enacted was a "safe harbor" provision granting companies operating platforms for user-contributed content protection from liability for acts of copyright infringement by those users. It was this provision that the operators of file-sharing platforms like Grokster and Napster tried to hide behind during their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves against DMCA-inspired litigation in the early 2000s.
The DMCA explicitly authorized copyright holders to issue "takedown" notices to individuals or companies believed to be engaging in infringing use of a copyrighted work. The allegation of infringing use in the case of the "Let's Go Crazy" toddler came from Universal Music Group acting in its capacity as Prince's music publisher in June 2007, and YouTube responded by immediately removing the offending video along with roughly 200 others also deemed by Universal to be in violation of the law. Stephanie Lenz appealed YouTube's takedown of her home video on the basis that the barely audible Prince clip conformed with the long-established doctrine of Fair Use. The video was restored when Universal failed to file a formal infringement lawsuit against Lenz within two weeks, but the legal thicket created by the DMCA has yet to be fully resolved by the courts or by Congress.
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Oct 29, 1929
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/stock-market-crashes (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/stock-market-crashes)
Stock market crashes
Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression.
During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, a period of wild speculation. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other causes of the eventual market collapse were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a weak agriculture, and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated.
Stock prices began to decline in September and early October 1929, and on October 18 the fall began. Panic set in, and on October 24—Black Thursday—a record 12,894,650 shares were traded. Investment companies and leading bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday. On Monday, however, the storm broke anew, and the market went into free fall. Black Monday was followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely.
After October 29, 1929, stock prices had nowhere to go but up, so there was considerable recovery during succeeding weeks. Overall, however, prices continued to drop as the United States slumped into the Great Depression, and by 1932 stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929. The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate the global economic collapse of which it was also a symptom. By 1933, nearly half of America's banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce. It would take World War II, and the massive level of armaments production taken on by the United States, to finally bring the country out of the Depression after a decade of suffering.
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You shouldve gone out with a bang, so good bye...
Berlin Wall came down this day, I can't remember how many years ago, but they're celebrating that in Germany today...
Remembrance Day of WW1 here in London England.
xL
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You shouldve gone out with a bang, so good bye...
Berlin Wall came down this day, I can't remember how many years ago, but they're celebrating that in Germany today...
Remembrance Day of WW1 here in London England.
xL
'89, woman, but you are far too nutty, or far to Joon for me to reply, so this didn't happen.
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I have decided not to continue this thread any longer.
It was fun for me, but I do not want to feel obligated to make a daily post.
Mods, feel free to unsticky.
I guess this is thread is like booze.
fucking quitter.
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1814
Napoleon exiled to Elba
On this day in 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba.
The future emperor was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on August 15, 1769. After attending military school, he fought during the French Revolution of 1789 and rapidly rose through the military ranks, leading French troops in a number of successful campaigns throughout Europe in the late 1700s. By 1799, he had established himself at the top of a military dictatorship. In 1804, he became emperor of France and continued to consolidate power through his military campaigns, so that by 1810 much of Europe came under his rule. Although Napoleon developed a reputation for being power-hungry and insecure, he is also credited with enacting a series of important political and social reforms that had a lasting impact on European society, including judiciary systems, constitutions, voting rights for all men and the end of feudalism. Additionally, he supported education, science and literature. His Code Napoleon, which codified key freedoms gained during the French Revolution, such as religious tolerance, remains the foundation of French civil law.
In 1812, thinking that Russia was plotting an alliance with England, Napoleon launched an invasion against the Russians that eventually ended with his troops retreating from Moscow and much of Europe uniting against him. In 1814, Napoleon’s broken forces gave up and Napoleon offered to step down in favor of his son. When this offer was rejected, he abdicated and was sent to Elba. In March 1815, he escaped his island exile and returned to Paris, where he regained supporters and reclaimed his emperor title, Napoleon I, in a period known as the Hundred Days. However, in June 1815, he was defeated at the bloody Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon’s defeat ultimately signaled the end of France’s domination of Europe. He abdicated for a second time and was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena, in the southern Atlantic Ocean, where he lived out the rest of his days. He died at age 52 on May 5, 1821, possibly from stomach cancer, although some theories contend he was poisoned.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/napoleon-exiled-to-elba?cmpid=Social_FBPAGE_HISTORY_20150411_166869118&linkId=13462842
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video
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
1861
The Civil War begins
1945
President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies
1961
First man in space
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April 26, 1986
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nuclear-disaster-at-chernobyl (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nuclear-disaster-at-chernobyl)
Nuclear disaster at Chernobyl
On April 26, 1986, the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union. Thirty-two people died and dozens more suffered radiation burns in the opening days of the crisis, but only after Swedish authorities reported the fallout did Soviet authorities reluctantly admit that an accident had occurred.
The Chernobyl station was situated at the settlement of Pripyat, about 65 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine. Built in the late 1970s on the banks of the Pripyat River, Chernobyl had four reactors, each capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of electric power. On the evening of April 25, 1986, a group of engineers began an electrical-engineering experiment on the Number 4 reactor. The engineers, who had little knowledge of reactor physics, wanted to see if the reactor’s turbine could run emergency water pumps on inertial power.
As part of their poorly designed experiment, the engineers disconnected the reactor’s emergency safety systems and its power-regulating system. Next, they compounded this recklessness with a series of mistakes: They ran the reactor at a power level so low that the reaction became unstable, and then removed too many of the reactor’s control rods in an attempt to power it up again. The reactor’s output rose to more than 200 megawatts but was proving increasingly difficult to control. Nevertheless, at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, the engineers continued with their experiment and shut down the turbine engine to see if its inertial spinning would power the reactor’s water pumps. In fact, it did not adequately power the water pumps, and without cooling water the power level in the reactor surged.
To prevent meltdown, the operators reinserted all the 200-some control rods into the reactor at once. The control rods were meant to reduce the reaction but had a design flaw: graphite tips. So, before the control rod’s five meters of absorbent material could penetrate the core, 200 graphite tips simultaneously entered, thus facilitating the reaction and causing an explosion that blew off the heavy steel and concrete lid of the reactor. It was not a nuclear explosion, as nuclear power plants are incapable of producing such a reaction, but was chemical, driven by the ignition of gases and steam that were generated by the runaway reaction. In the explosion and ensuing fire, more than 50 tons of radioactive material were released into the atmosphere, where it was carried by air currents.
On April 27, Soviet authorities began an evacuation of the 30,000 inhabitants of Pripyat. A cover-up was attempted, but on April 28 Swedish radiation monitoring stations, more than 800 miles to the northwest of Chernobyl, reported radiation levels 40 percent higher than normal. Later that day, the Soviet news agency acknowledged that a major nuclear accident had occurred at Chernobyl.
In the opening days of the crisis, 32 people died at Chernobyl and dozens more suffered radiation burns. The radiation that escaped into the atmosphere, which was several times that produced by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was spread by the wind over Northern and Eastern Europe, contaminating millions of acres of forest and farmland. An estimated 5,000 Soviet citizens eventually died from cancer and other radiation-induced illnesses caused by their exposure to the Chernobyl radiation, and millions more had their health adversely affected. In 2000, the last working reactors at Chernobyl were shut down and the plant was officially closed.
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April 27, 1667
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-milton-sells-the-copyright-to-paradise-lost (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-milton-sells-the-copyright-to-paradise-lost)
John Milton sells the copyright to Paradise Lost
Blind poet John Milton sells the copyright to his masterpiece Paradise Lost (1667) for a mere 10 pounds.
Milton was born and raised the indulged son of a prosperous London businessman. He excelled at languages in grammar school and at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he took a bachelor’s and a master’s, which he completed in 1632. He then decided to continue his own education, spending six years reading every major work of literature in several languages. He published an elegy for a college classmate, Lycidas, in 1637 and went abroad in 1638 to continue his studies.
In 1642, Milton married 17-year-old Mary Powell, who left him just weeks later. Milton wrote a series of pamphlets arguing for the institution of divorce based on incompatibility. The idea, however mild it seems today, was scandalous at the time, and Milton experienced a vehement backlash for his writing.
Milton’s wife returned to him in 1645, and the pair had three daughters. However, he continued espousing controversial views. He supported the execution of Charles I, he railed against the control of the church by bishops, and he upheld the institution of Cromwell’s commonwealth, for which he became secretary of foreign languages.
In 1651, he lost his sight but fulfilled his government duties with the help of assistants, including poet Andrew Marvell. His wife died the following year. He remarried in 1656, but his second wife died in childbirth. Four years later, the commonwealth was overturned, and Milton was thrown in jail, saved only by the intervention of friends. The blind man lost his position and property.
He remarried in 1663. Blind, impoverished, and jobless, he began to dictate his poem Paradise Lost to his family. When the poem was ready for publication, he sold it for 10 pounds. Once printed, the poem was immediately hailed as a masterpiece of the English language. In 1671, he wrote Paradise Regained, followed by Samson Agonistes. He died in 1674.
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April 28, 1967
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/muhammad-ali-refuses-army-induction (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/muhammad-ali-refuses-army-induction)
Muhammad Ali refuses Army induction
On April 28, 1967, boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the U.S. Army and is immediately stripped of his heavyweight title. Ali, a Muslim, cited religious reasons for his decision to forgo military service.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 14, 1942, the future three-time world champ changed his name to Muhammad Ali in 1964 after converting to Islam. He scored a gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome and made his professional boxing debut against Tunney Husaker on October 29, 1960, winning the bout in six rounds. On February 25, 1964, he defeated the heavily favored bruiser Sonny Liston in six rounds to become heavyweight champ.
On April 28, 1967, with the United States at war in Vietnam, Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces, saying “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” On June 20, 1967, Ali was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and banned from boxing for three years. He stayed out of prison as his case was appealed and returned to the ring on October 26, 1970, knocking out Jerry Quarry in Atlanta in the third round. On March 8, 1971, Ali fought Joe Frazier in the “Fight of the Century” and lost after 15 rounds, the first loss of his professional boxing career. On June 28 of that same year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction for evading the draft.
At a January 24, 1974, rematch at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Ali defeated Frazier by decision in 12 rounds. On October 30 of that same year, an underdog Ali bested George Forman and reclaimed his heavyweight champion belt at the hugely hyped “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire, with a knockout in the eighth round. On October 1, 1975, Ali met Joe Frazier for a third time at the “Thrilla in Manila” in the Philippines and defeated him in 14 rounds. On February 15, 1978, Ali lost the title to Leon Spinks in a 15-round split decision. However, seven months later, on September 15, Ali won it back. In June 1979, Ali announced he was retiring from boxing. He returned to the ring on October 2, 1980, and fought heavyweight champ Larry Holmes, who knocked him out in the 11th round. After losing to Trevor Berbick on December 11, 1981, Ali left the ring for the final time, with a 56-5 record. He is the only fighter to be heavyweight champion three times. In 1984, it was revealed Ali had Parkinson’s disease.
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April 29, 1429
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/joan-of-arc-relieves-orleans (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/joan-of-arc-relieves-orleans)
Joan of Arc relieves Orleans
During the Hundred Years’ War, the 17-year-old French peasant Joan of Arc leads a French force in relieving the city of Orleans, besieged by the English since October.
At the age of 16, “voices” of Christian saints told Joan to aid Charles, the French dauphin, in gaining the French throne and expelling the English from France. Convinced of the validity of her divine mission, Charles furnished Joan with a small force of troops. She led her troops to Orleans, and on April 29, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of the city, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate. Bringing needed supplies and troops into the besieged city, she also inspired the French to a passionate resistance and through the next week led the charge during a number of skirmishes and battles. On one occasion, she was even hit by an arrow, but after dressing her wounds she returned to the battle. On May 8, the siege of Orleans was broken, and the English retreated.
During the next five weeks, Joan led French forces into a number of stunning victories over the English, and Reims, the traditional city of coronation, was captured in July. Later that month, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan of Arc kneeling at his feet.
In May 1430, while leading another military expedition against the English occupiers of France, Bourguignon soldiers captured Joan and sold her to the English, who tried her for heresy. She was tried as a heretic and witch, convicted, and on May 30, 1431, burned at the stake at Rouen. In 1920, Joan of Arc, already one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
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April 30, 1803
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/louisiana-purchase-concluded (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/louisiana-purchase-concluded)
Louisiana Purchase concluded
On April 30, 1803, representatives of the United States and Napoleonic France conclude negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, a massive land sale that doubles the size of the young American republic. What was known as Louisiana Territory comprised most of modern-day United States between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the exceptions of Texas, parts of New Mexico, and other pockets of land already controlled by the United States. A formal treaty for the Louisiana Purchase, antedated to April 30, was signed two days later.
Beginning in the 17th century, France explored the Mississippi River valley and established scattered settlements in the region. By the middle of the 18th century, France controlled more of the modern United States than any other European power: from New Orleans northeast to the Great Lakes and northwest to modern-day Montana. In 1762, during the French and Indian War, France ceded its America territory west of the Mississippi River to Spain and in 1763 transferred nearly all of its remaining North American holdings to Great Britain. Spain, no longer a dominant European power, did little to develop Louisiana Territory during the next three decades. In 1796, Spain allied itself with France, leading Britain to use its powerful navy to cut off Spain from America.
In 1801, Spain signed a secret treaty with France to return Louisiana Territory to France. Reports of the retrocession caused considerable uneasiness in the United States. Since the late 1780s, Americans had been moving westward into the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys, and these settlers were highly dependent on free access to the Mississippi River and the strategic port of New Orleans. U.S. officials feared that France, resurgent under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, would soon seek to dominate the Mississippi River and access to the Gulf of Mexico. In a letter to Robert Livingston, the U.S. minister to France, President Thomas Jefferson stated, “The day that France takes possession of New Orleans…we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.” Livingston was ordered to negotiate with French minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand for the purchase of New Orleans.
France was slow in taking control of Louisiana, but in 1802 Spanish authorities, apparently acting under French orders, revoked a U.S.-Spanish treaty that granted Americans the right to store goods in New Orleans. In response, President Jefferson sent future president James Monroe to Paris to aid Livingston in the New Orleans purchase talks. On April 11, 1803, the day before Monroe’s arrival, Talleyrand asked a surprised Livingston what the United States would give for all of Louisiana Territory. It is believed that the failure of France to put down a slave revolution in Haiti, the impending war with Great Britain and probable Royal Navy blockade of France, and financial difficulties may all have prompted Napoleon to offer Louisiana for sale to the United States.
Negotiations moved swiftly, and at the end of April the U.S. envoys agreed to pay $11,250,000 and assumed claims of its citizens against France in the amount of $3,750,000. In exchange, the United States acquired the vast domain of Louisiana Territory, some 828,000 square miles of land. In October, Congress ratified the purchase, and in December 1803 France formally transferred authority over the region to the United States. The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory for the bargain price of less than three cents an acre was Thomas Jefferson’s most notable achievement as president. American expansion westward into the new lands began immediately, and in 1804 a territorial government was established. On April 30, 1812, exactly nine years after the Louisiana Purchase agreement was made, the first of 13 states to be carved from the territory–Louisiana–was admitted into the Union as the 18th U.S. state.
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May 1, 1963
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/an-american-tops-everest (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/an-american-tops-everest)
An American tops Everest
James Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, becomes the first American to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.
Located in the central Himalayas on the border of China and Nepal, Everest stands 29,028 feet above sea level. Called Chomo-Lungma, or “Mother Goddess of the Land,” by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, an early 19th-century British surveyor of the Himalayas. In May 1953, climber and explorer Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal made the first successful climb of the peak. Queen Elizabeth II later knighted Hillary for the achievement. Ten years later, American James Whittaker reached Everest’s summit with his Sherpa climbing partner, Nawang Gombu. The first American woman to successfully climb Everest was Stacy Allison in 1988.
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May 2, 1933
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Loch Ness Monster sighted
Although accounts of an aquatic beast living in Scotland’s Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, the modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster is born when a sighting makes local news on May 2, 1933. The newspaper Inverness Courier related an account of a local couple who claimed to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (a moniker chosen by the Courier editor) became a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound sterling reward for capture of the beast.
Loch Ness, located in the Scottish Highlands, has the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain; the body of water reaches a depth of nearly 800 feet and a length of about 23 miles. Scholars of the Loch Ness Monster find a dozen references to “Nessie” in Scottish history, dating back to around A.D. 500, when local Picts carved a strange aquatic creature into standing stones near Loch Ness. The earliest written reference to a monster in Loch Ness is a 7th-century biography of Saint Columba, the Irish missionary who introduced Christianity to Scotland. In 565, according to the biographer, Columba was on his way to visit the king of the northern Picts near Inverness when he stopped at Loch Ness to confront a beast that had been killing people in the lake. Seeing a large beast about to attack another man, Columba intervened, invoking the name of God and commanding the creature to “go back with all speed.” The monster retreated and never killed another man.
In 1933, a new road was completed along Loch Ness’ shore, affording drivers a clear view of the loch. After an April 1933 sighting was reported in the local paper on May 2, interest steadily grew, especially after another couple claimed to have seen the beast on land, crossing the shore road. Several British newspapers sent reporters to Scotland, including London’s Daily Mail, which hired big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to capture the beast. After a few days searching the loch, Wetherell reported finding footprints of a large four-legged animal. In response, the Daily Mail carried the dramatic headline: “MONSTER OF LOCH NESS IS NOT LEGEND BUT A FACT.” Scores of tourists descended on Loch Ness and sat in boats or decks chairs waiting for an appearance by the beast. Plaster casts of the footprints were sent to the British Natural History Museum, which reported that the tracks were that of a hippopotamus, specifically one hippopotamus foot, probably stuffed. The hoax temporarily deflated Loch Ness Monster mania, but stories of sightings continued.
A famous 1934 photograph seemed to show a dinosaur-like creature with a long neck emerging out of the murky waters, leading some to speculate that “Nessie” was a solitary survivor of the long-extinct plesiosaurs. The aquatic plesiosaurs were thought to have died off with the rest of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Loch Ness was frozen solid during the recent ice ages, however, so this creature would have had to have made its way up the River Ness from the sea in the past 10,000 years. And the plesiosaurs, believed to be cold-blooded, would not long survive in the frigid waters of Loch Ness. More likely, others suggested, it was an archeocyte, a primitive whale with a serpentine neck that is thought to have been extinct for 18 million years. Skeptics argued that what people were seeing in Loch Ness were “seiches”–oscillations in the water surface caused by the inflow of cold river water into the slightly warmer loch.
Amateur investigators kept an almost constant vigil, and in the 1960s several British universities launched expeditions to Loch Ness, using sonar to search the deep. Nothing conclusive was found, but in each expedition the sonar operators detected large, moving underwater objects they could not explain. In 1975, Boston’s Academy of Applied Science combined sonar and underwater photography in an expedition to Loch Ness. A photo resulted that, after enhancement, appeared to show the giant flipper of a plesiosaur-like creature. Further sonar expeditions in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in more tantalizing, if inconclusive, readings. Revelations in 1994 that the famous 1934 photo was a hoax hardly dampened the enthusiasm of tourists and professional and amateur investigators to the legend of the Loch Ness Monster.
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May 3, 2007
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/british-girl-goes-missing-in-portugal (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/british-girl-goes-missing-in-portugal)
British girl goes missing in Portugal
On this day in 2007, less than two weeks before her fourth birthday, Madeleine McCann of Rothley, England, vanishes during a family vacation at a resort in southern Portugal. McCann’s disappearance prompted an international search; however, she has never been found.
In May 2007, the McCann family—parents Gerry and Kate McCann, Madeleine and her 2-year-old twin siblings Sean and Amelie—were vacationing with a group of friends at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz (“Beach of Light”), a tourist village along Portugal’s Algarve coast. On the evening of May 3, Gerry and Kate McCann went with friends to the Ocean Club’s tapas bar, leaving a sleeping Madeleine and her brother and sister in the family’s ground-floor apartment, located near the tapas bar. The McCanns and their friends agreed to check on the children every half hour. At around 10 p.m., Kate McCann went to the apartment and discovered Madeleine was missing.
Portuguese police initially believed the little girl had wandered off and would be quickly found. As a result, they failed to promptly distribute a description of the missing child or search cars crossing the Portugal-Spain border, less than two hours from Praia da Luz.
McCann’s disappearance generated widespread media coverage in Europe and beyond. English soccer star David Beckham made a televised plea for her safe return, and “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling reportedly donated millions to help find the little girl. Gerry and Kate McCann, observant Catholics, also had an audience in Rome with Pope Benedict, who blessed a photo of Madeleine.
On September 7, 2007, Portuguese officials named Gerry and Kate McCann, both of whom are physicians, as suspects in their daughter’s disappearance. Soon after, authorities leaked word that Madeleine’s DNA had been discovered in the trunk of the car her parents rented in Portugal almost a month after she vanished. There was speculation that the McCanns, in order to enjoy an evening out, had given their children sedatives and that Madeleine had a fatal reaction to the dosage she received. Afterward, the McCanns faked her abduction and hid her body for weeks before transferring it to the trunk of their rental car. Gerry and Kate McCann labeled this theory ridiculous, particularly given the fact that they were under intense media scrutiny and constantly followed by reporters. The local Portuguese police chief later admitted that the DNA tests were inconclusive.
In July 2008, Gerry and Kate McCann were formally cleared by Portuguese officials of any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance. A third person who had been considered the case’s only other formal suspect, a British man living in Portugal, was cleared as well. Additionally, Portugal’s attorney general said there was insufficient evidence for police to continue their investigation.
The McCanns hired private detectives to keep looking for their daughter and have made publicity tours throughout Europe and the U.S. to raise awareness about her plight. In November 2010, the couple signed a deal to write a book about their search for Madeleine, the proceeds of which will go toward continuing to fund the investigation.
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May 4, 1970
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/four-students-killed-at-kent-state (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/four-students-killed-at-kent-state)
Four students killed at Kent State
At Kent State University, 100 National Guardsmen fire their rifles into a group of students, killing four and wounding 11. This incident occurred in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon’s April 30 announcement that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces had been ordered to execute an “incursion” into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases there. In protest, a wave of demonstrations and disturbances erupted on college campuses across the country.
At Kent State University in Ohio, student protesters torched the ROTC building on campus and Ohio Governor James Rhodes responded by calling on the National Guard to restore order. Under harassment from the demonstrators, the Guardsmen fired into the crowd, killing four and wounding 11. The Guardsmen were later brought to trial for the shootings, but found not guilty.
President Nixon issued a statement deploring the Kent State deaths, but said that the incident should serve as a reminder that, “When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy.” The shooting sparked hundreds of protests and college shutdowns, as well as a march on Washington, D.C., by 100,000 people. The National Student Association and former Vietnam Moratorium Committee leaders called for a national university strike of indefinite duration, beginning immediately, to protest the war. At least 100 colleges and universities pledged to strike. The presidents of 37 universities signed a letter urging President Nixon to show more clearly his determination to end the war.
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May 5, 1821
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/napoleon-dies-in-exile (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/napoleon-dies-in-exile)
Napoleon dies in exile
Napoleon Bonaparte, the former French ruler who once ruled an empire that stretched across Europe, dies as a British prisoner on the remote island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
The Corsica-born Napoleon, one of the greatest military strategists in history, rapidly rose in the ranks of the French Revolutionary Army during the late 1790s. By 1799, France was at war with most of Europe, and Napoleon returned home from his Egyptian campaign to take over the reigns of the French government and save his nation from collapse. After becoming first consul in February 1800, he reorganized his armies and defeated Austria. In 1802, he established the Napoleonic Code, a new system of French law, and in 1804 was crowned emperor of France in Notre Dame Cathedral. By 1807, Napoleon controlled an empire that stretched from the River Elbe in the north, down through Italy in the south, and from the Pyrenees to the Dalmatian coast.
Beginning in 1812, Napoleon began to encounter the first significant defeats of his military career, suffering through a disastrous invasion of Russia, losing Spain to the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War, and enduring total defeat against an allied force by 1814. Exiled to the island of Elba, he escaped to France in early 1815 and raised a new Grand Army that enjoyed temporary success before its crushing defeat at Waterloo against an allied force under Wellington on June 18, 1815. Napoleon was subsequently exiled to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa. Six years later, he died, most likely of stomach cancer, and in 1840 his body was returned to Paris, where it was interred in the Hotel des Invalides.
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May 6, 2013
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ohio-kidnap-victims-rescued-after-years-in-captivity (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ohio-kidnap-victims-rescued-after-years-in-captivity)
Ohio kidnap victims rescued after years in captivity
On this day in 2013, three women are rescued from a Cleveland, Ohio, house where they had been imprisoned for many years by their abductor, 52-year-old Ariel Castro, an unemployed bus driver.The women—Michelle Knight, Amada Berry and Gina DeJesus—went missing separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 21, 16 and 14 years old, respectively. Also rescued from the house was a 6-year-old girl born to Berry while she was being held captive and fathered by Castro.
Castro abducted each of the women, who had been acquaintances of his children, by giving them a ride in his car then luring them into his home in a working-class Cleveland neighborhood, where they were tortured and kept locked up. During their years in captivity, the women were beaten, sexually assaulted, restrained by chains and starved. Knight told authorities she became pregnant by Castro five times and each time he punched and kicked her to force a miscarriage. Additionally, Castro ordered Knight to help deliver Berry’s baby, threatening to kill Knight if anything went wrong. In all the years they were held hostage, the women were allowed into the backyard of Castro’s dilapidated, two-story house just a few times, and only when disguised in wigs and sunglasses.
Meanwhile, Castro led a double life: driving a school bus, chatting with neighbors, playing bass in local bands and posting to his Facebook page. That came to an end on the evening of May 6, 2013, when Berry stood at the front door of Castro’s house after he’d gone out, and screamed for help. In response, neighbors kicked in the door and Berry escaped with her daughter then called 911. When police arrived at the house, they rescued Knight and DeJesus. Castro was arrested in the area that same night.
On July 26, 2013, in a deal that allowed Castro to avoid a possible death sentence, he pleaded guilty to more than 900 charges against him, including kidnapping, rape and aggravated murder (for causing Knight to miscarry). On August 1, a judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 1,000 years. A month later, on September 3, Castro was found dead in his prison cell after hanging himself with a sheet.
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May 7, 1896
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-serial-killer-is-hanged (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-serial-killer-is-hanged)
A serial killer is hanged
Dr. H. H. Holmes, one of America’s first well-known serial killers, is hanged to death in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although his criminal exploits were just as extensive and occurred during the same time period as Jack the Ripper, the Arch Fiend–as Holmes was known–has not endured in the public’s memory the way the Ripper has.
Born with the unfortunate moniker Herman Mudgett in New Hampshire, Holmes began torturing animals as a child. Still, he was a smart boy who later graduated from the University of Michigan with a medical degree. Holmes financed his education with a series of insurance scams whereby he requested coverage for nonexistent people and then presented corpses as the insured.
In 1886, Holmes moved to Chicago to work as a pharmacist. A few months later, he bought the pharmacy from the owner’s widow after his death. She thenmysteriously disappeared. With a new series of cons, Holmes raised enough money to build a giant, elaborate home across from the store.
The home, which Holmes called “The Castle,” had secret passageways, fake walls, and trapdoors. Some of the rooms were soundproof and connected by pipes to a gas tank in the basement. Hisbedroom had controls that could fill these rooms with gas. Holmes’ basement also contained a lab with equipment used for his dissections.
Young women in the area, along with tourists who had come to see the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and had rented out rooms in Holmes’ castle, suddenly began disappearing. Medical schools purchased many human skeletons from Dr. Holmes during this period but never asked how he obtained the anatomy specimens.
Holmes was finally caught after attempting to use another corpse in an insurance scam. He confessed, saying, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing.”
Reportedly, authorities discovered the remains of over 200 victims on his property.
Devil in the White City, a book about Holmes’ murder spree and the World Fair by Erik Larson, was published in 2003.
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May 8, 1988
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/woman-convicted-for-tampering-with-excedrin (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/woman-convicted-for-tampering-with-excedrin)
Woman convicted for tampering with Excedrin
Stella Nickell is convicted on two counts of murder by a Seattle, Washington, jury. She was the first person to be found guilty of violating the Federal Anti-Tampering Act after putting cyanide in Excedrin capsules in an effort to kill her husband.
Stella and Bruce Nickell married in 1976, shortly after seven people were killed in Chicago, Illinois, from poisoned Tylenol pills. According to Stella’s daughter from a previous marriage, Stella had begun planning Bruce’s murder almost from the honeymoon. The Chicago Tylenol incident (which was never solved) had a lasting impact on Stella, who decided that cyanide would be a good method of murder.
In 1985, Stella took out a life insurance policy on Bruce that included a substantial indemnity payment for accidental death. A year later, Stella put cyanide in an Excedrin capsule that Bruce later took for a headache. He died in the hospital, but doctors did not detect the cyanide and ascribed the death to emphysema. Stella, who stood to lose $100,000 if his death wasn’t ruled an accident, decided to alter her plan.
Nickell tampered with five additional bottles of Excedrin and placed them on store shelves in the Seattle area. Six days later, Susan Snow took one of these capsules and died instantly. After her death was reported in the news, Stella called police to tell them that she thought her husband had also been poisoned.
When investigators came toNickell’s home to pick up the Excedrin bottle, she told them that there were two bottles and that she had purchased them on different days at different places. When both turned out to contain contaminated capsules, investigators grew suspicious. FBI detectives knew that it was an unlikely coincidence that Nickell had purchased two of four known contaminated bottles purely by chance. Still, hard evidence against her was hard to come by until January 1988.
Cynthia Hamilton, Stella’s daughter, came forward (possibly in order to obtain reward money) with her account of Stella’s plan to kill her husband. She told authorities that her mother had done extensive research at the library. When detectives investigated, they found that Stella had borrowed, but never returned, a book called Human Poisoning. Her fingerprints were also found all over other books on cyanide.
Nickell was given two 90-year sentences for the murders of her husband and Susan Snow. She will be eligible for parole in 2018. New evidence in the case has led some to believe that Nickell might be innocent.
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May 9, 1671
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/captain-blood-steals-crown-jewels (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/captain-blood-steals-crown-jewels)
Captain Blood steals crown jewels
In London, Thomas Blood, an Irish adventurer better known as “Captain Blood,” is captured attempting to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
Blood, a Parliamentarian during the English Civil War, was deprived of his estate in Ireland with the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660. In 1663, he put himself at the head of a plot to seize Dublin Castle from supporters of King Charles II, but the plot was discovered and his accomplices executed. He escaped capture. In 1671, he hatched a bizarre plan to steal the new Crown Jewels, which had been refashioned by Charles II because most of the original jewels were melted down after Charles I’s execution in 1649.
On May 9, 1671, Blood, disguised as a priest, managed to convince the Jewel House keeper to hand over his pistols. Blood’s three accomplices then emerged from the shadows, and together they forced their way into the Jewel House. However, they were caught in the act when the keeper’s son showed up unexpectedly, and an alarm went out to the Tower guard. One man shoved the Royal Orb down his breeches while Blood flattened the Crown with a mallet and tried to run off with it. The Tower guards apprehended and arrested all four of the perpetrators, and Blood was brought before the king. Charles was so impressed with Blood’s audacity that, far from punishing him, he restored his estates in Ireland and made him a member of his court with an annual pension.
Captain Blood became a colorful celebrity all across the kingdom, and when he died in 1680 his body had to be exhumed in order to persuade the public that he was actually dead.
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May 10, 1940
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/churchill-becomes-prime-minister (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/churchill-becomes-prime-minister)
Churchill becomes prime minister
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, is called to replace Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister following the latter’s resignation after losing a confidence vote in the House of Commons.
In 1938, Prime Minister Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, giving Czechoslovakia over to German conquest but bringing, as Chamberlain promised, “peace in our time.” In September 1939, that peace was shattered by Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Chamberlain declared war against Germany but during the next eight months showed himself to be ill-equipped for the daunting task of saving Europe from Nazi conquest. After British forces failed to prevent the German occupation of Norway in April 1940, Chamberlain lost the support of many members of his Conservative Party. On May 10, Hitler invaded Holland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The same day, Chamberlain formally lost the confidence of the House of Commons.
Churchill, who was known for his military leadership ability, was appointed British prime minister in his place. He formed an all-party coalition and quickly won the popular support of Britons. On May 13, in his first speech before the House of Commons, Prime Minister Churchill declared that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” and offered an outline of his bold plans for British resistance. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would “never surrender.” They never did.
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May 11, 1949
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-queen-of-poisoners-takes-her-toll (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-queen-of-poisoners-takes-her-toll)
The Queen of Poisoners takes her toll
The body of Leon Besnard is exhumed in Loudun, France, by authorities searching for evidence of poison. For years, local residents had been suspicious of his wife Marie, as they watched nearly her entire family die untimely and mysterious deaths. Law enforcement officials finally began investigating Marie after the death of her mother earlier in the year.
Marie married Leon in August 1929. The couple resented the fact that they lived relatively modestly while their families were so well off. When two of Leon’s great aunts perished unexpectedly, most of their money was left to Leon’s parents. Consequently, the Besnards invited Leon’s parents to live with them.
Shortly after moving in, Leon’s father died, ostensibly from eating a bad mushroom. Three months later, his widow also died and neighbors began chatting about a Besnard family jinx. The inheritance was split between Leon and his sister, Lucie. Not so surprisingly, the newly rich Lucie died shortly thereafter, supposedly taking her own life.
Becoming increasingly greedy, the Besnards began looking outside the family for their next victim. They took in the Rivets as boarders, who, under the Besnards’ care, also died abruptly. No one was too surprised when the Rivets’ will indicated Marie as the sole beneficiary.
Pauline and Virginie Lallerone, cousins of the Besnards, were next in line. When Pauline died, Marie explained that she had mistakenly eaten a bowl of lye. Apparently, her sister Virginie didn’t learn her lesson about carelessness, because when she died a week later, Marie told everyone that she too had inadvertently eaten lye.
When Marie fell in love with another man in 1947, Leon fell victim to her poisoning as well. Traces of arsenic were found in his exhumed body, as well as in the rest of her family’s corpses. But Marie didn’t let a little bit of pesky evidence get in her way. She managed to get a mistrial twice after trace evidence was lost while conducting the tests for poison each time. By her third trial, there wasn’t much physical evidence left. On December 12, 1961, Marie Besnard was acquitted. The “Queen of Poisoners,” as the French called her, ended up getting away with 13 murders.
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May 12, 2000
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fourth-generation-nascar-driver-adam-petty-dies-in-crash (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fourth-generation-nascar-driver-adam-petty-dies-in-crash)
Fourth-generation NASCAR driver Adam Petty dies in crash
On this day in 2000, 19-year-old Adam Petty, son of Winston Cup driver Kyle Petty and grandson of National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) icon Richard Petty, is killed after crashing into a wall during practice for a Grand National race at Loudon, New Hampshire.
The young Petty was the first fourth-generation driver in NASCAR history. His great-grandfather, Lee Petty, a pioneer of NASCAR racing, died in April 2000; Adam Petty competed in his first Winston Cup three days before his great-grandfather’s death, finishing 40th. The young Petty was in his second season in the Busch Series and was planning to move to the Winston Cup circuit full time the following year. In his 29 starts during 1999, he posted three top-five and four top-10 finishes; his best was fourth place in the AutoClub 300 at California Speedway (which in 2008 was renamed the Auto Club Speedway of Southern California). In 2000, Petty’s best finish was on April 15, when he came in 12th place in the Touchstone Energy 300 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.
Petty’s death occurred around noon on May 12, 2000, at the New Hampshire International Speedway, during a practice session to qualify for the following day’s Busch 200. According to an NBC News report, his car crashed head-on into a wall while traveling at 130 miles per hour. Petty was airlifted to Concord Hospital, where he was pronounced dead of head trauma.
Just eight weeks later, driver Kenny Irwin died at Loudon after crashing into a wall at 150 mph, almost in the same spot as Petty. As reported by The Chicago Tribune, speculation about the reason for the crash focused on a stuck accelerator, which would have kept Irwin from slowing enough to make the turn. A stuck accelerator was also believed to be the reason for Petty’s crash, though NASCAR was unable to verify that information. Though some drivers criticized the track, the Tribune quoted Richard Petty, who said it was just coincidence that his grandson and Irwin were killed at almost exactly the same spot. “Those things are circumstances beyond human control,” Petty said. “There’s nothing the matter with the racetrack. It’s circumstances with the way you stop that thing so quick. Your body just can’t stand it.”
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May 13, 1568
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mary-queen-of-scots-defeated (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mary-queen-of-scots-defeated)
Mary Queen of Scots defeated
At the Battle of Langside, the forces of Mary Queen of Scots are defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, the regent of her son, King James VI of Scotland. During the battle, which was fought out in the southern suburbs of Glasgow, a cavalry charge routed Mary’s 6,000 Catholic troops, and they fled the field. Three days later, Mary escaped to Cumberland, England, where she sought protection from Queen Elizabeth I.
In 1542, while just six days old, Mary ascended to the Scottish throne upon the death of her father, King James V. Her great-uncle was Henry VIII, the Tudor king of England. Mary’s mother sent her to be raised in the French court, and in 1558 she married the French dauphin, who became King Francis II of France in 1559 and died in 1560. After Francis’ death, Mary returned to Scotland to assume her designated role as the country’s monarch. In 1565, she married her English cousin Lord Darnley, another Tudor, which reinforced her claim to the English throne and angered Queen Elizabeth.
In 1567, Darnley was mysteriously killed in an explosion at Kirk o’ Field, and Mary’s lover, James Hepburn, the earl of Bothwell, was the key suspect. Although Bothwell was acquitted of the charge, his marriage to Mary in the same year enraged the nobility, and Mary was forced to abdicate in favor of her son by Darnley, James. In 1568, she escaped from captivity and raised a substantial army but was defeated and fled to England. Queen Elizabeth I initially welcomed Mary but was soon forced to put her cousin under house arrest after Mary became the focus of various English Catholic and Spanish plots to overthrow her.
In 1586, a major Catholic plot to murder Elizabeth was uncovered, and Mary was brought to trial, convicted for complicity, and sentenced to death. On February 8, 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for treason at Fotheringhay Castle in England. Her son, King James VI of Scotland, calmly accepted his mother’s execution, and upon Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603, he became James I, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
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May 14, 1998
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/frank-sinatra-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/frank-sinatra-dies)
Frank Sinatra dies
On this day in 1998, the legendary singer, actor and show-business icon Frank Sinatra dies of a heart attack in Los Angeles, at the age of 82.
Sinatra emerged from an Italian-American family in Hoboken, New Jersey, to become the first modern superstar of popular music, with an entertainment career that spanned more than five decades. In the first incarnation of his singing career, he was a master of the romantic ballads popular during World War II. After his appeal began to wane in the late 1940s, Sinatra reinvented himself as a suave swinger with a rougher, world-weary singing style, and began a spectacular comeback in the 1950s.
In addition to his great musical success, Sinatra appeared in 58 films; one of his earliest was Anchors Aweigh (1945). Playing a cocky Italian-American soldier who meets a violent death in From Here to Eternity (1953), co-starring Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift, Sinatra won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His film career flourished after that, as he starred as Nathan Detroit in the movie musical Guys and Dolls (1955) and played a heroin addict in The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), for which he was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor. He also starred in the musicals High Society (1956) and Pal Joey (1957) and turned in a memorable performance as an Army investigator in the acclaimed film The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
By the late 1950s, Sinatra had become the epitome of show-business success and glamorous, rough-edged masculinity. He even headed up his own entourage, known as the Rat Pack, which included Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. The group had originally formed around Humphrey Bogart, who died in 1957. The Rat Pack first appeared together on the big screen in 1960’s casino caper Ocean’s Eleven. They would go on to make Sergeant’s Three (1962), Four for Texas (1963) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). Onscreen and in real life, the Pack’s famous stomping grounds included Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York (notably the Copacabana Club).
Sinatra worked steadily in film throughout the 1960s, though many of his performances seemed almost perfunctory. His last major Hollywood role came in 1980’s The First Deadly Sin. A famous heartthrob, Sinatra married four times, divorcing his longtime sweetheart Nancy Barbato after a decade and three children (Nancy, Frank Jr. and Christina) to marry the actress Ava Gardner in 1951. Their marriage lasted less than two years, and in 1966 Sinatra married the 21-year-old actress Mia Farrow, 30 years his junior; they were divorced in 1968. In 1976, he married Barbara Blakely Marx (the former wife of Zeppo Marx), and they remained together until his death.
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May 15, 1976
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-young-woman-and-her-married-lover-kill-her-family (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-young-woman-and-her-married-lover-kill-her-family)
A young woman and her married lover kill her family
Patricia Columbo and Frank DeLuca are arrested for the brutal slaying of Columbo’s parents and brother in Elk Grove, Illinois. Twenty-year-old Columbo had left her family home two years earlier to live with DeLuca, a 36-year-old married man. The pair later killed Frank, Mary, and Michael Columbo in order to receive the family inheritance, unaware that the Columbos had written Patricia out of their wills years earlier.
As a 16-year-old,Columbo worked in a suburban coffee shop where she met pharmacist Frank DeLuca, who managed the pharmacy next door. He soon hired her to work in his store and the two began an unusual sexual relationship;Columbo showed classmates pictures of her having sex with DeLuca’s dog.
In April 1974, DeLuca broughtColumbo to stay in his own home, despite the fact that he still lived with his wife and five kids. Her parents were relieved when she later told them she was going to move into her own apartment, and even provided her with money. However, they soon learned that DeLuca had left his wife and moved in with their daughter, prompting Columbo’s father to beat DeLuca severely.
On May 4, 1976, Patricia Columbo, then 19,and Frank DeLuca, 39,decided to carry out the plan themselves. They crept into the Columbo family home and shot Columbo’s parents. They then bludgeoned Mike with a bowling trophy and stabbed him nearly 100 times with scissors. Police questioned Patricia but had no reason to suspect her until the following week.
Inspired by the promise of reward money, a friend led police to the men who had discussed killing the Columbo family with Patricia. After the couple was arrested, DeLuca’s employees revealed that they had seen him washing and burning bloodstained clothes on the day after the murders. Apparently, he had kept them silent by threatening their families. While in jail, DeLuca attempted to have these witnesses killed by a cellmate, but another inmate thwarted the plan by telling the police.
The jury convicted Patricia Columbo and Frank DeLuca, and they were each sentenced to 200 to 300 years in prison. ButColumbo managed to keep herself in the spotlight: In 1979, it was reported that she had assisted in organizing sex orgies involving guards and wardens at her prison in Dwight, Illinois. High-ranking officials at the prison, including the warden, were forced to resign in the wake of the scandal.
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May 16, 1717
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/voltaire-is-imprisoned-in-the-bastille (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/voltaire-is-imprisoned-in-the-bastille)
Voltaire is imprisoned in the Bastille
Writer Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, is imprisoned in the Bastille on this day in 1717.
The outspoken writer was born to middle-class parents, attended college in Paris, and began to study law. However, he quit law to become a playwright and made a name for himself with classical tragedies. Critics embraced his epic poem, La Henriade, but its satirical attack on politics and religion infuriated the government, and Voltaire was arrested in 1717. He spent nearly a year in the Bastille.
Voltaire’s time in prison failed to dry up his satirical pen. In 1726, he was forced to flee to England. He returned several years later and continued to write plays. In 1734, his Lettres Philosophiques criticized established religions and political institutions, and he was forced to flee again. He retreated to the region of Champagne, where he lived with his mistress and patroness, Madame du Chatelet. In 1750, he moved to Berlin on the invitation of Frederick II of Prussia and later settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his best-known work, Candide. He died in Paris in 1778, having returned to supervise the production of one of his plays.
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May 17, 1954
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Brown v. Board of Ed is decided
In a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down an unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional. The historic decision, which brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl who had been denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.
In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” accommodations in railroad cars conformed to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. That ruling was used to justify segregating all public facilities, including elementary schools. However, in the case of Linda Brown, the white school she attempted to attend was far superior to her black alternative and miles closer to her home. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took up Linda’s cause, and in 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka reached the Supreme Court. African American lawyer (and future Supreme Court justice) Thurgood Marshall led Brown’s legal team, and on May 17, 1954, the high court handed down its decision.
In an opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the nation’s highest court ruled that not only was the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional in Linda’s case, it was unconstitutional in all cases because educational segregation stamped an inherent badge of inferiority on African American students. A year later, after hearing arguments on the implementation of their ruling, the Supreme Court published guidelines requiring public school systems to integrate “with all deliberate speed.”
The Brown v. Board of Education decision served to greatly motivate the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and ultimately led to the abolishment of racial segregation in all public facilities and accommodations.
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May 18, 1980
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mount-st-helens-erupts (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mount-st-helens-erupts)
Mount St. Helens erupts
Mount St. Helens in Washington erupts, causing a massive avalanche and killing 57 people on this day in 1980. Ash from the volcanic eruption fell as far away as Minnesota.
Seismic activity at Mount St. Helens, which is 96 miles south of Seattle, began on March 16. A 4.2-magnitude tremor was recorded four days later and then, on March 23-24, there were 174 different recorded tremors. The first eruption occurred on March 27, when a 250-foot wide vent opened up on top of the mountain. Ash was blasted 10,000 feet in the air, some of which came down nearly 300 miles away in Spokane. The ash caused static electricity and lightning bolts.
Authorities issued a hazard watch for a 50-mile radius around the mountain. The National Guard set up road blocks to prevent access to the area, but these were easily avoided by using the region’s unguarded logging roads. Many residents of the area evacuated, but a substantial number refused. Harry Truman, 84—no relation to the former president—was one resident who refused to move and, after receiving a great deal of positive media coverage for his decision, became a national icon as well as, later, the subject of a local memorial.
Throughout April, scientists watched a bulge on the north side of Mount St. Helens grow larger and larger. Finally, on May 18 at 8:32 a.m., a sudden 5.1-magnitude earthquake and eruption rocked the mountain. The north side of the peak rippled and blasted out ash at 650 miles per hour. A cloud of ash, rocks, gas and glacial ice roared down the side of the mountain at 100 mph. Fourteen miles of the Toutle River were buried up to 150 feet deep in the debris. Magma, at 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, flowed for miles.
The 24-megaton blast demolished a 230-square-mile area around the mountain. Geologist Dave Johnson was the closest to the eruption when it blew. He was on his radio that morning and was only able to say, Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it! before his truck was pushed over a ridge and he was killed.
Millions of trees were scorched and burned by the hot air alone. When the glacier atop the mountain melted, a massive mudslide wiped out homes and dammed up rivers throughout the area. The plume of ash belched out for nine hours; easterly winds carried it across the state and as far away as Minneapolis, Minnesota. The falling ash clogged carburetors and thousands of motorists were stranded. Fifty-seven people died overall from suffocation, burns and other assorted injuries. Twenty-seven bodies, including that of the stubborn Harry Truman, were never found. Mount St. Helens went from 9,600 feet high to only 8,300 feet high in a matter of seconds.
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May 19, 1715
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-early-years-of-species-protection (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-early-years-of-species-protection)
The early years of species protection
The colony of New York passes a law making it illegal to “gather, rake, take up, or bring to the market, any oysters whatsoever” between the months of May and September. This regulation was only one of many that were passed in the early days of America to help preserve certain species. In recent years, endangered species laws have been enacted in order to criminalize poaching for the protection of animals. However, earlier versions of these laws were more concerned with insuring that hunters would have a steady supply of game.
In 1699, Virginia passed a law to prevent people from shooting deer during half the year and Massachusetts made criminals out of those who exported raccoon furs or skins from the state in 1675.
Fish and game laws were not restricted to the East, though. After the near extinction of the buffalo (it is estimated that many millions of these animals were killed during the western expansion of the mid-to-late 1800s), it became a felony to kill buffalo anywhere across the country.
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May 20, 1506
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/christopher-columbus-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/christopher-columbus-dies)
Christopher Columbus dies
On May 20, 1506, the great Italian explorer Christopher Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain. Columbus was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century. He explored the West Indies, South America, and Central America, but died a disappointed man, feeling he had been mistreated by his patron, King Ferdinand of Spain.
Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a sailing entrepreneur. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes. Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus’ day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century. However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world’s size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed).
With only the Atlantic Ocean, he thought, lying between Europe and the riches of the East Indies, Columbus met with King John II of Portugal and tried to persuade him to back his “Enterprise of the Indies,” as he called his plan. He was rebuffed and went to Spain, where he was also rejected at least twice by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. However, after the Spanish conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in January 1492, the Spanish monarchs, flush with victory, agreed to support his voyage.
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three small ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina. On October 12, the expedition sighted land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, and went ashore the same day, claiming it for Spain. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and “Indian” captives in March 1493, and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was given the title “admiral of the ocean sea,” and a second expedition was promptly organized.
Fitted out with a large fleet of 17 ships, with 1,500 colonists aboard, Columbus set out from Cadiz in September 1493 on his second voyage to the New World. Landfall was made in the Lesser Antilles in November. Returning to Hispaniola, he found the men he left there slaughtered by the natives, and he founded a second colony. Sailing on, he explored Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and numerous smaller islands in the Caribbean. Columbus returned to Spain in June 1496 and was greeted less warmly, as the yield from the second voyage had fallen well short of its costs.
Isabella and Ferdinand, still greedy for the riches of the East, agreed to a smaller third voyage and instructed Columbus to find a strait to India. In May 1498, Columbus left Spain with six ships, three filled with colonists and three with provisions for the colony on Hispaniola. This time, he made landfall on Trinidad. He entered the Gulf of Paria in Venezuela and planted the Spanish flag on South America. By the scope of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, he realized he had stumbled upon another continent, which Columbus, a deeply religious man, decided after careful thought was the outer regions of the Garden of Eden.
Returning to Hispaniola, he found that conditions on the island had deteriorated under the rule of his brothers, Diego and Bartholomew. Columbus’ efforts to restore order were marked by brutality, and his rule came to be deeply resented by both the colonists and the native Taino chiefs. In 1500, Spanish chief justice Francisco de Bobadilla arrived at Hispaniola, sent by Isabella and Ferdinand to investigate complaints, and Columbus and his brother were sent back to Spain in chains.
He was immediately released upon his return, and Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to finance a fourth voyage in which he was to search for the earthly paradise and the realms of gold said to lie nearby. He was also to continue looking for a passage to India. In May 1502, Columbus left Cadiz on his fourth and final voyage to the New World. After returning to Hispaniola against his patron’s wishes, he explored the coast of Central America looking for a strait and for gold. Attempting to return to Hispaniola, his ships, in poor condition, had to be beached on Jamaica. Columbus and his men were marooned, but two of his captains succeed in canoeing the 450 miles to Hispaniola. Columbus was a castaway on Jamaica for a year before a rescue ship arrived.
In November 1504, Columbus returned to Spain. Queen Isabella, his chief patron, died less than three weeks later. Although Columbus enjoyed a substantial revenue from Hispaniola gold during the last years of his life, he repeatedly attempted (unsuccessfully) to gain an audience with King Ferdinand, whom he felt owed him further redress. Columbus died on May 20, 1506, without realizing the great scope of his achievement: He had discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
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May 21, 1539
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/black-spanish-explorer-estevan-is-reported-killed (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/black-spanish-explorer-estevan-is-reported-killed)
Black Spanish explorer Estevan is reported killed
Word reaches Fray Marcos that Indians have killed his guide Estevan, a black slave who was the first non-Indian to visit the pueblo lands of the American Southwest.
Thought to have been born sometime around 1500 on the west coast of Morocco, Estevan was sold to the Spanish as a slave. He ended up in the hands of Andres Dorantes de Carranza, who took him on an ill-fated expedition to Florida in 1527. A series of disasters reduced the original exploratory party of 300 to four men: Estevan, Dorantes de Carranza, Cabeza de Vaca, and Alonso del Castillo. The four survivors lived with Indians on the Gulf of Mexico for several years before finally heading west in hopes of reaching Mexico City. With the assistance of Spanish slave hunters they encountered, they finally made it to Mexico City in 1536, where their amazing story of survival caused a sensation.
Intrigued by reports by the four men of rich cities of gold to the north, the Spanish Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, immediately began to plan an expedition. The three white men, however, wished only to return to Spain and refused to serve as guides. As a slave, Estevan had no choice in the matter and he was sold to the viceroy.
In 1539, the viceroy ordered Estevan to lead the Catholic friar and explorer Fray Marcos de Niza on a preliminary mission to investigate the rumors of cities of gold. Setting out on March 7, 1539, the two men and a party of retainers headed north into the modern-day states of Arizona and New Mexico. On March 21, Marcos sent Estevan ahead to scout the territory, in part because the pious Marcos had become annoyed with Estevan’s penchant for collecting turquoise and his too-evident enjoyment of the native women.
Six days later, Estevan sent back word to Marcos that he had encountered Indians who had told him spectacular places lay ahead. Marcos took this to mean that Estevan had heard reports of one of the fabulous golden cities. The two travelers trudged on through the hot desert sands, with Estevan traveling ahead by several days and periodically sending Indian messengers back to the friar with reports. By mid-May, they were nearing the White Mountains of Arizona. On this day in 1539, another messenger came riding from the north to tell Marcos that Estevan was dead.
From the messenger, Marcos learned that Estevan had made contact with a band of Pueblo Indians. In his earlier transcontinental trek, the black man had acquired a sacred rattle used by the Plains Indian tribes. Estevan had previously found that the gourd filled with pebbles worked wonders in gaining the trust and respect of certain Indians. The Pueblo people, however, deeply feared anyone using the paraphernalia of a Plains Indian medicine man. Estevan may have also further alienated the Pueblo Indians by demanding women and treasure. After keeping him for three days, the Indians killed Estevan near the modern-day Arizona border southwest of Zuni, New Mexico.
Upon hearing this frightening news, Marcos immediately returned to Mexico City. Based on the third or fourth-hand reports from Estevan of spectacular places ahead, Marcos told the viceroy the rumored golden cities of the north might actually exist. Encouraged by the friar’s tales, the explorer Coronado headed north a year later, confidently promising to return with hordes of gold. Like Estevan and Marcos, he found no gold but he did return with a wealth of useful knowledge about the geography and people of the Southwest. However, it was the black slave Estevan, not the white nobleman Coronado, who was the first non-Indian to penetrate the southwest territory.
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May 22, 1455
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-war-of-the-roses (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-war-of-the-roses)
The War of the Roses
In the opening battle of England’s War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI’s Lancastrian forces at St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. Many Lancastrian nobles perished, including Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, and the king was forced to submit to the rule of his cousin, Richard of York. The dynastic struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a white rose, and the House of Lancaster, later associated with a red rose, would stretch on for 30 years.
Both families, closely related, claimed the throne through descent from the sons of Edward III, the king of England from 1327 to 1377. The first Lancastrian king was Henry IV in 1399, and rebellion and lawlessness were rife during his reign. His son, Henry V, was more successful and won major victories in the Hundred Years War against France. His son and successor, Henry VI, had few kingly qualities and lost most of the French land his father had conquered. At home, chaos prevailed and lords with private armies challenged Henry VI’s authority. At times, his ambitious queen, Margaret of Anjou, effectively controlled the crown.
In 1453, Henry lapsed into insanity, and in 1454 Parliament appointed Richard, duke of York, as protector of the realm. Henry and York’s grandfathers were the fourth and third sons of Edward III, respectively. When Henry recovered in late 1454, he dismissed York and restored the authority of Margaret, who saw York as a threat to the succession of their son, Prince Edward. York raised an army of 3,000 men, and in May the Yorkists marched to London. On May 22, 1455, York met Henry’s forces at St. Albans while on the northern road to the capital. The bloody encounter lasted less than an hour, and the Yorkists carried the day. The duke of Somerset, Margaret’s great ally, was killed, and Henry was captured by the Yorkists.
After the battle, Richard again was made English protector, but in 1456 Margaret regained the upper hand. An uneasy peace was broken in 1459, and in 1460 the Lancastrians were defeated, and York was granted the right to ascend to the throne upon Henry’s death. The Lancastrians then gathered forces in northern England and in December 1460 surprised and killed York outside his castle near Wakefield.
York’s son Edward reached London before Margaret and was proclaimed King Edward IV. In March 1461, Edward won a decisive victory against the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton, the bloodiest of the war. Henry, Margaret, and their son fled to Scotland, and the first phase of the war was over.
Yorkist rivalry would later lead to the overthrow of Edward in 1470 and the restoration of Henry VI. The next year, Edward returned from exile in the Netherlands, defeated Margaret’s forces, killed her son, and imprisoned Henry in the Tower of London, where he was murdered. Edward IV then ruled uninterrupted until his death in 1483. His eldest son was proclaimed Edward V, but Edward IV’s brother, Richard III, seized the crown and imprisoned Edward and his younger brother in the Tower of London, where they disappeared, probably murdered. In 1485, Richard III was defeated and killed by Lancastrians led by Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
Henry Tudor was proclaimed King Henry VII, the first Tudor king. Henry was the grandson of Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V, and Owen Tudor. In 1486, he married Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth of York, thereby uniting the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims. This event is seen as marking the end of the War of Roses; although some Yorkists supported in 1487 an unsuccessful rebellion against Henry, led by Lambert Simnel. The War of Roses left little mark on the common English people but severely thinned the ranks of the English nobility.
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May 23, 1701
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/captain-kidd-walks-the-plank (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/captain-kidd-walks-the-plank)
Captain Kidd walks the plank
At London’s Execution Dock, British privateer William Kidd, popularly known as Captain Kidd, is hanged for piracy and murder.
Born in Strathclyde, Scotland, Kidd established himself as a sea captain before settling in New York in 1690, where he bought property and married. At various times he was commissioned by New York and other American colonies to rid the coast of enemy privateers. In 1695, while on a trip to London, the recently appointed governor of New York commissioned him to defend English ships from pirates in the Red Sea. In 1696, Kidd sailed to New York aboard the Adventure Galley, enlisted men for the mission, and set sail for the Indian Ocean. The expedition met with little success and failed to capture a major prize until February 1698, when the Quedagh Merchant, an Indian vessel allegedly sailing under a French pass, was taken. Word of Kidd’s capture of the boat, which was loaded with gold, jewels, silk, sugar, and guns, aroused significant controversy in Britain, as the ship had an English captain.
Suspicions that he had turned to piracy were apparently confirmed when he sailed to St. Mary’s, Madagascar, an infamous pirate haven. From there, he traveled to the West Indies on the Quedagh Merchant, where he learned of the piracy charges against him. Intending to clear his name, he sailed to New York and delivered himself to the colonial authorities, claiming that the vessels he had attacked were lawful prizes. He was arrested and taken to London.
In 1701, he was tried on five charges of piracy and one charge of murdering a crewman. The Tories used the trial as a political opportunity to embarrass his Whig sponsors, and the latter chose to give up Kidd as a scapegoat rather than back his possibly correct claims to legitimacy. Convicted on all counts, he was executed by hanging on May 23, 1701. In later years, a colorful legend grew up around the story of William Kidd, including reports of lost buried treasure that fortune seekers have pursued for centuries.
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May 24, 1543
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/copernicus-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/copernicus-dies)
Copernicus dies
On May 24, 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus dies in what is now Frombork, Poland. The father of modern astronomy, he was the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
Prior to the publication of his major astronomical work, “Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs,” in 1543, European astronomers argued that Earth lay at the center of the universe, the view also held by most ancient philosophers and biblical writers. In addition to correctly postulating the order of the known planets, including Earth, from the sun, and estimating their orbital periods relatively accurately, Copernicus argued that Earth turned daily on its axis and that gradual shifts of this axis accounted for the changing seasons.
He died the year his major work was published, saving him from the outrage of some religious leaders who later condemned his heliocentric view of the universe as heresy. By the late 18th century, the Copernican view of the solar system was almost universally accepted.
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May 25, 1979
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dc-10-crashes-killing-all-aboard (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dc-10-crashes-killing-all-aboard)
Worst air crash in U.S. history.
Almost 300 people are killed on this day in 1979 when an American Airlines flight crashes and explodes after losing one engine just after takeoff.
It was the beginning of Memorial Day weekend in 1979 when 277 passengers filled Flight 191 from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport bound for Los Angeles. The DC-10 jet took off normally but after rising to only 400 feet, stalled and then rolled to the left. The plane quickly plunged, crashing into Ravenswood Airport, which had been abandoned and was no longer in use.
The plane, loaded with fuel, exploded on impact, killing all 277 people on board instantly. The heat from the fire was so intense that firefighters could not approach the crash for close to an hour. The crash also caused a fire at a nearby mobile-home park and killed two bystanders on the ground. A Standard Oil gas storage facility was also nearly hit.
Following this crash, all DC-10s in the United States were impounded and grounded by judicial order because there was no immediate determination as to the cause of the crash and it was feared that it could have been caused by a problem common to the jet type. Ultimately, it was found that the left pylon, which supported the turbofan engine, came loose and took out the hydraulic lines. The left wing slats then retracted and the plane could not lift off properly. The American Airlines maintenance crew was found to be at fault–they had failed to follow the proper procedures when removing the engine and pylon during repairs and maintenance.
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May 26, 2005
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/murder-charges-dropped-against-marine (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/murder-charges-dropped-against-marine)
Murder charges dropped against Marine
On this day in 2005, a U.S. Marine general drops murder charges against 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano, a Wall Street trader and former Marine who had rejoined the service after the attacks of September 11. Pantano had been accused of the premeditated murder of two suspected Iraqi insurgents, a crime punishable by death.
In April 2004, the then 33-year-old Pantano had been leading a Marine platoon in the investigation of a suspected terrorist hideout in Al Anbar, Iraq. According to Pantano, he shot the two Iraqi men in self-defense after they ignored instructions and seemed to make a threatening move toward him. A witness in the case contended, however, that Pantano had shot the men in the back while they were kneeling. Prosecutors in the case attempted to show that Pantano had killed the men as a warning to others in the area, and pointed to the fact that he had fired 60 times and then hung a sign over their dead bodies that read, “No better friend, no worse enemy,” moves Pantano did not deny.
In an April 2005 Article 32 hearing, which is similar to a civilian grand jury session, other witnesses and fellow Marines praised Pantano as a soldier and rebutted the other witness’ testimony, chalking it up to the soldier’s anger at Pantano for removing him from a leadership role in the platoon. Upon the conclusion of the hearing, hearing officer Lieutenant Colonel Mark Winn recommended that the charges be dropped, but that Pantano be given some sort of punishment for desecrating the bodies of the Iraqis.
The matter was then referred to Major General Richard Huck, commander of the 2nd Marine Division, who decided to drop the charges and declined to further punish Pantano, who had been demoted after the incident.
Ilario Pantano resigned from the Marines in June 2005. A book about his experiences, Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy was published in 2006.
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May 27, 1831
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Commanche kill mountain man Jedediah Smith
Jedediah Smith, one of the nation’s most important trapper-explorers, is killed by Commanche Indians on the Santa Fe Trail.
Smith’s role in opening up the Far West was not fully appreciated until modern scholars examined the records of his far-ranging journeys. As with all of the mountain men, Smith ventured west as a practical businessman working for eastern fur companies. His goal was to find new territories to trap beaver and otter and make trading contacts with Native Americans.
Nonetheless, beginning in 1822 when he made his first expedition with the fur trader William Ashley, Smith’s travels provided information on western geography and potential trails that were invaluable to later pioneers. Smith’s most important accomplishment was his rediscovery in 1824 of the South Pass, an easy route across the Rocky Mountains in modern-day western Wyoming. The first Anglo-Americans to cross the pass were fur traders returning east from a Pacific Coast trading post in 1812, yet the news of their discovery was never publicized. Smith, by contrast, established the South Pass as a well-known and heavily traveled route for fur trappers. A few decades later, it became a part of the Oregon Trail and greatly reduced the obstacles faced by wagon trains heading to Oregon and California.
During the next seven years, Smith filled in many other blank spots on the map of the Far West. Despite having opened many new territories for future pioneers, Smith had little to show for his years of dangerous efforts. In 1830, he returned to St. Louis, determined to go into the mercantile business and draft detailed maps of the country he had explored. Before he could get started, however, an associate convinced him to take a supply of goods to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
With a party of 83 men, Smith left St. Louis in early 1831 and headed south along the Cimarron River, a region known to be nearly devoid of potable water. Despite his years of wilderness experience, Smith was apparently overconfident in his ability to find water and did not take adequate supplies from St. Louis. By mid-May, the party’s water supplies were almost exhausted, and the men started separating each day to search for waterholes.
On this day in 1831, Smith was riding alone when a hunting party of Commanche Indians attacked him. Dazed and weakened by lack of water, Smith nonetheless managed to shoot one of the Commanche before he was overwhelmed and killed.
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May 28, 1998
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/comic-phil-hartman-killed-by-wife (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/comic-phil-hartman-killed-by-wife)
Comic Phil Hartman killed by wife
On this day in 1998, the comedian and actor Phil Hartman, famous for his work on Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio, is shot to death by his troubled wife, Brynn, in a murder-suicide. He was 49.
Born on September 24, 1948, in Ontario, Canada, Hartman was raised in Connecticut and Southern California, and later became an American citizen. Early on, he found work designing record album covers (he created the official logo for the rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) but made the leap to acting in 1975 when he joined the L.A. improvisational acting group, the Groundlings. With his fellow Groundlings alum, Paul Reubens, Hartman wrote the screenplay for the successful comedy Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985). Along with Reubens, Hartman had helped create the zany man-child character of Pee Wee Herman, though Reubens received most of the credit. From 1986 to 1990, Hartman portrayed Kap’n Karl on the Saturday morning children’s TV series Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.
Also in 1986, Hartman earned a spot on the long-running NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. In his eight years on the show, Hartman became known for his spot-on impersonations of a variety of celebrities, notably President Bill Clinton. He also made frequent guest appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 1989, Hartman shared an Emmy Award for his writing contributions to Saturday Night Live. He went on to set a record for the most appearances (153) as one of the show’s regulars.
Hartman joined the cast of the TV sitcom NewsRadio in 1995. He played the egotistical anchorman of an AM radio news station in New York City through four seasons of the show’s five-year run. The ensemble cast also included Dave Foley, Maura Tierney and Andy Dick. Hartman also notably provided the voices for a number of characters, including the has-been actor Troy McClure and the incompetent lawyer Lionel Hurtz, on the acclaimed animated series The Simpsons. In addition to his TV work as an actor and pitchman (for MCI, McDonald’s and Cheetos, among others), Hartman appeared on the big screen in Blind Date (1987), Jingle All the Way (1996) and Small Soldiers, released after his death.
Off-screen, Hartman was popular among his Hollywood colleagues and known for being completely different from some of the more unlikable characters he had portrayed. The murder-suicide, which shocked fans and friends alike, occurred early on the morning of May 28, 1998, at the couple’s home in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino. According to news reports, Brynn, Hartman’s third wife (two previous marriages ended in divorce) had a history of drug and alcohol problems. The couple had two children.
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May 29, 1953
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hillary-and-tenzing-reach-everest-summit (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hillary-and-tenzing-reach-everest-summit)
Hillary and Tenzing reach Everest summit
At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. The two, part of a British expedition, made their final assault on the summit after spending a fitful night at 27,900 feet. News of their achievement broke around the world on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, and Britons hailed it as a good omen for their country’s future.
Mount Everest sits on the crest of the Great Himalayas in Asia, lying on the border between Nepal and Tibet. Called Chomo-Lungma, or “Mother Goddess of the Land,” by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, a 19th-century British surveyor of South Asia. The summit of Everest reaches two-thirds of the way through the air of the earth’s atmosphere–at about the cruising altitude of jet airliners–and oxygen levels there are very low, temperatures are extremely cold, and weather is unpredictable and dangerous.
The first recorded attempt to climb Everest was made in 1921 by a British expedition that trekked 400 difficult miles across the Tibetan plateau to the foot of the great mountain. A raging storm forced them to abort their ascent, but the mountaineers, among them George Leigh Mallory, had seen what appeared to be a feasible route up the peak. It was Mallory who quipped when later asked by a journalist why he wanted to climb Everest, “Because it’s there.”
A second British expedition, featuring Mallory, returned in 1922, and climbers George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce reached an impressive height of more than 27,000 feet. In another attempt made by Mallory that year, seven Sherpa porters were killed in an avalanche. (The Sherpas, native to the Khumbu region, have long played an essential support role in Himalayan climbs and treks because of their strength and ability to endure the high altitudes.) In 1924, a third Everest expedition was launched by the British, and climber Edward Norton reached an elevation of 28,128 feet, 900 vertical feet short of the summit, without using artificial oxygen. Four days later, Mallory and Andrew Irvine launched a summit assault and were never seen alive again. In 1999, Mallory’s largely preserved body was found high on Everest–he had suffered numerous broken bones in a fall. Whether or not he or Irvine reached the summit remains a mystery.
Several more unsuccessful summit attempts were made via Tibet’s Northeast Ridge route, and after World War II Tibet was closed to foreigners. In 1949, Nepal opened its door to the outside world, and in 1950 and 1951 British expeditions made exploratory climbs up the Southeast Ridge route. In 1952, a Swiss expedition navigated the treacherous Khumbu Icefall in the first real summit attempt. Two climbers, Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay, reached 28,210 feet, just below the South Summit, but had to turn back for want of supplies.
Shocked by the near-success of the Swiss expedition, a large British expedition was organized for 1953 under the command of Colonel John Hunt. In addition to the best British climbers and such highly experienced Sherpas as Tenzing Norgay, the expedition enlisted talent from the British Commonwealth, such as New Zealanders George Lowe and Edmund Hillary, the latter of whom worked as a beekeeper when not climbing mountains. Members of the expedition were equipped with specially insulated boots and clothing, portable radio equipment, and open- and closed-circuit oxygen systems.
Setting up a series of camps, the expedition pushed its way up the mountain in April and May 1953. A new passage was forged through the Khumbu Icefall, and the climbers made their way up the Western Cwm, across the Lhotse Face, and to the South Col, at about 26,000 feet. On May 26, Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon launched the first assault on the summit and came within 300 feet of the top of Everest before having to turn back because one of their oxygen sets was malfunctioning.
On May 28, Tenzing and Hillary set out, setting up high camp at 27,900 feet. After a freezing, sleepless night, the pair plodded on, reaching the South Summit by 9 a.m. and a steep rocky step, some 40 feet high, about an hour later. Wedging himself in a crack in the face, Hillary inched himself up what was thereafter known as the Hillary Step. Hillary threw down a rope, and Norgay followed. At about 11:30 a.m., the climbers arrived at the top of the world.
News of the success was rushed by runner from the expedition’s base camp to the radio post at Namche Bazar, and then sent by coded message to London, where Queen Elizabeth II learned of the achievement on June 1, the eve of her coronation. The next day, the news broke around the world. Later that year, Hillary and Hunt were knighted by the queen. Norgay, because he was not a citizen of a Commonwealth nation, received the lesser British Empire Medal.
Since Hillary and Norgay’s historic climb, numerous expeditions have made their way up to Everest’s summit. In 1960, a Chinese expedition was the first to conquer the mountain from the Tibetan side, and in 1963 James Whittaker became the first American to top Everest. In 1975, Tabei Junko of Japan became the first woman to reach the summit. Three years later, Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Habeler of Austria achieved what had been previously thought impossible: climbing to the Everest summit without oxygen. Nearly two hundred climbers have died attempting to summit the mountain. A major tragedy occurred in 1996 when eight climbers from various nations died after being caught in a blizzard high on the slopes.
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May 30, 1806
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/andrew-jackson-kills-charles-dickinson-in-duel (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/andrew-jackson-kills-charles-dickinson-in-duel)
Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in duel
On this day in 1806, future President Andrew Jackson kills a man who accused him of cheating on a horse race bet and then insulted his wife, Rachel.
Contemporaries described Jackson, who had already served in Tennessee’s Senate and was practicing law at the time of the duel, as argumentative, physically violent and fond of dueling to solve conflicts. Estimates of the number of duels in which Jackson participated ranged from five to 100.
Jackson and Dickinson were rival horse breeders and southern plantation owners with a long-standing hatred of each other. Dickinson accused Jackson of reneging on a horse bet, calling Jackson a coward and an equivocator. Dickinson also called Rachel Jackson a bigamist. (Rachel had married Jackson not knowing her first husband had failed to finalize their divorce.) After the insult to Rachel and a statement published in the National Review in which Dickinson called Jackson a worthless scoundrel and, again, a coward, Jackson challenged Dickinson to a duel.
On May 30, 1806, Jackson and Dickinson met at Harrison’s Mills on the Red River in Logan, Kentucky. At the first signal from their seconds, Dickinson fired. Jackson received Dickinson’s first bullet in the chest next to his heart. Jackson put his hand over the wound to staunch the flow of blood and stayed standing long enough to fire his gun. Dickinson’s seconds claimed Jackson’s first shot misfired, which would have meant the duel was over, but, in a breach of etiquette, Jackson re-cocked the gun and shot again, this time killing his opponent. Although Jackson recovered, he suffered chronic pain from the wound for the remainder of his life.
Jackson was not prosecuted for murder, and the duel had very little effect on his successful campaign for the presidency in 1829. Many American men in the early 1800s, particularly in the South, viewed dueling as a time-honored tradition. In 1804, Thomas Jefferson’s vice president Aaron Burr had also avoided murder charges after killing former Treasury secretary and founding father Alexander Hamilton in a duel. In fact, Rachel’s divorce raised more of a scandal in the press and in parlors than the killing of Dickinson.
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May 31, 1859
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Big Ben goes into operation in London
The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high St. Stephen’s Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on this day in 1859.
After a fire destroyed much of the Palace of Westminster–the headquarters of the British Parliament–in October 1834, a standout feature of the design for the new palace was a large clock atop a tower. The royal astronomer, Sir George Airy, wanted the clock to have pinpoint accuracy, including twice-a-day checks with the Royal Greenwich Observatory. While many clockmakers dismissed this goal as impossible, Airy counted on the help of Edmund Beckett Denison, a formidable barrister known for his expertise in horology, or the science of measuring time.
Denison’s design, built by the company E.J. Dent& Co., was completed in 1854; five years later, St. Stephen’s Tower itself was finished. Weighing in at more than 13 tons, its massive bell was dragged to the tower through the streets of London by a team of 16 horses, to the cheers of onlookers. Once it was installed, Big Ben struck its first chimes on May 31, 1859. Just two months later, however, the heavy striker designed by Denison cracked the bell. Three more years passed before a lighter hammer was added and the clock went into service again. The bell was rotated so that the hammer would strike another surface, but the crack was never repaired.
The name “Big Ben” originally just applied to the bell but later came to refer to the clock itself. Two main stories exist about how Big Ben got its name. Many claim it was named after the famously long-winded Sir Benjamin Hall, the London commissioner of works at the time it was built. Another famous story argues that the bell was named for the popular heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt, because it was the largest of its kind.
Even after an incendiary bomb destroyed the chamber of the House of Commons during the Second World War, St. Stephen’s Tower survived, and Big Ben continued to function. Its famously accurate timekeeping is regulated by a stack of coins placed on the clock’s huge pendulum, ensuring a steady movement of the clock hands at all times. At night, all four of the clock’s faces, each one 23 feet across, are illuminated. A light above Big Ben is also lit to let the public know when Parliament is in session.
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June 1, 1779
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/benedict-arnold-is-court-martialed (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/benedict-arnold-is-court-martialed)
Benedict Arnold is court-martialed
The court-martial of Benedict Arnold convenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After a relatively clean record in the early days of the American Revolution, Arnold was charged with 13 counts of misbehavior, including misusing government wagons and illegally buying and selling goods. Although his notorious betrayal was still many months away, Arnold’s resentment over this order and the perceived mistreatment by the American Army would fuel his traitorous decision.
Abruptly interrupted at its outset by a British attack north of New York City, the court-martial did not get underway again until December 23 in Morristown, New Jersey. Although Arnold was cleared of most charges, General George Washington issued a reprimand against him, and Arnold became increasingly angered.
While on a trip to the important West Point base to make sure that it could withstand a British attack, Arnold stewed over his slight by Washington and the Americans. He thought that he had never been properly rewarded or acknowledged for his military success on their behalf. He began corresponding with British spies about the possibility of changing sides. Arnold negotiated his defection to the British and the subversion of West Point over several months. The British already held control of New York City and believed that by taking West Point they could effectively cut off the American’s New England forces from the rest of the fledgling nation.
In August 1780, Sir Henry Clinton offered Arnold £20,000 for delivering West Point and 3,000 troops. Arnold told General Washington that West Point was adequately prepared for an attack even though he was busy making sure that that it really wasn’t. He even tried to set up General Washington’s capture as a bonus. His plan might have been successful but his message was delivered too late and Washington escaped. The West Point surrender was also foiled when an American colonel ignored Arnold’s order not to fire on an approaching British ship.
Arnold’s defection was revealed to the Americans when British officer John André, acting as a messenger, was robbed by AWOL Americans working as pirates in the woods north of New York City. The notes revealing Arnold’s traitorous agreement were stashed in his boots. Arnold and his wife Peggy, who fooled American officers into believing she had no involvement in the betrayal, escaped to New York City.
At the British surrender at Yorktown, Benedict Arnold was burned in effigy and his name has since become synonymous with traitor. The British didn’t treat him very well after the war either. After prevailing in a libel action, he was awarded only a nominal amount because his reputation was already so tarnished. He died in 1801 and was buried in England without military honors.
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June 2, 1935
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Babe Ruth retires
On this day in 1935, Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players in the history of baseball, ends his Major League playing career after 22 seasons, 10 World Series and 714 home runs. The following year, Ruth, a larger-than-life figure whose name became synonymous with baseball, was one of the first five players inducted into the sport’s hall of fame.
George Herman Ruth was born February 6, 1895, into a poor family in Baltimore. As a child, he was sent to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a school run by Roman Catholic brothers, where he learned to play baseball and was a standout athlete. At 19, Ruth was signed by the Baltimore Orioles, then a Boston Red Sox minor league team. Ruth’s fellow teammates and the media began referring to him as team owner Jack Dunn’s newest “babe,” a nickname that stuck. Ruth would later acquire other nicknames, including “The Sultan of Swat” and “The Bambino.”
Ruth made his Major League debut as a left-handed pitcher with the Red Sox in July 1914 and pitched 89 winning games for the team before 1920, when he was traded to the New York Yankees. After Ruth left Boston, in what became known as “the curse of the Bambino,” the Red Sox didn’t win another World Series until 2004. In New York, Ruth’s primary position changed to outfielder and he led the Yankees to seven American League pennants and four World Series victories. Ruth was a huge star in New York and attracted so many fans that the team was able to open a new stadium in 1923, Yankee Stadium, dubbed “The House That Ruth Built.”
The southpaw slugger’s final season, in 1935, was with the Boston Braves. He had joined the Braves with the hope that he’d become the team’s manager the next season. However, this dream never came to pass for a disappointed Ruth, who had a reputation for excessive drinking, gambling and womanizing.
Many of the records Ruth set remained in place for decades. His career homerun record stood until 1974, when it was broken by Hank Aaron. Ruth’s record of 60 homeruns in a single season (1927) of 154 games wasn’t bested until 1961, when Roger Maris knocked out 61 homers in an extended season of 162 games. The Sultan of Swat’s career slugging percentage of .690 remains the highest in Major League history.
Ruth died of throat cancer at age 53 on August 16, 1948, in New York City. His body lay in state at Yankee Stadium for two days and was visited by over 100,000 fans.
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June 3, 1989
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Crackdown at Tiananmen begins
With protests for democratic reforms entering their seventh week, the Chinese government authorizes its soldiers and tanks to reclaim Beijing’s Tiananmen Square at all costs. By nightfall on June 4, Chinese troops had forcibly cleared the square, killing hundreds and arresting thousands of demonstrators and suspected dissidents.
On April 15, the death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party head who supported democratic reforms, roused some 100,000 students to gather at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate the leader and voice their discontent with China’s authoritative government. On April 22, an official memorial service for Hu Yaobang was held in Tiananmen’s Great Hall of the People, and student representatives carried a petition to the steps of the Great Hall, demanding to meet with Premier Li Peng. The Chinese government refused the meeting, leading to a general boycott of Chinese universities across the country and widespread calls for democratic reforms.
Ignoring government warnings of suppression of any mass demonstration, students from more than 40 universities began a march to Tiananmen on April 27. The students were joined by workers, intellectuals, and civil servants, and by mid-May more than a million people filled the square, the site of Mao Zedong’s proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
On May 20, the government formally declared martial law in Beijing, and troops and tanks were called in to disperse the dissidents. However, large numbers of students and citizens blocked the army’s advance, and by May 23 government forces had pulled back to the outskirts of Beijing. On June 3, with negotiations to end the protests stalled and calls for democratic reforms escalating, the troops received orders from the Chinese government to seize control of Tiananmen Square and the streets of Beijing. Hundreds were killed and thousands arrested.
In the weeks after the government crackdown, an unknown number of dissidents were executed, and hard-liners in the government took firm control of the country. The international community was outraged by the incident, and economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries sent China’s economy into decline. By late 1990, however, international trade had resumed, thanks in part to China’s release of several hundred imprisoned dissidents.
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June 4, 1942
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Battle of Midway begins
On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway–one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during World War II–begins. During the four-day sea-and-air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy.
In six months of offensives prior to Midway, the Japanese had triumphed in lands throughout the Pacific, including Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and numerous island groups. The United States, however, was a growing threat, and Japanese Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto sought to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet before it was large enough to outmatch his own.
A thousand miles northwest of Honolulu, the strategic island of Midway became the focus of his scheme to smash U.S. resistance to Japan’s imperial designs. Yamamoto’s plan consisted of a feint toward Alaska followed by an invasion of Midway by a Japanese strike force. When the U.S. Pacific Fleet arrived at Midway to respond to the invasion, it would be destroyed by the superior Japanese fleet waiting unseen to the west. If successful, the plan would eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet and provide a forward outpost from which the Japanese could eliminate any future American threat in the Central Pacific. U.S. intelligence broke the Japanese naval code, however, and the Americans anticipated the surprise attack.
In the meantime, 200 miles to the northeast, two U.S. attack fleets caught the Japanese force entirely by surprise and destroyed three heavy Japanese carriers and one heavy cruiser. The only Japanese carrier that initially escaped destruction, the Hiryu, loosed all its aircraft against the American task force and managed to seriously damage the U.S. carrier Yorktown, forcing its abandonment. At about 5:00 p.m., dive-bombers from the U.S. carrier Enterprise returned the favor, mortally damaging the Hiryu. It was scuttled the next morning.
When the Battle of Midway ended, Japan had lost four carriers, a cruiser and 292 aircraft, and suffered an estimated 2,500 casualties. The U.S. lost the Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft and suffered approximately 300 casualties.
Japan’s losses hobbled its naval might–bringing Japanese and American sea power to approximate parity–and marked the turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II. In August 1942, the great U.S. counteroffensive began at Guadalcanal and did not cease until Japan’s surrender three years later.
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June 5, 1933
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FDR takes United States off gold standard
On June 5, 1933, the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable.
Soon after taking office in March 1933, Roosevelt declared a nationwide bank moratorium in order to prevent a run on the banks by consumers lacking confidence in the economy. He also forbade banks to pay out gold or to export it. According to Keynesian economic theory, one of the best ways to fight off an economic downturn is to inflate the money supply. And increasing the amount of gold held by the Federal Reserve would in turn increase its power to inflate the money supply. Facing similar pressures, Britain had dropped the gold standard in 1931, and Roosevelt had taken note.
On April 5, 1933, Roosevelt ordered all gold coins and gold certificates in denominations of more than $100 turned in for other money. It required all persons to deliver all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve by May 1 for the set price of $20.67 per ounce. By May 10, the government had taken in $300 million of gold coin and $470 million of gold certificates. Two months later, a joint resolution of Congress abrogated the gold clauses in many public and private obligations that required the debtor to repay the creditor in gold dollars of the same weight and fineness as those borrowed. In 1934, the government price of gold was increased to $35 per ounce, effectively increasing the gold on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheets by 69 percent. This increase in assets allowed the Federal Reserve to further inflate the money supply.
The government held the $35 per ounce price until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus completely abandoning the gold standard. In 1974, President Gerald Ford signed legislation that permitted Americans again to own gold bullion.
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June 6, 1944
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D-Day
Although the term D-Day is used routinely as military lingo for the day an operation or event will take place, for many it is also synonymous with June 6, 1944, the day the Allied powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control during World War II. Within three months, the northern part of France would be freed and the invasion force would be preparing to enter Germany, where they would meet up with Soviet forces moving in from the east.
With Hitler’s armies in control of most of mainland Europe, the Allies knew that a successful invasion of the continent was central to winning the war. Hitler knew this too, and was expecting an assault on northwestern Europe in the spring of 1944. He hoped to repel the Allies from the coast with a strong counterattack that would delay future invasion attempts, giving him time to throw the majority of his forces into defeating the Soviet Union in the east. Once that was accomplished, he believed an all-out victory would soon be his.
On the morning of June 5, 1944, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe gave the go-ahead for Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious military operation in history. On his orders, 6,000 landing craft, ships and other vessels carrying 176,000 troops began to leave England for the trip to France. That night, 822 aircraft filled with parachutists headed for drop zones in Normandy. An additional 13,000 aircraft were mobilized to provide air cover and support for the invasion.
By dawn on June 6, 18,000 parachutists were already on the ground; the land invasions began at 6:30 a.m. The British and Canadians overcame light opposition to capture Gold, Juno and Sword beaches; so did the Americans at Utah. The task was much tougher at Omaha beach, however, where 2,000 troops were lost and it was only through the tenacity and quick-wittedness of troops on the ground that the objective was achieved. By day’s end, 155,000 Allied troops–Americans, British and Canadians–had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches.
For their part, the Germans suffered from confusion in the ranks and the absence of celebrated commander Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was away on leave. At first, Hitler, believing that the invasion was a feint designed to distract the Germans from a coming attack north of the Seine River, refused to release nearby divisions to join the counterattack and reinforcements had to be called from further afield, causing delays. He also hesitated in calling for armored divisions to help in the defense. In addition, the Germans were hampered by effective Allied air support, which took out many key bridges and forced the Germans to take long detours, as well as efficient Allied naval support, which helped protect advancing Allied troops.
Though it did not go off exactly as planned, as later claimed by British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery–for example, the Allies were able to land only fractions of the supplies and vehicles they had intended in France–D-Day was a decided success. By the end of June, the Allies had 850,000 men and 150,000 vehicles in Normandy and were poised to continue their march across Europe.
The heroism and bravery displayed by troops from the Allied countries on D-Day has served as inspiration for several films, most famously The Longest Day (1962) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). It was also depicted in the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers (2001).
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June 7, 1692
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Earthquake destroys Jamaican pirate haven
On this day in 1692, a massive earthquake devastates the infamous town of Port Royal in Jamaica, killing thousands. The strong tremors, soil liquefaction and a tsunami brought on by the earthquake combined to destroy the entire town.
Port Royal was built on a small island off the coast of Jamaica in the harbor across from present-day Kingston. Many of the buildings where the 6,500 residents lived and worked were constructed right over the water. In the 17th century, Port Royal was known throughout the New World as a headquarters for piracy, smuggling and debauchery. It was described as “most wicked and sinful city in the world” and “one of the lewdest in the Christian world.”
Earthquakes in the area were not uncommon, but were usually rather small. In 1688, a tremor had toppled three homes. But four years later, late in the morning on June 7, three powerful quakes struck Jamaica. A large tsunami hit soon after, putting half of Port Royal under 40 feet of water. The HMS Swan was carried from the harbor and deposited on top of a building on the island. It turned out to be a refuge for survivors.
Residents also soon discovered that the island of Port Royal was not made of bedrock. The relatively loosely packed soil turned almost to liquid during the quake. Many buildings literally sank into the ground. In the aftermath, virtually every building in the city was uninhabitable, including two forts. Corpses from the cemetery floated in the harbor alongside recent victims of the disaster.
On the main island, Spanish Town was also demolished. Even the north side of the island experienced great tragedy. Fifty people were killed in a landslide. In all, about 3,000 people lost their lives on June 7. There was little respite in the aftermath–widespread looting began that evening and thousands more died in the following weeks due to sickness and injury. Aftershocks discouraged the survivors from rebuilding Port Royal. Instead, the city of Kingston was built and remains to this day the largest city in Jamaica.
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June 8, 1968
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King assassination suspect arrested
James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in London, England, and charged with the assassination of African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, King was fatally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. That evening, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.
On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. Ray was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King’s assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named “Raoul” had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning enterprise. On April 4, 1968, however, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled for Canada. Ray’s motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29 years.
During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists’ minds, implicated circumstantially. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI. Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military intelligence, who may have been called to watch over King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.
Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney’s office, and three times by the U.S. Justice Department. All of these investigations have ended with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, Jr. The House committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence definitively to prove this theory. In addition to the mountain of evidence against him, such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and admitted presence at the rooming house on April 4, Ray had a definite motive in assassinating King: hatred. According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who told them of his intent to kill King. Ray died in 1998.
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June 9, 1993
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“Hollywood madam” arrested
On this day in 1993, the now-infamous madam-to-the-stars Heidi Fleiss is arrested as part of a sting operation run by the Los Angeles Police and Beverly Hills Police Departments and the U.S. Justice Department.
In the 1980s, Fleiss’ then-boyfriend introduced her to the leading Beverly Hills madam Elizabeth (Alex) Adams, who, according to Fleiss, taught her the tricks of the trade. Before long, Fleiss started a competing business, and when Adams was arrested in 1988, Fleiss took her spot as the leading provider of expensive prostitutes in Hollywood. As her business grew, she enjoyed the perks of celebrity, even as her rising profile attracted the attention of local authorities. On June 9, 1993, after she sent four of her employees (along with a quantity of cocaine) to fulfill an arrangement made with three “clients” (actually undercover agents), the 27-year-old Fleiss was arrested and charged with pandering, pimping and narcotics possession.
Fleiss’ trial, during which she refused to name any of her agency’s high-profile clients (though testimony did reveal at least one of them, the actor Charlie Sheen), was the talk of Hollywood. She pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and her lawyers argued that the authorities had entrapped her. In December 1994, a California grand jury found Fleiss guilty on three of five pandering counts and not guilty on the narcotics charge; she was sentenced her to three years in prison and ordered to pay a $1,500 fine. Fleiss also went on trial before a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy, money laundering and tax evasion. She was convicted in August 1995 on eight of the 14 counts and sentenced to 37 months in prison.
All told, Fleiss served three years in prison, and was released in the fall of 1999. She later began a two-year relationship with the actor Tom Sizemore, star of films such as Heat, Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down. In 2003, Fleiss filed charges against Sizemore for violent abuse; he was convicted that August on six of 16 counts, including abuse, threat, harassment and vandalism. His initial sentence of six months in jail was eventually reduced to 90 days, plus mandatory drug rehab and domestic-violence and anger-management counseling.
Fleiss, who has also struggled with drug abuse, has attempted to profit from her infamy by authoring several non-fiction books, including Pandering (2003). In early 2008, Fleiss opened a Laundromat called Dirty Laundry in Pahrump, Nevada; she also announced plans to open a brothel catering to female customers.
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June 10, 1752
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Franklin flies kite during thunderstorm
On this day in 1752, Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during a thunderstorm and collects a charge in a Leyden jar when the kite is struck by lightning, enabling him to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning. Franklin became interested in electricity in the mid-1740s, a time when much was still unknown on the topic, and spent almost a decade conducting electrical experiments. He coined a number of terms used today, including battery, conductor and electrician. He also invented the lightning rod, used to protect buildings and ships.
Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, to a candle and soap maker named Josiah Franklin, who fathered 17 children, and his wife Abiah Folger. Franklin’s formal education ended at age 10 and he went to work as an apprentice to his brother James, a printer. In 1723, following a dispute with his brother, Franklin left Boston and ended up in Philadelphia, where he found work as a printer. Following a brief stint as a printer in London, Franklin returned to Philadelphia and became a successful businessman, whose publishing ventures included the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard’s Almanack, a collection of homespun proverbs advocating hard work and honesty in order to get ahead. The almanac, which Franklin first published in 1733 under the pen name Richard Saunders, included such wisdom as: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Whether or not Franklin followed this advice in his own life, he came to represent the classic American overachiever. In addition to his accomplishments in business and science, he is noted for his numerous civic contributions. Among other things, he developed a library, insurance company, city hospital and academy in Philadelphia that would later become the University of Pennsylvania.
Most significantly, Franklin was one of the founding fathers of the United States and had a career as a statesman that spanned four decades. He served as a legislator in Pennsylvania as well as a diplomat in England and France. He is the only politician to have signed all four documents fundamental to the creation of the U.S.: the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Alliance with France (1778), the Treaty of Paris (1783), which established peace with Great Britain, and the U.S. Constitution (1787).
Franklin died at age 84 on April 17, 1790, in Philadelphia. He remains one of the leading figures in U.S. history.
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June 11, 1979
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John Wayne dies
On this day in 1979, John Wayne, an iconic American film actor famous for starring in countless westerns, dies at age 72 after battling cancer for more than a decade.
The actor was born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa, and moved as a child to Glendale, California. A football star at Glendale High School, he attended the University of Southern California on a scholarship but dropped out after two years. After finding work as a movie studio laborer, Wayne befriended director John Ford, then a rising talent. His first acting jobs were bit parts in which he was credited as Duke Morrison, a childhood nickname derived from the name of his beloved pet dog.
Wayne’s first starring role came in 1930 with The Big Trail, a film directed by his college buddy Raoul Walsh. It was during this time that Marion Morrison became “John Wayne,” when director Walsh didn’t think Marion was a good name for an actor playing a tough western hero. Despite the lead actor’s new name, however, the movie flopped. Throughout the 1930s, Wayne made dozens of mediocre westerns, sometimes churning out two movies a week. In them, he played various rough-and-tumble characters and occasionally appeared as “Singing Sandy,” a musical cowpoke a la Roy Rogers.
In 1939, Wayne finally had his breakthrough when his old friend John Ford cast him as Ringo Kid in the Oscar-winning Stagecoach. Wayne went on to play larger-than-life heroes in dozens of movies and came to symbolize a type of rugged, strong, straight-shooting American man. John Ford directed Wayne in some of his best-known films, including Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962).
Off-screen, Wayne came to be known for his conservative political views. He produced, directed and starred in The Alamo (1960) and The Green Berets (1968), both of which reflected his patriotic, conservative leanings. In 1969, he won an Oscar for his role as a drunken, one-eyed federal marshal named Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Wayne’s last film was The Shootist (1976), in which he played a legendary gunslinger dying of cancer. The role had particular meaning, as the actor was fighting the disease in real life.
During four decades of acting, Wayne, with his trademark drawl and good looks, appeared in over 250 films. He was married three times and had seven children.
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June 12, 1987
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Reagan challenges Gorbachev
On this day in 1987, in one of his most famous Cold War speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided Germany.
In 1945, following Germany’s defeat in World War II, the nation’s capital, Berlin, was divided into four sections, with the Americans, British and French controlling the western region and the Soviets gaining power in the eastern region. In May 1949, the three western sections came together as the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), with the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) being established in October of that same year. In 1952, the border between the two countries was closed and by the following year East Germans were prosecuted if they left their country without permission. In August 1961, the Berlin Wall was erected by the East German government to prevent its citizens from escaping to the West. Between 1949 and the wall’s inception, it’s estimated that over 2.5 million East Germans fled to the West in search of a less repressive life.
With the wall as a backdrop, President Reagan declared to a West Berlin crowd in 1987, “There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.” He then called upon his Soviet counterpart: “Secretary General Gorbachev, if you seek peace–if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe–if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Reagan then went on to ask Gorbachev to undertake serious arms reduction talks with the United States.
Most listeners at the time viewed Reagan’s speech as a dramatic appeal to Gorbachev to renew negotiations on nuclear arms reductions. It was also a reminder that despite the Soviet leader’s public statements about a new relationship with the West, the U.S. wanted to see action taken to lessen Cold War tensions. Happily for Berliners, though, the speech also foreshadowed events to come: Two years later, on November 9, 1989, joyful East and West Germans did break down the infamous barrier between East and West Berlin. Germany was officially reunited on October 3, 1990.
Gorbachev, who had been in office since 1985, stepped down from his post as Soviet leader in 1991. Reagan, who served two terms as president, from 1981 to 1989, died on June 5, 2004, at age 93.
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June 13, 323 B.C.
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Alexander the Great dies
Alexander the Great, the young Macedonian military genius who forged an empire stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to India, dies in Babylon, in present-day Iraq, at the age of 33.
Born in Macedonia to King Phillip II and Queen Olympias, Alexander received a classical education from famed philosopher Aristotle and a military education from his father. At the age of 16, Alexander led his first troops into combat and two years later commanded a large part of his father’s army that won the Battle of Chaeronea and brought Greece under Macedonian rule. In 336 B.C., Phillip II was assassinated, and Alexander ascended to the throne.
Two years later, the young king led a large army into Asia Minor to carry out his father’s plans for conquering Persia. Consistently outnumbered in his battles against superior Persian forces, Alexander displayed an unprecedented understanding of strategic military planning and tactical maneuvers. He never lost a single battle, and by 330 B.C. all of Persia and Asia Minor was under his sway. Within his empire, he founded great and lasting cities, such as Alexandria in Egypt, and brought about sweeping political and economic changes based on the advanced Greek models taught to him in his youth.
Although Alexander controlled the largest empire in the history of the world, he launched a new eastern campaign soon after his return from Persia. By 327 B.C., he had conquered Afghanistan, Central Asia, and northern India. In the next year, his army, exhausted after eight years of fighting, refused to go farther, and Alexander led them on a difficult journey home through the inhospitable Makran Desert.
Finally reaching Babylon, Alexander began constructing a large fleet to take his army back to Egypt. However, in June 323 B.C., just as the work on his ships was reaching its conclusion, Alexander fell sick after a prolonged banquet and drinking bout and died. Perhaps earnestly believing himself to be a god (as many of his subjects did), he had not selected a successor, and within a year of his death his army and his empire broke into a multitude of warring factions. His body was later returned to Alexandria, where it was laid to rest in a golden coffin.
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June 14, 1951
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UNIVAC computer dedicated
On June 14, 1951, the U.S. Census Bureau dedicates UNIVAC, the world’s first commercially produced electronic digital computer. UNIVAC, which stood for Universal Automatic Computer, was developed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, makers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. These giant computers, which used thousands of vacuum tubes for computation, were the forerunners of today’s digital computers.
The search for mechanical devices to aid computation began in ancient times. The abacus, developed in various forms by the Babylonians, Chinese, and Romans, was by definition the first digital computer because it calculated values by using digits. A mechanical digital calculating machine was built in France in 1642, but a 19th century Englishman, Charles Babbage, is credited with devising most of the principles on which modern computers are based. His “Analytical Engine,” begun in the 1830s and never completed for lack of funds, was based on a mechanical loom and would have been the first programmable computer.
By the 1920s, companies such as the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) were supplying governments and businesses with complex punch-card tabulating systems, but these mechanical devices had only a fraction of the calculating power of the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). Completed by John Atanasoff of Iowa State in 1939, the ABC could by 1941 solve up to 29 simultaneous equations with 29 variables. Influenced by Atanasoff’s work, Presper Eckert and John Mauchly set about building the first general-purpose electronic digital computer in 1943. The sponsor was the U.S. Army Ordnance Department, which wanted a better way of calculating artillery firing tables, and the work was done at the University of Pennsylvania.
ENIAC, which stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator, was completed in 1946 at a cost of nearly $500,000. It took up 15,000 feet, employed 17,000 vacuum tubes, and was programmed by plugging and replugging some 6,000 switches. It was first used in a calculation for Los Alamos Laboratories in December 1945, and in February 1946 it was formally dedicated.
Following the success of ENIAC, Eckert and Mauchly decided to go into private business and founded the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. They proved less able businessmen than they were engineers, and in 1950 their struggling company was acquired by Remington Rand, an office equipment company. On June 14, 1951, Remington Rand delivered its first computer, UNIVAC I, to the U.S. Census Bureau. It weighed 16,000 pounds, used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1,000 calculations per second. On November 4, 1952, the UNIVAC achieved national fame when it correctly predicted Dwight D. Eisenhower’s unexpected landslide victory in the presidential election after only a tiny percentage of the votes were in.
UNIVAC and other first-generation computers were replaced by transistor computers of the late 1950s, which were smaller, used less power, and could perform nearly a thousand times more operations per second. These were, in turn, supplanted by the integrated-circuit machines of the mid-1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, the development of the microprocessor made possible small, powerful computers such as the personal computer, and more recently the laptop and hand-held computers.
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June 15, 1215
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Magna Carta sealed
Following a revolt by the English nobility against his rule, King John puts his royal seal on the Magna Carta, or “Great Charter.” The document, essentially a peace treaty between John and his barons, guaranteed that the king would respect feudal rights and privileges, uphold the freedom of the church, and maintain the nation’s laws. Although more a reactionary than a progressive document in its day, the Magna Carta was seen as a cornerstone in the development of democratic England by later generations.
John was enthroned as king of England following the death of his brother, King Richard the Lion-Hearted, in 1199. King John’s reign was characterized by failure. He lost the duchy of Normandy to the French king and taxed the English nobility heavily to pay for his foreign misadventures. He quarreled with Pope Innocent III and sold church offices to build up the depleted royal coffers. Following the defeat of a campaign to regain Normandy in 1214, Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury, called on the disgruntled barons to demand a charter of liberties from the king.
In 1215, the barons rose up in rebellion against the king’s abuse of feudal law and custom. John, faced with a superior force, had no choice but to give in to their demands. Earlier kings of England had granted concessions to their feudal barons, but these charters were vaguely worded and issued voluntarily. The document drawn up for John in June 1215, however, forced the king to make specific guarantees of the rights and privileges of his barons and the freedom of the church. On June 15, 1215, John met the barons at Runnymede on the Thames and set his seal to the Articles of the Barons, which after minor revision was formally issued as the Magna Carta.
The charter consisted of a preamble and 63 clauses and dealt mainly with feudal concerns that had little impact outside 13th century England. However, the document was remarkable in that it implied there were laws the king was bound to observe, thus precluding any future claim to absolutism by the English monarch. Of greatest interest to later generations was clause 39, which stated that “no free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed] or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimised…except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” This clause has been celebrated as an early guarantee of trial by jury and of habeas corpus and inspired England’s Petition of Right (1628) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679).
In immediate terms, the Magna Carta was a failure–civil war broke out the same year, and John ignored his obligations under the charter. Upon his death in 1216, however, the Magna Carta was reissued with some changes by his son, King Henry III, and then reissued again in 1217. That year, the rebellious barons were defeated by the king’s forces. In 1225, Henry III voluntarily reissued the Magna Carta a third time, and it formally entered English statute law.
The Magna Carta has been subject to a great deal of historical exaggeration; it did not establish Parliament, as some have claimed, nor more than vaguely allude to the liberal democratic ideals of later centuries. However, as a symbol of the sovereignty of the rule of law, it was of fundamental importance to the constitutional development of England. Four original copies of the Magna Carta of 1215 exist today: one in Lincoln Cathedral, one in Salisbury Cathedral, and two in the British Museum.
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June 16, 1903
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Ford Motor Company incorporated
At 9:30 in the morning on this day in 1903, Henry Ford and other prospective stockholders in the Ford Motor Company meet in Detroit to sign the official paperwork required to create a new corporation. Twelve stockholders were listed on the forms, which were signed, notarized and sent to the office of Michigan’s secretary of state. The company was officially incorporated the following day, when the secretary of state’s office received the articles of association.
Ford had built his first gasoline-powered vehicle–which he called the Quadricycle–in a workshop behind his home in 1896, while he was working as the chief engineer for the main plant of the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. He made two unsuccessful attempts to start a company to manufacture automobiles before 1903. A month after the Ford Motor Company was established, the first Ford car was assembled at a plant on Mack Avenue in Detroit .
In the early days of Ford, only a few cars were assembled per day, and they were built by hand by small groups of workers from parts made to order by other companies. With the introduction of the Model T in 1908, Ford succeeded in his mission to produce an affordable, efficient and reliable automobile for everyone: within a decade, nearly half the cars in America were Model Ts. The sensational demand for the “Tin Lizzie” led Ford to develop mass-production methods, including large production plants, the use of standardized, interchangeable parts and, in 1913, the world’s first moving assembly line for cars. In 1914, to further improve productivity, Ford introduced the $5 daily wage for an eight-hour day for his workers (up from $2.34 for nine hours), setting a standard for the industry.
During the late 1910s and early 1920s, Ford began construction of a massive industrial complex along the banks of the River Rouge in Dearborn, Michigan. The plant combined all the components necessary for auto production, including a glass factory, steel mill and assembly line. When Ford Motor’s other stockholders resisted the idea of building the River Rouge plant due to its enormous costs, Henry Ford (who as early as 1906 owned 58.5 percent of the company) bought them out, installing his son Edsel as president of the company in 1919. The elder Ford retained full control of the company’s operations, however, and returned to the presidency briefly after Edsel died in 1943, before handing it over to his grandson, Henry Ford II, in 1945. Two years later, the legendary automaker died at his Dearborn home at the age of 83.
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June 17, 1885
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor
On this day in 1885, the dismantled State of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of America, arrives in New York Harbor after being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces packed in more than 200 cases. The copper and iron statue, which was reassembled and dedicated the following year in a ceremony presided over by U.S. President Grover Cleveland, became known around the world as an enduring symbol of freedom and democracy.
Intended to commemorate the American Revolution and a century of friendship between the U.S. and France, the statue was designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi (who modeled it after his own mother), with assistance from engineer Gustave Eiffel, who later developed the iconic tower in Paris bearing his name. The statue was initially scheduled to be finished by 1876, the 100th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence; however, fundraising efforts, which included auctions, a lottery and boxing matches, took longer than anticipated, both in Europe and the U.S., where the statue’s pedestal was to be financed and constructed. The statue alone cost the French an estimated $250,000 (more than $5.5 million in today’s money).
Finally completed in Paris in the summer of 1884, the statue, a robed female figure with an uplifted arm holding a torch, reached its new home on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor (between New York City and Hudson County, New Jersey) on June 17, 1885. After being reassembled, the 450,000-pound statue was officially dedicated on October 28, 1886, by President Cleveland, who said, “We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected.” Standing more than 305 feet from the foundation of its pedestal to the top of its torch, the statue, dubbed “Liberty Enlightening the World” by Bartholdi, was taller than any structure in New York City at the time. The statue was originally copper-colored, but over the years it underwent a natural color-change process called patination that produced its current greenish-blue hue.
In 1892, Ellis Island, located near Bedloe’s Island (which in 1956 was renamed Liberty Island), opened as America’s chief immigration station, and for the next 62 years Lady Liberty, as the statue is nicknamed, stood watch over the more than 12 million immigrants who sailed into New York Harbor. In 1903, a plaque inscribed with a sonnet titled “The New Colossus” by American poet Emma Lazarus, written 20 years earlier for a pedestal fundraiser, was placed on an interior wall of the pedestal. Lazarus’ now-famous words, which include “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” became symbolic of America’s vision of itself as a land of opportunity for immigrants.
Some 60 years after President Calvin Coolidge designated the statue a national monument in 1924, it underwent a multi-million-dollar restoration (which included a new torch and gold leaf-covered flame) and was rededicated by President Ronald Reagan on July 4, 1986, in a lavish celebration. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the statue was closed; its base, pedestal and observation deck re-opened in 2004, while its crown re-opened to the public on July 4, 2009. (For safety reasons, the torch has been closed to visitors since 1916, after an incident called the Black Tom explosions in which munitions-laden barges and railroad cars on the Jersey City, New Jersey, waterfront were blown up by German agents, causing damage to the nearby statue.)
Today, the Statue of Liberty is one of America’s most famous landmarks. Over the years, it has been the site of political rallies and protests (from suffragettes to anti-war activists), has been featured in numerous movies and countless photographs, and has received millions of visitors from around the globe.
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June 18, 1815
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/napoleon-defeated-at-waterloo (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/napoleon-defeated-at-waterloo)
Napoleon defeated at Waterloo
At Waterloo in Belgium, Napoleon Bonaparte suffers defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington, bringing an end to the Napoleonic era of European history.
The Corsica-born Napoleon, one of the greatest military strategists in history, rapidly rose in the ranks of the French Revolutionary Army during the late 1790s. By 1799, France was at war with most of Europe, and Napoleon returned home from his Egyptian campaign to take over the reigns of the French government and save his nation from collapse. After becoming first consul in February 1800, he reorganized his armies and defeated Austria. In 1802, he established the Napoleonic Code, a new system of French law, and in 1804 was crowned emperor of France in Notre Dame Cathedral. By 1807, Napoleon controlled an empire that stretched from the River Elbe in the north, down through Italy in the south, and from the Pyrenees to the Dalmatian coast.
Beginning in 1812, Napoleon began to encounter the first significant defeats of his military career, suffering through a disastrous invasion of Russia, losing Spain to the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War, and enduring total defeat against an allied force by 1814. Exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, he escaped to France in early 1815 and set up a new regime. As allied troops mustered on the French frontiers, he raised a new Grand Army and marched into Belgium. He intended to defeat the allied armies one by one before they could launch a united attack.
On June 16, 1815, he defeated the Prussians under Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher at Ligny, and sent 33,000 men, or about one-third of his total force, in pursuit of the retreating Prussians. On June 18, Napoleon led his remaining 72,000 troops against the Duke of Wellington’s 68,000-man allied army, which had taken up a strong position 12 miles south of Brussels near the village of Waterloo. In a fatal blunder, Napoleon waited until mid-day to give the command to attack in order to let the ground dry. The delay in fighting gave Blucher’s troops, who had eluded their pursuers, time to march to Waterloo and join the battle by the late afternoon.
In repeated attacks, Napoleon failed to break the center of the allied center. Meanwhile, the Prussians gradually arrived and put pressure on Napoleon’s eastern flank. At 6 p.m., the French under Marshal Michel Ney managed to capture a farmhouse in the allied center and began decimating Wellington’s troops with artillery. Napoleon, however, was preoccupied with the 30,000 Prussians attacking his flank and did not release troops to aid Ney’s attack until after 7 p.m. By that time, Wellington had reorganized his defenses, and the French attack was repulsed. Fifteen minutes later, the allied army launched a general advance, and the Prussians attacked in the east, throwing the French troops into panic and then a disorganized retreat. The Prussians pursued the remnants of the French army, and Napoleon left the field. French casualties in the Battle of Waterloo were 25,000 men killed and wounded and 9,000 captured, while the allies lost about 23,000.
Napoleon returned to Paris and on June 22 abdicated in favor of his son. He decided to leave France before counterrevolutionary forces could rally against him, and on July 15 he surrendered to British protection at the port of Rochefort. He hoped to travel to the United States, but the British instead sent him to Saint Helena, a remote island in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa. Napoleon protested but had no choice but to accept the exile. With a group of followers, he lived quietly on St. Helena for six years. In May 1821, he died, most likely of stomach cancer. He was only 51 years old. In 1840, his body was returned to Paris, and a magnificent funeral was held. Napoleon’s body was conveyed through the Arc de Triomphe and entombed under the dome of the Invalides.
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June 19, 1892
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-bloody-fingerprint-elicits-a-mothers-evil-tale-in-argentina (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-bloody-fingerprint-elicits-a-mothers-evil-tale-in-argentina)
A bloody fingerprint elicits a mother’s evil tale in Argentina
Francesca Rojas’ two young children are killed in their home in the small town of Necochea, Argentina. According to Rojas, a man named Velasquez had threatened her when she rejected his sexual advances earlier in the day. Upon returning home later, Rojas claimed to have seen Velasquez escaping out her open door. Once inside, she found both her six-year-old boy and four-year-old girlstabbed to death.
Police arrested and questioned Velasquez, but he denied any involvement, even after some rather painful interrogation techniques were used to obtain a confession. Law enforcement officials even tried tying him to the corpses of the children overnight. When that didn’t produce any results, Velasquez was tortured for another week. Still, he maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal.
Juan Vucetich, in charge of criminal identification at the regional headquarters, had been intrigued by the new theories of fingerprint identification and sent an investigator to see if the methods could help crack the case. Until then, the only other method of identification was the Bertillonage, named after its inventor, Alphonse Bertillon, who worked for the Paris police. This method involved the recording of body measurements in more than 11 different places. In an age when photography was very expensive, Bertillonage gave police their best chance of definitively identifying a person.
When the investigator examined Rojas’s house, he found a bloody thumb print on the bedroom door. Rojas was then asked to provide an ink-print of her thumb at the police station. Even with only a rudimentary understanding of forensic identification, investigators were able to determine that the print on the door belonged to Rojas. Using this new piece of evidence against her, detectives were able to exact her confession.
Apparently, Rojas had killed her own children in an attempt to improve her chance of marrying her boyfriend, who was known to dislike children, and then pegged the crime on Velasquez. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.
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June 20, 1947
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bugsy-siegel-organized-crime-leader-is-killed (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bugsy-siegel-organized-crime-leader-is-killed)
Bugsy Siegel, organized crime leader, is killed
Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, the man who brought organized crime to the West Coast, is shot and killed at his mistress Virginia Hill’s home in Beverly Hills, California. Siegel had been talking to his associate Allen Smiley when three bullets were fired through the window and into his head, killing him instantly.
Siegel’s childhood had been pretty similar to that of other organized crime leaders: Growing up with little money in Brooklyn, he managed to establish himself as a teenage thug. With his pal Meyer Lansky, Siegel terrorized local peddlers and collected protection money. Before long, they had a business that included bootlegging and gambling all over New York City.
By the late 1930s, Siegel had become one of the major players of a highly powerful crime syndicate, which gave him $500,000 to set up a Los Angeles franchise. Bugsy threw himself into the Hollywood scene, making friends with some of the biggest names of the time–Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow. His all-night parties at his Beverly Hills mansion became the hot spot in town. He also started up a solid gambling and narcotics operation to keep his old friends back east happy. Just before World War II began, Siegel traveled to Italy to sell explosives to Mussolini, but the deal fizzled when tests of the explosives did too.
In 1945, Siegel had a brilliant idea. Just hours away from Los Angeles sat the sleepy desert town of Las Vegas, Nevada. It had nothing going for it except for a compliant local government and legal gambling. Siegel decided to build the Flamingo Hotel in the middle of the desert with $6,000,000, a chunk of which came from the New York syndicate.
The Flamingo wasn’t immediately profitable and Siegel ended up in an argument with Lucky Luciano over paying back the money used to build it. Around the same time that Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills, Luciano’s men walked into the Flamingo and announced that they were now in charge. Even Siegel probably never imagined the astounding growth and success of Las Vegas in the subsequent years.
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June 21, 1964
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-kkk-kills-three-civil-rights-activists (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-kkk-kills-three-civil-rights-activists)
The KKK kills three civil rights activists
Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob near Meridian, Mississippi. The three young civil rights workers were working to register black voters in Mississippi, thus inspiring the ire of the local Klan. The deaths of Schwerner and Goodman, white Northerners and members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), caused a national outrage.
When the desegregation movement encountered resistance in the early 1960s, CORE set up an interracial team to ride buses into the Deep South to help protest. These so-called Freedom Riders were viciously attacked in May 1961 when the first two buses arrived in Alabama. One bus was firebombed; the other boarded by KKK members who beat the activists inside. The Alabama police provided no protection.
Still, the Freedom Riders were not dissuaded and they continued to come into Alabama and Mississippi. Michael Schwerner was a particularly dedicated activist who lived in Mississippi while he assisted blacks to vote. Sam Bowers, the local Klan’s Imperial Wizard, decided that Schwerner was a bad influence, and had to be killed.
When Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, a young black man, were coming back from a trip to Philadelphia, Mississippi, deputy sheriff Cecil Price, who was also a Klan member, pulled them over for speeding. He then held them in custody while other KKK members prepared for their murder. Eventually released, the three activists were later chased down in their car and cornered in a secluded spot in the woods where they were shot and then buried in graves that had been prepared in advance.
When news of their disappearance got out, the FBI converged on Mississippi to investigate. With the help of an informant, agents learned about the Klan’s involvement and found the bodies. Since Mississippi refused to prosecute the assailants in state court, the federal government charged 18 men with conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney.
Bowers, Price, and five other men were convicted; eight were acquitted; and the all-white jury deadlocked on the other three defendants. On the forty-first anniversary of the three murders, June 21, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter. The 80-year-old Killen, known as an outspoken white supremacist and part-time Baptist minister, was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
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June 22, 1876
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/general-santa-anna-dies-in-mexico-city (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/general-santa-anna-dies-in-mexico-city)
General Santa Anna dies in Mexico City
Embittered and impoverished, the once mighty Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna dies in Mexico City.
Born in 1792 at Jalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico, Santa Anna was the son of middle-class parents. As a teen, he won a commission in the Spanish army and might have been expected to live out an unspectacular career as a middle-level army officer. However, the young Santa Anna quickly distinguished himself as a capable fighter and leader, and after 1821, he gained national prominence in the successful Mexican war for independence from Spain. In 1833, he won election to the presidency of the independent republic of Mexico by an overwhelming popular majority. His dedication to the ideal of a democratic role proved weak, though, and he proclaimed himself dictator in 1835.
Santa Anna’s assumption of dictatorial power over Mexico brought him into direct conflict with a growing movement for independence in the Mexican state of Texas. During the 1820s and 1830s, large numbers of Euro-Americans had settled in the area of Texas, and many of them remained more loyal to the United States than to their distant rulers in Mexico City. Some viewed Santa Anna’s overthrow of the Mexican Republic as an opportunity to break away and form an independent Republic of Texas that might one day become an American state.
Determined to crush the Texas rebels, Santa Anna took command of the Mexican army that invaded Texas in 1836. His forces successfully defeated the Texas rebels at the Alamo, and he personally ordered the execution of 400 Texan prisoners after the Battle of Goliad. However, these two victories planted the seeds for Santa Anna’s defeat. “Remember the Alamo” and “Remember Goliad” became the rallying cries for a reinvigorated Texan army. Lulled into overconfidence by his initial easy victories, Santa Anna was taken by surprise at San Jacinto, and his army was annihilated on April 21, 1836. The captured Santa Anna, fearing execution, willingly signed an order calling for all Mexican troops to withdraw. Texas became an independent republic.
Deposed during his captivity with the Texan rebels, Santa Anna returned to Mexico a powerless man. During the next two decades, however, the highly unstable political situation in Mexico provided him with several opportunities to regain-and again lose-his dictatorial power. All told, he became the head of the Mexican government 11 times. Overthrown for the last time in 1855, he spent the remaining two decades of his life scheming with elements in Mexico, the United States, and France to stage a comeback.
Although he was clearly a brilliant political opportunist, Santa Anna was ultimately loyal only to himself and he had an insatiable lust for power. While Santa Anna played an important role in achieving Mexican independence, his subsequent governments were also at least partially responsible for the loss of the Southwest to the United States. He died in poverty and squalor in Mexico City at the age of 82, no doubt still dreaming of a return to power.
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June 23, 1992
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Teflon Don sentenced to life.
Mafia boss John Gotti, who was nicknamed the “Teflon Don” after escaping unscathed from several trials during the 1980s, is sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty on 14 accounts of conspiracy to commit murder and racketeering. Moments after his sentence was read in a federal courthouse in Brooklyn, hundreds of Gotti’s supporters stormed the building and overturned and smashed cars before being forced back by police reinforcements.
Gotti, born and educated on the mean streets of New York City, became head of the powerful Gambino family after boss Paul Castellano was murdered outside a steakhouse in Manhattan in December 1985. The gang assassination, the first in three decades in New York, was organized by Gotti and his colleague Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. The Gambino family was known for its illegal narcotics operations, gambling activities, and car theft. During the next five years, Gotti rapidly expanded his criminal empire, and his family grew into the nation’s most powerful Mafia family. Despite wide publicity of his criminal activities, Gotti managed to avoid conviction several times, usually through witness intimidation. In 1990, however, he was indicted for conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Paul Castellano, and Gravano agreed to testify against him in a federal district court in exchange for a reduced prison sentence.
On April 2, 1992, John Gotti was found guilty on all counts and on June 23 was sentenced to multiple life terms without the possibility of parole.
While still imprisoned, Gotti died of throat cancer on June 10, 2002.
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June 24, 2005
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tom-cruise-raises-eyebrows (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tom-cruise-raises-eyebrows)
Tom Cruise raises eyebrows
The actor Tom Cruise has an infamous interview with Matt Lauer, host of NBC’s morning talk show Today, on this day in 2005. During the interview, Lauer challenged Cruise about critical comments the actor had made regarding the actress Brooke Shields’ use of anti-depressant medications to treat her post-partum depression.
One of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men since the late 1980s, Cruise was on Today to promote his forthcoming movie, The War of the Worlds, the director Steven Spielberg’s big-budget movie version of H.G. Wells’ classic science-fiction novel. Cruise was happy to talk about the movie, as well as his upcoming marriage to the actress Katie Holmes, whom he had proposed to atop the Eiffel Tower a short time before, following a whirlwind romance.
When Lauer asked Cruise about his criticism of Shields, however, the exchange got heated, as Cruise’s demeanor became visibly more serious and combative. As a leading member of the Church of Scientology, Cruise is against the use of anti-depressant drugs or psychiatric therapy of any kind. “I really care about Brooke Shields,” Cruise said. “…[But] there’s misinformation, and she doesn’t understand the history of psychiatry…psychiatry is a pseudoscience.” After chastising Lauer for being “glib” and not knowing enough about the topic, Cruise mentioned his research into the use of the prescription drug Ritalin, which is notably used to treat hyperactive children. When Lauer mentioned that he knew people for whom prescription drugs had worked, Cruise accused him of “advocating” Ritalin, to which Lauer got visibly frustrated and said “I am not….You’re telling me that your experiences with the people I know, which are zero, are more important than my experiences….And I’m telling you, I’ve lived with these people and they’re better.”
The Lauer interview marked the latest in what the Washington Post called at the time “a series of manic moments in public, in which the screen idol appeared to be losing his chiseled, steely reserve.” Another of these moments had occurred earlier that month on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, where Cruise jumped up and down on a couch professing his love for Holmes. During the Today interview, Holmes sat in the wings watching “adoringly” as her fiance “Chernobyled” (again in the words of the Washington Post). Some blamed Cruise’s run of out-of-control public outbursts on the actor’s split with his longtime publicist, Pat Kingsley, in the spring of 2004 and his decision to entrust his sister, Lee Ann DeVette, with all his publicity. In November 2005, after the worst run of publicity in his career, Cruise replaced DeVette with another veteran publicist, Paul Bloch.
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June 25, 1876
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Battle of Little Bighorn
On this day in 1876, Native American forces led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeat the U.S. Army troops of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in a bloody battle near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River.
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, leaders of the Sioux tribe on the Great Plains, strongly resisted the mid-19th-century efforts of the U.S. government to confine their people to reservations. In 1875, after gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills, the U.S. Army ignored previous treaty agreements and invaded the region. This betrayal led many Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen to leave their reservations and join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in Montana. By the late spring of 1876, more than 10,000 Native Americans had gathered in a camp along the Little Bighorn River–which they called the Greasy Grass–in defiance of a U.S. War Department order to return to their reservations or risk being attacked.
In mid-June, three columns of U.S. soldiers lined up against the camp and prepared to march. A force of 1,200 Native Americans turned back the first column on June 17. Five days later, General Alfred Terry ordered Custer’s 7th Cavalry to scout ahead for enemy troops. On the morning of June 25, Custer drew near the camp and decided to press on ahead rather than wait for reinforcements.
At mid-day, Custer’s 600 men entered the Little Bighorn Valley. Among the Native Americans, word quickly spread of the impending attack. The older Sitting Bull rallied the warriors and saw to the safety of the women and children, while Crazy Horse set off with a large force to meet the attackers head on. Despite Custer’s desperate attempts to regroup his men, they were quickly overwhelmed. Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3,000 Native Americans; within an hour, Custer and every last one of his soldier were dead.
The Battle of Little Bighorn–also called Custer’s Last Stand–marked the most decisive Native American victory and the worst U.S. Army defeat in the long Plains Indian War. The gruesome fate of Custer and his men outraged many white Americans and confirmed their image of the Indians as wild and bloodthirsty. Meanwhile, the U.S. government increased its efforts to subdue the tribes. Within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne would be confined to reservations.
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June 26, 1541
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/conqueror-of-the-incas-assassinated (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/conqueror-of-the-incas-assassinated)
Conqueror of the Incas assassinated
Francisco Pizarro, the governor of Peru and conqueror of the Inca civilization, is assassinated in Lima by Spanish rivals.
The illegitimate son of a Spanish gentleman, Pizarro served under Spanish conquistador Alonso de Ojeda during his expedition to Colombia in 1510 and was with Vasco Nunez de Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513. Hearing legends of the great wealth of the Incas in South America, Pizarro formed an alliance with fellow conquistador Diego de Almagro in 1524 and sailed back to the Americas. Their first expedition only penetrated as far as present-day Ecuador, but their second reached farther and discovered evidence of the existence of the Inca kingdom.
Securing aid from Emperor Charles V, and a guarantee that he, not Almagro, would receive the majority of the expedition’s future profits, Pizarro sailed to Peru and landed at Tumbes in 1532. He led his army up the Andes Mountains to the Inca city of Cajamarca and met with Atahualpa, the king of the Inca kingdom of Quito. After winning his trust, Pizarro captured Atahualpa, exacted a room full of gold as ransom for his life, and then treacherously had him executed. The conquest of Peru came quickly to Pizarro and his army, and in 1533 Inca resistance came to an end with their defeat at Cuzco.
Pizarro, now the governor of Peru, founded new settlements, including Lima, and granted Almagro the conquest of Chile as appeasement for claiming the riches of the Inca civilization for himself. However, Pizarro failed to provide Almagro with all the land he had promised, and Almagro responded by seizing Cuzco in 1538. Pizarro sent his half brother, Hernando, to reclaim the city, and Almagro was defeated and put to death. Three years later, on June 26, 1541, a group hired by Almagro’s former adherents penetrated Pizarro’s palace and slew the conquistador while he was eating dinner. Shortly after his death, Diego el Monzo, Almagro’s son, proclaimed himself governor of Peru.
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June 27, 1985
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/route-66-decertified (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/route-66-decertified)
Route 66 decertified
After 59 years, the iconic Route 66 enters the realm of history on this day in 1985, when the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials decertifies the road and votes to remove all its highway signs.
Measuring some 2,200 miles in its heyday, Route 66 stretched from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California, passing through eight states. According to a New York Times article about its decertification, most of Route 66 followed a path through the wilderness forged in 1857 by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Edward Beale at the head of a caravan of camels. Over the years, wagon trains and cattlemen eventually made way for trucks and passenger automobiles.
The idea of building a highway along this route surfaced in Oklahoma in the mid-1920s as a way to link the state to cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. Highway Commissioner Cyrus S. Avery touted it as a way of diverting traffic from Kansas City, Missouri and Denver. In 1926, the highway earned its official designation as Route 66. The diagonal course of Route 66 linked hundreds of mostly rural communities to the cities along its route, allowing farmers to more easily transport grain and other types of produce for distribution. The highway was also a lifeline for the long-distance trucking industry, which by 1930 was competing with the railroad for dominance in the shipping market.
Route 66 was the scene of a mass westward migration during the 1930s, when more than 200,000 people traveled from the poverty-stricken Dust Bowl to California. John Steinbeck immortalized the highway, which he called the “Mother Road,” in his classic 1939 novel “The Grapes of Wrath.”
Beginning in the 1950s, the building of a massive system of interstate highways made older roads increasingly obsolete, and by 1970, modern four-lane highways had bypassed nearly all sections of Route 66. In October 1984, Interstate-40 bypassed the last original stretch of Route 66 at Williams, Arizona, and the following year the road was decertified. According to the National Historic Route 66 Federation, drivers can still use 85 percent of the road, and Route 66 has become a destination for tourists from all over the world.
Often called the “Main Street of America,” Route 66 became a pop culture mainstay over the years, inspiring its own song (written in 1947 by Bobby Troup, “Route 66″ was later recorded by artists as varied as Nat “King” Cole, Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones) as well as a 1960s television series. More recently, the historic highway was featured prominently in the hit animated film “Cars” (2006).
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June 28, 1914
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/archduke-ferdinand-assassinated (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/archduke-ferdinand-assassinated)
Archduke Ferdinand assassinated
On this day in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August. On June 28, 1919, five years to the day after Franz Ferdinand’s death, Germany and the Allied Powers signed the Treaty of Versailles, officially marking the end of World War I.
The archduke traveled to Sarajevo in June 1914 to inspect the imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908. The annexation had angered Serbian nationalists, who believed the territories should be part of Serbia. A group of young nationalists hatched a plot to kill the archduke during his visit to Sarajevo, and after some missteps, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip was able to shoot the royal couple at point-blank range, while they traveled in their official procession, killing both almost instantly.
The assassination set off a rapid chain of events, as Austria-Hungary immediately blamed the Serbian government for the attack. As large and powerful Russia supported Serbia, Austria asked for assurances that Germany would step in on its side against Russia and its allies, including France and possibly Great Britain. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the fragile peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed, beginning the devastating conflict now known as the First World War.
After more than four years of bloodshed, the Great War ended on November 11, 1918, after Germany, the last of the Central Powers, surrendered to the Allies. At the peace conference in Paris in 1919, Allied leaders would state their desire to build a post-war world that was safe from future wars of such enormous scale. The Versailles Treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, tragically failed to achieve this objective. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s grand dreams of an international peace-keeping organization faltered when put into practice as the League of Nations. Even worse, the harsh terms imposed on Germany, the war’s biggest loser, led to widespread resentment of the treaty and its authors in that country–a resentment that would culminate in the outbreak of the Second World War two decades later.
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June 29, 2001
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boston-doctor-found-guilty-of-killing-wife (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boston-doctor-found-guilty-of-killing-wife)
Boston doctor found guilty of killing wife
On June 29, 2001, Boston doctor Dirk Greineder, 60, is found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Mabel Greineder, 58, his wife of more than 30 years.
Dirk Greineder was a distinguished allergist. His wife, known as May, worked for him as a nurse and was pursuing an advanced degree in healthcare. The couple had raised three children, and lived in Wellesley, a tony–and usually crime-free–Boston suburb. Neighbors and friends saw the couple as especially close and devoted to each other. Nearly every day, they walked their German shepherds together in a nearby park.
On October 31, 1999, Dirk called 911 from his cell phone to report that his wife had been attacked near a pond at their local park while the two were out for a walk. According to his testimony, he had left his wife to exercise their dog because she had been experiencing back pain, and when he returned to her, he found her beaten body prostrate on the path. She had been nearly decapitated and stabbed in the chest. Police found gloves, a hammer and a pocketknife believed to be used in the murder in a nearby storm drain.
In the course of their investigation, it was discovered that the well-respected and accomplished Dirk Greineder had been living a secret life. Using the alias “Thomas Young,” he had frequently downloaded internet pornography; rang up substantial phone sex bills; and regularly arranged meetings with prostitutes in hotels and at his home office. In fact, police found that he had contacted a prostitute the day after his wife’s murder. Believing that the doctor had killed his wife in order to more freely pursue his extramarital sexual activities, he was arrested in mid-November 1999.
Over the course of the trial, prosecutors described how Dirk had set up a phony company and used it to apply for a corporate credit card in the name “Thomas Young”; that he had frequently solicited group sex and escorts; and that this behavior seemed to become almost obsessive in the week before his wife’s murder. In those seven days, the doctor contacted several prostitutes, had sex with at least one, and sometimes spent more than four hours per day on internet porn sites, in addition to keeping up with a demanding career. Several witnesses testified that May had become increasingly insecure about the marriage, and had become focused on buying new clothes, exercising more often and had even thought about getting a face lift. Prosecutors pointed to the conclusion that May either had discovered her husband’s secret life, or was getting very close, and that Dirk wanted her out of the way.
Prosecutors also stressed that witnesses placed Greineder in the moments after the murder emerging from the area where the murder weapons were found hidden instead of heading in the most likely place to find help, the main road. The prosecution also introduced evidence that the doctor had delayed making the 911 call, that the gloves and hammer likely belonged to Dirk and that the blood found at the scene, including on Dirk’s body, was not consistent with his story.
Despite some seemingly damning evidence, Dirk Greineder enjoyed strong support from friends and family, including the couple’s three children. The doctor testified about how much he loved his wife and that they were looking forward to their daughter’s upcoming wedding. Although he said he was unsure if his wife knew of his sexual affairs, he intimated that the outside sex may have contributed to the strength of their relationship. The defense contended that the doctor had no reason at all to kill his wife.
Despite a mostly circumstantial case against him, Dirk Greineder was found guilty of first-degree murder on June 29, 2001, after a six-week trial and four days of deliberations. Later in the day, Greineder was given the mandatory sentence, life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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June 30, 1953
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-corvette-built (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-corvette-built)
First Corvette built
On this day in 1953, the first production Corvette is built at the General Motors facility in Flint, Michigan. Tony Kleiber, a worker on the assembly line, is given the privilege of driving the now-historic car off the line.
Harley J. Earl, the man behind the Corvette, got his start in his father’s business, Earl Automobile Works, designing custom auto bodies for Hollywood movie stars such as Fatty Arbuckle. In 1927, General Motors hired Earl to redesign the LaSalle, the mid-range option the company had introduced between the Buick and the Cadillac. Earl’s revamped LaSalle sold some 50,000 units by the end of 1929, before the Great Depression permanently slowed sales and it was discontinued in 1940. By that time, Earl had earned more attention for designing the Buick “Y Job,” recognized as the industry’s first “concept” car. Its relatively long, low body came equipped with innovations such as disappearing headlamps, electric windows and air-cooled brake drums over the wheels like those on an airplane.
After scoring another hit with the 1950 Buick LeSabre, Earl headed into the 1950s–a boom decade for car manufacturers–at the top of his game. In January 1953, he introduced his latest “dream car,” the Corvette, as part of GM’s traveling Motorama display at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The sleek Corvette, the first all-fiberglass-bodied American sports car, was an instant hit. It went into production the following June in Flint; 300 models were built that year. All 1953 Corvettes were white convertibles with red interiors and black canvas tops. Underneath its sleek exterior, however, the Corvette was outfitted with parts standard to other GM automobiles, including a “Blue Flame” six-cylinder engine, two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission and the drum brakes from Chevrolet’s regular car line.
The Corvette’s performance as a sports car was disappointing relative to its European competitors, and early sales were unimpressive. GM kept refining the design, however, and the addition of its first V-8 engine in 1955 greatly improved the car’s performance. By 1961, the Corvette had cemented its reputation as America’s favorite sports car. Today, it continues to rank among the world’s elite sports cars in acceleration time, top speed and overall muscle.
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July 1, 2003
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kobe-bryant-accuser-goes-to-police (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kobe-bryant-accuser-goes-to-police)
Kobe Bryant accuser goes to police
A female employee at a Colorado resort goes to police to file sexual misconduct charges against basketball star Kobe Bryant on this day in 2003. A few days later, an arrest warrant was issued for Bryant, and the ensuing case generated a media frenzy.
On the night of June 30, 2003, Bryant checked into the Lodge and Spa in Cordillera, located in Edwards, Colorado, near Vail. The 24-year-old Los Angeles Lakers guard was scheduled to have knee surgery the following day. A 19-year-old employee at the resort agreed to show Bryant around and he later invited her to his room. The two reportedly flirted and kissed; however, the accuser claimed that when she decided to leave, Bryant became upset and sexually assaulted her. The following day, July 1, she went to the police to file a complaint. Bryant was questioned by the authorities and provided a DNA sample. On July 3, an arrest warrant was issued for the basketball phenom, who the next day turned himself in to authorities in Eagle County, Colorado, and was released on $25,000 bail. On July 18, with his wife by his side, Bryant held a news conference in which he admitted to having sex with the accuser but maintained it was consensual.
Bryant, who was drafted into the NBA after high school in 1996, went on to play for the Lakers during the 2003-2004 season, but faced intense scrutiny and lost many of his endorsement deals as a result of the rape case. The accuser, whose identity was mistakenly made public as a result of court clerical errors, endured media speculation about her personal life and received death threats.
On September 1, 2004, after jury selection had begun, the district attorney dropped the rape charge against Bryant because the accuser decided not to testify or participate in the trial. In early March 2005, Bryant and the accuser settled her civil lawsuit against him for an undisclosed sum.
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July 2, 1839
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mutiny-on-the-amistad-slave-ship (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mutiny-on-the-amistad-slave-ship)
Mutiny on the Amistad slave ship
Early in the morning, Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rise up against their captors, killing two crewmembers and seizing control of the ship, which had been transporting them to a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba.
In 1807, the U.S. Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing the African slave trade, although the trading of slaves within the United States was not prohibited. Despite the international ban on the importation of African slaves, Cuba continued to transport captive Africans to its sugar plantations until the 1860s, and Brazil to its coffee plantations until the 1850s.
On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African known as Cinque, freed himself and the other slaves and planned a mutiny. Early in the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans rose up against their captors and, using sugar-cane knives found in the hold, killed the captain of the vessel and a crewmember. Two other crewmembers were either thrown overboard or escaped, and Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who had purchased the slaves, were captured. Cinque ordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During the day, Ruiz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vessel in a northerly direction, toward U.S. waters. After almost nearly two difficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africans perished, what became known as the “black schooner” was first spotted by American vessels.
On August 26, the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut. Ruiz and Montes were freed, and the Africans were imprisoned pending an investigation of the Amistad revolt. The two Cubans demanded the return of their supposedly Cuban-born slaves, while the Spanish government called for the Africans’ extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder. In opposition to both groups, American abolitionists advocated the return of the illegally bought slaves to Africa.
The story of the Amistad mutiny garnered widespread attention, and U.S. abolitionists succeeded in winning a trial in a U.S. court. Before a federal district court in Connecticut, Cinque, who was taught English by his new American friends, testified on his own behalf. On January 13, 1840, Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the Africans were illegally enslaved, that they would not be returned to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder, and that they should be granted free passage back to Africa. The Spanish authorities and U.S. President Martin Van Buren appealed the decision, but another federal district court upheld Judson’s findings. President Van Buren, in opposition to the abolitionist faction in Congress, appealed the decision again.
On February 22, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing the Amistad case. U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who had served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829, joined the Africans’ defense team. In Congress, Adams had been an eloquent opponent of slavery, and before the nation’s highest court he presented a coherent argument for the release of Cinque and the 34 other survivors of the Amistad.
On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled, with only one dissent, that the Africans had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised a natural right to fight for their freedom. In November, with the financial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africans departed America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa. Some of the Africans helped establish a Christian mission in Sierra Leone, but most, like Cinque, returned to their homelands in the African interior. One of the survivors, who was a child when taken aboard the Amistad as a slave, eventually returned to the United States. Originally named Margru, she studied at Ohio’s integrated and coeducational Oberlin College in the late 1840s before returning to Sierra Leone as evangelical missionary Sara Margru Kinson.
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July 3, 1863
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Battle of Gettysburg ends
On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s last attempt at breaking the Union line ends in disastrous failure, bringing the most decisive battle of the American Civil War to an end.
In June 1863, following his masterful victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, General Lee launched his second invasion of the Union in less than a year. He led his 75,000-man Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River, through Maryland, and into Pennsylvania, seeking to win a major battle on Northern soil that would further dispirit the Union war effort and induce Britain or France to intervene on the Confederacy’s behalf. The 90,000-strong Army of the Potomac pursued the Confederates into Maryland, but its commander, General Joseph Hooker, was still stinging from his defeat at Chancellorsville and seemed reluctant to chase Lee further. Meanwhile, the Confederates divided their forces and investigated various targets, such as Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital.
On June 28, President Abraham Lincoln replaced Hooker with General George Meade, and Lee learned of the presence of the Army of the Potomac in Maryland. Lee ordered his army to concentrate in the vicinity of the crossroads town of Gettysburg and prepare to meet the Federal army. At the same time, Meade sent ahead part of his force into Pennsylvania but intended to make a stand at Pipe Creek in Maryland.
On July 1, a Confederate division under General Henry Heth marched into Gettysburg hoping to seize supplies but finding instead three brigades of Union cavalry. Thus began the Battle of Gettysburg, and Lee and Meade ordered their massive armies to converge on the impromptu battle site. The Union cavalrymen defiantly held the field against overwhelming numbers until the arrival of Federal reinforcements. Later, the Confederates were reinforced, and by mid-afternoon some 19,000 Federals faced 24,000 Confederates. Lee arrived to the battlefield soon afterward and ordered a general advance that forced the Union line back to Cemetery Hill, just south of the town.
During the night, the rest of Meade’s force arrived, and by the morning Union General Winfield Hancock had formed a strong Union line. On July 2, against the Union left, General James Longstreet led the main Confederate attack, but it was not carried out until about 4 p.m., and the Federals had time to consolidate their positions. Thus began some of the heaviest fighting of the battle, and Union forces retained control of their strategic positions at heavy cost. After three hours, the battle ended, and the total number of dead at Gettysburg stood at 35,000.
On July 3, Lee, having failed on the right and the left, planned an assault on Meade’s center. A 15,000-man strong column under General George Pickett was organized, and Lee ordered a massive bombardment of the Union positions. The 10,000 Federals answered the Confederate artillery onslaught, and for more than an hour the guns raged in the heaviest cannonade of the Civil War. At 3 p.m., Pickett led his force into no-man’s-land and found that Lee’s bombardment had failed. As Pickett’s force attempted to cross the mile distance to Cemetery Ridge, Union artillery blew great holes in their lines. Meanwhile, Yankee infantry flanked the main body of “Pickett’s charge” and began cutting down the Confederates. Only a few hundred Virginians reached the Union line, and within minutes they all were dead, dying, or captured. In less than an hour, more than 7,000 Confederate troops had been killed or wounded.
Both armies, exhausted, held their positions until the night of July 4, when Lee withdrew. The Army of the Potomac was too weak to pursue the Confederates, and Lee led his army out of the North, never to invade it again. The Battle of Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War, costing the Union 23,000 killed, wounded, or missing in action. The Confederates suffered some 25,000 casualties. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address during the dedication of a new national cemetery at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg. The Civil War effectively ended with the surrender of General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865.
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July 4, 1776
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
U.S. declares independence
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually encourage France’s intervention on behalf of the Patriots.
The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the banner of “no taxation without representation,” colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.
Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until Parliament’s enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the “Boston Tea Party,” which saw British tea valued at some 18,000 pounds dumped into Boston Harbor.
Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.
With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.
Initially, both the Americans and the British saw the conflict as a kind of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was a colonial rebellion, and to the Americans it was a struggle for their rights as British citizens. However, Parliament remained unwilling to negotiate with the American rebels and instead purchased German mercenaries to help the British army crush the rebellion. In response to Britain’s continued opposition to reform, the Continental Congress began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the colonies.
In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, an influential political pamphlet that convincingly argued for American independence and sold more than 500,000 copies in a few months. In the spring of 1776, support for independence swept the colonies, the Continental Congress called for states to form their own governments, and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration.
The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew generously from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of natural rights, and from the work of other English theorists. The first section features the famous lines, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The second part presents a long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion.
On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain. The dramatic words of this resolution were added to the closing of the Declaration of Independence. Two days later, on July 4, the declaration was formally adopted by 12 colonies after minor revision. New York approved it on July 19. On August 2, the declaration was signed.
The American War for Independence would last for five more years. Yet to come were the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at Valley Forge, the intervention of the French, and the final victory at Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.
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July 5, 1996
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-successful-cloning-of-a-mammal (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-successful-cloning-of-a-mammal)
First successful cloning of a mammal
On this day in 1996, Dolly the sheep–the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell–is born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland.
Originally code-named “6LL3,” the cloned lamb was named after the buxom singer and actress Dolly Parton. The name was reportedly suggested by one of the stockmen who assisted with her birth, after he learned that the animal was cloned from a mammary cell. The cells had been taken from the udder of a six-year-old ewe and cultured in a lab using microscopic needles, in a method first used in human fertility treatments in the 1970s. After producing a number of normal eggs, scientists implanted them into surrogate ewes; 148 days later one of them gave birth to Dolly.
Dolly’s birth was announced publicly in February 1997 to a storm of controversy. On one hand, supporters argued that cloning technology can lead to crucial advances in medicine, citing the production of genetically modified animals to be organ donors for humans as well as “therapeutic” cloning, or the process of cloning embryos in order to collect stem cells for use in the development of treatments for degenerative nerve diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Some scientists also looked at animal cloning as a possible way to preserve endangered species. On the other hand, detractors saw the new cloning technology as potentially unsafe and unethical, especially when it was applied to what many saw as the logical next step: human cloning.
Over the course of her short life, Dolly was mated to a male sheep named David and eventually gave birth to four lambs. In January 2002 she was found to have arthritis in her hind legs, a diagnosis that raised questions about genetic abnormalities that may have been caused in the cloning process. After suffering from a progressive lung disease, Dolly was put down on February 14, 2003, at the age of six. Her early death raised more questions about the safety of cloning, both animal and human. Though Ian Wilmut, the lead scientist on the team that produced Dolly, has spoken out publicly against human cloning, its supporters are unlikely to be dissuaded. As for Dolly, the historic sheep was stuffed and is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
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July 6, 1946
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/george-bugs-moran-is-arrested (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/george-bugs-moran-is-arrested)
George “Bugs” Moran is arrested
FBI agents arrest George “Bugs” Moran, along with fellow crooks Virgil Summers and Albert Fouts, in Kentucky. Once one of the biggest organized crime figures in America, Moran had been reduced to small bank robberies by this time. He died in prison 11 years later.
Bugs Moran’s criminal career took an abrupt downturn after the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, in which his top gunmen were slaughtered by rival Al Capone’s henchmen. (A lasting feud had been established after Capone’s men killed Moran’s friend and mentor, Deanie O’Banion, in 1924.) Moran, who just missed the massacre by a couple of minutes, was visibly shaken when reporters talked to him days later. He shouted at them, “Only Capone kills like that!”
Al “Scarface” Capone established his alibi by vacationing in Florida at the time of the Valentine’s Day murders. Sitting poolside, he mocked Moran, chuckling as he told reporters, “The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran.” Later, while Capone was serving time for tax evasion, Moran may have earned a measure of revenge by killing Jack McGurn, one of the men who had carried out the massacre.
A bank robbery charge conviction eventually landed Moran in Leavenworth federal prison. Hewas releasedin 1956, but was then re-arrested for an earlier bank robbery. He died in prison of lung cancer on February 2, 1957.
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July 7, 2005
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/terrorists-attack-london-transit-system-at-rush-hour (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/terrorists-attack-london-transit-system-at-rush-hour)
Terrorists attack London transit system at rush hour
On the morning of July 7, 2005, bombs are detonated in three crowded London subways and one bus during the peak of the city’s rush hour. The synchronized suicide bombings, which were thought to be the work of al-Qaida, killed 56 people including the bombers and injured another 700. It was the largest attack on Great Britain since World War II. No warning was given.
The train bombings targeted the London Underground, the city’s subway system. Nearly simultaneous explosions, at about 8:50 a.m., occurred on trains in three locations: between the Aldgate and Liverpool Street stations on the Circle Line; between the Russell Square and King’s Cross stations on the Piccadilly Line; and at the Edgware Road station, also on the Circle Line. Almost an hour later, a double-decker bus on Upper Woburn Place near Tavistock Square was also hit; the bus’s roof was ripped off by the blast.
The attacks took place as world leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, were meeting at the G8 summit in nearby Scotland. In his remarks after learning of the blasts, Blair called the attacks barbaric and pointed out that their taking place at the same time as the G8 summit was most likely purposeful. Later, he vowed to see those responsible brought to justice and that Great Britain, a major partner with the U.S. in the war in Iraq, would not be intimidated by terrorists.
Of the four suicide bombers, three were born in Great Britain and one in Jamaica. Three lived in or near Leeds in West Yorkshire; one resided in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. Al-Qaida officially claimed responsibility for the attacks on September 1, 2005, in a videotape released to the al-Jazeera television network.
Two weeks later, on July 21, 2005, a second set of four bombings was attempted, also targeting the city’s transit system, but failed when the explosives only partially detonated. The four men alleged to be responsible for the failed attacks were arrested in late July.
An estimated 3 million people ride the London Underground every day, with another 6.5 million using the city’s bus system.
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July 8, 1928
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-spiteful-son-kills-four-in-a-fit-of-rage (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-spiteful-son-kills-four-in-a-fit-of-rage)
A spiteful son kills four in a fit of rage
Rose Booher, her son Fred, and two hired workers are all shot to death on a secluded farm in Mannville, Alberta, Canada, while the rest of the Booher family is away. Although nothing appeared to be stolen from the house and few clues were found, authorities determined that a rifle had caused the gunshot wounds. Not coincidentally, a rifle had been taken from a neighbor’s farm just prior to the killings.
The investigation centered on the Booher family-Rose’s son Vernon, in particular. Vernon was known to have had problems with his mother, but he denied any involvement in the murders. After persistent interrogation failed to crack Vernon, Max Langsner, who had reputedly solved crimes all over Europe by picking up “mind signals” from criminals, was summoned from Vienna, Austria.
Using his alleged psychic powers, Langsner sketched a scene that included a rifle hidden under some bushes. Using the sketch as a makeshift map, the police discovered the murder weapon near the Booher home.
With this new evidence, Vernon confessed to the crime. He had planned to kill his mother because he despised her. The other three were killed only because they had stumbled on to the scene. Vernon expressed remorse only for killing his brother, Fred.
Langsner went on to conduct psychic research with the Eskimos in Northern Canada and Alaska. However, there is no record of his involvement in allegedly solving any additional crimes through psychic measures.
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July 9, 1996
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-family-is-brutally-attacked-on-a-walk-in-england (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-family-is-brutally-attacked-on-a-walk-in-england)
A family is brutally attacked on a walk in England
Dr. Lin Russell, her two daughters, Josie and Megan, and their dog, Lucy, are all brutally attacked by a man wielding a hammer on their way home to Nonington Village, Kent, England, after a swimming gala. Forcing them to sit down in the woods, the attacker blindfolded and tied up his victims with their torn towels, and then bludgeoned them one by one. Nine-year-old Josie, the sole survivor of the vicious assault, had to relearn to speak after surgeons inserted a metal plate into her head to cover the area where her skull had been smashed. Some of her brain tissue was so damaged that it had to be removed.
Finally, on July 17 of the following year, Michael Stone, who had a record of burglary and robbery, as well as a history of drug abuse and mental illness, was arrested. He had been recognized afterthe broadcast of aBBC television special that included hispicture and description. Asked by detectives where he was on the day of the murders, Stone replied, “I can’t remember for two reasons. One, I was badly on drugs, and two, it was so long ago.”
During the trial, several witnesses testified against Stone. One maintained that the defendant’s stepfather often beat young Michael with a hammer; several prison inmates (Barry Thompson, Damien Daley, and Mark Jennings) claimed that Stone had confessed to the murders on separate occasions; and a couple, Sheree Batt and Lawrence Calder, alleged that Stone had come to their house the morning after the murders wearing blood-splattered clothing.
On October 23, 1998, the 38-year-old Stone was convicted and given a triple life sentence, despite his repeated claims of innocence. Immediately thereafter, Barry Thompson contacted a daily newspaper to retract his testimony. Based on Thompson’s admission that he lied, a Court of Appeals threw out Stone’s conviction. At a second trial, which ended in early October 2001, he was again convicted and sentenced to three life terms, which he began serving on October 5. Stone’s attorney, who said he was “disappointed and saddened by the outcome” pledged to appeal the convictions “in the event of fresh evidence.”
Despite the second conviction, there are some who still believe Stone is innocent.
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July 10, 1925
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Monkey Trial begins
In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Monkey Trial” begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.
The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” With local businessman George Rappalyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing of this coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.
On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the city’s main street to keep the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse, the defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against their attempt to prove the law unconstitutional and then refused to end his practice of opening each day’s proceeding with prayer.
Outside, Dayton took on a carnival-like atmosphere as an exhibit featuring two chimpanzees and a supposed “missing link” opened in town, and vendors sold Bibles, toy monkeys, hot dogs, and lemonade. The missing link was in fact Jo Viens of Burlington, Vermont, a 51-year-old man who was of short stature and possessed a receding forehead and a protruding jaw. One of the chimpanzees–named Joe Mendi–wore a plaid suit, a brown fedora, and white spats, and entertained Dayton’s citizens by monkeying around on the courthouse lawn.
In the courtroom, Judge Raulston destroyed the defense’s strategy by ruling that expert scientific testimony on evolution was inadmissible–on the grounds that it was Scopes who was on trial, not the law he had violated. The next day, Raulston ordered the trial moved to the courthouse lawn, fearing that the weight of the crowd inside was in danger of collapsing the floor.
In front of several thousand spectators in the open air, Darrow changed his tactics and as his sole witness called Bryan in an attempt to discredit his literal interpretation of the Bible. In a searching examination, Bryan was subjected to severe ridicule and forced to make ignorant and contradictory statements to the amusement of the crowd. On July 21, in his closing speech, Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver the closing speech he had been preparing for weeks. After eight minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed. Although Bryan had won the case, he had been publicly humiliated and his fundamentalist beliefs had been disgraced. Five days later, on July 26, he lay down for a Sunday afternoon nap and never woke up.
In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.
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July 11, 1914
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/babe-ruth-makes-mlb-debut (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/babe-ruth-makes-mlb-debut)
Babe Ruth makes MLB debut
On July 11, 1914, in his major league debut, George Herman “Babe” Ruth pitches seven strong innings to lead the Boston Red Sox over the Cleveland Indians, 4-3.
George Herman Ruth was born February 6, 1895, in Baltimore, Maryland, where his father worked as a saloon keeper on the waterfront. He was the first of eight children, but only he and a sister survived infancy. The young George, known as “Gig” (pronounced jij) to his family, was a magnet for trouble from an early age. At seven, his truancy from school led his parents to declare him incorrigible, and he was sent to an orphanage, St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. Ruth lived there until he was 19 in 1914, when he was signed as a pitcher by the Baltimore Orioles.
That same summer, Ruth was sold to the Boston Red Sox. His teammates called him “Babe” for his naiveté, but his talent was already maturing. In his debut game against the Indians, the 19-year-old Ruth gave up just five hits over the first six innings. In the seventh, the Indians managed two runs on three singles and a sacrifice and Ruth was relieved. His hitting prowess, however, was not on display that first night–he went 0 for 2 at the plate.
Ruth developed quickly as a pitcher and as a hitter. When the Red Sox made the World Series in 1916 and 1918, Ruth starred, setting a record with 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play. His career record as a pitcher for the Red Sox was 89-46.
To the great dismay of Boston fans, Ruth’s contract was sold to the New York Yankees before the 1920 season by Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, so that Frazee could finance the musical No, No, Nanette. Ruth switched to the outfield with the Yankees, and hit more home runs than the entire Red Sox team in 10 of the next 12 seasons. “The Sultan of Swat” or “The Bambino,” as he was alternately known, was the greatest gate attraction in baseball until his retirement as a player in 1935. During his career with the New York Yankees, the team won four World Series and seven American League pennants. After getting rid of Ruth, the Red Sox did not win a World Series until 2004, an 85-year drought known to Red Sox fans as “the Curse of the Bambino.”
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On July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton was shot and mortally wounded by Vice President Aaron Burr in one of the most famous duels in American history. Get the facts on one of America's most influential and controversial founding fathers.
http://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-alexander-hamilton?cmpid=Social_FBPAGE_HISTORY_20150711_205998355&linkId=15422733
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July 12, 1979
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/disco-is-dealt-death-blow-by-fans-of-the-chicago-white-sox (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/disco-is-dealt-death-blow-by-fans-of-the-chicago-white-sox)
Disco is dealt death blow by fans of the Chicago White Sox
As the 1970s came to an end, the age of disco was also nearing its finale. But for all of its decadence and overexposure, disco didn’t quite die a natural death by collapsing under its own weight. Instead, it was killed by a public backlash that reached its peak on this day in 1979 with the infamous “Disco Demolition” night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. That incident, which led to at least nine injuries, 39 arrests and the cancellation and forfeit of a Major League Baseball game, is widely credited—or, depending on your perspective, blamed—with dealing disco its death blow.
The event was the brainchild of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, popular disk jockeys on Chicago’s WLUP “The Loop” FM. Dahl had only recently moved to WLUP from rival station WDAI when that station switched to an all-disco format—a relatively common reformatting trend in American radio in 1979. But however many other rock DJs were displaced by disco, only Dahl was inspired to launch a semi-comic vendetta aimed at “the eradication and elimination of the dreaded musical disease.”
On May 2, the rainout of a game between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers led to the scheduling of a doubleheader on July 12. Dahl and Meier approached the White Sox with a rather unorthodox idea for an attendance-boosting promotion: Declare July 12 “Disco Demolition” night and allow Dahl to blow up a dumpster full of disco records between games of the doubleheader. White Sox executive Mike Veeck embraced the idea in the same spirit with which his father, legendary team-owner Bill Veeck, had once sent a little person to the plate in a major league ballgame in order to amuse the fans and draw a walk.
The first mistake organizers made on Disco Demolition night was grossly underestimating the appeal of the 98-cent discount tickets offered to anyone who brought a disco record to the park to add to the explosive-rigged dumpster. WLUP and the White Sox expected perhaps 5,000 more fans than the average draw of 15,000 or so at Comiskey Park. What they got instead was a raucous sellout crowd of 40,000-plus and an even more raucous overflow crowd of as many as 40,000 more outside on Shields Avenue. The second mistake was failing to actually collect those disco records, which would become dangerous projectiles in the hands of a crowd that was already out of control by the time Dahl detonated his dumpster in center field during warm-ups for the evening’s second game.
What followed was utter chaos, as fans by the thousands stormed the field and began to wreak havoc, shimmying up the foul poles, tearing up the grass and lighting vinyl bonfires on the diamond while the stadium scoreboard implored them to return to their seats. Conditions were judged too dangerous for the scheduled game to begin, and the Detroit Tigers were awarded a win by forfeit.
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July 13, 2010
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/legendary-new-york-yankees-owner-george-steinbrenner-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/legendary-new-york-yankees-owner-george-steinbrenner-dies)
Legendary New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner dies
On this day in 2010, George Steinbrenner, the larger-than-life, longtime owner of the New York Yankees, who re-established the team as one of baseball’s most successful franchises, dies of a heart attack at age 80 in Tampa, Florida. Under Steinbrenner, who owned the team from 1973 until his death, the Yankees won seven World Series championships and 11 American League pennants. Nicknamed “the Boss,” the influential, demanding and controversial owner also built the Yankees into baseball’s first billion-dollar team.
George Michael Steinbrenner III was born on July 4, 1930, and raised in Bay Village, Ohio, near Cleveland. After graduating from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1952, he served in the Air Force, earned a master’s degree in physical education from Ohio State University and did brief stints as an assistant college football coach at Northwestern and Purdue. In 1957, Steinbrenner joined his family’s Great Lakes shipping business and went on to grow it substantially. In the early 1960s, he became an owner of the short-lived Cleveland Pipers professional basketball team, and later invested in horse racing and Broadway shows, among other ventures.
In 1973, Steinbrenner headed an investment group that bought the Yankees for less than $10 million. (At the time of his death, the team was worth an estimated $1.6 billion.) Although he initially promised to be a hands-off owner and “stick to building ships,” Steinbrenner soon became heavily involved in running the team, even dictating the length of his players’ hair and sometimes directing post-game traffic outside Yankee Stadium. He had contentious relationships with a number of his players and staff, and famously hired and fired manager Billy Martin five times. Steinbrenner himself was suspended from the sport twice–first, in 1974, after pleading guilty to making illegal corporate contributions to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign, and a second time, in 1990, for paying a small-time gambler to dig up damaging information about Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield, with whom Steinbrenner was feuding. Beyond baseball, Steinbrenner became a pop-culture figure, hosting “Saturday Night Live” and being portrayed as a recurring character on “Seinfeld.”
When Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees, the team was struggling and hadn’t won a World Series since 1962. He began spending record-breaking sums to acquire the game’s top players and soon got results: the Bronx Bombers won the World Series in 1977 and 1978, and again in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000. Steinbrenner and the Yankees also raked in millions from lucrative licensing and marketing deals. However, the Yankees’ long-term dominance and colossal payroll earned them detractors, who charged Steinbrenner with “buying” championships and driving up salaries (and ticket prices) across the sport. In an effort to level the playing field for teams with fewer financial resources, Major League Baseball in 2002 instituted a luxury tax in which teams whose payroll goes over a certain threshold are taxed on the excess amount.
In 2009, the Yankees won their 27th World Series–more than any other team in baseball history. By then, Steinbrenner’s health was in decline and he had ceded day-to-day management of the team to his sons Hal and Hank. Following Steinbrenner’s July 13, 2010, death, baseball commissioner Bud Selig said, “He was and always will be as much of a New York Yankee as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and all of the other Yankee legends.”
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July 14, 1099
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jerusalem-captured-in-first-crusade (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jerusalem-captured-in-first-crusade)
Jerusalem captured in First Crusade
During the First Crusade, Christian knights from Europe capture Jerusalem after seven weeks of siege and begin massacring the city’s Muslim and Jewish population.
Beginning in the 11th century, Christians in Jerusalem were increasingly persecuted by the city’s Islamic rulers, especially when control of the holy city passed from the relatively tolerant Egyptians to the Seljuk Turks in 1071. Late in the century, Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comenus, also threatened by the Seljuk Turks, appealed to the West for aid. In 1095, Pope Urban II publicly called for a crusade to aid Eastern Christians and recover the holy lands. The response by Western Europeans was immediate.
The first crusaders were actually undisciplined hordes of French and German peasants who met with little success. One group, known as the “People’s Crusade,” reached as far as Constantinople before being annihilated by the Turks. In 1096, the main crusading force, featuring some 4,000 mounted knights and 25,000 infantry, began to move east. Led by Raymond of Toulouse, Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Flanders, and Bohemond of Otranto, the army of Christian knights crossed into Asia Minor in 1097.
In June, the crusaders captured the Turkish-held city of Nicaea and then defeated a massive army of Seljuk Turks at Dorylaeum. From there, they marched on to Antioch, located on the Orontes River below Mount Silpius, and began a difficult six-month siege during which they repulsed several attacks by Turkish relief armies. Finally, early in the morning of June 3, 1098, Bohemond persuaded a Turkish traitor to open Antioch’s Bridge Gate, and the knights poured into the city. In an orgy of killing, the Christians massacred thousands of enemy soldiers and citizens, and all but the city’s fortified citadel was taken. Later in the month, a large Turkish army arrived to attempt to regain the city, but they too were defeated, and the Antioch citadel surrendered to the Europeans.
After resting and reorganizing for six months, the crusaders set off for their ultimate goal, Jerusalem. Their numbers were now reduced to some 1,200 cavalry and 12,000 foot soldiers. On June 7, 1099, the Christian army reached the holy city, and finding it heavily fortified, began building three enormous siege towers. By the night of July 13, the towers were complete, and the Christians began fighting their way across Jerusalem’s walls. On July 14, Godfrey’s men were the first to penetrate the defenses, and the Gate of Saint Stephen was opened. The rest of the knights and soldiers then poured in, the city was captured, and tens of thousands of its occupants were slaughtered.
The crusaders had achieved their aims, and Jerusalem was in Christian hands, but an Egyptian army marched on the holy city a few weeks later to challenge their claim. The Egyptians’ defeat by the outnumbered Christians in August ended Muslim resistance to the Europeans for the time being, and five small Christian states were set up in the region under the rule of the leaders of the crusade.
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July 15, 1997
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/versace-murdered-in-cunanan-killing-spree (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/versace-murdered-in-cunanan-killing-spree)
Versace murdered in Cunanan killing spree
Spree killer Andrew Cunanan murders world-renowned Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace on the steps outside his Miami mansion. Versace was shot twice in the head, and Cunanan fled.
Andrew Cunanan had no criminal record before the spring of 1997, when he began a killing spree in Minneapolis. On April 27, 1997, after traveling from San Diego, Cunanan bludgeoned Jeffrey Trail to death. Trail was an acquaintance of David Madson, an ex-lover of Cunanan’s whom Cunanan in turn murdered on May 3. Cunanan shot Madson in the head, dumped his body near a lake outside Minneapolis, and took his red Jeep Cherokee. Two days later, in Chicago, he gained access to the estate of wealthy developer Lee Miglin, beat him to death, and stole his Lexus. On May 9, Cunanan abandoned Miglin’s automobile in Pennsville, New Jersey, and shot cemetery caretaker William Reese to death for his red pickup truck.
With a massive FBI manhunt for Cunanan already underway, he drove down to Miami Beach and on July 11 was recognized by a fast-food employee who had seen his picture on the television show America’s Most Wanted. However, the police arrived too late, and four days later Cunanan shot Versace to death outside his South Beach mansion. Although Cunanan and Versace were both openly gay and ran in similar circles, the police failed to find evidence that they had ever met.
Versace’s killing set off a nationwide manhunt for Cunanan, who was famous for his chameleon-like ability to appear differently in every picture taken of him. However, on July 23, the search ended just 40 blocks away from Versace’s home on a two-level houseboat that Cunanan had broken into. There, police found him dead from a self-inflicted bullet wound from the same gun that took the lives of two of his victims. He left no suicide note.
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July 16, 1945
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Atom bomb successfully tested
On this day in 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., the Manhattan Project comes to an explosive end as the first atom bomb is successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Plans for the creation of a uranium bomb by the Allies were established as early as 1939, when Italian emigre physicist Enrico Fermi met with U.S. Navy department officials at Columbia University to discuss the use of fissionable materials for military purposes. That same year, Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt supporting the theory that an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction had great potential as a basis for a weapon of mass destruction. In February 1940, the federal government granted a total of $6,000 for research. But in early 1942, with the United States now at war with the Axis powers, and fear mounting that Germany was working on its own uranium bomb, the War Department took a more active interest, and limits on resources for the project were removed.
Brigadier-General Leslie R. Groves, himself an engineer, was now in complete charge of a project to assemble the greatest minds in science and discover how to harness the power of the atom as a means of bringing the war to a decisive end. The Manhattan Project (so-called because of where the research began) would wind its way through many locations during the early period of theoretical exploration, most importantly, the University of Chicago, where Enrico Fermi successfully set off the first fission chain reaction. But the Project took final form in the desert of New Mexico, where, in 1943, Robert J. Oppenheimer began directing Project Y at a laboratory at Los Alamos, along with such minds as Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, and Fermi. Here theory and practice came together, as the problems of achieving critical mass-a nuclear explosion-and the construction of a deliverable bomb were worked out.
Finally, on the morning of July 16,in the New Mexico desert120 miles south of Santa Fe, the first atomic bomb was detonated. The scientists and a few dignitaries had removed themselves 10,000 yards away to observe as the first mushroom cloud of searing light stretched 40,000 feet into the air and generated the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. The tower on which the bomb sat when detonated was vaporized.
The question now became-on whom was the bomb to be dropped? Germany was the original target, but the Germans had already surrendered. The only belligerent remaining was Japan.
A footnote: The original $6,000 budget for the Manhattan Project finally ballooned to a total cost of $2 billion.
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July 17, 1955
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Disneyland opens
Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion.
Walt Disney, born in Chicago in 1901, worked as a commercial artist before setting up a small studio in Los Angeles to produce animated cartoons. In 1928, his short film Steamboat Willy, starring the character “Mickey Mouse,” was a national sensation. It was the first animated film to use sound, and Disney provided the voice for Mickey. From there on, Disney cartoons were in heavy demand, but the company struggled financially because of Disney’s insistence on ever-improving artistic and technical quality. His first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), took three years to complete and was a great commercial success.
Snow White was followed by other feature-length classics for children, such as Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). Fantasia (1940), which coordinated animated segments with famous classical music pieces, was an artistic and technical achievement. In Song of the South (1946), Disney combined live actors with animated figures, and beginning with Treasure Island in 1950 the company added live-action movies to its repertoire. Disney was also one of the first movie studios to produce film directly for television, and its Zorro and Davy Crockett series were very popular with children.
In the early 1950s, Walt Disney began designing a huge amusement park to be built near Los Angeles. He intended Disneyland to have educational as well as amusement value and to entertain adults and their children. Land was bought in the farming community of Anaheim, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and construction began in 1954. In the summer of 1955, special invitations were sent out for the opening of Disneyland on July 17. Unfortunately, the pass was counterfeited and thousands of uninvited people were admitted into Disneyland on opening day. The park was not ready for the public: food and drink ran out, a women’s high-heel shoe got stuck in the wet asphalt of Main Street USA, and the Mark Twain Steamboat nearly capsized from too many passengers.
Disneyland soon recovered, however, and attractions such as the Castle, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White’s Adventures, Space Station X-1, Jungle Cruise, and Stage Coach drew countless children and their parents. Special events and the continual building of new state-of-the-art attractions encouraged them to visit again. In 1965, work began on an even bigger Disney theme park and resort near Orlando, Florida. Walt Disney died in 1966, and Walt Disney World was opened in his honor on October 1, 1971. Epcot Center, Disney-MGM Studios, and Animal Kingdom were later added to Walt Disney World, and it remains Florida’s premier tourist attraction. In 1983, Disneyland Tokyo opened in Japan, and in 1992 Disneyland Paris–or “EuroDisney”–opened to a mixed reaction in Marne-la-Vallee. The newest Disneyland, in Hong Kong, opened its doors in September 2005.
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July 18, 64
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/neros-rome-burns (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/neros-rome-burns)
Nero’s Rome burns
The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64. Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned. Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda.
The fire began in the slums of a district south of the legendary Palatine Hill. The area’s homes burned very quickly and the fire spread north, fueled by high winds. During the chaos of the fire, there were reports of heavy looting. The fire ended up raging out of control for nearly three days. Three of Rome’s 14 districts were completely wiped out; only four were untouched by the tremendous conflagration. Hundreds of people died in the fire and many thousands were left homeless.
Although popular legend holds that Emperor Nero fiddled while the city burned, this account is wrong on several accounts. First, the fiddle did not even exist at the time. Instead, Nero was well known for his talent on the lyre; he often composed his own music. More importantly, Nero was actually 35 miles away in Antium when the fire broke out. In fact, he let his palace be used as a shelter.
Legend has long blamed Nero for a couple of reasons. Nero did not like the aesthetics of the city and used the devastation of the fire in order to change much of it and institute new building codes throughout the city. Nero also used the fire to clamp down on the growing influence of Christians in Rome. He arrested, tortured and executed hundreds of Christians on the pretext that they had something to do with the fire.
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July 19, 1799
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Rosetta Stone found
On this day in 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years.
When Napoleon, an emperor known for his enlightened view of education, art and culture, invaded Egypt in 1798, he took along a group of scholars and told them to seize all important cultural artifacts for France. Pierre Bouchard, one of Napoleon’s soldiers, was aware of this order when he found the basalt stone, which was almost four feet long and two-and-a-half feet wide, at a fort near Rosetta. When the British defeated Napoleon in 1801, they took possession of the Rosetta Stone.
Several scholars, including Englishman Thomas Young made progress with the initial hieroglyphics analysis of the Rosetta Stone. French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832), who had taught himself ancient languages, ultimately cracked the code and deciphered the hieroglyphics using his knowledge of Greek as a guide. Hieroglyphics used pictures to represent objects, sounds and groups of sounds. Once the Rosetta Stone inscriptions were translated, the language and culture of ancient Egypt was suddenly open to scientists as never before.
The Rosetta Stone has been housed at the British Museum in London since 1802, except for a brief period during World War I. At that time, museum officials moved it to a separate underground location, along with other irreplaceable items from the museum’s collection, to protect it from the threat of bombs.
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July 20, 1973
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Bruce Lee dies at age 32
On this day in 1973, the actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee dies in Los Angeles at age 32 from a brain edema possibly caused by a reaction to a prescription painkiller. During Lee’s all-too-brief career, he became a movie star in Asia and, posthumously, in America.
Jun Fan (Bruce) Lee was born on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California. At the time, his father, a Chinese opera star, was on tour in the United States. The family moved back to Hong Kong in 1941. Growing up, Lee was a child actor who appeared in some 20 Chinese films; he also studied dancing and trained in the Wing Chun style of gung fu (also known as “kung fu”). In 1959, Lee returned to America, where he eventually attended the University of Washington and opened a martial-arts school in Seattle. In 1964, Lee married Linda Emery, who in 1965 gave birth to Brandon Lee, the first of the couple’s two children. In 1966, the Lees moved to Los Angeles and Bruce appeared on the television program The Green Hornet (1966-1967), playing the Hornet’s acrobatic sidekick Kato. Lee also appeared in karate tournaments around the United States and continued to teach martial arts to private clients including the actor Steve McQueen.
In search of better acting roles than Hollywood was offering, Lee returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s and successfully established himself as a star in Asia with the action movies The Big Boss (1971) and The Way of the Dragon (1972), which he wrote, directed and starred in. Lee’s next film, Enter the Dragon, was released in the United States by Hollywood studio Warner Bros. in August 1973. Tragically, Lee had died one month earlier, on July 20, in Hong Kong, after suffering a brain edema believed to be caused by an adverse reaction to a pain medication. Enter the Dragon was a box-office hit, eventually grossing more than $200 million, and Lee posthumously became a movie icon in America.
Lee’s body was returned to Seattle, where he was buried. His sudden death at the young age of 32 led to rumors and speculation about the cause of his demise. One theory held that Lee had been murdered by Chinese gangsters while another rumor circulated that the actor had been the victim of a curse. The family-curse theory resurfaced when Lee’s 28-year-old son Brandon, who had followed in his father’s footsteps to become an actor, died in an accidental shooting on the set of the movie The Crow on March 31, 1991. The younger Lee was buried next to his father at Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery.
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July 21, 365
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Tsunami hits Alexandria, Egypt
On this day in the year 365, a powerful earthquake off the coast of Greece causes a tsunami that devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Although there were no measuring tools at the time, scientists now estimate that the quake was actually two tremors in succession, the largest of which is thought to have had a magnitude of 8.0.
The quake was centered near the plate boundary called the Hellenic Arc and quickly sent a wall of water across the Mediterranean Sea toward the Egyptian coast. Ships in the harbor at Alexandria were overturned as the water near the coast receded suddenly. Reports indicate that many people rushed out to loot the hapless ships. The tsunami wave then rushed in and carried the ships over the sea walls, landing many on top of buildings. In Alexandria, approximately 5,000 people lost their lives and 50,000 homes were destoyed.
The surrounding villages and towns suffered even greater destruction. Many were virtually wiped off the map. Outside the city, 45,000 people were killed. In addition, the inundation of saltwater rendered farmland useless for years to come. Evidence indicates that the area’s shoreline was permanently changed by the disaster. Slowly, but steadily, the buildings of Alexandria’s Royal Quarter were overtaken by the sea following the tsunami. It was not until 1995 that archaeologists discovered the ruins of the old city off the coast of present-day Alexandria.
Today, the anniversary of the tsunami is celebrated annually with the residents saying prayers and marking the evening by illuminating the city.
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July 22, 1934
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Dillinger gunned down
Outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, notorious criminal John Dillinger–America’s “Public Enemy No. 1″–is killed in a hail of bullets fired by federal agents. In a fiery bank-robbing career that lasted just over a year, Dillinger and his associates robbed 11 banks for more than $300,000, broke jail and narrowly escaped capture multiple times, and killed seven police officers and three federal agents.
John Dillinger was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1903. A juvenile delinquent, he was arrested in 1924 after a botched mugging. He pleaded guilty, hoping for clemency, but was sentenced to 10 to 20 years at Pendleton Reformatory. While in prison, he made several failed escapes and was adopted by a group of professional bank robbers led by Harry Pierpont, who taught him the ways of their trade. When his friends were transferred to Indiana’s tough Michigan City Prison, he requested to be transferred there too.
In May 1933, Dillinger was paroled, and he met up with accomplices of Pierpont. Dillinger’s plan was to raise enough funds to finance a prison break by Pierpont and the others, who then would take him on as a member of their elite robbery gang. In four months, Dillinger and his gang robbed four Indiana and Ohio banks, two grocery stores, and a drug store for a total of more than $40,000. He gained notoriety as a sharply dressed and athletic gunman who at one bank leapt over the high teller railing into the vault.
With the help of two of Pierpont’s women friends, Dillinger set up the jailbreak. Guns were bought and arranged to be smuggled into Michigan City Prison. Prison workers were bribed, and a safe house was set up. On September 22, however, just days before the jailbreak was scheduled to occur, Dillinger was arrested in Dayton, Ohio. Four days later, Pierpont and nine others broke out of Michigan City. Pierpont’s gang robbed a bank in Ohio for $11,000 and on October 12 came to Ohio to free Dillinger from the Lima city jail. The Lima sheriff was killed during the successful breakout. On October 30, the gang robbed a police arsenal, acquiring weapons, ammunition, and bulletproof vests.
The Pierpont/Dillinger gang robbed banks in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Chicago for more than $130,000, a great fortune in the Depression era, and eluded the police in several close encounters. In January 1934, the gang headed to Tucson, Arizona, to lay low. By this time, four police officers had been killed and two wounded, and the Chicago police had established an elite squad to track down the fugitives. They were recognized in Tucson and on January 25 captured without bloodshed.
Dillinger was extradited to Indiana, arraigned for his January 15 murder of Indiana police officer William Patrick O’Malley, and held at Crown Point prison. On March 3, while still awaiting trial, he executed his most celebrated escape. That morning, he brandished a gun and methodically began locking up the prison officials. The legend is that the weapon was a wooden gun carved by Dillinger and blackened with shoe polish, but it may also have been a real gun smuggled into the prison by an associate. Whatever the case, Dillinger raided the prison arsenal, where he found two sub-machine guns, and then enlisted the aid of another prisoner, an African American man named Herbert Youngblood. Dillinger and Youngblood then made their way to the prison garage, where they stole a sheriff’s car and calmly drove off–after pulling the ignition wires from the other vehicles parked there.
Parting ways with Youngblood, Dillinger traveled to Chicago and formed a new gang featuring “Baby Face” Nelson, a psychopathic killer who used to work for Al Capone. The new Dillinger gang robbed banks in South Dakota and Iowa, netting $101,500 and wounding two more police officers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joined the manhunt for Dillinger after he escaped from Crown Point, and on March 31 two FBI agents closed in on him at an apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dillinger and an accomplice shot their way out.
In April, the Dillinger gang went to hide out at a resort in Wisconsin, but the FBI was tipped off. On April 22, the FBI stormed the resort. In a disastrous operation, three civilians were mistakenly shot by the FBI, one of whom died; Baby Face Nelson killed one agent, shot another, and critically wounded a police officer; the entire Dillinger gang escaped.
With two other gang members, Dillinger traveled to Chicago, surviving a shoot-out with Minnesota police along the way. In Chicago, he lived in a safe house and got a facelift to conceal his identity. At some point, he also used acid to burn off his fingerprints. On June 30, he participated in his last robbery, in South Bend, Indiana. The gang got away with about $30,000 at the cost of one officer killed, four civilians shot, and one gang member shot.
In July, Anna Sage, a Romanian-born brothel madam in Chicago and friend of Dillinger’s, agreed to cooperate with the FBI in exchange for leniency in an upcoming deportation hearing. She also hoped to cash in on the $10,000 bounty that had been put on his head. On July 22, Sage and Dillinger went to see the gangster movie Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph Theatre around the corner from her house. Twenty FBI agents and police officers staked out the theater and waited for him to emerge with Sage, who would be wearing an orange dress to identify herself.
At 10:40 p.m., Dillinger came out. Sage’s orange dress looked red under the Biograph’s lights, which would earn her the nickname “the lady in red.” Dillinger was ordered to surrender, but he took off running. He made it as far as an alley at the end of the block before he was gunned down, allegedly because he pulled a gun. Two bystanders were wounded in the gunfire. Public Enemy No. 1, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had deemed him, was dead.
Some researchers have claimed that another man, not Dillinger, was killed outside the Biograph, citing autopsy findings on the corpse that allegedly contradict Dillinger’s known medical record.
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July 23, 1918
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-string-of-mysterious-deaths-surrounds-a-nebraska-woman (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-string-of-mysterious-deaths-surrounds-a-nebraska-woman)
A string of mysterious deaths surrounds a Nebraska woman
Della Sorenson kills the first of her seven victims in rural Nebraska by poisoning her sister-in-law’s infant daughter, Viola Cooper. Over the next seven years, friends, relatives, and acquaintances of Sorenson repeatedly died under mysterious circumstances before anyone finally realized that it had to be more than a coincidence.
Two years after little Viola met her demise, Wilhelmina Weldam, Sorenson’s mother-in-law, was poisoned. Sorenson then went after her own family, killing her daughter, Minnie, and husband, Joe, over a two-week period in September.
Waiting only four months before marrying again, Sorenson then settled in Dannebrog, Neb. In August 1922, her former sister-in-law came to visit with another infant, four-month-old Clifford. Just as she had done with Viola, Sorenson poisoned the poor child with a piece of candy. The unfortunate Mrs. Cooper, still oblivious to what was happening, came back again in October to visit with yet another child. This time, Sorenson’s poison didn’t work.
Early in 1923, Sorenson killed her own daughter, Delia, on her first birthday. When Sorenson’s friend brought her infant daughter for a visit only a week later, the tiny infant was also poisoned. After an attempt on Sorenson’s second husband’s life left him sick–but not dead–authorities began to think that there might be a connection between these series of deaths.
Finally, in 1925, Sorenson was arrested when she made an unsuccessful attempt at killing two children in the neighborhood with poisoned cookies. She confessed to the crimes, saying, “I like to attend funerals. I’m happy when someone is dying.” Sentiments like this convinced doctors that Sorenson was schizophrenic, and she was committed to the state mental asylum.
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July 24, 1984
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-nine-year-olds-murder-puts-an-innocent-man-in-jail (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-nine-year-olds-murder-puts-an-innocent-man-in-jail)
A nine-year-old’s murder puts an innocent man in jail
The body of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton is found in a wooded area of Rosedale, Maryland, near her home. The young girl had been raped and beaten to death with a rock. Unfortunately, Hamilton and her family were not the only ones to suffer because of this terrible crime.
After witnesses saw a suspicious man in the area of the murder scene, a police sketch was publicized on television and in newspapers. Two weeks later, an anonymous caller identified Kirk Bloodsworth, a 23-year-old ex-Marine, as the man in the sketch. Bloodsworth, who had been in Baltimore (which is close to Rosedale) at the time of Hamilton’s murder, later returned to his home in Cambridge and told friends that he had done something that would harm his marriage.
Prosecutors, with little evidence other than this, accused Bloodsworth of murder. During the trial in 1985, the defense presented several witnesses who said that they were with Bloodsworth at the time of the murder. Disregarding his alibi, the jury convicted Bloodsworth and sent him to death row.
For the next seven years, Bloodsworth maintained his innocence while in prison. In the meantime, forensic DNA testing had come of age. On Dawn Hamilton’s underwear, policehad a spot of semen,smaller than a dime, and science had finally progressed to the point where this small amount of physical evidence could be tested. When Bloodsworth’s attorneys were eventually granted permission to test the semen spot, Forensic Science Associates, a private California laboratory, found that it did not match Bloodsworth’s DNA.
After the FBI’s crime lab confirmed this test, prosecutors in Baltimore County had no choice but to release Bloodsworth (but pointedly refused to apologize). On June 28, 1993, nine years after first going to jail, Kirk Bloodsworth was released. He was officially pardoned later in the year.
Since the advent of forensic DNA testing, as many as 50 prisoners have been found innocent of crimes for which they had been convicted.
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July 25, 1978
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/worlds-first-test-tube-baby-born (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/worlds-first-test-tube-baby-born)
World’s First Test Tube Baby Born
On this day in 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first baby to be conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) is born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown. The healthy baby was delivered shortly before midnight by caesarean section and weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces.
Before giving birth to Louise, Lesley Brown had suffered years of infertility due to blocked fallopian tubes. In November 1977, she underwent the then-experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was removed from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with her husband’s sperm to form an embryo. The embryo then was implanted into her uterus a few days later. Her IVF doctors, British gynecologist Patrick Steptoe and scientist Robert Edwards, had begun their pioneering collaboration a decade earlier. Once the media learned of the pregnancy, the Browns faced intense public scrutiny. Louise’s birth made headlines around the world and raised various legal and ethical questions.
The Browns had a second daughter, Natalie, several years later, also through IVF. In May 1999, Natalie became the first IVF baby to give birth to a child of her own. The child’s conception was natural, easing some concerns that female IVF babies would be unable to get pregnant naturally. In December 2006, Louise Brown, the original “test tube baby,” gave birth to a boy, Cameron John Mullinder, who also was conceived naturally.
Today, IVF is considered a mainstream medical treatment for infertility. Hundreds of thousands of children around the world have been conceived through the procedure, in some cases with donor eggs and sperm.
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July 26, 1908
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fbi-founded (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fbi-founded)
FBI founded
On July 26, 1908, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is born when U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte orders a group of newly hired federal investigators to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch of the Department of Justice. One year later, the Office of the Chief Examiner was renamed the Bureau of Investigation, and in 1935 it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
When the Department of Justice was created in 1870 to enforce federal law and coordinate judicial policy, it had no permanent investigators on its staff. At first, it hired private detectives when it needed federal crimes investigated and later rented out investigators from other federal agencies, such as the Secret Service, which was created by the Department of the Treasury in 1865 to investigate counterfeiting. In the early part of the 20th century, the attorney general was authorized to hire a few permanent investigators, and the Office of the Chief Examiner, which consisted mostly of accountants, was created to review financial transactions of the federal courts.
Seeking to form an independent and more efficient investigative arm, in 1908 the Department of Justice hired 10 former Secret Service employees to join an expanded Office of the Chief Examiner. The date when these agents reported to duty–July 26, 1908–is celebrated as the genesis of the FBI. By March 1909, the force included 34 agents, and Attorney General George Wickersham, Bonaparte’s successor, renamed it the Bureau of Investigation.
The federal government used the bureau as a tool to investigate criminals who evaded prosecution by passing over state lines, and within a few years the number of agents had grown to more than 300. The agency was opposed by some in Congress, who feared that its growing authority could lead to abuse of power. With the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917, the bureau was given responsibility in investigating draft resisters, violators of the Espionage Act of 1917, and immigrants suspected of radicalism.
Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover, a lawyer and former librarian, joined the Department of Justice in 1917 and within two years had become special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Deeply anti-radical in his ideology, Hoover came to the forefront of federal law enforcement during the so-called “Red Scare” of 1919 to 1920. He set up a card index system listing every radical leader, organization, and publication in the United States and by 1921 had amassed some 450,000 files. More than 10,000 suspected communists were also arrested during this period, but the vast majority of these people were briefly questioned and then released. Although the attorney general was criticized for abusing his power during the so-called “Palmer Raids,” Hoover emerged unscathed, and on May 10, 1924, he was appointed acting director of the Bureau of Investigation.
During the 1920s, with Congress’ approval, Director Hoover drastically restructured and expanded the Bureau of Investigation. He built the agency into an efficient crime-fighting machine, establishing a centralized fingerprint file, a crime laboratory, and a training school for agents. In the 1930s, the Bureau of Investigation launched a dramatic battle against the epidemic of organized crime brought on by Prohibition. Notorious gangsters such as George “Machine Gun” Kelly and John Dillinger met their ends looking down the barrels of bureau-issued guns, while others, like Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, the elusive head of Murder, Inc., were successfully investigated and prosecuted by Hoover’s “G-men.” Hoover, who had a keen eye for public relations, participated in a number of these widely publicized arrests, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as it was known after 1935, became highly regarded by Congress and the American public.
With the outbreak of World War II, Hoover revived the anti-espionage techniques he had developed during the first Red Scare, and domestic wiretaps and other electronic surveillance expanded dramatically. After World War II, Hoover focused on the threat of radical, especially communist, subversion. The FBI compiled files on millions of Americans suspected of dissident activity, and Hoover worked closely with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Senator Joseph McCarthy, the architect of America’s second Red Scare.
In 1956, Hoover initiated COINTELPRO, a secret counterintelligence program that initially targeted the U.S. Communist Party but later was expanded to infiltrate and disrupt any radical organization in America. During the 1960s, the immense resources of COINTELPRO were used against dangerous groups such as the Ku Klux Klan but also against African American civil rights organizations and liberal anti-war organizations. One figure especially targeted was civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who endured systematic harassment from the FBI.
By the time Hoover entered service under his eighth president in 1969, the media, the public, and Congress had grown suspicious that the FBI might be abusing its authority. For the first time in his bureaucratic career, Hoover endured widespread criticism, and Congress responded by passing laws requiring Senate confirmation of future FBI directors and limiting their tenure to 10 years. On May 2, 1972, with the Watergate affair about to explode onto the national stage, J. Edgar Hoover died of heart disease at the age of 77.
The Watergate affair subsequently revealed that the FBI had illegally protected President Richard Nixon from investigation, and the agency was thoroughly investigated by Congress. Revelations of the FBI’s abuses of power and unconstitutional surveillance motivated Congress and the media to become more vigilant in the future monitoring of the FBI.
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July 27, 1921
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/insulin-isolated-in-toronto (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/insulin-isolated-in-toronto)
Insulin isolated in Toronto
At the University of Toronto, Canadian scientists Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolate insulin–a hormone they believe could prevent diabetes–for the first time. Within a year, the first human sufferers of diabetes were receiving insulin treatments, and countless lives were saved from what was previously regarded as a fatal disease.
Diabetes has been recognized as a distinct medical condition for more than 3,000 years, but its exact cause was a mystery until the 20th century. By the early 1920s, many researchers strongly suspected that diabetes was caused by a malfunction in the digestive system related to the pancreas gland, a small organ that sits on top of the liver. At that time, the only way to treat the fatal disease was through a diet low in carbohydrates and sugar and high in fat and protein. Instead of dying shortly after diagnosis, this diet allowed diabetics to live–for about a year.
A breakthrough came at the University of Toronto in the summer of 1921, when Canadians Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolated insulin from canine test subjects, produced diabetic symptoms in the animals, and then began a program of insulin injections that returned the dogs to normalcy. On November 14, the discovery was announced to the world.
Two months later, with the support of J.J.R. MacLeod of the University of Toronto, the two scientists began preparations for an insulin treatment of a human subject. Enlisting the aid of biochemist J.B. Collip, they were able to extract a reasonably pure formula of insulin from the pancreases of cattle from slaughterhouses. On January 23, 1921, they began treating 14-year-old Leonard Thompson with insulin injections. The diabetic teenager improved dramatically, and the University of Toronto immediately gave pharmaceutical companies license to produce insulin, free of royalties. By 1923, insulin had become widely available, and Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine.
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July 28, 1945
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/plane-crashes-into-empire-state-building (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/plane-crashes-into-empire-state-building)
Plane crashes into Empire State Building
A United States military plane crashes into the Empire State Building on this day in 1945, killing 14 people. The freak accident was caused by heavy fog.
The B-25 Mitchell bomber, with two pilots and one passenger aboard, was flying from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. As it came into the metropolitan area on that Saturday morning, the fog was particularly thick. Air-traffic controllers instructed the plane to fly to Newark Airport instead.
This new flight plan took the plane over Manhattan; the crew was specifically warned that the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the city at the time, was not visible. The bomber was flying relatively slowly and quite low, seeking better visibility, when it came upon the Chrysler Building in midtown. It swerved to avoid the building but the move sent it straight into the north side of the Empire State Building, near the 79th floor.
Upon impact, the plane’s jet fuel exploded, filling the interior of the building with flames all the way down to the 75th floor and sending flames out of the hole the plane had ripped open in the building’s side. One engine from the plane went straight through the building and landed in a penthouse apartment across the street. Other plane parts ended up embedded in and on top of nearby buildings. The other engine snapped an elevator cable while at least one woman was riding in the elevator car. The emergency auto brake saved the woman from crashing to the bottom, but the engine fell down the shaft and landed on top of it. Quick-thinking rescuers pulled the woman from the elevator, saving her life.
Since it was a Saturday, fewer workers than normal were in the building. Only 11 people in the building were killed, some suffering burns from the fiery jet fuel and others after being thrown out of the building. All 11 victims were workers from War Relief Services department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, into the offices of which the plane had crashed. The three people on the plane were also killed.
An 18 foot by 20 foot hole was left in the side of the Empire State Building. Though its structural integrity was not affected, the crash did cause nearly $1 million in damages, about $10.5 million in today’s money.
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July 29, 1900
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/italian-american-assassinates-italian-king (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/italian-american-assassinates-italian-king)
Italian American assassinates Italian king
In Monza, Italy, King Umberto I is shot to death by Gaetano Bresci, an Italian-born anarchist who resided in America before returning to his homeland to murder the king.
Crowned in 1878, King Umberto became increasingly authoritarian in the late 19th century. He enacted a program of suppression against the radical elements in Italian society, particularly members of the popular anarchist movements.
Gaetano Bresci, who was born into poverty in Tuscany, immigrated to America in the 1890s seeking a better life. Bresci settled with his family in Paterson, New Jersey, and was employed in a weaving mill. The city was a hotbed of Italian American radicalism at the time, and Bresci became a cofounder of an anarchist newspaper, La Questione Sociale. Sacrificing his free time and scarce extra money to the paper, Bresci was regarded by his political allies as a devoted anarchist. He never forgot his countrymen back in Italy, and he read with horror of the events that unfolded in 1898.
The crops were poor that year, and much of the peasantry was starving. Seeking a respite from their government, peasants and workers marched to Milan to petition the king for relief. King Umberto ordered the demonstrators to disperse, and when they did not, he ordered the Italian army under General Bava Beccaris to force them out of Milan. Beccaris’ soldiers fired cannons and numerous rounds into the crowd, and hundreds were killed. When Umberto then decorated Beccaris for the military action, Bresci resolved that the king should die.
Taking money from the newspaper without explaining to his compatriots why, Bresci traveled to Italy and in July 1900 finally got close to the king, who was making a royal visit to Milan. Umberto had already survived two attempts on his life, but on July 29, 1900, Bresci hit his mark, felling the king with three bullets. Bresci was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to a life of hard labor at Santo Stefano Prison on Ventotene Island. On May 22, 1901, he was found dead in his cell, allegedly a victim of suicide.
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July 30, 1976
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bruce-jenner-wins-decathlon (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bruce-jenner-wins-decathlon)
Bruce Jenner wins decathlon
On July 30, 1976, American Bruce Jenner wins gold in the decathlon at the Montreal Olympics. His 8,617 points set a world record in the event.
The secret to Jenner’s success was his preparation. In the 1970s, most decathletes trained with other decathletes. Bruce Jenner, however, trained with some of the world’s best athletes in each of the 10 decathlon events. “If you train with a decathlon man,” Jenner told Dave Anderson of The New York Times in 1976, “you can’t visualize that you can do much better. But if you throw the discus with Mac Wilkins or throw the shot with Al Feuerbach, then they’re 20 feet ahead of me. You learn much more that way.”
Although the blond, chiseled, 6-foot-2-inch Nikolai Avilov, the world record-holder and 1972 Olympic champion from the Soviet Union, was considered nearly impossible to beat, Jenner’s intense training paid off at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. After the first day of competition, Jenner was in third place, 35 points off the pace and 17 points behind his rival. With all of Jenner’s best events slated for the second day, though, Jenner knew he could pull off a victory. He later admitted thinking, “If I am within 150 points of the leader after five events, I’ll run away with it.” On July 30, the next five events went exactly as Jenner hoped: He ran efficiently in the 110-meter hurdles, set a personal best in the pole vault, threw the discus and the javelin well and sprinted the last 300 meters of the 1,500-meter event to seal a win. Jenner then took an impromptu victory lap with an American flag before finding his wife Chrystie–who had supported him during his training by working as a flight attendant–for a congratulatory kiss. Avilov finished third, almost 300 points behind the new champion.
After his win, Jenner enjoyed the unofficial title of “world’s greatest athlete” and appeared in movies, on television and, of course, adorned a Wheaties® box. He was voted the 1976 AP Male Athlete of the Year. The 1976 Olympics was his last decathlon.
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July 31, 1556
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ignatius-of-loyola-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ignatius-of-loyola-dies)
Ignatius of Loyola dies
Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic missionaries and educators, dies in Rome. The Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is formally known, played an important role in the Counter-Reformation and eventually succeeded in converting millions around the world to Catholicism.
Ignatius, the son of a noble and wealthy Spanish family called the Loyolas, was born in his family’s ancestral castle in 1491. Little interested in church matters, he trained as a knight and in 1517 went in the service of a relative, Antonio Manrique de Lara, the duke of Najera and viceroy of Navarre. In May 1521, during the siege of Pamplona by the French, his legs were shattered by a cannonball. Seriously wounded, he was transported to his family’s castle, where he was forced to lie in convalescence for many weeks. During this time, he was given the Bible and a book on the saints to read. He came to see the service of God as a kind of holy chivalry and resolved to live an austere life in imitation of the saints.
In February 1522 he made a pilgrimage to Montserrat, where a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary and Child, supposedly carved by St. Luke, resides. Ignatius hung his sword and dagger near the statue as symbols of his conversion to a holy life. For the next year, he lived as a beggar and prayed for seven hours a day, often in a cave near Manresa in northeastern Spain. During this time, he composed an early draft of The Spiritual Exercises, his manual for spiritual meditation and conversion. In 1523, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
After his return to Spain in 1524, Ignatius resolved to gain an extensive education to prepare himself for his spiritual mission. He studied in Barcelona and at the University of Alcala, where he began to acquire followers. Suspected of heresy, he was tried in Alcala, and later in Salamanca but both times was acquitted. He was forbidden to teach until he reached the priesthood, and he went to the University of Paris to continue his studies.
In August 1534, the Jesuit movement was born when Ignatius led six of his followers to Montmartre near Paris, where the group took vows of poverty and chastity and made plans to work for the conversion of Muslims. If travel to the Holy Land was not possible, they vowed to offer themselves to the pope for apostolic work. In 1537, Ignatius and most of his companions were ordained. Unable to travel to Jerusalem because of the Turkish wars, they went to Rome instead to meet with the pope and request permission to form a new religious order. In September 1540, Pope Paul III approved Ignatius’ outline of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is formally known.
Under Ignatius’ charismatic leadership, the Society of Jesus grew quickly. Jesuit missionaries played a leading role in the Counter-Reformation and won back many of the European faithful who had been lost to Protestantism. In Ignatius’ lifetime, Jesuits were also dispatched to India, Brazil, the Congo region, and Ethiopia. Education was of utmost importance to the Jesuits, and in Rome Ignatius founded the Roman College (later called the Gregorian University) and the Germanicum, a school for German priests. The Jesuits also ran several charitable organizations, such as one for former prostitutes and one for converted Jews. When Ignatius de Loyola died on July 31, 1556, there were more than 1,000 Jesuit priests.
During the next century, the Jesuits set up ministries around the globe. The “Black-Robes,” as they were known in Native America, often preceded European countries in their infiltration of foreign lands and societies. The life of a Jesuit was one of immense risk, and thousands of priests were persecuted or killed by foreign authorities hostile to their mission of conversion. However, in some nations, such as India and China, the Jesuits were revered as men of wisdom and science.
With the rise of nationalism in the 18th century, most European countries suppressed the Jesuits, and in 1773 Pope Clement XIV dissolved the order under pressure from the Bourbon monarchs. However, in 1814, Pope Pius VII gave in to popular demand and reestablished the Jesuits as an order, and they continue their missionary work to this day. Ignatius de Loyola was canonized as a Catholic saint in 1622. His feast day is July 31.
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August 1, 1981
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mtv-launches (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mtv-launches)
MTV launches
On this day in 1981, MTV: Music Television goes on the air for the first time ever, with the words (spoken by one of MTV’s creators, John Lack): “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first music video to air on the new cable television channel, which initially was available only to households in parts of New Jersey. MTV went on to revolutionize the music industry and become an influential source of pop culture and entertainment in the United States and other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia and Latin America, which all have MTV-branded channels.
In MTV’s early days, its programming consisted of basic music videos that were introduced by VJs (video jockeys) and provided for free by record companies. As the record industry recognized MTV’s value as a promotional vehicle, money was invested in making creative, cutting-edge videos. Some directors, including Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Three Kings) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), worked on music videos before segueing into feature films. In the 1980s, MTV was instrumental in promoting the careers of performers such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince and Duran Duran, whose videos played in heavy rotation.
By the late 1980s, MTV started airing non-video programming, geared toward teenagers and young adults. Its popular reality series The Real World launched in 1992 and was followed by such highly rated shows as The Osbournes, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, Laguna Beach, My Super Sweet 16 and The Hills. MTV also debuted animated series including Beavis and Butthead and Celebrity Deathmatch, as well as documentaries, news, game shows and public service campaigns on topics ranging from voting rights to safe sex. MTV developed a reputation for pushing cultural boundaries and taste; the airing of Madonna’s 1989 “Like a Prayer” video is just one famous example. In 1984, the channel launched the MTV Music Video Awards, which were followed in 1992 by the MTV Movie Awards. Today, MTV’s music-video programming is largely confined to one show, Total Request Live.
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August 2, 1934
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-becomes-fuhrer (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-becomes-fuhrer)
Hitler becomes fuhrer
With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler becomes absolute dictator of Germany under the title of Fuhrer, or “Leader.” The German army took an oath of allegiance to its new commander-in-chief, and the last remnants of Germany’s democratic government were dismantled to make way for Hitler’s Third Reich. The Fuhrer assured his people that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years, but Nazi Germany collapsed just 11 years later.
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, in 1889. As a young man he aspired to be a painter, but he received little public recognition and lived in poverty in Vienna. Of German descent, he came to detest Austria as a “patchwork nation” of various ethnic groups, and in 1913 he moved to the German city of Munich in the state of Bavaria. After a year of drifting, he found direction as a German soldier in World War I, and was decorated for his bravery on the battlefield. He was in a military hospital in 1918, recovering from a mustard gas attack that left him temporarily blind, when Germany surrendered.
He was appalled by Germany’s defeat, which he blamed on “enemies within”–chiefly German communists and Jews–and was enraged by the punitive peace settlement forced on Germany by the victorious Allies. He remained in the German army after the war, and as an intelligence agent was ordered to report on subversive activities in Munich’s political parties. It was in this capacity that he joined the tiny German Workers’ Party, made up of embittered army veterans, as the group’s seventh member. Hitler was put in charge of the party’s propaganda, and in 1920 he assumed leadership of the organization, changing its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ party), which was abbreviated to Nazi.
The party’s socialist orientation was little more than a ploy to attract working-class support; in fact, Hitler was fiercely right-wing. But the economic views of the party were overshadowed by the Nazis’ fervent nationalism, which blamed Jews, communists, the Treaty of Versailles, and Germany’s ineffectual democratic government for the country’s devastated economy. In the early 1920s, the ranks of Hitler’s Bavarian-based Nazi party swelled with resentful Germans. A paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA), was formed to protect the Nazis and intimidate their political opponents, and the party adopted the ancient symbol of the swastika as its emblem.
In November 1923, after the German government resumed the payment of war reparations to Britain and France, the Nazis launched the “Beer Hall Putsch”–an attempt at seizing the German government by force. Hitler hoped that his nationalist revolution in Bavaria would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would bring down the government in Berlin. However, the uprising was immediately suppressed, and Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for treason.
Imprisoned in Landsberg fortress, he spent his time there dictating his autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a bitter and rambling narrative in which he sharpened his anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist beliefs and laid out his plans for Nazi conquest. In the work, published in a series of volumes, he developed his concept of the Fuhrer as an absolute dictator who would bring unity to German people and lead the “Aryan race” to world supremacy.
Political pressure from the Nazis forced the Bavarian government to commute Hitler’s sentence, and he was released after nine months. However, Hitler emerged to find his party disintegrated. An upturn in the economy further reduced popular support of the party, and for several years Hitler was forbidden to make speeches in Bavaria and elsewhere in Germany.
The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 brought a new opportunity for the Nazis to solidify their power. Hitler and his followers set about reorganizing the party as a fanatical mass movement, and won financial backing from business leaders, for whom the Nazis promised an end to labor agitation. In the 1930 election, the Nazis won six million votes, making the party the second largest in Germany. Two years later, Hitler challenged Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency, but the 84-year-old president defeated Hitler with the support of an anti-Nazi coalition.
Although the Nazis suffered a decline in votes during the November 1932 election, Hindenburg agreed to make Hitler chancellor in January 1933, hoping that Hitler could be brought to heel as a member of his cabinet. However, Hindenburg underestimated Hitler’s political audacity, and one of the new chancellor’s first acts was to exploit the burning of the Reichstag (parliament) building as a pretext for calling general elections. The police under Nazi Hermann Goering suppressed much of the party’s opposition before the election, and the Nazis won a bare majority. Shortly after, Hitler took on dictatorial power through the Enabling Acts.
Chancellor Hitler immediately set about arresting and executing political opponents, and even purged the Nazis’ own SA paramilitary organization in a successful effort to win support from the German army. With the death of President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Hitler united the chancellorship and presidency under the new title of Fuhrer. As the economy improved, popular support for Hitler’s regime became strong, and a cult of Fuhrer worship was propagated by Hitler’s capable propagandists.
German remilitarization and state-sanctioned anti-Semitism drew criticism from abroad, but the foreign powers failed to stem the rise of Nazi Germany. In 1938, Hitler implemented his plans for world domination with the annexation of Austria, and in 1939 Germany seized all of Czechoslovakia. Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, finally led to war with Germany and France. In the opening years of World War II, Hitler’s war machine won a series of stunning victories, conquering the great part of continental Europe. However, the tide turned in 1942 during Germany’s disastrous invasion of the USSR.
By early 1945, the British and Americans were closing in on Germany from the west, the Soviets from the east, and Hitler was holed up in a bunker under the chancellery in Berlin awaiting defeat. On April 30, with the Soviets less than a mile from his headquarters, Hitler committed suicide with Eva Braun, his mistress whom he married the night before.
Hitler left Germany devastated and at the mercy of the Allies, who divided the country and made it a major battlefield of Cold War conflict. His regime exterminated nearly six millions Jews and an estimated 250,000 Gypsies in the Holocaust, and an indeterminable number of Slavs, political dissidents, disabled persons, homosexuals, and others deemed unacceptable by the Nazi regime were systematically eliminated. The war Hitler unleashed upon Europe took even more lives–close to 20 million people killed in the USSR alone. Adolf Hitler is reviled as one of history’s greatest villains.
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August 2, 1934
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-becomes-fuhrer (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-becomes-fuhrer)
Hitler becomes fuhrer
With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler becomes absolute dictator of Germany under the title of Fuhrer, or “Leader.” The German army took an oath of allegiance to its new commander-in-chief, and the last remnants of Germany’s democratic government were dismantled to make way for Hitler’s Third Reich. The Fuhrer assured his people that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years, but Nazi Germany collapsed just 11 years later.
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, in 1889. As a young man he aspired to be a painter, but he received little public recognition and lived in poverty in Vienna. Of German descent, he came to detest Austria as a “patchwork nation” of various ethnic groups, and in 1913 he moved to the German city of Munich in the state of Bavaria. After a year of drifting, he found direction as a German soldier in World War I, and was decorated for his bravery on the battlefield. He was in a military hospital in 1918, recovering from a mustard gas attack that left him temporarily blind, when Germany surrendered.
He was appalled by Germany’s defeat, which he blamed on “enemies within”–chiefly German communists and Jews–and was enraged by the punitive peace settlement forced on Germany by the victorious Allies. He remained in the German army after the war, and as an intelligence agent was ordered to report on subversive activities in Munich’s political parties. It was in this capacity that he joined the tiny German Workers’ Party, made up of embittered army veterans, as the group’s seventh member. Hitler was put in charge of the party’s propaganda, and in 1920 he assumed leadership of the organization, changing its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ party), which was abbreviated to Nazi.
The party’s socialist orientation was little more than a ploy to attract working-class support; in fact, Hitler was fiercely right-wing. But the economic views of the party were overshadowed by the Nazis’ fervent nationalism, which blamed Jews, communists, the Treaty of Versailles, and Germany’s ineffectual democratic government for the country’s devastated economy. In the early 1920s, the ranks of Hitler’s Bavarian-based Nazi party swelled with resentful Germans. A paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA), was formed to protect the Nazis and intimidate their political opponents, and the party adopted the ancient symbol of the swastika as its emblem.
In November 1923, after the German government resumed the payment of war reparations to Britain and France, the Nazis launched the “Beer Hall Putsch”–an attempt at seizing the German government by force. Hitler hoped that his nationalist revolution in Bavaria would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would bring down the government in Berlin. However, the uprising was immediately suppressed, and Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for treason.
Imprisoned in Landsberg fortress, he spent his time there dictating his autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a bitter and rambling narrative in which he sharpened his anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist beliefs and laid out his plans for Nazi conquest. In the work, published in a series of volumes, he developed his concept of the Fuhrer as an absolute dictator who would bring unity to German people and lead the “Caucasian race” to world supremacy.
Political pressure from the Nazis forced the Bavarian government to commute Hitler’s sentence, and he was released after nine months. However, Hitler emerged to find his party disintegrated. An upturn in the economy further reduced popular support of the party, and for several years Hitler was forbidden to make speeches in Bavaria and elsewhere in Germany.
The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 brought a new opportunity for the Nazis to solidify their power. Hitler and his followers set about reorganizing the party as a fanatical mass movement, and won financial backing from business leaders, for whom the Nazis promised an end to labor agitation. In the 1930 election, the Nazis won six million votes, making the party the second largest in Germany. Two years later, Hitler challenged Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency, but the 84-year-old president defeated Hitler with the support of an anti-Nazi coalition.
Although the Nazis suffered a decline in votes during the November 1932 election, Hindenburg agreed to make Hitler chancellor in January 1933, hoping that Hitler could be brought to heel as a member of his cabinet. However, Hindenburg underestimated Hitler’s political audacity, and one of the new chancellor’s first acts was to exploit the burning of the Reichstag (parliament) building as a pretext for calling general elections. The police under Nazi Hermann Goering suppressed much of the party’s opposition before the election, and the Nazis won a bare majority. Shortly after, Hitler took on dictatorial power through the Enabling Acts.
Chancellor Hitler immediately set about arresting and executing political opponents, and even purged the Nazis’ own SA paramilitary organization in a successful effort to win support from the German army. With the death of President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Hitler united the chancellorship and presidency under the new title of Fuhrer. As the economy improved, popular support for Hitler’s regime became strong, and a cult of Fuhrer worship was propagated by Hitler’s capable propagandists.
German remilitarization and state-sanctioned anti-Semitism drew criticism from abroad, but the foreign powers failed to stem the rise of Nazi Germany. In 1938, Hitler implemented his plans for world domination with the annexation of Austria, and in 1939 Germany seized all of Czechoslovakia. Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, finally led to war with Germany and France. In the opening years of World War II, Hitler’s war machine won a series of stunning victories, conquering the great part of continental Europe. However, the tide turned in 1942 during Germany’s disastrous invasion of the USSR.
By early 1945, the British and Americans were closing in on Germany from the west, the Soviets from the east, and Hitler was holed up in a bunker under the chancellery in Berlin awaiting defeat. On April 30, with the Soviets less than a mile from his headquarters, Hitler committed suicide with Eva Braun, his mistress whom he married the night before.
Hitler left Germany devastated and at the mercy of the Allies, who divided the country and made it a major battlefield of Cold War conflict. His regime exterminated nearly six millions Jews and an estimated 250,000 Gypsies in the Holocaust, and an indeterminable number of Slavs, political dissidents, disabled persons, homosexuals, and others deemed unacceptable by the Nazi regime were systematically eliminated. The war Hitler unleashed upon Europe took even more lives–close to 20 million people killed in the USSR alone. Adolf Hitler is reviled as one of history’s greatest villains.
Good times.
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August 3, 1958
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nautilus-travels-under-north-pole (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nautilus-travels-under-north-pole)
Nautilus travels under North Pole
On August 3, 1958, the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus accomplishes the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole. The world’s first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus dived at Point Barrow, Alaska, and traveled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world. It then steamed on to Iceland, pioneering a new and shorter route from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Europe.
The USS Nautilus was constructed under the direction of U.S. Navy Captain Hyman G. Rickover, a brilliant Russian-born engineer who joined the U.S. atomic program in 1946. In 1947, he was put in charge of the navy’s nuclear-propulsion program and began work on an atomic submarine. Regarded as a fanatic by his detractors, Rickover succeeded in developing and delivering the world’s first nuclear submarine years ahead of schedule. In 1952, the Nautilus’ keel was laid by President Harry S. Truman, and on January 21, 1954, first lady Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across its bow as it was launched into the Thames River at Groton, Connecticut. Commissioned on September 30, 1954, it first ran under nuclear power on the morning of January 17, 1955.
Much larger than the diesel-electric submarines that preceded it, the Nautilus stretched 319 feet and displaced 3,180 tons. It could remain submerged for almost unlimited periods because its atomic engine needed no air and only a very small quantity of nuclear fuel. The uranium-powered nuclear reactor produced steam that drove propulsion turbines, allowing the Nautilus to travel underwater at speeds in excess of 20 knots.
In its early years of service, the USS Nautilus broke numerous submarine travel records and on July 23, 1958, departed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on “Operation Northwest Passage”–the first crossing of the North Pole by submarine. There were 116 men aboard for this historic voyage, including Commander William R. Anderson, 111 officers and crew, and four civilian scientists. The Nautilus steamed north through the Bering Strait and did not surface until it reached Point Barrow, Alaska, in the Beaufort Sea, though it did send its periscope up once off the Diomedes Islands, between Alaska and Siberia, to check for radar bearings. On August 1, the submarine left the north coast of Alaska and dove under the Arctic ice cap.
The submarine traveled at a depth of about 500 feet, and the ice cap above varied in thickness from 10 to 50 feet, with the midnight sun of the Arctic shining in varying degrees through the blue ice. At 11:15 p.m. EDT on August 3, 1958, Commander Anderson announced to his crew: “For the world, our country, and the Navy–the North Pole.” The Nautilus passed under the geographic North Pole without pausing. The submarine next surfaced in the Greenland Sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland on August 5. Two days later, it ended its historic journey at Iceland. For the command during the historic journey, President Dwight D. Eisenhower decorated Anderson with the Legion of Merit.
After a career spanning 25 years and almost 500,000 miles steamed, the Nautilus was decommissioned on March 3, 1980. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982, the world’s first nuclear submarine went on exhibit in 1986 as the Historic Ship Nautilus at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut.
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August 4, 1944
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Anne Frank captured
Acting on tip from a Dutch informer, the Nazi Gestapo captures 15-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. The Franks had taken shelter there in 1942 out of fear of deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. They occupied the small space with another Jewish family and a single Jewish man, and were aided by Christian friends, who brought them food and supplies. Anne spent much of her time in the “secret annex” working on her diary. The diary survived the war, overlooked by the Gestapo that discovered the hiding place, but Anne and nearly all of the others perished in the Nazi death camps.
Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on June 12, 1929. She was the second daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank-Hollander, both of Jewish families that had lived in Germany for centuries. With the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1933, Otto moved his family to Amsterdam to escape the escalating Nazi persecution of Jews. In Holland, he ran a successful spice and jam business. Anne attended a Montessori school with other middle-class Dutch children, but with the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 she was forced to transfer to a Jewish school. In 1942, Otto began arranging a hiding place in an annex of his warehouse on the Prinsengracht Canal in Amsterdam.
On her 13th birthday in 1942, Anne began a diary relating her everyday experiences, her relationship with her family and friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous world around her. Less than a month later, Anne’s older sister, Margot, received a call-up notice to report to a Nazi “work camp.” Fearing deportation to a Nazi concentration camp, the Frank family took shelter in the secret annex the next day. One week later, they were joined by Otto Frank’s business partner and his family. In November, a Jewish dentist—the eighth occupant of the hiding place—joined the group.
For two years, Anne kept a diary about her life in hiding that is marked with poignancy, humor, and insight. The entrance to the secret annex was hidden by a hinged bookcase, and former employees of Otto and other Dutch friends delivered them food and supplies procured at high risk. Anne and the others lived in rooms with blacked-out windows, and never flushed the toilet during the day out of fear that their presence would be detected. In June 1944, Anne’s spirits were raised by the Allied landing at Normandy, and she was hopeful that the long-awaited liberation of Holland would soon begin.
On August 1, 1944, Anne made her last entry in her diary. Three days later, 25 months of seclusion ended with the arrival of the Nazi Gestapo. Anne and the others had been given away by an unknown informer, and they were arrested along with two of the Christians who had helped shelter them. They were sent to a concentration camp in Holland, and in September Anne and most of the others were shipped to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. In the fall of 1944, with the Soviet liberation of Poland underway, Anne was moved with her sister Margot to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Suffering under the deplorable conditions of the camp, the two sisters caught typhus and died in early March 1945. The camp was liberated by the British less than two months later.
Otto Frank was the only one of the 10 to survive the Nazi death camps. After the war, he returned to Amsterdam via Russia, and was reunited with Miep Gies, one of his former employees who had helped shelter him. She handed him Anne’s diary, which she had found undisturbed after the Nazi raid. In 1947, Anne’s diary was published by Otto in its original Dutch as Diary of a Young Girl. An instant best-seller and eventually translated into more than 50 languages, The Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary testament to the nearly six million Jews, including Anne herself, who were silenced in the Holocaust.
The Frank family’s hideaway at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam opened as a museum in 1960. A new English translation of Anne’s diary in 1995 restored material that had been edited out of the original version, making the work nearly a third longer.
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August 5, 1998
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mother-charged-with-smothering-her-eight-children (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mother-charged-with-smothering-her-eight-children)
Mother charged with smothering her eight children
On August 5, 1998, Marie Noe, age 70, is arrested at her Philadelphia home and charged in the smothering deaths of eight of her children, who died between 1949 and 1968.
Each of the eight infants was reportedly healthy at birth, but later died when home alone with Noe. At the time, the deaths were attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Noe and her husband Arthur had two other children who died from natural causes–one was stillborn and the other passed away at the hospital shortly after birth. Suspicion swirled around Marie Noe as the death toll mounted, but police lacked evidence to charge her with any crime. In the 1990s, a magazine article put the case back in the spotlight. In August 1998, Noe confessed to killing four of her children but claimed she couldn’t remember what happened to the other four. None of the children had lived beyond 14 months. Arthur Noe was not charged in the murders of his children. In June 1999, Noe was given 20 years probation and ordered to spend five years under house arrest.
In a case with eerie parallels to Noe’s, Mary Beth Tinning’s nine healthy children died suddenly and mysteriously between 1972 and 1985. None made it to the age of five. The children all died while home alone with Tinning, of Schenectady, New York, who claimed she found them unconscious. In 1987, Tinning was convicted of smothering her 3-month-old infant daughter Tami Lynne to death two years earlier. She was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
Other infamous instances of infanticide in the United States include Susan Smith of South Carolina, who in 1994 drove a car with her two young sons into a lake. Smith, who initially blamed the boys’ disappearance on a carjacker, was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison. In another case, Andrea Yates drowned her five young children in a bathtub in June 2001. After being convicted of first-degree murder, Yates’ conviction was overturned and she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to a state mental health facility in Texas.
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August 6, 1926
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gertrude-ederle-becomes-first-woman-to-swim-english-channel (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gertrude-ederle-becomes-first-woman-to-swim-english-channel)
Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel
On this day in 1926, on her second attempt, 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the 21 miles from Dover, England, to Cape Griz-Nez across the English Channel, which separates Great Britain from the northwestern tip of France.
Ederle was born to German immigrants on October 23, 1906, in New York City. She did not learn to swim until she was nine years old, and it was not until she was 15 that she learned proper form in the water. Just two years later, at the 1924 Paris Olympics, Ederle won a gold medal in the 4 x 100 meter relay and a bronze in the 100- and 400-meter freestyle races. In June 1925, Ederle became the first woman to swim the length of New York Bay, breaking the previous men’s record by swimming from the New York Battery to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 7 hours 11 minutes. That same summer, Ederle made her first attempt at crossing the notoriously cold and choppy English Channel, but after eight hours and 46 minutes, her coach, Jabez Wolff, forced her to stop, out of concern that she was swallowing too much saltwater. Ederle disagreed and fired Wolff, replacing him with T.W. Burgess, a skilled Channel swimmer.
On August 6, 1926, Ederle entered the water at Cape Gris-Nez in France at 7:08 a.m. to make her second attempt at the Channel. The water was predictably cold as she started out that morning, but unusually calm. Twice that day, however–at noon and 6 p.m.–Ederle encountered squalls along her route and Burgess urged her to end the swim. Ederle’s father and sister, though, who were riding in the boat along with Burgess, agreed with Ederle that she should stay the course. Ederle’s father had promised her a new roadster at the conclusion of the swim, and for added motivation he called out to her in the water to remind her that the roadster was only hers if she finished. Ederle persevered through storms and heavy swells, and, finally, at 9:04 p.m. after 14 hours and 31 minutes in the water, she reached the English coast, becoming the sixth person and first woman to swim the Channel successfully. Furthermore, she had bettered the previous record by two hours.
Afterward, Ederle told Alec Rutherford of The New York Times, “I knew it could be done, it had to be done, and I did it.” Ederle’s feat was celebrated by a ticker-tape parade in New York City, and she received congratulations from fans ranging from the mayor of New York City to Henry Sullivan, the first American man ever to swim the Channel.
Ederle damaged her hearing during the Channel swim, and went on to spend much of her adult life teaching deaf children in New York City to swim. She died in 2003 at the age of 98.
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August 7, 1947
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Wood raft makes 4,300-mile voyage
On this day in 1947, Kon-Tiki, a balsa wood raft captained by Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, completes a 4,300-mile, 101-day journey from Peru to Raroia in the Tuamotu Archipelago, near Tahiti.Heyerdahl wanted to prove his theory that prehistoric South Americans could have colonized the Polynesian islands by drifting on ocean currents.
Heyerdahl and his five-person crew set sail from Callao, Peru, on the 40-square-foot Kon-Tiki on April 28, 1947. The Kon-Tiki, named for a mythical white chieftain, was made of indigenous materials and designed to resemble rafts of early South American Indians. While crossing the Pacific, the sailors encountered storms, sharks and whales, before finally washing ashore at Raroia. Heyerdahl, born in Larvik, Norway, on October 6, 1914, believed that Polynesia’s earliest inhabitants had come from South America, a theory that conflicted with popular scholarly opinion that the original settlers arrived from Asia. Even after his successful voyage, anthropologists and historians continued to discredit Heyerdahl’s belief. However, his journey captivated the public and he wrote a book about the experience that became an international bestseller and was translated into 65 languages. Heyerdahl also produced a documentary about the trip that won an Academy Award in 1951.
Heyerdahl made his first expedition to Polynesia in 1937. He and his first wife lived primitively on Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas Islands for a year and studied plant and animal life. The experience led him to believe that humans had first come to the islands aboard primitive vessels drifting on ocean currents from the east.
Following the Kon-Tiki expedition, Heyerdahl made archeological trips to such places as the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island and Peru and continued to test his theories about how travel across the seas played a major role in the migration patterns of ancient cultures. In 1970, he sailed across the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados in a reed boat named Ra II (after Ra, the Egyptian sun god) to prove that Egyptians could have connected with pre-Columbian Americans. In 1977, he sailed the Indian Ocean in a primitive reed ship built in Iraq to learn how prehistoric civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and Egypt might have connected.
While Heyerdahl’s work was never embraced by most scholars, he remained a popular public figure and was voted “Norwegian of the Century” in his homeland. He died at age 87 on April 18, 2002, in Italy. The raft from his famous 1947 expedition is housed at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway.
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August 8, 1988
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gangsta-rap-hits-the-mainstream-with-the-release-of-n-w-as-straight-outta-compton (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gangsta-rap-hits-the-mainstream-with-the-release-of-n-w-as-straight-outta-compton)
Gangsta rap hits the mainstream with the release of N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton
As of 1988, the top-selling hip hop albums of all time were Run D.M.C.’s Raising Hell and the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill, both released in 1987 and both selling millions without ruffling many feathers. In June 1988, Public Enemy released It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, an album that broke new ground both musically and lyrically with its richly layered, aggressive sound and its angry, politically conscious content. Yet even Public Enemy were dwarfed commercially by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, whose kid-friendly single “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and album He’s the DJ, I’m The Rapper were both Top 5 pop hits that same summer. The group that would truly revolutionize hip hop was N.W.A—”Niggaz With Attitude” —whose debut album, Straight Outta Compton, was released on this day in 1988.
The release of Straight Outta Compton marks a critical turning point in the history of hip hop, which was a booming global phenomenon in 1988 but still hadn’t strayed far from its roots as party music. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had established hip hop’s potential for social commentary with their epic single “The Message” in 1983, but Straight Outta Compton offered something far less measured and polite than one usually associates with the word “commentary.” The album’s first three tracks alone— “Straight Outta Compton,” “**** Tha Police” and “Gangsta Gangsta”—may have contained more explicit language and incendiary subject matter than every previous hip hop record combined, and it contained nothing like a didactic “message.” It may not have been the first recorded example of Gangsta rap—Schooly D and Ice-T mined similar territory somewhat earlier—but Straight Outta Compton is the album that introduced it to the mainstream.
What is remarkable is that the album reached the mainstream at all. Far too controversial and explicit for commercial radio or MTV, Straight Outta Compton was shut out from the traditional route to commercial success. Yet it would eventually be certified triple Platinum, helped in part by a counterproductive effort at suppression in the form of an official letter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation warning N.W.A and their label, Priority Records, that “Advocating violence and assault is wrong….Music plays a significant role in society and I wanted you to to be aware of the FBI’s position relative ["**** Tha Police"] and its message.”
N.W.A broke up in several stages between 1989 and 1992, releasing two more hit albums along the way: 100 Miles and Runnin’ (1990) and Efil4zaggin (Niggaz4Life) (1991). Former members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube would both go on to have hugely successful careers in popular music, while founding member Easy E would die of AIDS in 1995, by which time Gangsta rap—the sub-genre he’d helped to create—was the dominant style in the world of hip hop.
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August 9, 1945
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/atomic-bomb-dropped-on-nagasaki (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/atomic-bomb-dropped-on-nagasaki)
Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan’s unconditional surrender.
The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called “Bock’s Car,” after its usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off from Tinian Island under the command of Maj. Charles W. Sweeney. Nagasaki was a shipbuilding center, the very industry intended for destruction. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 a.m., 1,650 feet above the city. The explosion unleashed the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. The hills that surrounded the city did a better job of containing the destructive force, but the number killed is estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 (exact figures are impossible, the blast having obliterated bodies and disintegrated records).
General Leslie R. Groves, the man responsible for organizing the Manhattan Project, which solved the problem of producing and delivering the nuclear explosion, estimated that another atom bomb would be ready to use against Japan by August 17 or 18—but it was not necessary. Even though the War Council still remained divided (“It is far too early to say that the war is lost,” opined the Minister of War), Emperor Hirohito, by request of two War Council members eager to end the war, met with the Council and declared that “continuing the war can only result in the annihilation of the Japanese people…” The Emperor of Japan gave his permission for unconditional surrender.
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August 10, 1981
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/child-found-decapitated (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/child-found-decapitated)
Child found decapitated
The severed head of six-year-old Adam Walsh, who disappeared from a shopping mall two weeks earlier, is found in a canal in Vera Beach, Florida. Two years later, career criminal Ottis Ellwood Toole, then an inmate at a Raiford, Florida, prison, confessed to Adam’s abduction and murder. However, investigators were unable to locate Adam’s body where Toole claimed to have buried it and without any physical evidence the Florida state attorney couldn’t prosecute the case. Toole died of cirrhosis of the liver and AIDS in 1996 in a Florida prison, where he was on Death Row for another murder. On December 16, 2008, the police department in Hollywood, Florida, announced that the case against Toole was strong enough to close the investigation into Adam’s death.
In the wake of Adam Walsh’s kidnapping and murder, Congress passed the Missing Children’s Act, giving the FBI greater authority to track the disappearance of children. A television movie about the case, Adam, aired a week before Toole confessed to the crime. John Walsh, Adam’s father, became a national spokesman against crime. He went on to host America’s Most Wanted, a television show that profiles fugitives whose capture is sought by the FBI. Since it debuted in 1988,nearly 1,000criminals have been caughtas a result ofviewer tips.
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August 11, 1980
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carol-bundy-confesses-her-connection-to-the-sunset-slayer (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carol-bundy-confesses-her-connection-to-the-sunset-slayer)
Carol Bundy confesses her connection to the “Sunset Slayer”
Nurse Carol Bundy confesses her connection to the “Sunset Slayer,” the killer who had been murdering and mutilating young women in Hollywood, California, all summer, to co-workers. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m supposed to save lives, not take them,” she reportedly said. Her confession was relayed to police, who immediately arrested Douglas Clark, Bundy’s live-in lover.
Bundy and Clark met in a North Hollywood bar in January. Clark was a self-described “king of the one-night stands.” But when he met Bundy, he soon discovered that she was willing to assist and indulge in his sick fantasies. Bundy began taking pictures of Clark having sex with children and listening to his desire to kill.
In June, Clark abducted two teenagers, sexually assaulted them, and then shot them in the head. He dumped their bodies off the freeway and then went home to brag about it to Bundy. Days later, Clark called a friend of his victims’ and told her details about the awful murders while masturbating. Two weeks later, Clark struck again, killing two young women in separate incidents. In the second attack, Clark cut the head off the woman and took it home, insisting that Bundy apply cosmetics to it. Because most of his victims had been abducted from the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, the press had taken to calling the serial killer the “Sunset Slayer.”
Clark proved to be more of an influence than Bundy expected. When she blabbed about Clark’s activities to a former boyfriend, she felt compelled to kill the man to make sure that she wasn’t implicated. On August 5, Bundy stabbed John Murray to death and then cut off his head. Within a week, she was tearfully confessing to her fellow nurses. During the trial in 1981, Clark tried to pin all of the murders on Bundy, but the jurors found his story hard to believe and sentenced him to die. Bundy attempted an insanity defense, but she eventually pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 52 years-to-life.
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August 12, 1978
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rising-nfl-star-paralyzed-by-hit (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rising-nfl-star-paralyzed-by-hit)
Rising NFL star paralyzed by hit
Oakland Raiders free safety Jack Tatum levels New England Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley with a helmet-to-helmet hit in a preseason game, leaving Stingley paralyzed for life. Despite the sport’s hard hits and reputation for roughness, this was the first and only time a player was permanently paralyzed as a result of an injury sustained in a National Football League game.
Stingley, a wide receiver out of Purdue, was chosen by the Patriots in the first round of the 1973 draft. He showed rapid improvement in his first few NFL seasons and was thought to be one of the league’s rising stars. In 1977, he had enjoyed the best year of his career, racking up 39 catches for 657 yards and five touchdowns. Tatum, known as a hard-hitting defensive back, had starred at Ohio State and was drafted by the Oakland Raiders in the first round of the 1971 draft. Nicknamed “the assassin” at Ohio State for his vicious hits, Tatum had knocked Baltimore Colts star tight end John Mackey unconscious in his NFL debut. In Super Bowl XI, Tatum hit Minnesota Viking Sammy Knight so hard that Knight’s helmet flew off—the move is often referred to as one of the hardest hits in Super bowl history.
The hit that Tatum would be best remembered for in his 10-year, three-time Pro Bowl career, though, came on August 12, 1978, during a pre-season game at the Oakland Coliseum. Stingley ran a shallow post pattern down the right hash mark toward the middle of the field to collect a pass from Patriot quarterback Steve Grogan. Tatum met him at full speed, hitting Stingley with his helmet and forearm and sending him to the ground with alarming force. The hit did not violate any NFL rules and no flag was thrown on the play, but Stingley’s neck was broken between the fourth and fifth vertebrae, rendering the 26-year-old a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest down. The tragic injury sent a shockwave through the NFL and its massive audience of fans.
Raiders head coach John Madden visited Stingley in the hospital every day after the injury, made him an honorary member of his team and instructed the Raiders to treat him as such. When Tatum went to see Stingley in the hospital, however, Stingley’s family would not allow him into the room. They weren’t alone in being angry with Tatum for what seemed like a lack of remorse about the hit. Tatum explained his position this way: “…you can’t get emotional about it. You don’t like to see any player get hurt, but football is a contact sport and that’s a real dangerous pattern. We don’t even run it in practice. But I had to do what I had to do. It was my job, and he was doing his job.”
In the aftermath of Stingley’s injury, the NFL was criticized for its violent nature. Partially in response to this event, the NFL worked to revise its rules to protect receivers on the field with tighter refereeing and stricter play calling. In addition, helmet-to-helmet hits were eventually ruled illegal anywhere on the field. Friends of Stingley also worked to secure better benefits for disabled NFL players.
Darryl Stingley died on April 5, 2007, as a result of complications from his injury. Stingley and Tatum never reconciled.
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August 13, 1961
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Berlin is divided
Shortly after midnight on this day in 1961, East German soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city.
After World War II, defeated Germany was divided into Soviet, American, British and French zones of occupation. The city of Berlin, though technically part of the Soviet zone, was also split, with the Soviets taking the eastern part of the city. After a massive Allied airlift in June 1948 foiled a Soviet attempt to blockade West Berlin, the eastern section was drawn even more tightly into the Soviet fold. Over the next 12 years, cut off from its western counterpart and basically reduced to a Soviet satellite, East Germany saw between 2.5 million and 3 million of its citizens head to West Germany in search of better opportunities. By 1961, some 1,000 East Germans–including many skilled laborers, professionals and intellectuals–were leaving every day.
In August, Walter Ulbricht, the Communist leader of East Germany, got the go-ahead from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to begin the sealing off of all access between East and West Berlin. Soldiers began the work over the night of August 12-13, laying more than 100 miles of barbed wire slightly inside the East Berlin border. The wire was soon replaced by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights. East German officers known as Volkspolizei (“Volpos”) patrolled the Berlin Wall day and night.
Many Berlin residents on that first morning found themselves suddenly cut off from friends or family members in the other half of the city. Led by their mayor, Willi Brandt, West Berliners demonstrated against the wall, as Brandt criticized Western democracies, particularly the United States, for failing to take a stand against it. President John F. Kennedy had earlier said publicly that the United States could only really help West Berliners and West Germans, and that any kind of action on behalf of East Germans would only result in failure.
The Berlin Wall was one of the most powerful and iconic symbols of the Cold War. In June 1963, Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”) speech in front of the Wall, celebrating the city as a symbol of freedom and democracy in its resistance to tyranny and oppression. The height of the Wall was raised to 10 feet in 1970 in an effort to stop escape attempts, which at that time came almost daily. From 1961 to 1989, a total of 5,000 East Germans escaped; many more tried and failed. High profile shootings of some would-be defectors only intensified the Western world’s hatred of the Wall.
Finally, in the late 1980s, East Germany, fueled by the decline of the Soviet Union, began to implement a number of liberal reforms. On November 9, 1989, masses of East and West Germans alike gathered at the Berlin Wall and began to climb over and dismantle it. As this symbol of Cold War repression was destroyed, East and West Germany became one nation again, signing a formal treaty of unification on October 3, 1990.
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August 14, 1994
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-terrorist-known-as-carlos-the-jackal-is-captured (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-terrorist-known-as-carlos-the-jackal-is-captured)
The terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal is captured
Terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, long known as Carlos the Jackal, is captured in Khartoum, Sudan, by French intelligence agents. Since there was no extradition treaty with Sudan, the French agents sedated and kidnapped Carlos. The Sudanese government, claiming that it had assisted in the arrest, requested that the United States remove their country from its list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
Sanchez, who was affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Organization for Armed Arab Struggle, and the Japanese Red Army, was widely believed to be responsible for numerous terrorist attacks between 1973 and 1992. In 1974, he took the French ambassador and 10 others hostage at the Hague, demanding that French authorities release Yutaka Furuya of the Japanese Red Army.
On June 27, 1975, French police officers tried to arrestSanchez in a Paris apartment, but he killed two officers in an ensuing gun battle and escaped. In June 1992,Sanchez was tried in absentia for these murders and convicted.
On December 21, 1975,Sanchez and a group of his men took 70 OPEC officials hostage at a Vienna conference. They made it to safety with somewhere between $25 million and $50 million in ransom money, but not before killing three hostages.Sanchez claimed responsibility for these crimes in an interview with the Arab magazine, Al Watan al Arabi.
In the subsequent trial that resulted in his imprisonment,Sanchez was represented by Jacque Verges, who had reportedly helped to organize a failed rocket attack on a French nuclear power plant in 1982. Verges was also accused of sending a threatening letter from Sanchez to the French authorities so that Sanchez’s girlfriend (possibly his wife), German terrorist Magdalena Kopp, could be released. He bitterly denied the charges.
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August 15, 1969
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-woodstock-festival-opens-in-bethel-new-york (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-woodstock-festival-opens-in-bethel-new-york)
The Woodstock festival opens in Bethel, New York
On this day in 1969, the Woodstock Music Festival opens on a patch of farmland in White Lake, a hamlet in the upstate New York town of Bethel.
Promoters John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang originally envisioned the festival as a way to raise funds to build a recording studio and rock-and-roll retreat near the town of Woodstock, New York. The longtime artists’ colony was already a home base for Bob Dylan and other musicians. Despite their relative inexperience, the young promoters managed to sign a roster of top acts, including the Jefferson Airplane, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival and many more. Plans for the festival were on the verge of foundering, however, after both Woodstock and the nearby town of Wallkill denied permission to hold the event. Dairy farmer Max Yasgur came to the rescue at the last minute, giving the promoters access to his 600 acres of land in Bethel, some 50 miles from Woodstock.
Early estimates of attendance increased from 50,000 to around 200,000, but by the time the gates opened on Friday, August 15, more than 400,000 people were clamoring to get in. Those without tickets simply walked through gaps in the fences, and the organizers were eventually forced to make the event free of charge. Folk singer and guitarist Richie Havens kicked off the event with a long set, and Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie also performed on Friday night.
Somewhat improbably, the chaotic gathering of half a million young “hippies” lived up to its billing of “Three Days of Peace and Music.” There were surprisingly few incidents of violence on the overcrowded grounds, and a number of musicians performed songs expressing their opposition to the Vietnam War. Among the many great moments at the Woodstock Music Festival were career-making performances by up-and-coming acts like Santana, Joe Cocker and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; the Who’s early-morning set featuring songs from their classic rock opera “Tommy”; and the closing set by Hendrix, which climaxed with an improvised solo guitar performance of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Though Woodstock had left its promoters nearly bankrupt, their ownership of the film and recording rights more than compensated for the losses after the release of a hit documentary film in 1970. Later music festivals inspired by Woodstock’s success failed to live up to its standard, and the festival still stands for many as a example of America’s 1960s youth counterculture at its best.
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August 16, 1977
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/elvis-presley-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/elvis-presley-dies)
Elvis Presley dies
Popular music icon Elvis Presley dies in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 42. The death of the “King of Rock and Roll” brought legions of mourning fans to Graceland, his mansion in Memphis. Doctors said he died of a heart attack, likely brought on by his addiction to prescription barbiturates.
Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jesse, died during the birth. Elvis grew up dirt-poor in Tupelo and Memphis and found work as a truck driver after high school. When he was 19, he walked into a Memphis recording studio and paid $4 to record a few songs as a present to his mother. Sam Philips, the owner of the studio, was intrigued by the rough, soulful quality of his voice and invited Presley back to practice with some local musicians. After Philips heard Elvis sing the rhythm-and-blues song “That’s All Right,” which Presley imbued with an accessible country-and-western flavor, he agreed to release the rendition as a single on his Sun Records label. The recording went to the top of the local charts, and Presley’s career was launched.
During the next year, Elvis attracted a growing following in the South, and in 1955 Sun Records sold his contract to a major record label, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), for a record $40,000. His first record for RCA was “Heartbreak Hotel,” which made him a national sensation in early 1956. He followed this up with the double-sided hit record “Hound Dog”/”Don’t Be Cruel.” In September 1956, Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, a national variety television show, and teenagers went into hysterics over his dynamic stage presence, good looks, and simple but catchy songs. Many parents, however, were appalled by his sexually suggestive pelvic gyrations, and by his third appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Elvis was filmed from only the waist up.
From 1956 through 1958, Elvis dominated the music charts and ushered in the age of rock and roll, opening doors for both white and black rock artists. During this period, he starred in four successful motion pictures, all of which featured his soundtracks: Love Me Tender (1956), Jailhouse Rock (1957), Loving You (1957), and King Creole (1958).
In 1958, Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army and served an 18-month tour of duty in West Germany as a Jeep driver. Teenage girls were overcome with grief, but Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, kept American youth satiated with stockpiled recordings that Presley made before his departure. All five singles released during this period eventually became million-sellers.
After being discharged as a sergeant in 1960, Elvis underwent a style change, eschewing edgy, rhythm-and-blues-inspired material in favor of romantic, dramatic ballads such as “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” He retired from concerts to concentrate on his musical films, and he made 27 in the 1960s, including G.I. Blues (1960), Blue Hawaii (1961), Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), Viva Las Vegas (1964), and Frankie and Johnny (1966). In 1967, he married Priscilla Beaulieu, and the couple had a daughter, Lisa Marie, in 1968.
By the end of the 1960s, rock and roll had undergone dramatic changes, and Elvis was no longer seen as relevant by American youth. A 1968 television special won back many of his fans, but hits were harder to come by. His final Top 10 entry, “Burning Love,” was in 1972. Still, he maintained his sizable fortune through lucrative concert and television appearances.
By the mid 1970s, Elvis was in declining physical and mental health. He divorced his wife in 1973 and developed a dangerous dependence on prescription drugs. He was also addicted to junk food and gained considerable weight. In the last two years of his life, he made erratic stage appearances and lived nearly as a recluse. On the afternoon of August 16, 1977, he was found unconscious in his Graceland mansion and rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was buried on the grounds of Graceland, which continues to attract fans and has been turned into a highly successful tourist attraction.
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Major Discovery at James Monroe’s Historic Virginia Home
http://www.history.com/news/major-discovery-at-james-monroes-historic-virginia-home?cmpid=Social_FBPAGE_HISTORY_20160429_452319545&linkId=23999135
Just in time for the 258th anniversary of James Monroe’s birth, big news has arrived out of Highland, the fifth president’s historic home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Recent archaeological excavations, combined with tree-ring dating of wood on the property, show that a sizeable foundation uncovered in the yard of a later structure was in fact the Monroe home, built in 1799. The more modest house standing today, long thought to have been the president’s residence, appears to have been constructed nearly two decades later, during Monroe’s first term in the White House. The discovery, which will be followed up by more extensive excavations, promises to offer a fresh look at the last president of the Revolutionary era, who presided over the so-called Era of Good Feelings and introduced the momentous foreign policy doctrine that bears his name.
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Is this GP's jammier open() very hot?? Any one can tell me some advise? Thanks in advance. :)
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Is this GP's jammier open() very hot?? Any one can tell me some advise? Thanks in advance. :)
It is indeed GP's open(), you came to the right place.
You're welcome.
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Sept 10, 1897
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-drunk-driving-arrest (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-drunk-driving-arrest)
First drunk driving arrest
On this day in 1897, a 25-year-old London taxi driver named George Smith becomes the first person ever arrested for drunk driving after slamming his cab into a building. Smith later pled guilty and was fined 25 shillings.
In the United States, the first laws against operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol went into effect in New York in 1910. In 1936, Dr. Rolla Harger, a professor of biochemistry and toxicology, patented the Drunkometer, a balloon-like device into which people would breathe to determine whether they were inebriated. In 1953, Robert Borkenstein, a former Indiana state police captain and university professor who had collaborated with Harger on the Drunkometer, invented the Breathalyzer. Easier-to-use and more accurate than the Drunkometer, the Breathalyzer was the first practical device and scientific test available to police officers to establish whether someone had too much to drink. A person would blow into the Breathalyzer and it would gauge the proportion of alcohol vapors in the exhaled breath, which reflected the level of alcohol in the blood.
Despite the invention of the Breathalyzer and other developments, it was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that public awareness about the dangers of drinking and driving increased and lawmakers and police officers began to get tougher on offenders. In 1980, a Californian named Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, after her 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver while walking home from a school carnival. The driver had three previous drunk-driving convictions and was out on bail from a hit-and-run arrest two days earlier.Lightner and MADD were instrumental in helping to change attitudes about drunk driving and pushed for legislation that increased the penalties for driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. MADD also helped get the minimum drinking age raised in many states. Today, the legal drinking age is 21 everywhere in the United States and convicted drunk drivers face everything from jail time and fines to the loss of their driver’s licenses and increased car insurance rates. Some drunk drivers are ordered to have ignition interlock devices installed in their vehicles. These devices require a driver to breath into a sensor attached to the dashboard; the car won’t start if the driver’s blood alcohol concentration is above a certain limit.
Despite the stiff penalties and public awareness campaigns, drunk driving remains a serious problem in the United States. In 2005, 16,885 people died in alcohol-related crashes and almost 1.4 million people were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
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I know I have posted this before, but it deserves to be remembered:
Sept 11, 2001
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/attack-on-america (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/attack-on-america)
Attack on America
At 8:45 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors. As the evacuation of the tower and its twin got underway, television cameras broadcasted live images of what initially appeared to be a freak accident. Then, 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767–United Airlines Flight 175–appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center, and sliced into the south tower at about the 60th floor. The collision caused a massive explosion that showered burning debris over surrounding buildings and the streets below. America was under attack.
The attackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist organization, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America’s support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and its continued military presence in the Middle East. Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the U.S. in the months before September 11 and acted as the “muscle” in the operation. The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through security at three East Coast airports and boarded four flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for the long transcontinental journey. Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming the ordinary commuter jets into guided missiles.
As millions watched in horror the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington and slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to a structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.
Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. The structural steel of the skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 mph and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel. At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed. Close to 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 other people were treated for injuries, many severe.
Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane–United Flight 93–was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett, Jr., told his wife over the phone that “I know we’re all going to die. There’s three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey.” Another passenger–Todd Beamer–was heard saying “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll” over an open line. Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”
he passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All 45 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.
At 7 p.m., President George W. Bush, who had spent the day being shuttled around the country because of security concerns, returned to the White House. At 9 p.m., he delivered a televised address from the Oval Office, declaring “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.” In a reference to the eventual U.S. military response he declared: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led international effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and destroy Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network based there, began on October 7, 2001. Bin Laden was killed during a raid of his compound in Pakistan by U.S. forces on May 2, 2011.
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Sept 12, 1972
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hopalong-cassidy-rides-off-into-his-last-sunset (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hopalong-cassidy-rides-off-into-his-last-sunset)
Hopalong Cassidy rides off into his last sunset
After nearly 40 years of riding across millions of American TV and movie screens, the cowboy actor William Boyd, best known for his role as Hopalong Cassidy, dies on this day in 1972 at the age of 77.
Boyd’s greatest achievement was to be the first cowboy actor to make the transition from movies to television. Following World War II, Americans began to buy television sets in large numbers for the first time, and soon I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners were standard evening fare for millions of families. But despite their proven popularity in movie theaters, westerns were slow to come to the small screen. Many network TV producers scorned westerns as lowbrow “horse operas” unfit for their middle- and upper-class audiences.
Riding to the small screen’s rescue came the movie cowboy, William Boyd. During the 1930s, Boyd made more than 50 cheap but successful “B-grade” westerns starring as Hopalong Cassidy. Together with his always loyal and outlandishly intelligent horse, Topper, Hopalong righted wrongs, saved school marms in distress, and single-handedly fought off hordes of marauding Indians. After the war, Boyd recognized an opportunity to take Hopalong and Topper into the new world of television, and he began to market his old “B” westerns to TV broadcasters in Los Angeles and New York City. A whole new generation of children thrilled to “Hoppy’s” daring adventures, and they soon began to clamor for more.
Rethinking their initial disdain for the genre, producers at NBC contracted with Boyd in 1948 to produce a new series of half-hour westerns for television. By 1950, American children had made Hopalong Cassidy the seventh most popular TV show in America and were madly snapping up genuine “Hoppy” cowboy hats, chaps, and six-shooters, earning Boyd’s venture more than $250 million. Soon other TV westerns followed Boyd’s lead, becoming popular with both children and adults. In 1959, seven of the top-10 shows on national television were westerns like The Rifleman, Rawhide, and Maverick. The golden era of the TV western would finally come to an end in 1975 when the long-running Gunsmoke left the air, three years after Boyd rode off into his last sunset.
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Sept 13, 1971
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massacre-at-attica-prison (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massacre-at-attica-prison)
Massacre at Attica Prison
The four-day revolt at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York, ends when hundreds of state police officers storm the complex in a hail of gunfire. Thirty-nine people were killed in the disastrous assault, including 29 prisoners and 10 prison guards and employees held hostage since the outset of the ordeal.
On September 9, prisoners rioted and seized control of the overcrowded state prison. One prison guard was fatally beaten. Later that day, state police retook most of the prison, but 1,281 convicts occupied an exercise field called D Yard, where they held 39 prison guards and employees hostage for four days. After negotiations stalled, New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller ordered the state police to regain control of the prison by force.
On the rainy Monday morning of September 13, an ultimatum was read to the inmates, calling on them to surrender. They responded by putting knives against the hostages’ throats. At 9:46 a.m., helicopters flew over the yard, dropping tear gas as state police and corrections officers stormed in with guns blazing. The police fired 3,000 rounds into the tear gas haze, killing 29 inmates and 10 of the hostages and wounding 89. Most were shot in the initial indiscriminate barrage of gunfire, but other prisoners were shot or killed after they surrendered.
In the aftermath of the bloody raid, authorities said that the inmates had killed the slain hostages by slitting their throats. One hostage was said to have been castrated. However, autopsies showed that these charges were false and that all 10 hostages had been shot to death by police. The attempted cover-up increased public condemnation of the raid and prompted a Congressional investigation.
The Attica riot was the worst prison riot in U.S. history. A total of 43 people were killed–prison guard William Quinn, the 39 killed in the raid, and three inmates killed by other prisoners early in the riot. In the week after its conclusion, police engaged in brutal reprisals against the prisoners, forcing them to run a gauntlet of nightsticks and crawl naked across broken glass, among other tortures. The many injured inmates received substandard medical treatment, if any.
In January 2000, New York State settled a 26-year-old class-action lawsuit filed by the Attica inmates against prison and state officials. For their suffering during the raid and the weeks following, the former and current inmates accepted $8 million.
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Sept 14, 1982
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hollywood-star-and-real-life-princess-grace-kelly-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hollywood-star-and-real-life-princess-grace-kelly-dies)
Hollywood star and real-life princess Grace Kelly dies
On this day in 1982, Princess Grace of Monaco–the American-born former film star Grace Kelly, whose movie credits include The Country Girl and Rear Window–dies at the age of 52 from injuries suffered after her car plunged off a mountain road near Monte Carlo. During the height of her Hollywood career in the 1950s, Kelly became an international icon of beauty and glamour.
Kelly, the daughter of a former model and a wealthy industrialist, was born on November 12, 1929, in Philadelphia, and began acting as a child. After high school, she attended the American Academy for Dramatic Arts in New York. While she auditioned for Broadway plays, the classic blonde beauty supported herself by modeling and appearing in TV commercials.
In 1949, Kelly debuted on Broadway in The Father by August Strindberg. Two years later, she landed her first Hollywood bit part, in Fourteen Hours. Her big break came in 1952, when she starred as Gary Cooper’s wife in the Western High Noon. Her performance in 1954’s The Country Girl, as the wife of an alcoholic actor and singer played by Bing Crosby, won her a Best Actress Oscar (Kelly beat out Judy Garland in A Star is Born). Among Kelly’s other acting credits were three Alfred Hitchcock thrillers: Dial M for Murder (1954), with Ray Milland and Robert Cummings, Rear Window (1954), with James Stewart, and To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant. Her last big-screen role was in 1956’s High Society, a musical adaptation of 1940’s The Philadelphia Story, co-starring Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.
Kelly gave up her acting career after marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco (1923-2005) on April 19, 1956, in a lavish ceremony in Monaco. The couple, who had met the year before at the Cannes Film Festival, went on to have three children. On September 13, 1982, Princess Grace was driving with her youngest daughter, Stephanie, when she reportedly suffered a stroke and lost control of her car, which plunged down a mountainside. Seventeen-year-old Stephanie survived, but Princess Grace died the following day. Her death was mourned by millions of fans around the world.
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Sept 15, 1978
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ali-defeats-spinks-to-win-world-heavyweight-championship (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ali-defeats-spinks-to-win-world-heavyweight-championship)
Ali defeats Spinks to win world heavyweight championship
On this day in 1978, boxer Muhammad Ali defeats Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, the first fighter ever to do so. Following his victory, Ali retired from boxing, only to make a brief comeback two years later. Ali, who once claimed he could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” left the sport permanently in 1981.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 14, 1942, the future world champ changed his name to Muhammad Ali in 1964 after converting to Islam. He earned a gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome and made his professional boxing debut against Tunney Husaker in October 1960, winning the bout in six rounds. On February 25, 1964, Ali defeated the heavily favored Sonny Liston in six rounds to become heavyweight champ, after which he famously declared, “I am the greatest!”
During the Vietnam War, Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. armed forces and in 1967 was convicted of draft evasion and banned from boxing for three years. He stayed out of prison as his case was appealed and returned to the ring in October 1970, knocking out Jerry Quarry in Atlanta in the third round. On March 8, 1971, Ali fought Joe Frazier in the “Fight of the Century” and lost after 15 rounds, the first loss of his professional boxing career. In June 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction for evading the draft.
At a January 1974 rematch at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Ali defeated Frazier in 12 rounds. In October of that same year, an underdog Ali bested George Foreman and reclaimed his heavyweight champion belt at the heavily hyped “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire, with a knockout in the eighth round. On February 15, 1978, in Las Vegas, an aging Ali lost the title to Leon Spinks in a 15-round split decision. For Spinks, who was born in 1953 and won a gold medal in boxing at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, the fight was just the eighth of his professional career. However, seven months later, on September 15, Ali won the title back, in a unanimous 15-round decision.
In June 1979, Ali announced he was retiring from boxing. On October 2, 1980, he returned to the ring and fought heavyweight champ Larry Holmes, who knocked him out in the 11th round. After losing to Trevor Berbick on December 11, 1981, Ali left the ring for the last time, with a record of 56 wins, five losses and 37 knockouts. In 1984, he was revealed to have Parkinson’s disease. Spinks retired from boxing in 1995 with a record of 26 wins, 17 losses and 14 knockouts.
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Sept 16, 1932
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Gandhi begins fast in protest of caste separation
On this day in 1932, in his cell at Yerovda Jail near Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi begins a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s decision to separate India’s electoral system by caste.
A leader in the Indian campaign for home rule, Gandhi worked all his life to spread his own brand of passive resistance across India and the world. By 1920, his concept of Satyagraha (or “insistence upon truth”) had made Gandhi an enormously influential figure for millions of followers. Jailed by the British government from 1922-24, he withdrew from political action for a time during the 1920s but in 1930 returned with a new civil disobedience campaign. This landed Gandhi in prison again, but only briefly, as the British made concessions to his demands and invited him to represent the Indian National Congress Party at a round-table conference in London.
After his return to India in January 1932, Gandhi wasted no time beginning another civil disobedience campaign, for which he was jailed yet again. Eight months later, Gandhi announced he was beginning a “fast unto death” in order to protest British support of a new Indian constitution, which gave the country’s lowest classes–known as “untouchables”–their own separate political representation for a period of 70 years. Gandhi believed this would permanently and unfairly divide India’s social classes. A member of the more powerful Vaisya, or merchant caste, Gandhi nonetheless advocated the emancipation of the untouchables, whom he called Harijans, or “Children of God.”
“This is a god-given opportunity that has come to me,” Gandhi said from his prison cell at Yerovda, “to offer my life as a final sacrifice to the downtrodden.” Though other public figures in India–including Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambdekar, the official political representative of the untouchables–had questioned Gandhi’s true commitment to the lower classes, his six-day fast ended after the British government accepted the principal terms of a settlement between higher caste Indians and the untouchables that reversed the separation decision.
As India slowly moved towards independence, Gandhi’s influence only grew. He continued to resort to the hunger strike as a method of resistance, knowing the British government would not be able to withstand the pressure of the public’s concern for the man they called Mahatma, or “Great Soul.” On January 12, 1948, Gandhi undertook his last successful fast in New Delhi, to persuade Hindus and Muslims in that city to work toward peace. On January 30, less than two weeks after breaking that fast, he was assassinated by a Hindu extremist on his way to an evening prayer meeting.
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Sept 17, 1796
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Washington prepares final draft of farewell address
On this day in 1796, George Washington prepares a final draft of his presidential farewell address. Two days later, the carefully crafted words appeared in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, published in Philadelphia, officially notifying the American public that Washington would voluntarily step down as the nation’s first president. The decision was extraordinary: rarely, if ever, in the history of western civilization had a national leader voluntarily relinquished his title. The action set a model for successive U.S. administrations and future democracies.
Historians have since discovered that Washington dated the draft of the address to coincide with the nine-year anniversary of the adoption of the first draft of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Scholars agree that Alexander Hamilton, former aide to Washington during the Revolutionary War and the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, wrote much of the address. Washington was greatly influenced by his federalist cohort Hamilton throughout their professional relationship, much to the frustration of the Republican members of his government, particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It was Madison who had helped pen a farewell draft for Washington at the end of his first term, which Hamilton had initially used as a template for the final farewell address. That version was ultimately tossed aside, however, in favor of one drafted from scratch by Hamilton. He and Washington spent the summer of 1796 finalizing the speech, which was delivered for printing in September.
Many Americans had hoped or assumed that Washington would serve another term or even until his death. As Washington’s second term came to a close in early 1797, he was in poor health, exhausted from years of internal squabbling amongst members of his cabinet and ready to retire to his beloved plantation in Virginia. According to biographer Ron Chernow, although Hamilton wrote much of the speech, it was faithful to Washington’s style and tone. In addition to laying out his hopes for America’s future, the address called for an end to partisan politics and maintained that Washington’s decision not to run for a third term was in the best interests of the country. “I have…contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable,” he humbly admitted. Desiring the “shade of retirement,” Washington reminded the people that his position as president was designed to be temporary. He believed it was his patriotic duty to uphold the Constitution and pass on his role as the nation’s top public servant to someone else.
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Sept 18, 1960
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Castro arrives in New York
Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. Castro’s visit stirred indignation and admiration from various sectors of American society, and was climaxed by his speech to the United Nations on September 26.
By the time Castro arrived in New York City in September 1960, relations between the United States and Cuba were rapidly deteriorating. Since taking power in January 1959, Castro had infuriated the American government with his policies of nationalizing U.S. companies and investments in Cuba. Some American officials, such as Vice President Richard Nixon, believed that Castro was leaning perilously toward communism. (Castro did not publicly proclaim his adherence to communism until late-1961, when he declared that he was a “Marxist-Leninist”.) In March 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to begin training Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro’s regime. When the United States suspended the import of Cuban sugar in 1960, Castro’s government turned to the Soviet Union for economic assistance. The Russians were happy to oblige.
In September 1960, Castro led a delegation to New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly. He and his entourage caused an immediate sensation by deciding to stay at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem. While there, Castro met with a number of African-American leaders, including Malcolm X from the Nation of Islam and the poet Langston Hughes. On September 26, Castro delivered a blistering attack on what he termed American “aggression” and “imperialism.” For over four hours, Castro lambasted U.S. policy toward Cuba and other nations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The United States, he declared, had “decreed the destruction” of his revolutionary government.
Castro’s visit and lengthy public denunciation marked the final breaking point in relations between the U.S. and Cuba. In January 1961, the Eisenhower administration severed all diplomatic relations with Cuba. In April 1961, just a short time after taking office, President John F. Kennedy ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the Cuban exile force, armed and trained by the CIA, landed in Cuba. The attack was a fiasco. Castro’s power in Cuba was solidified by his Bay of Pigs victory over the American “imperialists.” Castro remained the undisputed leader of the communist government in Cuba for over four decades; meanwhile, relations between the United States and Cuba remained strained. In late July 2006, an unwell Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his younger brother Raul. Fidel Castro officially stepped down in February 2008.
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Sept 19, 1881
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President James Garfield dies
On this day in 1881, President James A. Garfield, who had been in office just under four months, succumbs to wounds inflicted by an assassin 80 days earlier, on July 2.
Garfield’s assassin was an attorney and political office-seeker named Charles Guiteau. Guiteau was a relative stranger to the president and his administration in an era when federal positions were doled out on a “who you know” basis. When his requests for an appointment were ignored, a furious Guiteau stalked the president, vowing revenge.
On the morning of July 2, 1881, Garfield headed for the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station on his way to a short vacation. As he walked through the station toward the waiting train, Guiteau stepped behind the president and fired two shots. The first bullet grazed Garfield’s arm; the second lodged below his pancreas. Doctors made several unsuccessful attempts to remove the bullet while Garfield lay in his White House bedroom, awake and in pain. Alexander Graham Bell, who was one of Garfield’s physicians, tried to use an early version of a metal detector to find the second bullet, but failed.
Historical accounts vary as to the exact cause of Garfield’s death. Some believe that his physicians’ treatments—which included the administration of quinine, morphine, brandy and calomel and feeding him through the rectum–may have hastened his demise. Others insist Garfield died from an already advanced case of heart disease. By early September, Garfield, who was recuperating at a seaside retreat in New Jersey, appeared to be recovering. He died on September 19. Autopsy reports at the time said that pressure from his internal wound had created an aneurism, which was the likely cause of death.
Guiteau was deemed sane by a jury, convicted of murder and hanged on June 30, 1882. Garfield’s spine, which shows the hole created by the bullet, is kept as a historical artifact by the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.
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Sept 20, 1519
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Magellan sets out
Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific. He searched the Río de la Plata, a large estuary south of Brazil, for a way through; failing, he continued south along the coast of Patagonia. At the end of March 1520, the expedition set up winter quarters at Port St. Julian. On Easter day at midnight, the Spanish captains mutinied against their Portuguese captain, but Magellan crushed the revolt, executing one of the captains and leaving another ashore when his ship left St. Julian in August.
On October 21, he finally discovered the strait he had been seeking. The Strait of Magellan, as it became known, is located near the tip of South America, separating Tierra del Fuego and the continental mainland. Only three ships entered the passage; one had been wrecked and another deserted. It took 38 days to navigate the treacherous strait, and when ocean was sighted at the other end Magellan wept with joy. He was the first European explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. His fleet accomplished the westward crossing of the ocean in 99 days, crossing waters so strangely calm that the ocean was named “Pacific,” from the Latin word pacificus, meaning “tranquil.” By the end, the men were out of food and chewed the leather parts of their gear to keep themselves alive. On March 6, 1521, the expedition landed at the island of Guam.
Ten days later, they dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebú–they were only about 400 miles from the Spice Islands. Magellan met with the chief of Cebú, who after converting to Christianity persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the neighboring island of Mactan. In fighting on April 27, Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades.
After Magellan’s death, the survivors, in two ships, sailed on to the Moluccas and loaded the hulls with spice. One ship attempted, unsuccessfully, to return across the Pacific. The other ship, the Vittoria, continued west under the command of Basque navigator Juan SebastiÁn de Elcano. The vessel sailed across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived at the Spanish port of SanlÚcar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the globe.
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Sept 21, 1904
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The great Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph dies in Washington
On this day in 1904, the remarkable Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph dies on the Colville reservation in northern Washington at the age of 64. The whites had described him as superhuman, a military genius, an Indian Napoleon. But in truth, the Nez Perce Chief Him-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (“Thunder Rolling Down from the Mountains”) was more of a diplomat than a warrior.
Chief Joseph-as non-Indians knew him-had been elected chief of the Wallowa band of Nez Perce Indians when he was only 31. For six difficult years the young leader struggled peacefully against the whites who coveted the Wallowa’s fertile land in northeastern Oregon. In 1877, General Howard of the U.S. Army warned that if the Wallowa and other bands of the Nez Perce did not abandon their land and move to the Lapwai Reservation within 30 days, his troops would attack. While some of the other Nez Perce chiefs argued they should resist, Chief Joseph convinced them to comply with the order rather than face war, and he led his people on a perilous voyage across the flood-filled Snake and Salmon River canyons to a campsite near the Lapwai Reservation. But acting without Chief Joseph’s knowledge, a band of 20 young hotheaded braves decided to take revenge on some of the more offensive white settlers in the region, sparking the Nez Perce War of 1877.
Chief Joseph was no warrior, and he opposed many of the subsequent actions of the Nez Perce war councils. Joseph’s younger brother, Olikut, was far more active in leading the Nez Perce into battle, and Olikut helped them successfully outsmart the U.S. Army on several occasions as the war ranged over more than 1,600 miles of Washington, Idaho, and Montana territory. Nonetheless, military leaders and American newspapers persisted in believing that since Chief Joseph was the most prominent Nez Perce spokesman and diplomat, he must also be their principal military leader.
By chance, Chief Joseph was the only major leader to survive the war, and it fell to him to surrender the surviving Nez Perce forces to Colonel Nelson A. Miles at the Bear Paw battlefield in northern Montana in October 1877. “From where the sun now stands,” he promised, “I will fight no more forever.” Chief Joseph lived out the rest of his life in peace, a popular romantic symbol of the noble “red men” who many Americans admired now that they no longer posed any real threat.
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Sept 22, 1554
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Coronado dies, without finding the fabled cities of gold
On this day in 1554, Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado, his health badly deteriorated from injuries and the toll of his strenuous travels, dies. He never found the fabled cities of gold that he had sought for decades.
A quarter-century earlier Coronado had explored much of the southwestern United States, leading his force of 300 Spaniards and 800 Indians northward from Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola that were rumored to have walls made of gold and treasure houses filled with priceless gems. Arriving in the region that today straddles the border between New Mexico and Arizona, Coronado did actually find Cibola. But after winning a brief battle against the native defenders, Coronado discovered he had conquered only a modest Zuni village built with walls of adobe mud, not gold.
Discouraged, Coronado considered abandoning his search. But while exploring the Rio Grande one of his lieutenants had acquired a slave, a man the Spaniards called “the Turk,” who boasted that in his homeland of Quivara, far to the northeast, Coronado could find all the treasures after which he lusted. Coronado set off in search of Quivara in the spring of 1541, eventually traveling across the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and up into Kansas. But when he finally made contact with the Quivara Indians, Coronado was once again disappointed to find that they were living in simple huts and had no more gold and silver than the Zunis. After strangling the Turk for having lied to him, Coronado gave up and returned to Mexico where he faced a government furious that he had not brought back the wealth he had promised.
Coronado never again mounted another exploratory mission and died believing that he had been a shameful failure. But while he never found the golden cities he sought, Coronado did succeed in giving the Spanish and the rest of the world their first fairly accurate understanding of the inhabitants and geography of the southern half of the present United States.
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Sept 23, 1981
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A two-month manhunt for a murdering writer comes to an end
Jack Henry Abbott is captured in the oil fields of Louisiana after a two-month long manhunt that began when he killed Richard Adan at the Binibon restaurant in New York City on July 18. At the time of the murder, Abbott had been out on parole largely through the efforts of author Norman Mailer, who convinced officials that he had a great writing talent.
Abbott spent virtually his entire life in prison. At the age of nine, he was sent to reform school in Utah. Soon after his release nine years later, he was arrested and convicted of forgery. While serving his time at the Utah state penitentiary, Abbott killed a fellow inmate in 1966. Although he claimed to have been defending himself from a homosexual assault, he received another 14-year sentence.
In 1971, Abbott escaped from jail and robbed a bank in Denver before being captured. Back in prison, he heard that Norman Mailer was writing a book about Gary Gilmore, who was on Utah’s death row, and began writing long letters to Mailer, detailing his supposed mistreatment in prison.
Mailer, who thought Abbott was a talented writer, got the New York Review of Books to publish some of the letters. Random House then published Abbott’s book, In the Belly of the Beast. Telling prison officials that Abbott had a promising career as a writer, Mailer offered to employ him as a researcher. On June 5, 1981, Abbott was released to a halfway house in New York City.
Although the New York literary crowd adopted Abbott, he found himself more comfortable among the small time crooks living in the city’s Lower East Side. Only six weeks after his parole, Abbott picked a fight with waiter Richard Adan at the Bonibon restaurant, stabbing him in the chest and killing him instantly. Abbott fled to a small Mexican village, but since he did not speak Spanish, he traveled to Louisiana, where detectives caught up with him.
Back in New York, Abbott managed to get the minimum sentence for murdering Adan—15 years-to-life—in part because Mailer urged the court to be lenient. According to Mailer, “culture is worth a little risk.” Subsequently, Abbott’s notoriety grew even more, and his book became a bestseller. He committed suicide in prison on February 10, 2002.
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Sept 24 1890
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The Mormon Church officially renounces polygamy
On this day in 1890, faced with the eminent destruction of their church and way of life, Mormon leaders reluctantly issue the “Mormon Manifesto” in which they command all Latter-day Saints to uphold the anti-polygamy laws of the nation. The Mormon leaders had been given little choice: If they did not abandon polygamy they faced federal confiscation of their sacred temples and the revocation of basic civil rights for all Mormons.
Followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had been practicing the doctrine of “plural marriage” since the 1840s. The best available evidence suggests that the church founder, Joseph Smith, first began taking additional wives in 1841, and historians estimate he eventually married more than 50 women. For a time, the practice was shrouded in secrecy, though rumors of widespread polygamy had inspired much of the early hatred and violence directed against the Mormons in Illinois. After establishing their new theocratic state centered in Salt Lake City, the church elders publicly confirmed that plural marriage was a central Mormon belief in 1852.
The doctrine was distinctly one-sided: Mormon women could not take multiple husbands. Nor could just any Mormon man participate. Only those who demonstrated unusually high levels of spiritual and economic worthiness were permitted to practice plural marriage, and the Church also required that the first wife give her consent. As a result of these barriers, relatively few Mormon men had multiple wives. Best estimates suggest that men with two or more wives made up only 5 to 15 percent of the population of most Mormon communities.
Even though only a tiny minority of Mormons practiced plural marriage, many church leaders were very reluctant to abandon it, arguing that to do so would destroy the Mormon way of life. Ironically, though, the Mormon Manifesto’s call for an end to polygamy actually paved the way to greater Mormon-Gentile cooperation and may well have helped ensure the religion’s lasting vitality.
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Sept 25, 1959
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Little Augie Pisano is murdered
Mob assassins shoot Anthony Carfano, known as Little Augie Pisano,to death in New York City on Meyer Lansky’s orders. Lansky, one of the few organized crime figures who managed to survive at the top for several decades, was estimated to have accumulated as much as $300,000,000 in ill-gotten gains by the 1970s. Still, the government was never able to prove any wrongdoing.
Meyer Lansky, the son of Russian immigrants, had an eighth-grade education, which put him far ahead of many other criminals. According to legend, Lansky was a straight arrow until one day in October 1918, when he joined a fight between teenagers Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano over a prostitute. After the three were charged with disorderly conduct, Lansky and Siegel became friends and began running a high-stakes craps game.
The two later expanded into bootlegging, car theft, and extortion, and helped form the New York “syndicate.” Lansky, a ruthless leader who would not tolerate disloyalty, ordered the murder of a thief who failed to provide an adequate kickback. Although he was shot several times, the thief survived to name Lansky as one of the assailants. Lansky then poisoned his hospital food, and though he survived a second time, the threat was enough to change his attitude toward testifying. Later, he even rejoined Lansky’s gang.
In June 1947, Lansky ordered the death of his old friend Bugsy Siegel in Beverly Hills, California. Siegel, who had been sent to the West Coast in order to establish a new mob presence, came up with the idea of building The Flamingo, Las Vegas’ first major casino. The casino had been built with mob money, and Lansky was angry over the pace of Siegel’s loan payments.
When Lansky ordered the murder of Anthony Carfano 12 years later, Carfano had been intruding on Lansky’s gambling interests in Florida and Cuba. His death eliminated all competition and opened up emerging markets for Lansky in South America. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lansky made a special effort to stay out of the public eye and was fairly successful. He died of lung cancer in 1983.
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Sept 26, 2008
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Screen legend Paul Newman dies
On this day in 2008, Paul Newman, one of the leading movie stars of the 20th century, dies at the age of 83 from cancer at his home in Westport, Connecticut. In a career spanning more than five decades, Newman made over 65 movies, including the classics “Cool Hand Luke,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Sting” and “The Verdict.” As reported in The New York Times, Newman’s talent as an actor was drawn from his “physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless.”
Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights. In high school, he acted in school drama performances and played football. At age 18, Newman joined the U.S. Navy and served as a radioman/gunner on a torpedo plane during World War II. After the war, Newman attended Kenyon College on a football scholarship and continued to act. He graduated in 1949 and began performing with small theater companies. Following the 1950 death of his father, Newman briefly moved back to Cleveland to help manage his family’s sporting goods store. After a stint at the Yale Drama School, Newman made his Broadway debut in “Picnic” in 1953. His silver-screen debut came a year later in “The Silver Chalice,” which he later labeled the worst film ever made. Newman’s first starring movie role was in 1956’s “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” in which he portrayed real-life boxer Rocky Graziano.
The famously blued-eyed Newman earned his first Academy Award nomination, for best actor, with his performance in the 1959 big-screen version of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hat Tin Roof.” He went on to collect lead-actor Oscar nominations for his work in seven other films: “The Hustler” (1961), “Hud” (1963), “Cool Hand Luke” (1967), “Absence of Malice” (1981), “The Verdict” (1982), “The Color of Money” (1986) and “Nobody’s Fool” (1994). Of those nominations, he took home only a golden statuette for “The Color of Money.” Additionally, he garnered an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor for 2002’s “Road to Perdition.” Newman also earned an Oscar nomination for best picture with 1968’s “Rachel, Rachel,” in which he directed his wife, the actress Joanne Woodward (1930-).
Among Newman’s many other notable cinematic performances was 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” in which he teamed up with Robert Redford (1936-) to play a team of bank robbers in the Old West. The film was a commercial and critical success and won four Oscars. Newman and Redford collaborated again with 1973’s “The Sting,” in which they portrayed a pair of con men. The movie collected seven Academy Awards, including best picture, and was a big hit at the box office.
In addition to acting, Newman was known for his love of auto racing. After playing a professional race car driver in 1969’s “Winning,” he became passionate about the sport and competed in a number of races, including the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans, at which he took second place in 1979. In 1983, he co-founded a racing team with Carl Haas, Newman/Haas Racing (now Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing).
Newman was also a noted philanthropist who launched a series of summer camps for sick children and founded a multi-million-dollar food business, Newman’s Own, the profits of which go to charity.
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Sept 27, 1938
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Franklin Roosevelt appeals to Hitler for peace
On this day in 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt writes to German Chancellor Adolf Hitler regarding the threat of war in Europe. The German chancellor had been threatening to invade the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and, in the letter, his second to Hitler in as many days, Roosevelt reiterated the need to find a peaceful resolution to the issue.
The previous day, FDR had written to Hitler with an appeal to negotiate with Czechoslovakia regarding Germany’s desire for the natural and industrial resources of the Sudetenland rather than resort to force. Hitler responded that Germany was entitled to the area because of the “shameful” way in which the Treaty of Versailles, which had ended World War I, had made Germany a “pariah” in the community of nations. The treaty had given the Sudetenland, a territory that was believed by Hitler and many of his supporters to be inherently German, to the state of Czechoslovakia. Therefore, Hitler reasoned, German invasion of the Sudetenland was justified, as annexation by Germany would simply mean returning the area to its cultural and historical roots. Hitler assured Roosevelt that he also desired to avoid another large-scale war in Europe.
In his letter of September 27, Roosevelt expressed relief at Hitler’s assurances but re-emphasized his desire that “negotiations [between Germany and Czechoslovakia] be continued until a peaceful settlement is found.” FDR also suggested that a conference of all nations concerned with the current conflict be convened as soon as possible. He appealed to Hitler’s ego, saying “should you agree to a solution in this peaceful manner I am convinced that hundreds of millions throughout the world would recognize your action as an outstanding historic service to all humanity.” FDR then assured Hitler that the U.S. would remain neutral regarding European politics, but that America recognized a responsibility to be involved “as part of a world of neighbors.”
In the end, Hitler ignored the international community’s pleas for a peaceful solution and invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939. The invasion was just the first in Hitler’s quest to control Europe and create a “Third Reich” of German geopolitical supremacy.
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Sep 28, 1941
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ted-williams-becomes-last-player-to-hit-400 (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ted-williams-becomes-last-player-to-hit-400)
Ted Williams becomes last player to hit .400
On this day in 1941, the Boston Red Sox’s Ted Williams plays a double-header against the Philadelphia Athletics on the last day of the regular season and gets six hits in eight trips to the plate, to boost his batting average to .406 and become the first player since Bill Terry in 1930 to hit .400. Williams, who spent his entire career with the Sox, played his final game exactly 19 years later, on September 28, 1960, at Boston’s Fenway Park and hit a home run in his last time at bat, for a career total of 521 homeruns.
Williams was born on August 30, 1918, in San Diego, and began his major league career with the Red Sox in 1939. 1941 marked Williams’ best season. In addition to his .406 batting average–no major league player since him has hit .400–the left fielder led the league with 37 homers, 135 runs and had a slugging average of .735. Also that season, Williams, whose nicknames included “The Splendid Splinter” and “The Thumper,” had an on-base percentage of .553, a record that remained unbroken for 61 years, until Barry Bonds achieved a percentage of .582 in 2002.
In 1942, Williams won the American League Triple Crown, for highest batting average and most RBIs and homeruns. He duplicated the feat in 1947. In 1946 and 1949, he was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player and in June 1960, he became the fourth player in major league history to hit 500 homers. He was selected to the All-Star team 17 times.
Williams played his last game on September 28, 1960, and retired with a lifetime batting average of .344, a .483 career on-base percentage and 2,654 hits. His achievements are all the more impressive because his career was interrupted twice for military service: Williams was a Marine Corps pilot during World War II and the Korean War and as a result missed a total of nearly five seasons from baseball.
Williams, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, managed the Washington Senators (renamed the Texas Rangers in 1972) from 1969 to 1972. In 1984, the Boston Red Sox retired his uniform number (nine). Williams died of cardiac arrest at age 83 on July 5, 2002, in Florida. In a controversial move, his son sent his father’s body to be frozen at a cryonics laboratory.
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Sep 29, 1758
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lord-nelson-born (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lord-nelson-born)
Lord Nelson born
Horatio Nelson, Britain’s most celebrated naval hero, is born in Burnham Thorpe, England. In the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, he won a series of crucial victories and saved England from possible invasion by France.
The son of the village rector, he entered the British navy as a midshipman at the age of 12. He traveled the world’s oceans and at age 20 was made a captain. After Spain joined France in its alliance with the rebellious American colonies, he raided Spanish holdings in Central America and the West Indies. In the years after the American Revolution, his zealous enforcement of the Navigation Acts, which restricted England’s carrying trade to English ships, made him unpopular. Between 1787 and 1792, he received no new naval commission. In 1793, however, war broke out with Revolutionary France, and he was immediately given command of the 64-gun Agamemnon.
He served in the Mediterranean, fighting at the port of Toulon and helping to capture Corsica. While ashore on Corsica assisting in the siege of Calvi, he lost the sight in his right eye after being injured by debris from a French shot. Four years later, on February 14, 1797, he acted boldly and without orders and single-handedly took on an entire squadron of Spanish ships that were about to surprise a British fleet off Portugal’s Cape St. Vincent. For his heroic contribution to British victory at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, Nelson was knighted and made a rear admiral. Later that year, he led the unsuccessful British assault on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands and was shot in the right arm, forcing its amputation.
After his recovery, he pursued a French expeditionary force to Egypt and succeeded in destroying the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798, thereby stranding French General Napoleon Bonaparte and his army in Egypt. Nelson was hailed as a great hero and went with his squadron to Naples, where he began an affair with the wife of a British minister. Nelson had a wife in England. He aided Ferdinand, king of Naples, in his struggles against republican revolutionaries but later was recalled to England after he refused an order to take his ships to Minorca. Due to his overwhelming public popularity, however, Nelson was made a vice admiral instead of being punished when he returned to England.
In April 1801, Nelson engaged Danish naval forces at the Battle of Copenhagen. Ordered to withdraw by his superior officer during the fiercely contested battle, Nelson put his telescope to his blind eye and said, “I really do not see the signal.” An hour later, victory was his. He was made an admiral and viscount and instructed to return to England to protect the Channel against an expected French invasion. In 1802, a brief interlude of peace with the French began, and Nelson lived with the minister’s wife in the countryside.
Upon the renewal of war in 1803, he was given command of the Mediterranean fleet, and he blockaded the French port of Toulon, trapping a French fleet for nearly two years. Meanwhile, French Emperor Napoleon planned an invasion of Britain. He induced Spain to declare war against England and in 1805 ordered the French and Spanish fleets to break out of the British blockades and then converge as a single enormous fleet in the West Indies. The Franco-Spanish fleet, Napoleon hoped, would then win control of the English Channel, and an invasion force of 350,000 could cross to the British isle.
In March 1805, French Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve’s fleet broke through Nelson’s blockade at Toulon under cover of bad weather. Nelson set off in pursuit, chasing the French to the West Indies, where Villeneuve found himself alone at the appointed meeting place in the Antilles. Not daring to attack Nelson, he recrossed the Atlantic and retreated to the Spanish port of Cadiz, where a Spanish fleet lay. Napoleon called off his English invasion for the time being, and the British blockaded Cadiz.
In October, Napoleon ordered Villeneuve to run the blockade and sail to Italy to assist a French campaign. On October 19, Villeneuve slipped out of Cadiz with a Franco-Spanish force of 33 ships, but Nelson caught him off Cape Trafalgar on October 21. Nelson divided his 27 ships into two divisions and signaled a famous message from the flagship Victory: “England expects that every man will do his duty.” In five hours of fighting, the British devastated the enemy fleet, destroying 19 enemy ships and capturing Villeneuve. No British ships were lost, but 1,500 British seamen were killed or wounded in the heavy fighting. The battle raged at its fiercest around the Victory, and a French sniper shot Nelson in the shoulder and chest. The admiral was taken below and died about 30 minutes before the end of the battle. Nelson’s last words, after being informed that victory was imminent, were “Now I am satisfied. Thank God I have done my duty.”
Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar ensured that Napoleon would never invade Britain. Nelson, hailed as the savior of his nation, was given a magnificent funeral in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. A column was erected to his memory in the newly named Trafalgar Square, and numerous streets were renamed in his honor. The HMS Victory, where Nelson won his most spectacular victory and drew his last breath, sits preserved in dry-dock at Portsmouth.
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Sept 30, 1889
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wyoming-legislators-write-the-first-state-constitution-to-grant-women-the-vote (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wyoming-legislators-write-the-first-state-constitution-to-grant-women-the-vote)
Wyoming legislators write the first state constitution to grant women the vote
On this day in 1889, the Wyoming state convention approves a constitution that includes a provision granting women the right to vote. Formally admitted into the union the following year, Wyoming thus became the first state in the history of the nation to allow its female citizens to vote.
That the isolated western state of Wyoming should be the first to accept women’s suffrage was a surprise. Leading suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were Easterners, and they assumed that their own more progressive home states would be among the first to respond to the campaign for women’s suffrage. Yet the people and politicians of the growing number of new Western states proved far more supportive than those in the East.
In 1848, the legislature in Washington Territory became the first to introduce a women’s suffrage bill. Though the Washington bill was narrowly defeated, similar legislation succeeded elsewhere, and Wyoming Territory was the first to give women the vote in 1869, quickly followed by Utah Territory (1870) and Washington Territory (1883). As with Wyoming, when these territories became states they preserved women’s suffrage.
By 1914, the contrast between East and West had become striking. All of the states west of the Rockies had women’s suffrage, while no state did east of the Rockies, except Kansas. Why the regional distinction? Some historians suggest western men may have been rewarding pioneer women for their critical role in settling the West. Others argue the West had a more egalitarian spirit, or that the scarcity of women in some western regions made men more appreciative of the women who were there while hoping the vote might attract more.
Whatever the reasons, while the Old West is usually thought of as a man’s world, a wild land that was “no place for a woman,” Westerners proved far more willing than other Americans to create states where women were welcomed as full and equal citizens.
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Oct 1, 1961
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/roger-maris-breaks-home-run-record (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/roger-maris-breaks-home-run-record)
Roger Maris breaks home-run record
On October 1, 1961, New York Yankee Roger Maris becomes the first-ever major-league baseball player to hit more than 60 home runs in a single season. The great Babe Ruth set the record in 1927; Maris and his teammate Mickey Mantle spent 1961 trying to break it. After hitting 54 homers, Mantle injured his hip in September, leaving Maris to chase the record by himself. Finally, in the last game of the regular season, Maris hit his 61st home run against the Boston Red Sox. (The league-champion Yanks won the game 1-0.)
Maris hit his famous homer on his second at-bat of the day. On his first, he popped out to left field. When he came to the plate again in the fourth, his team had one out and the bases were empty. Maris let two pitches from Boston rookie Tracy Stallard go–one high and outside, one low and inside–before swinging hard at a waist-high fastball.
“An ear-splitting roar went up,” the New York Times reported, as “the crowd sensed that this was it.” The ball was gone, all right–Sal Durante, a 19-year-old Brooklyn truck driver, caught it about 10 rows back in the right-field stands. Maris trotted around the bases, stopping to shake hands with a young boy who’d managed to wriggle past security and onto the field and stepped on home plate. Then he tipped his cap to the crowd, took four bows and returned to his seat on the bench.
He’d hit 61 homers, but his new record wasn’t official. In July, baseball commissioner Ford Frick had announced that he wouldn’t consider Ruth’s record broken unless the player who broke it had hit more than 60 home runs in fewer than 154 games–the number of games Ruth’s Yankees had played in the 1927 season. (By 1961, teams played 162 regular-season games.) Frick had more than a passing interest in the issue: He’d been a good friend of the Babe’s and thought it was his responsibility to guard his legacy as closely as possible. Moreover, he resented the changes he saw in baseball–bulky sluggers, shorter fences, longer seasons, livelier balls. And Frick, like many fans, didn’t quite know what to make of Maris, a Midwesterner of few words who once told a reporter “I was born surly, and I’m going to stay that way.” The ever-disdainful Rogers Hornsby summed up the feelings of many Ruth partisans and Mantle fans when he told anyone who would listen that the young Yankee “has no right to break Ruth’s record.”
And so, as far as Major League Baseball was concerned, he didn’t. While there was never an official asterisk next to any record of Maris’–in fact, the league didn’t even have its own record book until 1995, and of course Frick had no real say over what anybody else put in their record books–the league simply considered Ruth’s and Maris’ to be two separate accomplishments. In 1991, an MLB committee on historical accuracy voted to remove the distinction and award the record fully to Maris, who had died of cancer six years earlier.
In 1998, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs both broke Maris’ home-run record. Sosa finished the season with 66 and McGwire finished with 70. Barry Bonds now holds the record with 73.
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Oct 2, 1780
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/benedict-accomplice-hanged (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/benedict-accomplice-hanged)
Benedict accomplice hanged
Thirty-one-year-old British Major John Andre is hanged as a spy by U.S. military forces in Tappan, New York, on this day in 1780.
Andre, an accomplice of Benedict Arnold, had been captured by Patriots John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart on September 23 after they found incriminating papers in his boot. The papers revealed that Andre was returning from a secret meeting with U.S. General Benedict Arnold, commander of West Point, who had offered to surrender the strategic Hudson River fort to the British for a bribe of £20,000. Upon hearing of Andre’s capture, Arnold fled to the British warship Vulture and subsequently joined the British in their fight against the Patriots.
After being sentenced to death by U.S. authorities on September 29, Andre was allowed to write a letter to his commander, General Henry Clinton. Andre also wrote a letter to General George Washington in which he asked, not that his life be spared, but that he be executed by firing squad. Death by firing squad was considered a more “gentlemanly” death than hanging.
Members of the Continental Army respected Andre’s bravery, including Washington, who wanted to find a way to spare Andre’s life. Believing that Andre had committed a lesser crime than Benedict Arnold, Washington wrote a letter to Clinton, stating that he would exchange Andre for Arnold, so that Arnold could be hanged instead.
When he did not receive a reply to his offer by October 2, Washington wrote in his “general order” of the day, “That Major Andre General to the British Army ought to be considered as a spy from the Enemy and that agreeable to the law and usage of nations it is their opinion he ought to suffer death…The Commander in Chief directs the execution of the above sentence in the usual way this afternoon at five o’clock precisely.”
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Oct 3, 1995
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/o-j-simpson-acquitted (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/o-j-simpson-acquitted)
O.J. Simpson acquitted
At the end of a sensational trial, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. In the epic 252-day trial, Simpson’s “dream team” of lawyers employed creative and controversial methods to convince jurors that Simpson’s guilt had not been proved “beyond a reasonable doubt,” thus surmounting what the prosecution called a “mountain of evidence” implicating him as the murderer.
Orenthal James Simpson–a Heisman Trophy winner, star running back with the Buffalo Bills, and popular television personality–married Nicole Brown in 1985. He reportedly regularly abused his wife and in 1989 pleaded no contest to a charge of spousal battery. In 1992, she left him and filed for divorce. On the night of June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed and slashed to death in the front yard of Mrs. Simpson’s condominium in Brentwood, Los Angeles. By June 17, police had gathered enough evidence to charge O.J. Simpson with the murders.
Simpson had no alibi for the time frame of the murders. Some 40 minutes after the murders were committed, a limousine driver sent to take Simpson to the airport saw a man in dark clothing hurrying up the drive of his Rockingham estate. A few minutes later, Simpson spoke to the driver though the gate phone and let him in. During the previous 25 minutes, the driver had repeatedly called the house and received no answer.
A single leather glove found outside Simpson’s home matched a glove found at the crime scene. In preliminary DNA tests, blood found on the glove was shown to have come from Simpson and the two victims. After his arrest, further DNA tests would confirm this finding. Simpson had a wound on his hand, and his blood was a DNA match to drops found at the Brentwood crime scene. Nicole Brown Simpson’s blood was discovered on a pair of socks found at the Rockingham estate. Simpson had recently purchased a “Stiletto” knife of the type the coroner believed was used by the killer. Shoe prints in the blood at Brentwood matched Simpson’s shoe size and later were shown to match a type of shoe he had owned. Neither the knife nor shoes were found by police.
On June 17, a warrant was put out for Simpson’s arrest, but he refused to surrender. Just before 7 p.m., police located him in a white Ford Bronco being driven by his friend, former teammate Al Cowlings. Cowlings refused to pull over and told police over his cellular phone that Simpson was suicidal and had a gun to his head. Police agreed not to stop the vehicle by force, and a low-speed chase ensued. Los Angeles news helicopters learned of the event unfolding on their freeways, and live television coverage began. As millions watched, the Bronco was escorted across Los Angeles by a phalanx of police cars. Just before 8 p.m., the dramatic journey ended when Cowlings pulled into the Rockingham estate. After an hour of tense negotiation, Simpson emerged from the vehicle and surrendered. In the vehicle was found a travel bag containing, among other things, Simpson’s passport, a disguise kit consisting of a fake moustache and beard, and a revolver. Three days later, Simpson appeared before a judge and pleaded not guilty.
Simpson’s subsequent criminal trial was a sensational media event of unprecedented proportions. It was the longest trial ever held in California, and courtroom television cameras captured the carnival-like atmosphere of the proceedings. The prosecution’s mountain of evidence was systemically called into doubt by Simpson’s team of expensive attorneys, who made the dramatic case that their client was framed by unscrupulous and racist police officers. Citing the questionable character of detective Mark Fuhrman and alleged blunders in the police investigation, defense lawyers painted Simpson as yet another African American victim of the white judicial system. The jurors’ reasonable doubt grew when the defense spent weeks attacking the damning DNA evidence, arguing in overly technical terms that delays and other anomalies in the gathering of evidence called the findings into question. Critics of the trial accused Judge Lance Ito of losing control of his courtroom.
In polls, a majority of African Americans believed Simpson to be innocent of the crime, while white America was confident of his guilt. However, the jury–made up of nine African Americans, two whites, and one Hispanic–was not so divided; they took just four hours of deliberation to reach the verdict of not guilty on both murder charges. On October 3, 1995, an estimated 140 million Americans listened in on radio or watched on television as the verdict was delivered.
In February 1997, Simpson was found liable for several charges related to the murders in a civil trial and was forced to award $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the victims’ families. However, with few assets remaining after his long and costly legal battle, he has avoided paying the damages.
In 2007, Simpson ran into legal problems once again when he was arrested for breaking into a Las Vegas hotel room and taking sports memorabilia, which he claimed had been stolen from him, at gunpoint. On October 3, 2008, he was found guilty of 12 charges related to the incident, including armed robbery and kidnapping, and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
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October 4, 1970
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/janis-joplin-dies-of-a-heroin-overdose (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/janis-joplin-dies-of-a-heroin-overdose)
Janis Joplin dies of a heroin overdose
In the summer of 1966, Janis Joplin was a drifter; four years later, she was a rock-and-roll legend. She’d gone from complete unknown to generational icon on the strength of a single, blistering performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in the summer of 1967, and she’d followed that up with three years of touring and recording that cemented her status as, in the words of one critic, “second only to Bob Dylan in importance as a creator/recorder/embodiment of her generation’s history and mythology.”
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1943, Janis Joplin made her way to San Francisco in 1966, where she fell in with a local group called Big Brother and the Holding Company. It was with this group that she would become famous, first through her legendary performance of “Ball And Chain” at Monterey and then with the 1968 album Cheap Thrills. She soon split off to launch a solo career, however, her personality and her voice being far too big to be contained within a group.
”I’d rather not sing than sing quiet,” she once said in comparing herself to one of her musical idols. “Billie Holliday was subtle and refined. I’m going to shove that power right into you, right through you and you can’t refuse it.” But if sheer abandon was Janis Joplin’s vocal trademark, she nevertheless always combined it with a musicality and authenticity that lent her music a great deal more soul than much of what the psychedelic era produced.
But it was never just music, or the passion she displayed in performing it, that made Janis Joplin an icon. It was the no-holds-barred gusto with which she lived every other aspect of her life as well. Far from being an empty cliché, “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” was a revolutionary philosophy to many in the late 1960s, and Janis Joplin was its leading female exponent. Her string of romantic conquests ranged from Kris Kristofferson to Dick Cavett. Her drug and alcohol consumption was prolific. And the rock and roll she produced was timeless, from “Piece Of My Heart,” “Get It While You Can” and “Mercedes Benz” to her biggest pop hit, “Me And My Bobby McGee.”
In the autumn of 1970, Janis Joplin was in Los Angeles putting the finishing touches on the album that would prove to be the biggest hit of her career, Pearl. She did not live to see the album’s release, however. On this day in 1970, she died of an accidental heroin overdose and was discovered in her Los Angeles hotel room after failing to show for a scheduled recording session. She was 27 years old.
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October 5th, 1813
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tecumseh-defeated (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tecumseh-defeated)
Tecumseh defeated
During the War of 1812, a combined British and Indian force is defeated by General William Harrison’s American army at the Battle of the Thames near Ontario, Canada. The leader of the Indian forces was Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief who organized intertribal resistance to the encroachment of white settlers on Indian lands. He was killed in the fighting.
Tecumseh was born in an Indian village in present-day Ohio and early on witnessed the devastation wrought on tribal lands by white settlers. He fought against U.S. forces in the American Revolution and later raided white settlements, often in conjunction with other tribes. He became a great orator and a leader of intertribal councils. He traveled widely, attempting to organize a united Indian front against the United States. When the War of 1812 erupted, he joined the British, and with a large Indian force he marched on U.S.-held Fort Detroit with British General Isaac Brock. In August 1812, the fort surrendered without a fight when it saw the British and Indian show of force.
Tecumseh then traveled south to rally other tribes to his cause and in 1813 joined British General Henry Procter in his invasion of Ohio. The British-Indian force besieged Fort Meigs, and Tecumseh intercepted and destroyed a Kentucky brigade sent to relieve the fort. After the U.S. victory at the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813, Procter and Tecumseh were forced to retreat to Canada. Pursued by an American force led by the future president William Harrison, the British-Indian force was defeated at the Battle of the Thames River on October 5.
The battle gave control of the western theater to the United States in the War of 1812. Tecumseh’s death marked the end of Indian resistance east of the Mississippi River, and soon after most of the depleted tribes were forced west.
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October 6, 1866
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-u-s-train-robbery (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-u-s-train-robbery)
First U.S. train robbery
On this day in 1866, the Reno gang carries out the first robbery of a moving train in the U.S., making off with over $10,000 from an Ohio & Mississippi train in Jackson County, Indiana. Prior to this innovation in crime, holdups had taken place only on trains sitting at stations or freight yards.
This new method of sticking up moving trains in remote locations low on law enforcement soon became popular in the American West, where the recently constructed transcontinental and regional railroads made attractive targets. With the western economy booming, trains often carried large stashes of cash and precious minerals. The sparsely populated landscape provided bandits with numerous isolated areas perfect for stopping trains, as well as plenty of places to hide from the law. Some gangs, like Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, found robbing trains so easy and lucrative that, for a time, they made it their criminal specialty. Railroad owners eventually got wise and fought back, protecting their trains’ valuables with large safes, armed guards and even specially fortified boxcars. Consequently, by the late 1800s, robbing trains had turned into an increasingly tough and dangerous job.
As for the Reno gang, which consisted of the four Reno brothers and their associates, their reign came to an end in 1868 when they all were finally captured after committing a series of train robberies and other criminal offenses. In December of that year, a mob stormed the Indiana jail where the bandits were being held and meted out vigilante justice, hanging brothers Frank, Simeon and William Reno (their brother John had been caught earlier and was already serving time in a different prison) and fellow gang member Charlie Anderson.
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October 7, 1975
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-new-york-judge-reverses-john-lennons-deportation-order (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-new-york-judge-reverses-john-lennons-deportation-order)
A New York judge reverses John Lennon’s deportation order
On this day in 1975, a New York State Supreme Court judge reverses a deportation order for John Lennon, allowing him to remain legally in his adoptive home of New York City.
Protests against the Vietnam War had escalated significantly following the announcement of the Cambodia invasion on April 30, 1970, and the shooting deaths of four student protestors at Kent State just four days later. Many such gatherings would feature peaceful demonstrators singing Lennon’s 1969 anthem “Give Peace A Chance,” but others were more threatening. Newly relocated to New York City, John Lennon began to associate publicly with such radical figures as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale, and the White House reportedly grew concerned, according to the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, over his potentially powerful influence with a generation of 18-to-20-year-olds who would be allowed, for the very first time, to vote in the 1972 presidential election. “I suppose if you were going to list your enemies and decide who is most dangerous,” Walter Cronkite would later say, “if I were Nixon, I would put Lennon up near the top.”
South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond was of the same opinion, and it was a letter he wrote to the White House in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Internal Security Committee that prompted the White House to action. An FBI investigation of Lennon turned up no evidence of involvement in illegal activities, but the matter was referred nonetheless to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which began deportation proceedings against Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, on the basis of a 1968 marijuana conviction in England.
Leon Wildes, the immigration attorney who would handle Lennon’s case over the next four-plus years, would say of his client’s reaction to the case, “He understood that what was being done to him was wrong. It was an abuse of the law, and he was willing to stand up and try to show it—to shine the big light on it.” Lennon’s persistence in fighting the case finally paid off on October 7, 1975, with a court decision that left no question as to the real motives behind the deportation: “The courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds,” wrote Judge Irving Kaufman, who also went on to say, “Lennon’s four-year battle to remain in our country is testimony to his faith in this American dream.”
Less than one year later, in June 1976, John Lennon got his green card.
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October 8, 1956
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/don-larsen-is-perfect-in-world-series (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/don-larsen-is-perfect-in-world-series)
Don Larsen is perfect in World Series
On October 8, 1956, New York Yankees right-hander Don Larsen pitches the first no-hitter in the history of the World Series. Even better, it was a perfect game–that is, there were no runs, no hits and no errors, and no batter reached first base. Larsen’s performance anchored his team’s third-straight win against their cross-town rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yanks ended up winning the championship, the last all-New York World Series until 2000, in seven games.
Larsen was an uneven pitcher, and before the 1956 championship he was mostly known for being a hard drinker and an enthusiastic carouser. Because of a bad start in the second game of the World Series, he wasn’t even sure he’d pitch another game. In fact, he found out he’d be heading to the mound in Game 5 when he got to the clubhouse on the morning of October 8 and found that manager Casey Stengel had left a ball in his locker, wedged inside his cleat.
But that night, in front of a crowd of 61,519 people at Yankee Stadium, Don Larsen found his muse. He retired 27 batters–among them future Hall of Famers Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider, along with the always-dangerous Gil Hodges–in 97 pitches. There were a few defensive close calls, though. In the second inning, Robinson socked a grounder right toward the third baseman; the ball bounced off his glove but, fortuitously, headed right for shortstop Gil McDougald, who managed to toss it to first just in time. In the fifth, minutes after Mickey Mantle homered to right field and put the Bombers up 1-0, Hodges sent a ball deep into left center–a sure homer in today’s Yankee Stadium–but Mantle bolted across the outfield for an impossible backhanded catch. In the very next play, Sandy Amoros hit a line drive that would have tied the game if it hadn’t swerved foul. And in the eighth, Hodges cracked another one–this one a low line drive that third baseman Andy Carey managed to snag just inches from the ground.
The last batter of the game was Dale Mitchell, the Dodgers’ pinch hitter. He fouled off the 1-2 pitch and then watched the third strike, a fastball, hurtle over the center of the plate. Ump Babe Pinelli called it. The game was over; the Yanks had won.
Larsen stayed in New York for three more years, until, in the deal that brought the Yankees Roger Maris, the team traded him to the Kansas City A’s. He pitched for eight teams in all and finished with a career 81-91 record (4-2 in the World Series) and a 3.78 ERA. After he retired, he worked for 24 years as a salesman for a San Jose paper company. His perfect game is still the only one in World Series history.
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October 9, 1974
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oskar-schindler-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oskar-schindler-dies)
Oskar Schindler dies
German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, dies at the age of 66.
A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded Nazi officials to allow the transfer of his workers to the Plaszow labor camp, thus saving them from deportation to the death camps. In 1944, all Jews at Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz, but Schindler, at great risk to himself, bribed officials into allowing him to keep his workers and set up a factory in a safer location in occupied Czechoslovakia. By the war’s end, he was penniless, but he had saved 1,200 Jews.
In 1962, he was declared a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official agency for remembering the Holocaust. According to his wishes, he was buried in Israel at the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion.
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October 10, 1985
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/achille-lauro-hijacking-ends (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/achille-lauro-hijacking-ends)
Achille Lauro hijacking ends
The hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro reaches a dramatic climax when U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercept an Egyptian airliner attempting to fly the Palestinian hijackers to freedom and force the jet to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily. American and Italian troops surrounded the plane, and the terrorists were taken into Italian custody.
On October 7, four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. Some 320 crewmembers and 80 passengers,were taken hostage. Hundreds of other passengers had disembarked the cruise ship earlier that day to visit Cairo and tour the Egyptian pyramids. Identifying themselves as members of the Palestine Liberation Front–a Palestinian splinter group–the gunmen demanded the release of 50 Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel. If their demands were not met, they threatened to blow up the ship and kill the 11 Americans on board. The next morning, they also threatened to kill the British passengers.
The Achille Lauro traveled to the Syrian port of Tartus, where the terrorists demanded negotiations on October 8. Syria refused to permit the ship to anchor in its waters, which prompted more threats from the hijackers. That afternoon, they shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish-American who was confined to a wheelchair as the result of a stroke. His body was then pushed overboard in the wheelchair.
Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) condemned the hijacking, and PLO officials joined with Egyptian authorities in attempting to resolve the crisis. On the recommendation of the negotiators, the cruise ship traveled to Port Said. On October 9, the hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and freed the hostages in exchange for a pledge of safe passage to an undisclosed destination.
The next day–October 10–the four hijackers boarded an EgyptAir Boeing 737 airliner, along with Mohammed Abbas, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front who had participated in the negotiations; a PLO official; and several Egyptians. The 737 took off from Cairo at 4:15 p.m. EST and headed for Tunisia. President Ronald Reagan gave his final order approving the plan to intercept the aircraft, and at 5:30 p.m. EST, F-14 Tomcat fighters located the airliner 80 miles south of Crete. Without announcing themselves, the F-14s trailed the airliner as it sought and was denied permission to land at Tunis. After a request to land at the Athens airport was likewise refused, the F-14s turned on their lights and flew wing-to-wing with the airliner. The aircraft was ordered to land at a NATO air base in Sicily, and the pilot complied, touching down at 6:45 p.m. The hijackers were arrested soon after. Abbas and the other Palestinian were released, prompting criticism from the United States, which wanted to investigate their possible involvement in the hijacking.
On July 10, 1986, an Italian court later convicted three of the terrorists and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 15 to 30 years. Three others, including Mohammed Abbas, were convicted in absentia for masterminding the hijacking and sentenced to life in prison. They received harsher penalties because, unlike the hijackers, who the court found were acting for “patriotic motives,” Abbas and the others conceived the hijacking as a “selfish political act” designed “to weaken the leadership of Yasir Arafat.” The fourth hijacker was a minor who was tried and convicted separately.
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October 11, 1975
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bill-clinton-marries-hillary-rodham (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bill-clinton-marries-hillary-rodham)
Bill Clinton marries Hillary Rodham
On this day in 1975, William Jefferson Clinton marries Hillary Rodham in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Bill and Hillary met in 1972 while both were studying law at Yale University; both also worked on George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign. After marrying, they settled in Arkansas, where Clinton immersed himself in politics and practiced law until he decided to run for governor of the state in 1978. He won and became the youngest man ever to hold the position of governor in any state. In 1992, he ran for the presidency against Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush. He won, becoming, at age 46, the youngest president since John F. Kennedy, who took office at age 43.
Clinton’s two terms (1991 to 2000) were marred by one political scandal after another and in 1998 he became the first president since Andrew Johnson to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The impeachment trial was the culmination of a slew of scandals involving the president and first lady, which included investigations into allegedly improper Arkansas real-estate deals, suspected fundraising violations, claims of sexual harassment and accusations of cronyism. All this was capped off by Clinton’s affair with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. The president’s attempt to cover up the affair, to which he later admitted, enabled House Republican leaders to begin the impeachment process for perjury and obstruction of justice. A divided House of Representatives impeached Clinton on December 19, 1998; the issue then passed to the Senate. After a five-week trial, Clinton was acquitted.
Hillary, both during Clinton’s first presidential campaign and during her time in the White House, earned the ire of conservatives for her outspokenness and her involvement in public policy. Refusing to, in her words, “stay home and bake cookies,” Hillary devoted much of her time to lobbying for universal healthcare. When Clinton’s affair surfaced, many expected Hillary to leave him; she did not and instead spoke out against what she called a “right wing conspiracy” to unseat her husband. As Clinton’s tenure in the White House came to an end, Hillary set her sights on her own political career.
In 2001, the couple moved to Chappaqua, New York, a suburb of New York City. While Bill Clinton embarked on a new career of consulting for humanitarian and public policy groups, Hillary ran for and won a seat in the United States Senate. In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election she made a bid for the Democratic nomination but was defeated by Barack Obama. In 2009, President Obama appointed her secretary of state.
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October 12, 1492
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/columbus-reaches-the-new-world (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/columbus-reaches-the-new-world)
Columbus reaches the New World
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia. His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.
Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a maritime entrepreneur. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the gold and spice islands of Asia. At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes. Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus’ day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century. However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world’s size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed).
With only the Atlantic Ocean, he thought, lying between Europe and the riches of the East Indies, Columbus met with King John II of Portugal and tried to persuade him to back his “Enterprise of the Indies,” as he called his plan. He was rebuffed and went to Spain, where he was also rejected at least twice by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. However, after the Spanish conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in January 1492, the Spanish monarchs, flush with victory, agreed to support his voyage.
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three small ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina. On October 12, the expedition reached land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and “Indian” captives in March 1493 and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century.
During his lifetime, Columbus led a total of four expeditions to the New World, discovering various Caribbean islands, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South and Central American mainlands, but he never accomplished his original goal—a western ocean route to the great cities of Asia. Columbus died in Spain in 1506 without realizing the great scope of what he did achieve: He had discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
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October 13, 1792
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/white-house-cornerstone-laid (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/white-house-cornerstone-laid)
White House cornerstone laid
The cornerstone is laid for a presidential residence in the newly designated capital city of Washington. In 1800, President John Adams became the first president to reside in the executive mansion, which soon became known as the “White House” because its white-gray Virginia freestone contrasted strikingly with the red brick of nearby buildings.
The city of Washington was created to replace Philadelphia as the nation’s capital because of its geographical position in the center of the existing new republic. The states of Maryland and Virginia ceded land around the Potomac River to form the District of Columbia, and work began on Washington in 1791. French architect Charles L’Enfant designed the area’s radical layout, full of dozens of circles, crisscross avenues, and plentiful parks. In 1792, work began on the neoclassical White House building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue under the guidance of Irish American architect James Hoban, whose design was influenced by Leinster House in Dublin and by a building sketch in James Gibbs’ Book of Architecture. President George Washington chose the site.
On November 1, President John Adams was welcomed into the executive mansion. His wife, Abigail, wrote about their new home: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but wise men ever rule under this roof!”
In 1814, during the War of 1812, the White House was set on fire along with the U.S. Capitol by British soldiers in retaliation for the burning of government buildings in Canada by U.S. troops. The burned-out building was subsequently rebuilt and enlarged under the direction of James Hoban, who added east and west terraces to the main building, along with a semicircular south portico and a colonnaded north portico. The smoke-stained stone walls were painted white. Work was completed on the White House in the 1820s.
Major restoration occurred during the administration of President Harry Truman, and Truman lived across the street for several years in Blair House. Since 1995, Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Lafayette Square has been closed to vehicular traffic for security reasons. Today, more than a million tourists visit the White House annually. It is the oldest federal building in the nation’s capital.
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October 14, 2003
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/steve-bartman-catches-ball (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/steve-bartman-catches-ball)
Steve Bartman catches ball
On October 14, 2003, a Chicago Cubs fan named Steve Bartman plucks a fly ball out of the air before outfielder Moises Alou can catch it—a catch that would have been a crucial out—in the sixth game of the league championship series against the Florida Marlins. As a result of Bartman’s interference, the Cubs lost their momentum and the game. Bartman was escorted from Wrigley Field by security guards as bloodthirsty fans hurled beer cans and other debris at his head. The next day, he went into hiding—but not before he told the press that “I’ve been a Cub fan all my life and fully understand the relationship between my actions and the outcome of the gam—I am so truly sorry from the bottom of this Cubs fan’s broken heart.”
It was the eighth inning of the sixth game of the NLCS, and the Cubs were just five outs away from their first World Series since 1945–five outs away from proving once and for all that the famous Curse of the Billy Goat was dead. (Legend has it that a local bar owner and Cubs fan brought his pet goat to the fourth game of the 1945 World Series against the Tigers, but got thrown out in the middle of the game because, his seatmates said, the pair smelled like a barnyard. The goat’s insulted owner then declared that the team would never win another pennant. When Chicago lost to the Tigers a few days later, he sent a telegram to Wrigley that said simply: “Who stinks now?”)
Pitcher Mark Prior had a 3-0 lead, and he was on a roll. Cubs fans were sure their team was finally going all the way. Even when Florida’s Juan Pierre hit a double, things still looked good for the Cubs. Then, all of a sudden, they didn’t: Switch-hitter Luis Castillo stepped to the plate, worked a full count and cranked the ball hard toward the left-field fence. Moises Alou raced backward, jumped up and reached for the ball. He would have had it, too, but just then Bartman reached out and grabbed it just before it landed in Alou’s glove. The ump called the ball foul; Castillo went back to the plate; and an agitated Prior walked him in nine pitches. In the meantime, Pierre had moved to third on a wild pitch. Florida had men on the corners, the tying run at the plate and just one out.
All hell broke loose. A single to left scored Pierre. Then Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez missed a routine grounder and the bases were loaded. After that, team manager Dusty Baker said, “we couldn’t stop the bleeding. They just started hitting the ball all over everywhere.” By the end of the inning, the Marlins had scored eight runs and forced a seventh game.
Making matters worse for Bartman, Florida won the next game—and the NLCS—9-6. The Sun-Times printed his name and his picture under the headline “Cursed.” A Chicago alderman pointedly suggested that Bartman might consider moving to Alaska; Florida governor Jeb Bush gleefully recommended that he consider moving south instead. It seemed clear, as one Marlins fan noted dryly, that “this guy is their new goat.” Chicago has begun to forgive him, but it’s unlikely to ever forget. Meanwhile, the Cubs still haven’t won a pennant.
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October 15, 1989
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wayne-gretzky-breaks-nhl-points-record (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wayne-gretzky-breaks-nhl-points-record)
Wayne Gretzky breaks NHL points record
On October 15, 1989, 28-year-old Los Angeles King Wayne Gretzky breaks Gordie Howe’s points record (1,850) in the final period of a game against the Edmonton Oilers. Gretzky’s record-setting goal tied the game; in overtime he scored another, and the Kings won 5-4.
Gretzky had entered the game with 1,849 points. About five minutes into the first period, he tied Howe’s record by earning an assist on the game’s first goal. After that, he didn’t do much, and “almost didn’t play the third period,” Gretzky told reporters after the game, because “I got my bell rung a few times.” But when he came off the bench with three minutes to go in the game, his team down 3-4, he meant business. With 61 seconds left on the clock, defender Steve Duchesne shot the puck toward the corner of the goal. It bounced off winger Dave Taylor’s knee and slid across the front of the goal. Gretzky, who had set up behind the net (a part of the ice that many fans called “Gretzky’s office”), skated around and backhanded the puck past Oilers goaltender Bill Ranford and under the crossbar. The game was tied; the record was broken.
Gretzky had played in Edmonton for nine seasons and helped the team win four Stanley Cups, so the city’s Northland Coliseum was packed with fans. When he scored his goal, the sellout crowd erupted into a thunderous ovation that lasted for more than two minutes. The league stopped the game for a ceremony at center ice. Gordie Howe made a speech, and there were gifts: a 1.851-carat diamond bracelet (with diamonds spelling out “1,851” across its face) from his old teammates, a crystal hologram engraved with his picture from the Kings and a carved silver tea tray from the league. Then Gretzky himself took the microphone. He thanked the Edmonton fans, his parents and his wife, and he added: “Gordie is still the greatest, in my mind, and the greatest in everyone’s mind.”
Howe, who was 61, returned the younger player’s affection. “If it was, pardon the expression, some clown” who’d broken his record, he said, “it would have bothered me. But not Wayne.” By the time Gretzky retired at the end of the 1998-99 season, he held or shared 61 NHL records. In all, he scored 894 goals and tallied 1,963 assists for 2,857 points in 1,487 games. He’d broken Howe’s record for goals scored (801) in March 1994, in his 1,117th game. “You’ve always been the Great One,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told him that night, “but tonight you’ve become the greatest.”
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October 16, 1851
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/psychopathic-gunfighter-wild-bill-longley-is-born-in-texas (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/psychopathic-gunfighter-wild-bill-longley-is-born-in-texas)
Psychopathic gunfighter “Wild Bill” Longley is born in Texas
The sadistic and murderous western gunman William Preston Longley is born on this day in 1815 in Austin County, Texas.
Little is reliably known of the youth of William Longley, or “Wild Bill” as he was later aptly called. But it is certain that before he was even 20 years old, Longley had already killed several men, and the evidence suggests he was probably what modern-day psychologists would term a psychopath. Notoriously short-tempered, Longley frequently killed for the most trivial of reasons. More than a few men died simply because he believed they had somehow slighted or insulted him, like an unarmed man named Thomas, who Longley murdered in cold blood for daring to argue with him over a card game. He had a particularly strong dislike of blacks, and African-Americans in Texas avoided him whenever possible.
Wherever Longley traveled he left behind a trail of pointless murders, but most of the details of his life are shrouded in myth and supposition. Legend has it that Longley was once hanged along with a horse thief; but shots fired back by the departing posse cut his rope, and he was saved. Reports that he was imprisoned for at least a time and once lived with the Ute Indians are more believable, though not confirmed.
After fleeing to Louisiana to escape punishment for killing a minister named Roland Lay, Longley was captured and returned to Lee County, Texas, where he was tried and found guilty of murder. Sentenced to hang, during his final days Longley became a Catholic, wrote long letters about his life, and claimed that he had actually only killed eight men. On the day of his execution, October 28, 1878, he climbed the steps to the gallows with a cigar in his mouth and told the gathered crowd that his punishment was just and God had forgiven him. After kissing the sheriff and priest and bidding farewell to the crowd, the noose was fitted around his neck, and he was hanged. Unfortunately, the rope slipped so that Longley’s knees hit the ground, denying him a quick and painless death. After the hangman pulled the rope taut once more, the famous killer slowly choked to death. It took 11 minutes before he was finally pronounced dead.
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October 17, 1835
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-first-resolution-formally-creating-the-texas-rangers-is-approved (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-first-resolution-formally-creating-the-texas-rangers-is-approved)
The first resolution formally creating the Texas Rangers is approved
On this day in 1835, Texans approve a resolution to create the Texas Rangers, a corps of armed and mounted lawmen designed to “range and guard the frontier between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers.”
In the midst of their revolt against Mexico, Texan leaders felt they needed a semi-official force of armed men who would defend the isolated frontier settlers of the Lone Star Republic against both Santa Ana’s soldiers and hostile Indians; the Texas Rangers filled this role. But after winning their revolutionary war with Mexico the following year, Texans decided to keep the Rangers, both to defend against Indian and Mexican raiders and to serve as the principal law enforcement authority along the sparsely populated Texan frontier.
Although created and sanctioned by the Texas government, the Rangers was an irregular body made up of civilians who furnished their own horses and weapons. Given the vast expanse of territory they patrolled and the difficulty of communicating with the central government, the government gave the men of the Rangers considerable independence to act as they saw fit. Sometimes the Rangers served as a military force, taking on the role of fighting the Indians that in the U.S. was largely the responsibility of the Army. At other times the Rangers mainly served as the principal law enforcement power in many frontier regions of Texas, earning lasting fame for their ability to track down and eliminate outlaws, cattle thieves, train robbers, and murderers, including such notorious bandits as John Wesley Hardin and King Fisher.
Even as late as the first two decades of the 20th century, the state of Texas continued to rely on the Rangers to enforce order in the wilder regions of the state, like the oil boomtowns along the Rio Grande. Increasingly, though, some Texans began to criticize the Rangers, arguing that they used excessive violence and often failed to observe the finer points of the law when apprehending suspects. As a result, in the 1930s, the state won control over the Rangers, transforming it into a modern and professional law enforcement organization.
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October 18, 1767
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mason-and-dixon-draw-a-line (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mason-and-dixon-draw-a-line)
Mason and Dixon draw a line
On this day in 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon complete their survey of the boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as areas that would eventually become the states of Delaware and West Virginia. The Penn and Calvert families had hired Mason and Dixon, English surveyors, to settle their dispute over the boundary between their two proprietary colonies, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
In 1760, tired of border violence between the colonies’ settlers, the British crown demanded that the parties involved hold to an agreement reached in 1732. As part of Maryland and Pennsylvania’s adherence to this royal command, Mason and Dixon were asked to determine the exact whereabouts of the boundary between the two colonies. Though both colonies claimed the area between the 39th and 40th parallel, what is now referred to as the Mason-Dixon line finally settled the boundary at a northern latitude of 39 degrees and 43 minutes. The line was marked using stones, with Pennsylvania’s crest on one side and Maryland’s on the other.
When Mason and Dixon began their endeavor in 1763, colonists were protesting the Proclamation of 1763, which was intended to prevent colonists from settling beyond the Appalachians and angering Native Americans. As the Britons concluded their survey in 1767, the colonies were engaged in a dispute with the Parliament over the Townshend Acts, which were designed to raise revenue for the empire by taxing common imports including tea.
Twenty years later, in late 1700s, the states south of the Mason-Dixon line would begin arguing for the perpetuation of slavery in the new United States while those north of line hoped to phase out the ownership of human chattel. This period, which historians consider the era of “The New Republic,” drew to a close with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which accepted the states south of the line as slave-holding and those north of the line as free. The compromise, along with those that followed it, eventually failed.
One hundred years after Mason and Dixon began their effort to chart the boundary, soldiers from opposite sides of the line let their blood stain the fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the Southern states’ final and fatal attempt to breach the Mason-Dixon line during the Civil War. One hundred and one years after the Britons completed their line, the United States finally admitted men of any complexion born within the nation to the rights of citizenship with the ratification of the 14th Amendment.
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October 19, 1985
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-blockbuster-store-opens (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-blockbuster-store-opens)
First Blockbuster store opens
On this day in 1985, the first Blockbuster video-rental store opens, in Dallas, Texas. At a time when most video stores were small-scale operations featuring a limited selection of titles, Blockbuster opened with some 8,000 tapes displayed on shelves around the store and a computerized check-out process. The first store was a success and Blockbuster expanded rapidly, eventually becoming one of the world’s largest providers of in-home movies and game entertainment.
Blockbuster was founded by David Cook, who had previously owned a business that provided computer software services to the oil and gas industry in Texas. Cook saw the potential in the video-rental business and after opening the first Blockbuster in 1985, he added three more stores the following year. In 1987, he sold part of the business to a group of investors that included Wayne Huizenga, founder of Waste Management, Inc., the world’s biggest garbage disposal company. Later that year, Cook left Blockbuster and Huizenga assumed control of the company and moved its headquarters to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Under Huizenga’s leadership, Blockbuster embarked on an aggressive expansion plan, snapping up existing video store chains and opening scores of new stores. By 1988, Blockbuster was America’s leading video chain, with some 400 stores. By the early 1990s, Blockbuster had launched its 1,000th store and expanded into the overseas market.
In 1994, Blockbuster was acquired by the media giant Viacom Inc., whose brands include MTV and Nickelodeon. In the mid-1990s, the digital video disc (DVD) made its debut and in 1997, Netflix, an online DVD rental service, was founded. Around that same time, the e-commerce giant Amazon.com launched a video and DVD store. Blockbuster faced additional competition from the rise of pay-per-view and on-demand movie services, through which viewers could pay for and watch movies instantly in their own homes. In 2004, Blockbuster split off from Viacom. That same year, Blockbuster launched an online DVD rental service to compete with Netflix. As of 2008, Blockbuster had some 8,000 stores around the world and was well known for its advertising campaigns, which included the long-running slogan “Make it a Blockbuster Night.” In 2006, the company, headquartered once again in Dallas, had global revenues of more than $5.5 billion.
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October 20, 1990
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/2-live-crew-members-are-acquitted-of-obscenity-charges (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/2-live-crew-members-are-acquitted-of-obscenity-charges)
2 Live Crew members are acquitted of obscenity charges
Three members of the rap group 2 Live Crew are acquitted of obscenity charges in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Luther Campbell, Chris “Fresh Kid Ice” Wong Won, and Mark “Brother Marquis” Ross had faced a year in prison for performing their songs, which were considered to be sexually prurient and obscene, at a club in Hollywood, Florida. Their June 10 concert appearance and subsequent arrest capped a remarkable week in which a federal judge ruled that their latest album was obscene, and a local record store owner was arrested for selling it to an undercover police officer.
Police officers who were in the audience when 2 Live Crew performed at Club Futura on June 10 had brought along a recorder, but they did a poor job of preparing the case for prosecutors. During the two-week trial in October, the tape recording was found to be practically inaudible, and the lyrics were indecipherable. When a deputy futilely tried to interpret the tape, the jurors only laughed and shook their heads.
Attacking the assumption that their songs were obscene, 2 Live Crew’s attorneys introduced testimony from a noted music expert and an English professor to claim that the sexually charged songs were actually parodies of black stereotypes and were intended to make people laugh. “Of all the things in this world, sex is the one that all of us do,” said defense attorney Bruce Rogow during closing arguments. “But if you don’t say it quite the right way, you can get in big trouble with the state.”
The jury’s decision to acquit came as a slight surprise since record store owner Charles Freeman had been convicted earlier in the month for selling copies of 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty as They Wanna Be. It wasn’t until May 1992 that an appellate court overruled the original finding that the album was obscene. Luther Campbell claimed that he had spent more than $1 million in legal fees fighting the First Amendment battle.
The publicity from the trial prompted a national debate on what type of music was appropriate for children, and the U.S. Senate even held a hearing on music lyrics. Major record companies responded by voluntarily agreeing to place stickers on albums containing explicit lyrics.
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October 21, 2014
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/olympian-oscar-pistorius-gets-5-years-in-prison-for-girlfriendaes-death (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/olympian-oscar-pistorius-gets-5-years-in-prison-for-girlfriendaes-death)
Olympian Oscar Pistorius gets 5 years in prison for girlfriend’s death
On this day in 2014, South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius, the first double amputee runner to compete at the Olympics, is sentenced to five years behind bars after being found guilty of culpable homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter, in the February 2013 death of his girlfriend, 29-year-old Reeva Steenkamp. The world-famous track star admitted to fatally shooting Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, at his home in Pretoria, South Africa, but claimed he mistook her for an intruder.
Born in 1986 without fibulas, Pistorius had his legs amputated below the knees before his first birthday. Growing up, he used prostheses and started running track as a teen. A sprinter, he won gold and silver medals at the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Greece then began competing in meets against able-bodied athletes. In 2008, track and field’s governing organization banned him from able-bodied competitions because it believed the J-shaped carbon fiber blades he wore to race—and which earned him the nickname Blade Runner—provided an unfair advantage. However, Pistorius appealed the ruling and it was struck down later that year. He went on to compete for his homeland at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and, though he failed to collect any medals, his history-making appearance inspired people around the globe and he racked up lucrative endorsement deals.
In a stunning turn of events less than a year later, Pistorius was arrested on February 14, 2013, for killing Steenkamp, his girlfriend of about three months. The athlete said that in the early hours of Valentine’s Day he’d accidentally shot Steenkamp after mistaking her for an intruder; he claimed he thought she still was in bed when he got a gun and fired four shots through a bathroom door, only to discover that Steenkamp, not an intruder, was inside. Pistorius subsequently was charged with premeditated murder, to which he pleaded not guilty.
During his trial, which began in March 2014 and generated international media coverage, prosecutors portrayed the track star as jealous and hotheaded and contended he’d fought with Steenkamp, a fellow South African, before shooting and killing her. Some neighbors in Pistorius’ gated community testified they’d heard a woman screaming around the same time they heard gunfire coming from his home, and text messages between Steen¬kamp and Pistorius were read in court in which she expressed unhappiness with his behavior and said she was sometimes scared of him. The defense later demonstrated these messages represented only a tiny fraction of the total number of texts exchanged by the couple. Additionally, attorneys for Pistorius, who wept and vomited throughout portions of his trial, argued the former Olympian felt highly anxious and vulnerable at the time of the shooting because he wasn’t wearing his prosthetic legs and wouldn’t be able to run from an intruder. The defense also held that the screams heard by neighbors on the night of the shooting came from Pistorius, rather than Steenkamp, after realizing he’d accidentally shot her and was calling for help in a distraught, high-pitched voice.
On September 12, 2014, Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa found the 27-year-old Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide, after acquitting him the previous day of the more serious charge of murder. The following month, on October 21, the former Olympian received a five-year prison sentence, which he began serving immediately. He also was given a suspended three-year sentence for a separate firearms charge.
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October 22, 1934
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pretty-boy-floyd-is-killed-by-the-fbi (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pretty-boy-floyd-is-killed-by-the-fbi)
Pretty Boy Floyd is killed by the FBI
Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd is shot by FBI agents in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio. Floyd, who had been a hotly pursued fugitive for four years, used his last breath to deny his involvement in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, in which four officers were shot to death at a train station. He died shortly thereafter.
Charles Floyd grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. When it became impossible to operate a small farm in the drought conditions of the late 1920s, Floyd tried his hand at bank robbery. He soon found himself in a Missouri prison for robbing a St. Louis payroll delivery. After being paroled in 1929, he learned that Jim Mills had shot his father to death. Since Mills, who had been acquitted of the charges, was never heard from or seen again, Floyd was believed to have killed him.
Moving on to Kansas City, Floyd got mixed up with the city’s burgeoning criminal community. A local prostitute gave Floyd the nickname “Pretty Boy,” which he hated. Along with a couple of friends he had met in prison, he robbed several banks in Missouri and Ohio, but was eventually caught in Ohio and sentenced to 12-15 years. On the way to prison, Floyd kicked out a window and jumped from the speeding train. He made it to Toledo, where he hooked up with Bill “The Killer” Miller.
The two went on a crime spree across several states until Miller was killed in a spectacular firefight in Bowling Green, Ohio, in 1931. Once he was back in Kansas City, Floyd killed a federal agent during a raid and became a nationally known criminal figure. This time he escaped to the backwoods of Oklahoma. The locals there, reeling from the Depression, were not about to turn in an Oklahoma native for robbing banks. Floyd became a Robin Hood-type figure, staying one step ahead of the law. Even the Joads, characters in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, spoke well of Floyd.
However, not everyone was so enamored with “Pretty Boy.” Oklahoma’s governor put out a $6,000 bounty on his head. On June 17, 1933, when law enforcement officials were ambushed by a machine-gun attack in a Kansas City train station while transporting criminal Frank Nash to prison, Floyd’s notoriety grew even more. Although it was not clear whether or not Floyd was responsible, both the FBI and the nation’s press pegged the crime on him nevertheless. Subsequently, pressure was stepped up to capture the illustrious fugitive, and the FBI finally got their man in October 1934.
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October 23, 1993
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carter-homers-to-win-world-series (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carter-homers-to-win-world-series)
Carter homers to win World Series
On October 23, 1993, Toronto Blue Jay Joe Carter does what every kid dreams of—he wins the World Series for his team by whacking a ninth-inning home run over the SkyDome’s left-field wall. It was the first time the World Series had ended with a home run since Pittsburgh’s Bill Mazeroski homered to break a 9-9 tie with the Yankees in the seventh game of the 1960 series, and it was the first time in baseball history that a team won the championship with a come-from-behind home run.
The Blue Jays were leading the series three games to two, but thanks to a five-run seventh inning (punctuated by a three-run blast from outfielder Lenny Dykstra), the Philadelphia Phillies were ahead 6-5 in the ninth. It looked like the Phils would tie the series and force a seventh game—but then they brought reliever Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams out of the bullpen. Though Williams had saved an impressive 45 games that season, he’d earned his nickname by throwing wild pitches when his team was in a tight spot, and he’d already blown a 14-9 lead for the Phillies in Game 4.
Williams did just what the Blue Jays were hoping he’d do. First he walked leadoff batter Rickey Henderson in four straight pitches. Then, after Devon White finally popped out to left field after nine pitches, Williams gave up a single to Series MVP Paul Molitor. With Henderson on second and Molitor on first, Joe Carter stepped up to the plate.
Carter took two balls, then two strikes. Then he cracked a low slider hard toward the left-field pole. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred,” he said later, “I hook that pitch way foul.” But this time, he didn’t. The ball swerved right and disappeared over the wall.
“It was the ultimate sports fantasy,” Carter said. His memorable homer won the game and the series, the highest-scoring in history (81 runs in all) and the Blue Jays’ second championship in a row. And it put Carter alongside celebrated hitters like Bobby Thomson, whose immortal “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” won the 1951 National League pennant for the New York Giants.
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October 23, 1993
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carter-homers-to-win-world-series (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carter-homers-to-win-world-series)
Carter homers to win World Series
On October 23, 1993, Toronto Blue Jay Joe Carter does what every kid dreams of—he wins the World Series for his team by whacking a ninth-inning home run over the SkyDome’s left-field wall. It was the first time the World Series had ended with a home run since Pittsburgh’s Bill Mazeroski homered to break a 9-9 tie with the Yankees in the seventh game of the 1960 series, and it was the first time in baseball history that a team won the championship with a come-from-behind home run.
The Blue Jays were leading the series three games to two, but thanks to a five-run seventh inning (punctuated by a three-run blast from outfielder Lenny Dykstra), the Philadelphia Phillies were ahead 6-5 in the ninth. It looked like the Phils would tie the series and force a seventh game—but then they brought reliever Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams out of the bullpen. Though Williams had saved an impressive 45 games that season, he’d earned his nickname by throwing wild pitches when his team was in a tight spot, and he’d already blown a 14-9 lead for the Phillies in Game 4.
Williams did just what the Blue Jays were hoping he’d do. First he walked leadoff batter Rickey Henderson in four straight pitches. Then, after Devon White finally popped out to left field after nine pitches, Williams gave up a single to Series MVP Paul Molitor. With Henderson on second and Molitor on first, Joe Carter stepped up to the plate.
Carter took two balls, then two strikes. Then he cracked a low slider hard toward the left-field pole. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred,” he said later, “I hook that pitch way foul.” But this time, he didn’t. The ball swerved right and disappeared over the wall.
“It was the ultimate sports fantasy,” Carter said. His memorable homer won the game and the series, the highest-scoring in history (81 runs in all) and the Blue Jays’ second championship in a row. And it put Carter alongside celebrated hitters like Bobby Thomson, whose immortal “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” won the 1951 National League pennant for the New York Giants.
I was reading this in the paper an hour ago, in fact the paper that was on the table behind me in the pic I just posted(Toronto Sun, in the "In this day in history part")
I have been reading this section on and off, it is a good thread. Threads like this show you have potential if you stay away from those other threads you make
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October 24, 1997
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marv-albert-faces-sentencing-in-sexual-assault-case (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marv-albert-faces-sentencing-in-sexual-assault-case)
Marv Albert faces sentencing in sexual assault case
Circuit Court Judge Benjamin Kendrick announces that he will dismiss the sexual assault case filed against Marv Albert by 42-year-old Vanessa Perhach if the sportscaster agrees to get counseling and stays out of trouble for a year. Albert faced up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.
According to Perhach, Albert had invited her to his room in the Ritz Carlton Hotel on February 12, 1997, after announcing an NBA game between the New York Knicks and Washington Bullets. He then purportedly bit her on her back after she refused his request for three-way sex. Albert, who met Perhach at the Miami Hilton where she worked in 1986, resigned from his job at Madison Square Garden and was fired from NBC after pleading guilty to assault and battery. A felony charge of forcible sodomy was dropped.
During the trial, which began on September 22, 1997, the defense brought into evidence a taped conversation in which Perhach appeared to have offered a friend of hers money in exchange for testifying against Albert. Later, however, the prosecution introduced Patricia Masten, another hotel employee who claimed that the sportscaster had bit her on two separate occasions and had tried to force her to perform oral sex.
According to the emergency room nurse that treated her, Perhach had bite marks on her back, including one that broke the skin, and a forensic dentist testified that he had made a definitive match between molds made from Albert’s teeth and the marks on Perhach’s back.
On July 15, 1998, Albert was rehired by the Madison Square Garden Network to anchor MSG Sports Desk, a nightly sports show, and do radio play-by-play of New York Knicks games. All charges were dismissed in October of that same year, after determining that Albert had complied with the court’s conditions.
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October 25, 1415
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-agincourt (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-agincourt)
Battle of Agincourt
During the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, Henry V, the young king of England, leads his forces to victory at the Battle of Agincourt in northern France.
Two months before, Henry had crossed the English Channel with 11,000 men and laid siege to Harfleur in Normandy. After five weeks the town surrendered, but Henry lost half his men to disease and battle casualties. He decided to march his army northeast to Calais, where he would meet the English fleet and return to England. At Agincourt, however, a vast French army of 20,000 men stood in his path, greatly outnumbering the exhausted English archers, knights, and men-at-arms.
The battlefield lay on 1,000 yards of open ground between two woods, which prevented large-scale maneuvers and thus worked to Henry’s advantage. At 11 a.m. on October 25, the battle commenced. The English stood their ground as French knights, weighed down by their heavy armor, began a slow advance across the muddy battlefield. The French were met by a furious bombardment of artillery from the English archers, who wielded innovative longbows with a range of 250 yards. French cavalrymen tried and failed to overwhelm the English positions, but the archers were protected by a line of pointed stakes. As more and more French knights made their way onto the crowded battlefield, their mobility decreased further, and some lacked even the room to raise their arms and strike a blow. At this point, Henry ordered his lightly equipped archers to rush forward with swords and axes, and the unencumbered Englishmen massacred the French.
Almost 6,000 Frenchmen lost their lives during the Battle of Agincourt, while English deaths amounted to just over 400. With odds greater than three to one, Henry had won one of the great victories of military history. After further conquests in France, Henry V was recognized in 1420 as heir to the French throne and the regent of France. He was at the height of his powers but died just two years later of camp fever near Paris.
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October 26, 1948
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/an-abused-wife-gets-revenge (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/an-abused-wife-gets-revenge)
An abused wife gets revenge
Betty Ferreri kills her husband, Jerry, in their Los Angeles, California, home with the help of house caretaker Alan Adron. When Jerry, a notorious womanizer, brought a young model to the couple’s home in the upscale Hancock Park neighborhood, Betty became upset and threatened him with a large wrench. Although Jerry fled, Betty was worried that he would return in a violent state, so she asked for Adron’s assistance. When Jerry later returned, he began dragging Betty by her hair. Adron shot him twice, but the gun jammed before he was dead, so Betty finished him off with a meat cleaver, striking him in the head 23 times.
Betty and Jerry met in New Jersey in the early 1940s. Although Betty’s parents disapproved, she and Jerry, a small-time thief and the son of a well-connected New York politico, eloped and moved to Los Angeles. Jerry rarely worked, but his parents gave them enough money so that they could buy a 15-room house in Hancock Park.
But their marriage had more than its share of problems. Beating Betty on a regular basis, Jerry once asked his wife to have sex with an auto mechanic to pay off a bill he owed. When she refused, he ruptured her eardrum. Then, angry about the doctor’s bill, he struck her other ear, reportedly saying, “Maybe he’ll give you two for the price of one.” On another occasion, he brought a puppy home for the couple’s young child but then killed the poor animal with a baseball bat in front of the boy. Despite the clear evidence of abuse, prosecutors decided to charge Betty Ferreri and Alan Adron with premeditated murder.
At first, the defendants’ attorney wanted to claim that Adron was mentally incompetent and unable to stand trial. But Adron refused and hired his own lawyer, who argued that he was only insane at the time of the killing. Due to the salacious details about Jerry’s prodigious exploits with other women, the trial became the talk of the town.
In 1949, both Betty Ferreri and Alan Adron were acquitted.
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October 27, 1904
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/new-york-city-subway-opens (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/new-york-city-subway-opens)
New York City subway opens
At 2:35 on the afternoon of October 27, 1904, New York City Mayor George McClellan takes the controls on the inaugural run of the city’s innovative new rapid transit system: the subway.
While London boasts the world’s oldest underground train network (opened in 1863) and Boston built the first subway in the United States in 1897, the New York City subway soon became the largest American system. The first line, operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), traveled 9.1 miles through 28 stations. Running from City Hall in lower Manhattan to Grand Central Terminal in midtown, and then heading west along 42nd Street to Times Square, the line finished by zipping north, all the way to 145th Street and Broadway in Harlem. On opening day, Mayor McClellan so enjoyed his stint as engineer that he stayed at the controls all the way from City Hall to 103rd Street.
At 7 p.m. that evening, the subway opened to the general public, and more than 100,000 people paid a nickel each to take their first ride under Manhattan. IRT service expanded to the Bronx in 1905, to Brooklyn in 1908 and to Queens in 1915. Since 1968, the subway has been controlled by the Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA). The system now has 26 lines and 468 stations in operation; the longest line, the 8th Avenue “A” Express train, stretches more than 32 miles, from the northern tip of Manhattan to the far southeast corner of Queens.
Every day, some 4.5 million passengers take the subway in New York. With the exception of the PATH train connecting New York with New Jersey and some parts of Chicago’s elevated train system, New York’s subway is the only rapid transit system in the world that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No matter how crowded or dirty, the subway is one New York City institution few New Yorkers—or tourists—could do without.
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October 28, 1919
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-enforces-prohibition (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-enforces-prohibition)
Congress enforces prohibition
Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. The Volstead Act provided for the enforcement of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, also known as the Prohibition Amendment.
The movement for the prohibition of alcohol began in the early 19th century, when Americans concerned about the adverse effects of drinking began forming temperance societies. By the late 19th century, these groups had become a powerful political force, campaigning on the state level and calling for national liquor abstinence. In December 1917, the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. In January 1919, the 18th amendment achieved the necessary two-thirds majority of state ratification, and prohibition became the law of the land.
The Volstead Act, passed nine months later, provided for the enforcement of prohibition, including the creation of a special unit of the Treasury Department. Despite a vigorous effort by law-enforcement agencies, the Volstead Act failed to prevent the large-scale distribution of alcoholic beverages, and organized crime flourished in America. In 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was passed and ratified, repealing prohibition.
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October 29, 1740
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/james-boswell-is-born (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/james-boswell-is-born)
James Boswell is born
James Boswell is born on this day in Edinburgh to an ancient Scottish family. His father was a judge, the Lord of Auchinleck, and Boswell was heir to the title and a large fortune. He studied at the University of Edinburgh but ran away to London and was brought back by his family, who forced him to study law under close watch at home. He later studied law in Holland, then toured Germany, Italy, and France.
On his tour, he met Rousseau, Voltaire, and a prominent Corsican general leading the island in revolt against Genoa. Boswell took careful notes after his meetings and later used his detailed diaries to create vivid profiles of these famous personalities. In 1768, he published An Account of Corsica, which was translated into four languages and made him famous across Europe. Meanwhile, at age 23, in 1763, he had met the prominent man of letters Samuel Johnson, who had written A Dictionary of the English Languages (1755). Their friendship lasted until Johnson’s death, and Boswell’s greatest fame came from his study of the man.
In 1769, Boswell established a successful law practice in Edinburgh, which he maintained for 17 years, while continuing to write. He married a cousin and continued his correspondence with Johnson. In 1773, Boswell and Johnson took a tour of the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides. The journey was a great success, and in 1775 Boswell published Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland. During the next decade, he wrote some 70 essays for a London magazine and succeeded his father as Lord of Auchinleck. Four years after Johnson’s death in 1784, Boswell moved to London, where he practiced law, drank heavily, and began writing his masterpiece The Life of Samuel Johnson, which was published in two volumes, the first in 1791, the second in 1793. He was working on a third volume when he died in 1795. Boswell’s lively and colorful chronicles helped familiarized generations of future readers with the literary characters of the late 18th century.
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October 30, 1991
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/perfect-storm-hits-north-atlantic (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/perfect-storm-hits-north-atlantic)
Perfect storm hits North Atlantic
On this day in 1991, the so-called “perfect storm” hits the North Atlantic producing remarkably large waves along the New England and Canadian coasts. Over the next several days, the storm spread its fury over the ocean off the coast of Canada. The fishing boat Andrea Gail and its six-member crew were lost in the storm. The disaster spawned the best-selling book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and a blockbuster Hollywood movie of the same name.
On October 27, Hurricane Grace formed near Bermuda and moved north toward the coast of the southeastern United States. Two days later, Grace continued to move north, where it encountered a massive low pressure system moving south from Canada. The clash of systems over the Atlantic Ocean caused 40-to-80-foot waves on October 30—unconfirmed reports put the waves at more than 100 feet in some locations. This massive surf caused extensive coastal flooding, particularly in Massachusetts; damage was also sustained as far south as Jamaica and as far north as Newfoundland.
The storm continued to churn in the Atlantic on October 31; it was nicknamed the “Halloween storm.” It came ashore on November 2 along the Nova Scotia coast, then, as it moved northeast over the Gulf Stream waters, it made a highly unusual transition into a hurricane. The National Hurricane Center made the decision not to name the storm for fear it would alarm and confuse local residents. It was only the eighth hurricane not given a name since the naming of hurricanes began in 1950.
Meanwhile, as the storm developed, the crew of the 70-foot fishing boat Andrea Gail was fishing for swordfish in the Grand Banks of the North Atlantic. The Andrea Gail was last heard from on October 28. When the boat did not return to port on November 1 as scheduled, rescue teams were sent out.
The week-long search for the Andrea Gail and a possible cause of its demise were documented in Junger’s book, which became a national bestseller. Neither the Andrea Gail nor its crew—David Sullivan and Robert Shatford of Gloucester, Mass.; William Tyne, Dale Murphy and Michael Moran of Bradenton Beach, Fla.; and Alfred Pierre of New York City—was ever found.
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October 31, 1926
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/houdini-is-dead (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/houdini-is-dead)
Houdini is dead
Harry Houdini, the most celebrated magician and escape artist of the 20th century, dies of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital. Twelve days before, Houdini had been talking to a group of students after a lecture in Montreal when he commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows. Suddenly, one of the students punched Houdini twice in the stomach. The magician hadn’t had time to prepare, and the blows ruptured his appendix. He fell ill on the train to Detroit, and, after performing one last time, was hospitalized. Doctors operated on him, but to no avail. The burst appendix poisoned his system, and on October 31 he died.
Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, the son of a rabbi. At a young age, he immigrated with his family to Appleton, Wisconsin, and soon demonstrated a natural acrobatic ability and an extraordinary skill at picking locks. When he was nine, he joined a traveling circus and toured the country as a contortionist and trapeze performer. He soon was specializing in escape acts and gained fame for his reported ability to escape from any manacle. He went on his first international tour in 1900 and performed all over Europe to great acclaim. In executing his escapes, he relied on strength, dexterity, and concentration—not trickery—and was a great showman.
In 1908, Houdini began performing more dangerous and dramatic escapes. In a favorite act, he was bound and then locked in an ironbound chest that was dropped into a water tank or thrown off a boat. In another, he was heavily bound and then suspended upside down in a glass-walled water tank. Other acts featured Houdini being hung from a skyscraper in a straitjacket, or bound and buried—without a coffin—under six feet of dirt.
In his later years, Houdini campaigned against mediums, mind readers, fakirs, and others who claimed supernatural talents but depended on tricks. At the same time, he was deeply interested in spiritualism and made a pact with his wife and friends that the first to die was to try and communicate with the world of reality from the spirit world. Several of these friends died, but Houdini never received a sign from them. Then, on Halloween 1926, Houdini himself passed on at the age of 52. His wife waited for a communiqué from the spirit world but it never came; she declared the experiment a failure shortly before her death in 1943.
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November 1, 1924
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/legendary-western-lawman-is-murdered (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/legendary-western-lawman-is-murdered)
Legendary western lawman is murdered
On this day, William Tilghman is murdered by a corrupt prohibition agent who resented Tilghman’s refusal to ignore local bootlegging operations. Tilghman, one of the famous marshals who brought law and order to the Wild West, was 71 years old.
Known to both friends and enemies as “Uncle Billy,” Tilghman was one of the most honest and effective lawmen of his day. Born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1854, Tilghman moved west when he was only 16 years old. Once there, he flirted with a life of crime after falling in with a crowd of disreputable young men who stole horses from Indians. After several narrow escapes with angry Indians, Tilghman decided that rustling was too dangerous and settled in Dodge City, Kansas, where he briefly served as a deputy marshal before opening a saloon. He was arrested twice for alleged train robbery and rustling, but the charges did not stick.
Despite this shaky start, Tilghman gradually built a reputation as an honest and respectable young man in Dodge City. He became the deputy sheriff of Ford County, Kansas, and later, the marshal of Dodge City. Tilghman was one of the first men into the territory when Oklahoma opened to settlement in 1889, and he became a deputy U.S. marshal for the region in 1891. In the late 19th century, lawlessness still plagued Oklahoma, and Tilghman helped restore order by capturing some of the most notorious bandits of the day.
Over the years, Tilghman earned a well-deserved reputation for treating even the worst criminals fairly and protecting the rights of the unjustly accused. Any man in Tilghman’s custody knew he was safe from angry vigilante mobs, because Tilghman had little tolerance for those who took the law into their own hands. In 1898, a wild mob lynched two young Indians who were falsely accused of raping and murdering a white woman. Tilghman arrested and secured prison terms for eight of the mob leaders and captured the real rapist-murderer.
In 1924, after serving a term as an Oklahoma state legislator, making a movie about his frontier days, and serving as the police chief of Oklahoma City, Tilghman might well have been expected to quietly retire. However, the old lawman was unable to hang up his gun, and he accepted a job as city marshal in Cromwell, Oklahoma. Tilghman was shot and killed while trying to arrest a drunken Prohibition agent.
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November 2, 1989
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-nurses-aide-gets-life-imprisonment (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-nurses-aide-gets-life-imprisonment)
A nurse’s aide gets life imprisonment
Gwendolyn Graham is sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for killing five elderly female residents of the Alpine Manor Nursing Home near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Both Graham and her criminal and romantic partner, Catherine Wood, had been employed as nurses’ aides at the home.
A Texas native, Graham moved to Michigan in 1986 and found employment at Alpine Manor. Catherine Wood, Graham’s supervisor, had recently divorced and soon became her lover. Before long, Graham enlisted Wood’s aid in a brutal scheme: the duo decided to kill people whose initials would spell out the word “murder” when the spree was over. The first victim, however, fought back harder than expected so the pair abandoned the “initials game” and instead began focusing on the weakest women in the nursing home. According to Wood, Graham suffocated her victims with a washcloth while Wood stood guard as a lookout.
Reportedly, Graham and Wood often boasted about the murders but colleagues did not take them seriously. Wood claimed that in April 1987, Graham challenged her to “prove her love” by murdering someone. When she refused, Graham dumped her for another woman and returned to Texas. Wood, who later claimed that she was concerned that Graham would continue her killing spree in the South, confided in her ex-husband about the murders.
The story of the women’s exploits reached the police in late 1988. The deaths of five elderly women, who were originally believed to have died of natural causes, were then investigated by police officers. Although authorities could find no direct physical evidence linking Graham and Wood to the deaths, they were both arrested in December 1988. In return for a reduced sentence of 20 to 40 years, Wood agreed to testify against Graham. Graham was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility for parole.
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November 3, 1976
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carrie-creeps-out-audiences (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carrie-creeps-out-audiences)
Carrie creeps out audiences
On this day in 1976, Carrie, a horror film starring Sissy Spacek and based on Stephen King’s 1974 best-selling first novel, opens in theaters around the United States. Directed by Brian De Palma, the film tells the story of high school outcast Carrie White, who uses her telekinetic powers to exact a violent revenge on her teenage tormenters on prom night. In addition to Spacek, who received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the title role, the film’s cast included Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen and a then relatively unknown John Travolta. Carrie became a classic of the horror genre and is considered by many critics to be one of the best big-screen adaptations of Stephen King’s work.
After Spacek’s big breakout performance in Carrie, the freckle-faced actress—born on December 25, 1949—went on to become one of Hollywood’s favorite leading ladies during the 1980s. She collected a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as the country singer Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980) and earned nominations in the same category for her work in Missing (1982), The River (1984) and Crimes of the Heart (1986). She scored her sixth Best Actress Oscar nod in 2002, for her portrayal of an anguished mother in Todd Field’s In the Bedroom (2001).
arrie was also the first major box-office hit for director Brian De Palma, who was born on September 11, 1940. De Palma went on to helm a lengthy list of films, including Dressed to Kill (1980) with Michael Caine and Angie Dickinson, Scarface (1983) with Al Pacino, The Untouchables (1987) with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Robert De Niro, Carlito’s Way (1993) with Pacino and Mission: Impossible (1996), with Tom Cruise.
Following the success of Carrie—in print and on the big screen—Stephen King, who was born on September 21, 1947, eventually became one of America’s best-known and top-selling authors. Much of the prolific Maine native’s work has been adapted for television and film, including The Shining (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson; Stand by Me (1986), directed by Rob Reiner and starring River Phoenix, Jerry O’Connell, Corey Feldman and Wil Wheaton; Misery (1990), also directed by Reiner and featuring Kathy Bates and James Caan; The Shawshank Redemption (1994), with Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins; Dolores Claiborne (1995), with Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh; and The Green Mile (1999), with Tom Hanks.
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November 4, 1922
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/entrance-to-king-tuts-tomb-discovered (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/entrance-to-king-tuts-tomb-discovered)
Entrance to King Tut’s tomb discovered
British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, though the little-known King Tutankhamen, who had died when he was 18, was still unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for “King Tut’s Tomb,” finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the interior chambers of the tomb, finding them miraculously intact.
Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years. Most of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum.
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November 5, 1605
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/king-james-learns-of-gunpowder-plot (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/king-james-learns-of-gunpowder-plot)
King James learns of gunpowder plot
Early in the morning, King James I of England learns that a plot to explode the Parliament building has been foiled, hours before he was scheduled to sit with the rest of the British government in a general parliamentary session.
At about midnight on the night of November 4-5, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, found Guy Fawkes lurking in a cellar under the Parliament building and ordered the premises searched. Some 20 barrels of gunpowder were found, and Fawkes was taken into custody. During a torture session on the rack, Fawkes revealed that he was a participant in an English Catholic conspiracy to annihilate England’s Protestant government and replace it with Catholic leadership.
What became known as the Gunpowder Plot was organized by Robert Catesby, an English Catholic whose father had been persecuted by Queen Elizabeth I for refusing to conform to the Church of England. Guy Fawkes had converted to Catholicism, and his religious zeal led him to fight in the Spanish army in the Netherlands. Catesby and the handful of other plotters rented a cellar that extended under Parliament, and Fawkes planted the gunpowder there, hiding the barrels under coal and wood.
As the November 5 meeting of Parliament approached, Catesby enlisted more English Catholics into the conspiracy, and one of these, Francis Tresham, warned his Catholic brother-in-law Lord Monteagle not to attend Parliament that day. Monteagle alerted the government, and hours before the attack was to have taken place Fawkes and the explosives were found. By torturing Fawkes, King James’ government learned of the identities of his co-conspirators. During the next few weeks, English authorities killed or captured all the plotters and put the survivors on trial, along with a few innocent English Catholics.
Guy Fawkes himself was sentenced, along with the other surviving chief conspirators, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered in London. Moments before the start of his gruesome execution, on January 31, 1606, he jumped from a ladder while climbing to the hanging platform, breaking his neck and dying instantly.
In 1606, Parliament established November 5 as a day of public thanksgiving. Today, Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated across Great Britain every year on November 5 in remembrance of the Gunpowder Plot. As dusk falls, villagers and city dwellers across Britain light bonfires, set off fireworks, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, celebrating his failure to blow Parliament and James I to kingdom come.
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November 6, 1528
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cabeza-de-vaca-discovers-texas (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cabeza-de-vaca-discovers-texas)
Cabeza de Vaca discovers Texas
On this day, the Spanish conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked on a low sandy island off the coast of Texas. Starving, dehydrated, and desperate, he is the first European to set foot on the soil of the future Lone Star state.
Cabeza de Vaca’s unintentional journey to Texas was a disaster from the start. A series of dire accidents and Indian attacks plagued his expedition’s 300 men as they explored north Florida. The survivors then cobbled together five flimsy boats and headed to sea, where they endured vicious storms, severe shortages of food and water, and attacks from Indians wherever they put to shore. With his exploration party reduced to only 80 or 90 men, Cabeza de Vaca’s motley flotilla finally wrecked on what was probably Galveston Island just off the coast of Texas.
Unfortunately, landing on shore did not end Cabeza de Vaca’s trials. During the next four years, the party barely managed to eke out a tenuous existence by trading with the Indians located in modern-day east Texas. The crew steadily died off from illness, accidents, and attacks until only Cabeza de Vaca and three others remained. In 1532, the four survivors set out on an arduous journey across the present-day states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Captured by the Karankawa Indians, they lived in virtual slavery for nearly two years. Only after Cabeza de Vaca had won the respect of the Karankawa by becoming a skilled medicine man and diplomat did the small band win their freedom.
In 1536, the men encountered a party of Spanish slave hunters in what is now the Mexican state of Sinaloa. They followed them back to Mexico City, where the tale of their amazing odyssey became famous throughout the colony and in Europe. Despite the many hardships experienced by Cabeza de Vaca and his men during their northern travels, their stories inspired others to intensify exploration of the region that would one day become Texas.
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November 7, 1980
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/king-of-cool-steve-mcqueen-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/king-of-cool-steve-mcqueen-dies)
“King of Cool” Steve McQueen dies
On this day in 1980, the actor Steve McQueen, one of Hollywood’s leading men of the 1960s and 1970s and the star of such action thrillers as Bullitt and The Towering Inferno, dies at the age of 50 in Mexico, where he was undergoing an experimental treatment for cancer. In 1979, McQueen had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of cancer often related to asbestos exposure. It was later believed that the ruggedly handsome actor, who had an affinity for fast cars and motorcycles, might have been exposed to asbestos by wearing racing suits.
Terrence Steven McQueen was born on March 24, 1930, in Beech Grove, Indiana. After a troubled youth that included time in reform school, McQueen served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1940s. He then studied acting and began competing in motorcycle races. He made his big-screen debut with a tiny role in 1956’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, starring Paul Newman. McQueen went on to appear in the camp classic The Blob (1958) and gained fame playing a bounty hunter in the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive, which originally aired on CBS from 1958 to 1961.
During the 1960s, McQueen built a reputation for playing cool, loner heroes in a list of films that included the Western The Magnificent Seven (1960), which was directed by John Sturges and also featured Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson; The Great Escape (1963), in which McQueen played a U.S. solider in World War II who makes a daring motorcycle escape from a German prison camp; and The Sand Pebbles (1966), a war epic for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. McQueen played a detective in one of his most popular movies, 1968’s Bullitt, which featured a spectacular car chase through the streets of San Francisco. That same year, the actor portrayed an elegant thief in The Thomas Crown Affair.
In the 1970s, McQueen was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors and starred in hit films such as director Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway (1972) with Ali MacGraw, to whom McQueen was married from 1973 to 1978; Papillon (1973), with Dustin Hoffman; and The Towering Inferno (1974), with Paul Newman, William Holden and Faye Dunaway.
In the summer of 1980, McQueen traveled to Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where he underwent an unorthodox cancer treatment that involved, among other things, coffee enemas and a therapy derived from apricot pits. On November 6, 1980, he had surgery to remove cancerous masses from his body; he died the following day. His final films were Tom Horn and The Hunter, both of which were released in 1980.
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November 8, 1895
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
German scientist discovers X-rays
On this day in 1895, physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen (1845-1923) becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all medicine, by making the invisible visible. Rontgen’s discovery occurred accidentally in his Wurzburg, Germany, lab, where he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass when he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen. He dubbed the rays that caused this glow X-rays because of their unknown nature.
X-rays are electromagnetic energy waves that act similarly to light rays, but at wavelengths approximately 1,000 times shorter than those of light. Rontgen holed up in his lab and conducted a series of experiments to better understand his discovery. He learned that X-rays penetrate human flesh but not higher-density substances such as bone or lead and that they can be photographed.
Rontgen’s discovery was labeled a medical miracle and X-rays soon became an important diagnostic tool in medicine, allowing doctors to see inside the human body for the first time without surgery. In 1897, X-rays were first used on a military battlefield, during the Balkan War, to find bullets and broken bones inside patients.
Scientists were quick to realize the benefits of X-rays, but slower to comprehend the harmful effects of radiation. Initially, it was believed X-rays passed through flesh as harmlessly as light. However, within several years, researchers began to report cases of burns and skin damage after exposure to X-rays, and in 1904, Thomas Edison’s assistant, Clarence Dally, who had worked extensively with X-rays, died of skin cancer. Dally’s death caused some scientists to begin taking the risks of radiation more seriously, but they still weren’t fully understood. During the 1930s, 40s and 50s, in fact, many American shoe stores featured shoe-fitting fluoroscopes that used to X-rays to enable customers to see the bones in their feet; it wasn’t until the 1950s that this practice was determined to be risky business. Wilhelm Rontgen received numerous accolades for his work, including the first Nobel Prize in physics in 1901, yet he remained modest and never tried to patent his discovery. Today, X-ray technology is widely used in medicine, material analysis and devices such as airport security scanners.
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November 7, 1980
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/king-of-cool-steve-mcqueen-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/king-of-cool-steve-mcqueen-dies)
“King of Cool” Steve McQueen dies
On this day in 1980, the actor Steve McQueen, one of Hollywood’s leading men of the 1960s and 1970s and the star of such action thrillers as Bullitt and The Towering Inferno, dies at the age of 50 in Mexico, where he was undergoing an experimental treatment for cancer. In 1979, McQueen had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of cancer often related to asbestos exposure. It was later believed that the ruggedly handsome actor, who had an affinity for fast cars and motorcycles, might have been exposed to asbestos by wearing racing suits.
Terrence Steven McQueen was born on March 24, 1930, in Beech Grove, Indiana. After a troubled youth that included time in reform school, McQueen served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1940s. He then studied acting and began competing in motorcycle races. He made his big-screen debut with a tiny role in 1956’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, starring Paul Newman. McQueen went on to appear in the camp classic The Blob (1958) and gained fame playing a bounty hunter in the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive, which originally aired on CBS from 1958 to 1961.
During the 1960s, McQueen built a reputation for playing cool, loner heroes in a list of films that included the Western The Magnificent Seven (1960), which was directed by John Sturges and also featured Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson; The Great Escape (1963), in which McQueen played a U.S. solider in World War II who makes a daring motorcycle escape from a German prison camp; and The Sand Pebbles (1966), a war epic for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. McQueen played a detective in one of his most popular movies, 1968’s Bullitt, which featured a spectacular car chase through the streets of San Francisco. That same year, the actor portrayed an elegant thief in The Thomas Crown Affair.
In the 1970s, McQueen was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors and starred in hit films such as director Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway (1972) with Ali MacGraw, to whom McQueen was married from 1973 to 1978; Papillon (1973), with Dustin Hoffman; and The Towering Inferno (1974), with Paul Newman, William Holden and Faye Dunaway.
In the summer of 1980, McQueen traveled to Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where he underwent an unorthodox cancer treatment that involved, among other things, coffee enemas and a therapy derived from apricot pits. On November 6, 1980, he had surgery to remove cancerous masses from his body; he died the following day. His final films were Tom Horn and The Hunter, both of which were released in 1980.
Here's a cool page about his death that shows the hospital he died in (even the room!)
http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/m/mcqueen/mcqueen.htm
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November 9, 1971
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-sunday-school-teacher-murders-his-family-and-goes-undercover-for-18-years (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-sunday-school-teacher-murders-his-family-and-goes-undercover-for-18-years)
A Sunday school teacher murders his family and goes undercover for 18 years
John Emil List slaughters his entire family in their Westfield, New Jersey, home and then disappears. Though police quickly identified List as the most likely suspect in the murders, it took 18 years for them to locate him and close the case.
John List was an outwardly normal and successful father. A Sunday school teacher and Boy Scout troop leader, List was a strict disciplinarian who insisted his children follow extremely rigid rules.
On November 9, seemingly out of the blue, List shot his mother Alma (above her lefteye),his wife Helen (in the side of the head), and two older children in the back of their heads; he shot his youngest child, a son, several times in the chest and face. He thenleft the murder weapon alongside their carefully laid-out corpses. List had methodically devised a plan so that the bodies would not be discovered for quite a while, cancelling newspaper, milk, and mail delivery to his home in the days leading up to the murder. He then called the children’s schools to say that the family was going to visit a sick relative out of town. By the time authorities discovered the bodies, List had vanished without a trace.
Local law enforcement officials had essentially given up looking for List when the television show America’s Most Wanted began airing in the late 1980s. After a segment about the List murders aired on May 21, 1989, calls began flooding in. Although most of them proved to be unhelpful, one viewer claimed that John List was living in Virginia under the alias Robert Clark.
Indeed, List had assumed a false identity, relocated to the South, and remarried. In 1989, he was returned to New Jersey to face charges for the death of his family. The following year, he was convicted of five counts of murder and received five consecutive life sentences.
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November 10, 1775
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/birth-of-the-u-s-marine-corps (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/birth-of-the-u-s-marine-corps)
Birth of the U.S. Marine Corps
During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress passes a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces for the recently formed Continental Navy. The resolution, drafted by future U.S. president John Adams and adopted in Philadelphia, created the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth date of the United States Marine Corps.
Serving on land and at sea, the original U.S. Marines distinguished themselves in a number of important operations during the Revolutionary War. The first Marine landing on a hostile shore occurred when a force of Marines under Captain Samuel Nicholas captured New Province Island in the Bahamas from the British in March 1776. Nicholas was the first commissioned officer in the Continental Marines and is celebrated as the first Marine commandant. After American independence was achieved in 1783, the Continental Navy was demobilized and its Marines disbanded.
In the next decade, however, increasing conflict at sea with Revolutionary France led the U.S. Congress to establish formally the U.S. Navy in May 1798. Two months later, on July 11, President John Adams signed the bill establishing the U.S. Marine Corps as a permanent military force under the jurisdiction of the Department of Navy. U.S. Marines saw action in the so-called Quasi-War with France and then fought against the Barbary pirates of North Africa during the first years of the 19th century. Since then, Marines have participated in all the wars of the United States and in most cases were the first soldiers to fight. In all, Marines have executed more than 300 landings on foreign shores.
Today, there are more than 200,000 active-duty and reserve Marines, divided into three divisions stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Camp Pendleton, California; and Okinawa, Japan. Each division has one or more expeditionary units, ready to launch major operations anywhere in the world on two weeks’ notice. Marines expeditionary units are self-sufficient, with their own tanks, artillery, and air forces. The motto of the service is Semper Fidelis, meaning “Always Faithful” in Latin.
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November 11, 1918
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
World War I ends
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.
On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention.
On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed. On July 29, Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Russia, Serbia’s ally, ordered a troop mobilization against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting Great Britain, Belgium’s ally, to declare war against Germany.
For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the “Schlieffen Plan,” which envisioned the conquest of France through a great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France. Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France.
The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody Battle of the Marne near Paris. By the end of 1914, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front—the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium—the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition.
In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed the Allies were forced to retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about negotiating peace with Germany. In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies’ favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918.
World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict—the Treaty of Versailles of 1919—forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II.
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November 12, 1954
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Ellis Island closes
On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s.
On January 2, 1892, 15-year-old Annie Moore, from Ireland, became the first person to pass through the newly opened Ellis Island, which President Benjamin Harrison designated as America’s first federal immigration center in 1890. Before that time, the processing of immigrants had been handled by individual states.
Not all immigrants who sailed into New York had to go through Ellis Island. First- and second-class passengers submitted to a brief shipboard inspection and then disembarked at the piers in New York or New Jersey, where they passed through customs. People in third class, though, were transported to Ellis Island, where they underwent medical and legal inspections to ensure they didn’t have a contagious disease or some condition that would make them a burden to the government. Only two percent of all immigrants were denied entrance into the U.S.
Immigration to Ellis Island peaked between 1892 and 1924, during which time the 3.3-acre island was enlarged with landfill (by the 1930s it reached its current 27.5-acre size) and additional buildings were constructed to handle the massive influx of immigrants. During the busiest year of operation, 1907, over 1 million people were processed at Ellis Island.
With America’s entrance into World War I, immigration declined and Ellis Island was used as a detention center for suspected enemies. Following the war, Congress passed quota laws and the Immigration Act of 1924, which sharply reduced the number of newcomers allowed into the country and also enabled immigrants to be processed at U.S. consulates abroad. After 1924, Ellis Island switched from a processing center to serving other purposes, such as a detention and deportation center for illegal immigrants, a hospital for wounded soldiers during World War II and a Coast Guard training center. In November 1954, the last detainee, a Norwegian merchant seaman, was released and Ellis Island officially closed.
Beginning in 1984, Ellis Island underwent a $160 million renovation, the largest historic restoration project in U.S. history. In September 1990, the Ellis Island Immigration Museum opened to the public and today is visited by almost 2 million people each year.
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November 13, 1953
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/indiana-textbook-commission-member-charges-that-robin-hood-is-communistic (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/indiana-textbook-commission-member-charges-that-robin-hood-is-communistic)
Indiana Textbook Commission member charges that Robin Hood is communistic
In an example of the absurd lengths to which the “Red Scare” in America is going, Mrs. Thomas J. White of the Indiana Textbook Commission, calls for the removal of references to the book Robin Hood from textbooks used by the state’s schools. Mrs. Young claimed that there was “a Communist directive in education now to stress the story of Robin Hood because he robbed the rich and gave it to the poor. That’s the Communist line. It’s just a smearing of law and order and anything that disrupts law and order is their meat.” She went on to attack Quakers because they “don’t believe in fighting wars.” This philosophy, she argued, played into communist hands. Though she later stated that she never argued for the removal of texts mentioning the story from school textbooks, she continued to claim that the “take from the rich and give to the poor” theme was the “Communist’s favorite policy.” Reacting to criticisms of her stance, she countered that, “Because I’m trying to get Communist writers out of textbooks, my name is mud. Evidently I’m drawing blood or they wouldn’t make such an issue out of it.” The response to Mrs. White’s charges was mixed.
Indiana Governor George Craig came to the defense of Quakers, but backed away from getting involved in the textbook issue. The state superintendent of education went so far as to reread the book before deciding that it should not be banned. However, he did feel that “Communists have gone to work twisting the meaning of the Robin Hood legend.” The Indianapolis superintendent of schools also did not want the book banned, claiming that he could not find anything particularly subversive about the story. In the Soviet Union, commentators had a field day with the story. One joked that the “enrollment of Robin Hood in the Communist Party can only make sensible people laugh.” The current sheriff of Nottingham was appalled, crying, “Robin Hood was no communist.”
As silly as the episode seems in retrospect, the attacks on freedom of expression during the Red Scare in the United States resulted in a number of books being banned from public libraries and schools during the 1950s and 1960s because of their supposedly subversive content. Such well known books as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo, were just some of the books often pulled from shelves. Hollywood films also felt the pressure to conform to more suitably “all-American” themes and stories, and rock and roll music was decried by some as communist-inspired.
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November 14, 1851
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/moby-dick-is-published (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/moby-dick-is-published)
Moby-Dick is published
On this day, Harper & Brothers in New York publishes Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. The book flopped, and it was many years before the book was recognized as an American classic.
Melville was born in New York City in 1819. A childhood bout of scarlet fever left him with weakened eyes. At age 19, he became a cabin boy on a ship bound for Liverpool. He later sailed to the South Seas on a whaler, the Acushnet, which anchored in Polynesia. He took part in a mutiny, was thrown in jail in Tahiti, escaped, and wandered around the South Sea islands from 1841 to 1844. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee, based on his Polynesian adventures. His second book, Omoo (1847), also dealt with the South Seas. The two novels became popular, although his third, Mardi (1849), more experimental in nature, failed to catch on with the public.
Melville bought a farm near Nathaniel Hawthorne’s house in Massachusetts, and the two became close friends, although they later drifted apart. Melville wrote for journals and continued to publish novels. Moby Dick was coolly received, but his short stories were highly acclaimed. Putnam’s Monthly published “Bartleby the Scrivener” in 1853 and “Benito Cereno” in 1855.
In 1866, Melville won appointment as a customs inspector in New York, which brought him a stable income. He published several volumes of poetry. He continued to write until his death in 1891, and his last novel, Billy Budd, was not published until 1924.
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November 15, 1923
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/accused-of-rape-james-montgomerys-struggle-for-justice-begins (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/accused-of-rape-james-montgomerys-struggle-for-justice-begins)
Accused of rape, James Montgomery’s struggle for justice begins
Mamie Snow, a mentally disabled white woman from Waukegan, Illinois, claims that James Montgomery, a black veteran, factory worker, and homeowner raped her. Montgomery, who was promptly thrown in jail, spent more than 25 years in prison before his conviction was overturned and he was released.
From the start, Montgomery’s trial seemed ill fated. Local Ku Klux Klan members threatened Montgomery’s lawyer during the proceedings, and, in 1923, after a weak defense and a trial that took less than a day, Montgomery was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
While serving time, Montgomery studied the law in an attempt to prove his innocence. In 1946, he convinced civil rights attorney Luis Kutner to investigate his case. Kutner discovered a medical report from Snow’s hospital stay revealing that not only was Snow never raped, she was likely a virgin. Kutner also located additional evidence suggesting that the Klan had framed Montgomery and that prosecutors had withheld the medical evidence from the defense. Nonetheless, it took Kutner three more years to have the unjust conviction overturned. Montgomery was finally released in August 1949.
This case of wrongful imprisonment is not an isolated incident for Illinois. Between 1977 and 1999, the state released 11 people from death row because they had been wrongly convicted.
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November 16, 1532
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history)
Pizarro traps Incan emperor Atahualpa
On November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and conquistador, springs a trap on the Incan emperor, Atahualpa. With fewer than 200 men against several thousand, Pizarro lures Atahualpa to a feast in the emperor’s honor and then opens fire on the unarmed Incans. Pizarro’s men massacre the Incans and capture Atahualpa, forcing him to convert to Christianity before eventually killing him.
Pizarro’s timing for conquest was perfect. By 1532, the Inca Empire was embroiled in a civil war that had decimated the population and divided the people’s loyalties. Atahualpa, the younger son of former Incan ruler Huayna Capac, had just deposed his half-brother Huascar and was in the midst of reuniting his kingdom when Pizarro arrived in 1531, with the endorsement of Spain’s King Charles V. On his way to the Incan capital, Pizarro learned of the war and began recruiting soldiers still loyal to Huascar.
Pizarro met Atahualpa just outside Cajamarca, a small Incan town tucked into a valley of the Andes. Sending his brother Hernan as an envoy, Pizarro invited Atahualpa back to Cajamarca for a feast in honor of Atahualpa’s ascendance to the throne. Though he had nearly 80,000 soldiers with him in the mountains, Atahualpa consented to attend the feast with only 5,000 unarmed men. He was met by Vicente de Valverde, a friar traveling with Pizarro. While Pizarro’s men lay in wait, Valverde urged Atahualpa to convert and accept Charles V as sovereign. Atahualpa angrily refused, prompting Valverde to give the signal for Pizarro to open fire. Trapped in tight quarters, the panicking Incan soldiers made easy prey for the Spanish. Pizarro’s men slaughtered the 5,000 Incans in just an hour. Pizarro himself suffered the only Spanish injury: a cut on his hand sustained as he saved Atahualpa from death.
Realizing Atahualpa was initially more valuable alive than dead, Pizarro kept the emperor in captivity while he made plans to take over his empire.In response,Atahualpa appealed to his captors’ greed, offering them a room full of gold and silver in exchange for his liberation. Pizarro consented, but after receiving the ransom, Pizarro brought Atahualpa up on charges of stirring up rebellion. By that time, Atahualpa had played his part in pacifying the Incans while Pizarro secured his power, and Pizarro considered him disposable. Atahualpa was to be burned at the stake—the Spanish believed this to be a fitting death for a heathen—but at the last moment, Valverde offered the emperor clemency if he would convert. Atahualpa submitted, only to be executed by strangulation. The day was August 29, 1533.
Fighting between the Spanish and the Incas would continue well after Atahualpa’s death as Spain consolidated its conquests. Pizarro’s bold victory at Cajamarca, however, effectively marked the end of the Inca Empire and the beginning of the European colonization of South America.
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November 17, 2003
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-terminator-becomes-the-governator-of-california (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-terminator-becomes-the-governator-of-california)
“The Terminator” becomes “The Governator” of California
On this day in 2003, the actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in as the 38th governor of California at the State Capitol in Sacramento. Schwarzenegger, who became a major Hollywood star in the 1980s with such action movies as Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator, defeated Governor Gray Davis in a special recall election on October 7, 2003. Prior to Schwarzenegger, another famous actor, Ronald Reagan, served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975 before going on to become the nation’s 40th president in 1980.
Schwarzenegger was born July 30, 1947, in Austria. He trained as a bodybuilder and at the age of 20 became the youngest person to win the Mr. Universe title. In 1968, Schwarzenegger, dubbed “The Austrian Oak,” came to the United States, speaking little English, and went on to win a dozen more world bodybuilding titles. In 1977, he gained notice when he was featured in the documentary Pumping Iron, about the Mr. Olympia competition. Schwarzenegger’s acting career took off with the 1982 blockbuster Conan the Barbarian, in which he played a sword-wielding hero avenging his parents’ deaths, and its 1984 sequel, Conan the Destroyer. He later became an international star with roles in a long list of action films including The Terminator (1984), in which he plays a cyborg assassin who utters the now-famous line “I’ll be back”; the Oscar-nominated sci-fi thriller Total Recall (1990), co-starring Sharon Stone; Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which contains the memorable catchphrase “Hasta la vista, baby”; and True Lies (1994), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis and directed by James Cameron, who also helmed the Terminator films.
In addition to action films, Schwarzenegger also had box-office success with comedies, including Twins (1988), co-starring the diminutive Danny DeVito, and Kindergarten Cop (1990), in which he played a detective who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher in order to nab a drug dealer. While continuing to make movies into the 2000s–notably including Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)– Schwarzenegger also built a reputation as a savvy businessman and an advocate of physical fitness and after-school programs for children.
In 1986, Schwarzenegger, a committed Republican, married the broadcast journalist Maria Shriver, a niece of President John F. Kennedy and a member of one of America’s most famous Democratic families. In August 2003, Schwarzenegger, who became a U.S. citizen in 1983 and had never served in public office, announced on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that he intended to seek the California governorship in the special recall election that year. After winning the election and serving out the remainder of former governor Gray Davis’s term, “The Governator,” as he was dubbed, was re-elected in November 2006 to serve a full term in office.
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November 18, 1978
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mass-suicide-at-jonestown (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mass-suicide-at-jonestown)
Mass suicide at Jonestown
On this day in 1978, Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones leads hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their agricultural commune in a remote part of the South American nation of Guyana. Many of Jones’ followers willingly ingested a poison-laced punch while others were forced to do so at gunpoint. The final death toll at Jonestown that day was 909; a third of those who perished were children.
Jim Jones was a charismatic churchman who established the Peoples Temple, a Christian sect, in Indianapolis in the 1950s. He preached against racism, and his integrated congregation attracted many African Americans. In 1965, he moved the group to Northern California, settling in Ukiah and after 1971 in San Francisco. In the 1970s, his church was accused by the media of financial fraud, physical abuse of its members and mistreatment of children. In response to the mounting criticism, the increasingly paranoid Jones invited his congregation to move with him to Guyana, where he promised they would build a socialist utopia. Three years earlier, a small group of his followers had traveled to the tiny nation to set up what would become Jonestown on a tract of jungle.
Jonestown did not turn out to be the paradise their leader had promised. Temple members worked long days in the fields and were subjected to harsh punishments if they questioned Jones’ authority. Their passports were confiscated, their letters home censored and members were encouraged to inform on one another and forced to attend lengthy, late-night meetings. Jones, by then in declining mental health and addicted to drugs, was convinced the U.S. government and others were out to destroy him. He required Temple members to participate in mock suicide drills in the middle of the night.
In 1978, a group of former Temple members and concerned relatives of current members convinced U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, a Democrat of California, to travel to Jonestown and investigate the settlement. On November 17, 1978, Ryan arrived in Jonestown with a group of journalists and other observers. At first the visit went well, but the next day, as Ryan’s delegation was about to leave, several Jonestown residents approached the group and asked them for passage out of Guyana. Jones became distressed at the defection of his followers, and one of Jones’ lieutenants attacked Ryan with a knife. The congressman escaped from the incident unharmed, but Jones then ordered Ryan and his companions ambushed and killed at the airstrip as they attempted to leave. The congressman and four others were murdered as they boarded their charter planes.
Back in Jonestown, Jones commanded everyone to gather in the main pavilion and commit what he termed a “revolutionary act.” The youngest members of the Peoples Temple were the first to die, as parents and nurses used syringes to drop a potent mix of cyanide, sedatives and powdered fruit juice into children’s throats. Adults then lined up to drink the poison-laced concoction while armed guards surrounded the pavilion.
When Guyanese officials arrived at the Jonestown compound the next day, they found it carpeted with hundreds of bodies. Many people had perished with their arms around each other. A few residents managed to escape into the jungle as the suicides took place, while at least several dozen more Peoples Temple members, including several of Jones’ sons, survived because they were in another part of Guyana at the time.
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November 19, 1863
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincolns-gettysburg-address (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincolns-gettysburg-address)
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivers what will become one of the most famous speeches in American history, at the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Using just 272 words, Lincoln articulated the meaning of the Civil War for a public that had grown weary of the conflict.
For some time, Lincoln had been planning to make a public statement on the significance of the war and the struggle against slavery. In early November, he received an invitation to speak at the dedication of part of the Gettysburg battlefield, which was being transformed into a cemetery for the soldiers who had died in battle there from July 1 to July 3, 1863. A popular myth suggests that Lincoln hastily scribbled his speech on the back of an envelope during his trip to Gettysburg, but he had actually begun crafting his words well before the trip.
At Gettysburg, Lincoln, whobegan his address with the now well-known phrase “Four score and seven years ago,” reminded the assembled crowd of the Founding Fathers’ vision, which established a nation that was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He addressed the country’s civil war, which was testing the endurance of American revolutionary ideals, and he honored the soldiers who fought at Gettysburg, suggesting that their struggle had already consecrated the ground “far above our power to add or detract.” Lincoln then succinctly stated the purpose of the Northern war effort: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Today, the words of the Gettsyburg Address are carved into a wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
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November 20, 1945
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nuremberg-trials-begin (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nuremberg-trials-begin)
Nuremberg trials begin
Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis go on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for atrocities committed during World War II.
The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain. It was the first trial of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges ranging from crimes against peace, to crimes of war, to crimes against humanity. Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, the British member, presided over the proceedings, which lasted 10 months and consisted of 216 court sessions.
On October 1, 1946, 12 architects of Nazi policy were sentenced to death. Seven others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 years to life, and three were acquitted. Of the original 24 defendants, one, Robert Ley, committed suicide while in prison, and another, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, was deemed mentally and physically incompetent to stand trial. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, leader of the Gestapo and the Luftwaffe; Alfred Jodl, head of the German armed forces staff; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior.
On October 16, 10 of the architects of Nazi policy were hanged. Goering, who at sentencing was called the “leading war aggressor and creator of the oppressive program against the Jews,” committed suicide by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Nazi Party leader Martin Bormann was condemned to death in absentia (but is now believed to have died in May 1945). Trials of lesser German and Axis war criminals continued in Germany into the 1950s and resulted in the conviction of 5,025 other defendants and the execution of 806.
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November 21, 1916
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/britannic-sinks-in-aegean-sea (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/britannic-sinks-in-aegean-sea)
Britannic sinks in Aegean Sea
The Britannic, sister ship to the Titanic, sinks in the Aegean Sea on this day in 1916, killing 30 people. More than 1,000 others were rescued.
In the wake of the Titanic disaster on April 14, 1912, the White Star Line made several modifications in the construction of its already-planned sister ship. First, the name was changed from Gigantic to Britannic (probably because it seemed more humble) and the design of the hull was altered to make it less vulnerable to icebergs. In addition, it was mandated that there be enough lifeboats on board to accommodate all passengers, which had not been the case with the Titanic.
The nearly 50,000-ton luxury vessel, the largest in the world, was launched in 1914, but was requisitioned soon afterward by the British government to serve as a hospital ship during World War I. In this capacity, Captain Charlie Bartlett led the Britannic on five successful voyages bringing wounded British troops back to England from various ports around the world.
On November 21, the Britannic was on its way to pick up more wounded soldiers near the Gulf of Athens, when at 8:12 a.m., a violent explosion rocked the ship. Captain Bartlett ordered the closure of the watertight doors and sent out a distress signal. However, the blast had already managed to flood six whole compartments—even more extensive damage than that which had sunk the Titanic. Still, the Britannic had been prepared for such a disaster and would have stayed afloat except for two critical matters.
First, Captain Bartlett decided to try to run the Britannic aground on the nearby island of Kea. This might have been successful, but, earlier, the ship’s nursing staff had opened the portholes to air out the sick wards. Water poured in through the portholes as the Britannic headed toward Kea. Second, the disaster was compounded when some of the crew attempted to launch lifeboats without orders. Since the ship was still moving as fast as it could, the boats were sucked into the propellers, killing those on board.
Less than 30 minutes later, Bartlett realized that the ship was going to sink and ordered it abandoned. The lifeboats were launched and even though the Britannic sank at 9:07, less than an hour after the explosion, nearly 1,100 people managed to make it off the ship. In fact, most of the 30 people who died were in the prematurely launched lifeboats. In 1976, famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau found the Britannic lying on its side 400 feet below the surface of the Aegean. The cause of the explosion remains unknown, but many believe that the Britannic hit a mine.
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November 22, 1988
http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/FactSheets/Display/tabid/224/Article/104482/b-2-spirit.aspx
First prototype of B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bomber unveiled for public viewing
The first B-2 was publicly displayed on Nov. 22, 1988, when it was rolled out of its hangar at Air Force Plant 42, Palmdale, California. Its first flight was July 17, 1989. The B-2 Combined Test Force, Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards Air Force Base, California, is responsible for flight testing the engineering, manufacturing and development aircraft on the B-2.
Whiteman AFB, Missouri, is the only operational base for the B-2. The first aircraft, Spirit of Missouri, was delivered Dec. 17, 1993. Depot maintenance responsibility for the B-2 is performed by Air Force contractor support and is managed at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker AFB, Okla.
The combat effectiveness of the B-2 was proved in Operation Allied Force, where it was responsible for destroying 33 percent of all Serbian targets in the first eight weeks, by flying nonstop to Kosovo from its home base in Missouri and back. In support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the B-2 flew one of its longest missions to date from Whiteman to Afghanistan and back. The B-2 completed its first-ever combat deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, flying 22 sorties from a forward operating location as well as 27 sorties from Whiteman AFB and releasing more than 1.5 million pounds of munitions. The aircraft received full operational capability status in December 2003. On Feb. 1, 2009, the Air Force's newest command, Air Force Global Strike Command, assumed responsibility for the B-2 from Air Combat Command.
The prime contractor, responsible for overall system design and integration, is Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems Sector. Boeing Military Airplanes Co., Hughes Radar Systems Group, General Electric Aircraft Engine Group and Vought Aircraft Industries, Inc., are key members of the aircraft contractor team.
(http://media.defense.gov/2003/Sep/22/2000597310/670/394/0/030922-F-0000J-888.JPG)
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November 18, 1978
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mass-suicide-at-jonestown (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mass-suicide-at-jonestown)
Mass suicide at Jonestown
Good made for TV movie. Powers Boothe played Jim Jones, a great underrated actor.
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I appreciate your contributions, Princess.
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November 23, 1936
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-issue-of-life-is-published (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-issue-of-life-is-published)
First issue of Life is published
On November 23, 1936, the first issue of the pictorial magazine Life is published, featuring a cover photo of the Fort Peck Dam by Margaret Bourke-White.
Life actually had its start earlier in the 20th century as a different kind of magazine: a weekly humor publication, not unlike today’s The New Yorker in its use of tart cartoons, humorous pieces and cultural reporting. When the original Life folded during the Great Depression, the influential American publisher Henry Luce bought the name and re-launched the magazine as a picture-based periodical on this day in 1936. By this time, Luce had already enjoyed great success as the publisher of Time, a weekly news magazine.
From his high school days, Luce was a newsman, serving with his friend Briton Hadden as managing editors of their school newspaper. This partnership continued through their college years at Yale University, where they acted as chairmen and managing editors of the Yale Daily News, as well as after college, when Luce joined Hadden at The Baltimore News in 1921. It was during this time that Luce and Hadden came up with the idea for Time. When it launched in 1923, it was with the intention of delivering the world’s news through the eyes of the people who made it.
Whereas the original mission of Time was to tell the news, the mission of Life was to show it. In the words of Luce himself, the magazine was meant to provide a way for the American people “to see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events … to see things thousands of miles away… to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed… to see, and to show…” Luce set the tone of the magazine with Margaret Bourke-White’s stunning cover photograph of the Fort Peck Dam, which has since become an icon of the 1930s and the great public works completed under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Life was an overwhelming success in its first year of publication. Almost overnight, it changed the way people looked at the world by changing the way people could look at the world. Its flourish of images painted vivid pictures in the public mind, capturing the personal and the public, and putting it on display for the world to take in. At its peak, Life had a circulation of over 8 million and it exerted considerable influence on American life in the beginning and middle of the 20th century.
With picture-heavy content as the driving force behind its popularity,the magazine suffered as television became society’s predominant means of communication. Life ceased running as a weekly publication in 1972, when it began losing audience and advertising dollars to television. In 2004, however, it resumed weekly publication as a supplement to U.S. newspapers. At its re-launch, its combined circulation was once again in the millions.
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November 24, 1971
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hijacker-parachutes-into-thunderstorm (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hijacker-parachutes-into-thunderstorm)
Hijacker parachutes into thunderstorm
A hijacker calling himself D.B. Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 into a raging thunderstorm over Washington State. He had $200,000 in ransom money in his possession.
Cooper commandeered the aircraft shortly after takeoff, showing a flight attendant something that looked like a bomb and informing the crew that he wanted $200,000, four parachutes, and “no funny stuff.” The plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where authorities met Cooper’s demands and evacuated most of the passengers. Cooper then demanded that the plane fly toward Mexico at a low altitude and ordered the remaining crew into the cockpit.
At 8:13 p.m., as the plane flew over the Lewis River in southwest Washington, the plane’s pressure gauge recorded Cooper’s jump from the aircraft. Wearing only wraparound sunglasses, a thin suit, and a raincoat, Cooper parachuted into a thunderstorm with winds in excess of 100 mph and temperatures well below zero at the 10,000-foot altitude where he began his fall. The storm prevented an immediate capture, and most authorities assumed he was killed during his apparently suicidal jump. No trace of Cooper was found during a massive search.
In 1980, an eight-year-old boy uncovered a stack of nearly $5,880 of the ransom money in the sands along the north bank of the Columbia River, five miles from Vancouver, Washington. The fate of Cooper remains a mystery.
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November 25, 1876
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-army-retaliates-for-the-little-bighorn-massacre (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-army-retaliates-for-the-little-bighorn-massacre)
U.S. Army retaliates for the Little Bighorn massacre
U.S. troops under the leadership of General Ranald Mackenzie destroy the village of Cheyenne living with Chief Dull Knife on the headwaters of the Powder River. The attack was in retaliation against some of the Indians who had participated in the massacre of Custer and his men at Little Bighorn.
Although the Sioux and Cheyenne won one of their greatest victories at Little Bighorn, the battle actually marked the beginning of the end of their ability to resist the U.S. government. News of the massacre of Custer and his men reached the East Coast in the midst of nationwide centennial celebrations on July 4, 1876. Outraged at the killing of one of their most popular Civil War heroes, many Americans demanded an intensified military campaign against the offending Indians.
The government responded by sending one of its most successful Indian fighters to the region, General Ranald Mackenzie, who had previously been the scourge of Commanche and Kiowa Indians in Texas. Mackenzie led an expeditionary force up the Powder River in central Wyoming, where he located a village of Cheyenne living with Chief Dull Knife. Although Dull Knife himself does not appear to have been involved in the battle at Little Bighorn, there is no question that many of his people were, including one of his sons.
At dawn, Mackenzie and over 1,000 soldiers and 400 Indian scouts opened fire on the sleeping village, killing many Indians within the first few minutes. Some of the Cheyenne, though, managed to run into the surrounding hills. They watched as the soldiers burned more than 200 lodges-containing all their winter food and clothing-and then cut the throats of their ponies. When the soldiers found souvenirs taken by the Cheyenne from soldiers they had killed at Little Bighorn, the assailants felt justified in their attack.
The surviving Cheyenne, many of them half-naked, began an 11-day walk north to the Tongue River where Crazy Horse’s camp of Oglalas took them in. However, many of the small children and old people did not survive the frigid journey. Devastated by his losses, the next spring Dull Knife convinced the remaining Cheyenne to surrender. The army sent them South to Indian Territory, where other defeated survivors of the final years of the Plains Indian wars soon joined them.
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November 26, 1872
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-great-diamond-hoax-is-exposed (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-great-diamond-hoax-is-exposed)
The Great Diamond Hoax is exposed
The Great Diamond Hoax, one of the most notorious mining swindles of the time, is exposed with an article in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin.
Fraudulent gold and silver mines were common in the years following the California Gold Rush of 1849. Swindlers fooled many eager greenhorns by “salting” worthless mines with particles of gold dust to make them appear mineral-rich. However, few con men were as daring as Kentucky cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack, who convinced San Francisco capitalists to invest in a worthless mine in the northwestern corner of Colorado.
Arnold and Slack played their con perfectly. They arrived in San Francisco in 1872 and tried to deposit a bag of uncut diamonds at a bank. When questioned, the two men quickly disappeared, acting as if they were reluctant to talk about their discovery. Intrigued, a bank director named William Ralston tracked down the men. Assuming he was dealing with unsophisticated country bumpkins, he set out to take control of the diamond mine. The two cousins agreed to take a blindfolded mining expert to the site; the expert returned to report that the mine was indeed rich with diamonds and rubies.
Joining forces with a number of other prominent San Francisco financiers, Ralston formed the New York Mining and Commercial Company, capitalized at $10 million, and began selling stock to eager investors. As a show of good faith, Arnold and Slack received about $600,000-small change in comparison to the supposed value of the diamond mine. Convinced that the American West must have many other major deposits of diamonds, at least 25 other diamond exploration companies formed in the subsequent months.
Clarence King, the then-little-known young leader of a geographical survey of the 40th parallel, finally exposed the cousins’ diamond mine as a hoax. A brilliant geologist and mining engineer, King was suspicious of the mine from the start. He correctly deduced the location of the supposed mine, raced off to investigate, and soon realized that the swindlers had salted the mine–some of the gems he found even showed jewelers-cut marks.
Back in San Francisco, King exposed the fraud in the newspapers and the Great Diamond Hoax collapsed. Ralston returned $80,000 to each of his investors, but he was never able to recover the $600,000 given to the two cousins. Arnold lived out the few remaining years of his life in luxury in Kentucky before dying of pneumonia in 1878. Slack apparently squandered his share of the money, for he was last reported working as a coffin maker in New Mexico. King’s role in exposing the fraud brought him national recognition–he became the first director of the United States Geological Survey.
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November 27, 1940
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bruce-lee-born (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bruce-lee-born)
Bruce Lee born
On this day in 1940, the actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee is born in San Francisco, California. In his all-too-brief career, Lee became a film star in Asia, and a pop-culture icon, posthumously, in America.
Lee was born while his father, a Chinese opera star, was on tour in America. The Lee family moved back to Hong Kong in 1941. Growing up, Lee was a child actor who appeared in some 20 Chinese films; he also studied dancing and trained in the Wing Chun style of gung fu (also known as kung fu). In 1959, Lee returned to America, where he eventually attended the University of Washington and opened a martial-arts school in Seattle. In 1964, he married Linda Emery, who in 1965 gave birth to Brandon Lee, the first of the couple’s two children. In 1966, the Lees relocated to Los Angeles and Bruce appeared on the television program The Green Hornet (1966-1967), playing the Hornet’s acrobatic sidekick, Kato. Lee also appeared in karate tournaments around the United States and continued to teach martial arts to private clients, including the actor Steve McQueen.
In search of better acting roles than Hollywood was offering, Lee returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s. He successfully established himself as a star in Asia with the action movies The Big Boss (1971) and The Way of the Dragon (1972), which he wrote, directed and starred in. Lee’s next film, Enter the Dragon, was released in the United States by Hollywood studio Warner Brothers in August 1973. Tragically, Lee had died one month earlier, on July 20, in Hong Kong, after suffering a brain edema believed to be caused by an adverse reaction to a pain medication. Enter the Dragon was a box-office hit, eventually grossing more than $200 million, and Lee posthumously became a movie icon in America.
Lee’s body was returned to Seattle, where he was buried. His sudden death at the young age of 32 led to rumors and speculation about the cause of his demise. One theory held that Lee had been murdered by Chinese gangsters, while another rumor circulated that the actor had been the victim of a curse. The family-curse theory resurfaced when Lee’s 28-year-old son Brandon, who had followed in his father’s footsteps to become an actor, died in an accidental shooting on the set of the movie The Crow on March 31, 1993. The younger Lee was buried next to his father at Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery.
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November 28, 1520
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/magellan-reaches-the-pacific (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/magellan-reaches-the-pacific)
Magellan reaches the Pacific
After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships, becoming the first European explorer to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic.
On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific. He searched the Rio de la Plata, a large estuary south of Brazil, for a way through; failing, he continued south along the coast of Patagonia. At the end of March 1520, the expedition set up winter quarters at Port St. Julian. On Easter day at midnight, the Spanish captains mutinied against their Portuguese captain, but Magellan crushed the revolt, executing one of the captains and leaving another ashore when his ship left St. Julian in August.
On October 21, he finally discovered the strait he had been seeking. The Strait of Magellan, as it became known, is located near the tip of South America, separating Tierra del Fuego and the continental mainland. Only three ships entered the passage; one had been wrecked and another deserted. It took 38 days to navigate the treacherous strait, and when ocean was sighted at the other end Magellan wept with joy. His fleet accomplished the westward crossing of the ocean in 99 days, crossing waters so strangely calm that the ocean was named “Pacific,” from the Latin word pacificus, meaning “tranquil.” By the end, the men were out of food and chewed the leather parts of their gear to keep themselves alive. On March 6, 1521, the expedition landed at the island of Guam.
Ten days later, they dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebu—they were only about 400 miles from the Spice Islands. Magellan met with the chief of Cebu, who after converting to Christianity persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the neighboring island of Mactan. In fighting on April 27, Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades.
After Magellan’s death, the survivors, in two ships, sailed on to the Moluccas and loaded the hulls with spice. One ship attempted, unsuccessfully, to return across the Pacific. The other ship, the Vittoria, continued west under the command of Basque navigator Juan Sebastian de Elcano. The vessel sailed across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived at the Spanish port of Sanlucar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the globe.
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November 29, 1991
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dust-storm-causes-massive-pileup-in-california (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dust-storm-causes-massive-pileup-in-california)
Dust storm causes massive pileup in California
A massive car and truck collision in Coalinga, California, kills 17 people on this day in 1991. More than 100 vehicles were involved in the accident on Interstate 5, which was caused by a dust storm.
Interstate 5 runs north and south between Southern California and Northern California. On Saturday, November 29, there was considerable traffic on the highway as people were returning home after Thanksgiving. The area of the highway near Coalinga in the San Joaquin Valley is usually prime farmland. However, in 1991 many farmers had decided not to plant their fields because of severe drought conditions, leaving long stretches of dusty soil near the highway.
As the winds strengthened to nearly 40 miles per hour on November 29, dust swept over the highway, severely hampering visibility. Suddenly, a chain reaction of collisions developed over a mile-long stretch of the highway. One hundred and four vehicles, including 11 large trucks, were involved in the massive collision. It took hours for the rescuers to find all the victims in the continuing dust storm. Seventeen people lost their lives and 150 more suffered serious injuries. Meanwhile, thousands of people were trapped in their cars for the nearly an entire day until the highway could be cleared enough for traffic to pass.
The same stretch of highway was the scene of a similar, but smaller, incident in December 1978 when seven people died and 47 were injured in a large chain collision. Another storm in December 1977 caused residents to develop a flu-like respiratory infection, known as Valley Fever, from breathing in large quantities of dust.
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November 30, 1874
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/winston-churchill-born (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/winston-churchill-born)
Winston Churchill born
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, is born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.
Churchill came from a prestigious family with a long history of military service and joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father’s death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals, serving in a number of important posts before being appointed Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British navy to a readiness for the war he foresaw.
In 1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns, and he was excluded from the war coalition government. He resigned and volunteered to command an infantry battalion in France. However, in 1917, he returned to politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he was secretary of state for war and in 1924 returned to the Conservative Party, where two years later he played a leading role in the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill issued unheeded warnings of the threat of German and Japanese aggression.
After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill was called back to his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and eight months later replaced the ineffectual Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would “never surrender.” He rallied the British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that eventually crushed the Axis.
In July 1945, 10 weeks after Germany’s defeat, his Conservative government suffered an electoral loss against Clement Attlee’s Labour Party, and Churchill resigned as prime minister. He became leader of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. Two years later, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his six-volume historical study of World War II and for his political speeches. In 1955, he retired as prime minister but remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his death.
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December 1, 1955
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosa-parks-ignites-bus-boycot (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosa-parks-ignites-bus-boycot)
Rosa Parks ignites bus boycott
In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., followed Park’s historic act of civil disobedience.
“The mother of the civil rights movement,” as Rosa Parks is known, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913. She worked as a seamstress and in 1943 joined the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
According to a Montgomery city ordinance in 1955, African Americans were required to sit at the back of public buses and were also obligated to give up those seats to white riders if the front of the bus filled up. Parks was in the first row of the black section when the white driver demanded that she give up her seat to a white man. Parks’ refusal was spontaneous but was not merely brought on by her tired feet, as is the popular legend. In fact, local civil rights leaders had been planning a challenge to Montgomery’s racist bus laws for several months, and Parks had been privy to this discussion.
Learning of Parks’ arrest, the NAACP and other African American activists immediately called for a bus boycott to be held by black citizens on Monday, December 5. Word was spread by fliers, and activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the protest. The first day of the bus boycott was a great success, and that night the 26-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., told a large crowd gathered at a church, “The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.” King emerged as the leader of the bus boycott and received numerous death threats from opponents of integration. At one point, his home was bombed, but he and his family escaped bodily harm.
The boycott stretched on for more than a year, and participants carpooled or walked miles to work and school when no other means were possible. As African Americans previously constituted 70 percent of the Montgomery bus ridership, the municipal transit system suffered gravely during the boycott. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama state and Montgomery city bus segregation laws as being in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On December 20, King issued the following statement: “The year old protest against city buses is officially called off, and the Negro citizens of Montgomery are urged to return to the buses tomorrow morning on a non-segregated basis.” The boycott ended the next day. Rosa Parks was among the first to ride the newly desegregated buses.
Martin Luther King, Jr., and his nonviolent civil rights movement had won its first great victory. There would be many more to come.
Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005. Three days later the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to honor Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
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December 2, 1961
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/castro-declares-himself-a-marxist-leninist (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/castro-declares-himself-a-marxist-leninist)
Castro declares himself a Marxist-Leninist
Following a year of severely strained relations between the United States and Cuba, Cuban leader Fidel Castro openly declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist. The announcement sealed the bitter Cold War animosity between the two nations.
Castro came to power in 1959 after leading a successful revolution against the dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista. Almost from the start, the United States worried that Castro was too leftist in his politics. He implemented agrarian reform, expropriated foreign oil company holdings, and eventually seized all foreign-owned property in Cuba. He also established close diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and the Russians were soon providing economic and military aid. By January 1961, the United States had severed diplomatic relations with Cuba. In April, the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion took place, wherein hundreds of rebels, armed and trained by the United States, attempted a landing in Cuba with the intent of overthrowing the Castro government. The attack ended in a dismal military defeat for the rebels and an embarrassing diplomatic setback for the United States.
In December 1961, Castro made clear what most U.S. officials already believed. In a televised address on December 2, Castro declared, “I am a Marxist-Leninist and shall be one until the end of my life.” He went on to state that, “Marxism or scientific socialism has become the revolutionary movement of the working class.” He also noted that communism would be the dominant force in Cuban politics: “There cannot be three or four movements.” Some questioned Castro’s dedication to the communist cause, believing that his announcement was simply a stunt to get more Soviet assistance. Castro, however, never deviated from his declared principles, and went on to become one of the world’s longest-ruling heads of state. In late July 2006, an unwell Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his younger brother Raul. Fidel Castro officially stepped down in February 2008. Castro died on November 25, 2016, at 90.
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December 3, 1989
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-clothes-make-the-man-guilty (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-clothes-make-the-man-guilty)
The clothes make the man . . . guilty
Five-year-old Melissa Brannen disappears without a trace from a Christmas party in Fairfax, Virginia. The intensive forensic investigation that followed led to the arrest of party guest Caleb Hughes and, in the process, demonstrated how technically advanced crime solving had become.
After interviewing everyone who had been at the party, investigators determined that Hughes had left the party at roughly the same time that Brannen was discovered missing. When detectives visited Hughes’ home at 1 a.m., they found him washing his clothes, shoes, and belt. Although Hughes denied having any contact with the little girl, the detectives began an exhaustive search of his home and car.
To collect hairs and fibers, forensic experts carefully ran tape across all of the surfaces in Hughes’ house and car. Every tiny bit of evidence caught on the tape was cataloged and taken to a scraping room, where they were then examined under a microscope. In addition, Hughes’ clothing was systematically combed for foreign fibers and hairs.
Two of the fibers found in the passenger seat of Hughes’ car matched the rabbit-fur coat that Brannen’s motherhad been wearing at the party. Since it was possible that the two fibers had innocently landed there, though, police needed additional evidence. Although Brannen had been wearing a blue sweater when she disappeared and police located more than 50 blue fibers in the car, direct forensic comparisons were impossible to make, since the young girl and her clothing were still missing. However, investigators learned that Melissa’s sweater was part of a Sesame Street outfit made only by JC Penney, and they were able to obtain an identical sample outfit from the manufacturer. A detailed examination proved that the blue fibers in Hughes’ car matched those from the Sesame Street outfit.
Hughes was convicted of abduction with intent to defile on March 8, 1991, but Melissa Brannen was never found.
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December 4, 2009
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/amanda-knox-convicted-of-murder-in-italy (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/amanda-knox-convicted-of-murder-in-italy)
Amanda Knox convicted of murder in Italy
On this day in 2009, 22-year-old American exchange student Amanda Knox is convicted of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in 2007 in Perugia, Italy. Knox received a 26-year prison sentence, while her 25-year-old Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, who also was convicted in the slaying, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. The sensational, high-profile case raised questions in the United Statesabout whether Knox, who always maintained her innocence, received a fair trial. Then, in October 2011, in a decision that made international headlines, an Italian court reversed the murder convictions of both Knox and Sollecito and they were freed from prison.
On November 2, 2007, 21-year-old Kercher of Coulsdon, England, was found fatally stabbed in the bedroom of the home she shared with Knox and two other women in Perugia, the capital city of the Umbria region in central Italy. Investigators said the British exchange student had been slain the previous night. After questioning by police, Knox, a Seattle native and University of Washington student doing her junior year abroad in Italy, was arrested. She denied any wrongdoing, saying she was at computer science student Sollecito’s house the night the killing occurred. Police claimed Knox later gave them conflicting statements about her whereabouts at the time of the crime, and said she also accused her boss at a bar where she worked, who turned out to have a solid alibi, of Kercher’s murder. The American student, who was first questioned without an attorney or professional interpreter, said police coerced her into making the accusation as well as other incriminating statements. (The false accusation would later result in an extra year tacked on to Knox’s prison sentence.)
During the nearly yearlong trial that followed in 2009, Italian prosecutors charged that Knox, along with Sollecito and a third person, Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native, had viciously attacked Kercher in a sex game gone wrong. (Guede was convicted for his role in Kercher’s death in a separate, fast-track trial in 2008. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which was reduced to 16 years on appeal.) The prosecution’s main evidence against Knox included tiny traces of her DNA and that of Kercher’s on a knife discovered at Sollecito’s home. Traces of Knox’s DNA were also found on a bra clasp belonging to Kercher. Knox’s attorneys argued the bra clasp was found over a month after the murder at a contaminated crime scene, and that the knife blade couldn’t have made the wounds on the victim.
The case received extensive media coverage in the U.S. and Europe, where the attractive Knox was dubbed “Angel Face” and “Foxy Knoxy” by the tabloids. In the Italian and British press, Knox was painted as a promiscuous party girl. However, in America, she was often portrayed in the media as an innocent abroad, a young woman who had worked several jobs to earn money to study in Perugia, where she had been railroaded by an overzealous prosecutor.
Knox and Sollecito appealed their convictions, and at their subsequent trial court-appointed experts testified the original DNA evidence was unreliable and did not definitively link the young American and her former boyfriend to the crime. On October 3, 2011, a court in Perugia acquitted the two defendants of murder. The 24-year-old Knox, who been jailed in Italy since her 2007 arrest, flew home to the U.S. the following day.
In March 2013, in a new twist in the case, Italy’s highest court overturned the acquittals of Knox and Sollecito and ordered that they be retried. In January 2014, the two were re-convicted in Kercher’s death. Knox, who remained in America during the trial, was sentenced to 28 1/2 years years behind bars, while her former boyfriend received a 25-year prison sentence. Lawyers for the two vowed to appeal the convictions. If Knox’s conviction is upheld, she’s unlikely to return to Italy unless extradited.
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Dec. 5, 1933
http://time.com/3605609/a-toast-to-the-end-of-prohibition/
Prohibition comes to an end in the United States
The 18th Amendment, which prohibited the production, distribution and sale of alcohol, easily ranks as the least popular amendment in U.S. history — and the only constitutional amendment ever to be repealed.
When the 21st Amendment was ratified on this day, Dec. 5, in 1933, it ended Prohibition 13 years, 10 months, and 19 days after it began. The time had not passed quickly, according to journalist H.L. Mencken, who noted, “It seems almost a geologic epoch while it was going on, and the human suffering that it entailed must have been a fair match for that of the Black Death or the Thirty Years War.”
The national experiment was a resounding failure, even according to some of its early supporters. Lifelong teetotaler John D. Rockefeller, Jr, had recanted his support the year before Prohibition’s repeal, in a letter published in the New York Times. He wrote:
When the Eighteenth Amendment was passed I earnestly hoped… that it would be generally supported by public opinion and thus the day be hastened when the value to society of men with minds and bodies free from the undermining effects of alcohol would be generally realized. That this has not been the result, but rather that drinking generally has increased; that the speakeasy has replaced the saloon, not only unit for unit, but probably two-fold if not three-fold; that a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale… I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe.
While a Dallas newspaper editorial warned that Rockefeller’s change of heart “may in later years cause him deep regret,” William Randolph Hearst countered that Rockefeller’s opinion would help “bring the nation to calm conviction on the ineffectiveness of prohibition as a temperance measure.”
Early temperance advocates had warned that drunks were in danger — because of their high blood-alcohol levels — of spontaneous combustion (a claim that has since been proven impossible), but instead Prohibition sparked its own public health crisis. Drinking tainted bootleg liquor caused blindness, paralysis, and an estimated national average of 1,000 deaths a year.
Economically, the measure also failed to generate increased sales of clothing and household goods, which supporters claimed would skyrocket once breadwinners stopped throwing away their income in saloons. Sales of soda and juice were similarly expected to rise, along with entertainment industry revenue, as people sought ways to amuse themselves while sober. But those hopes were never realized; instead, the ban on alcohol cost the federal government $11 billion in lost tax revenue, according to Ken Burns’ documentary Prohibition.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was among those relieved to witness the end of the era. “What America needs now is a drink,” he’s reported to have said.
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December 6, 1969
Altamont Free Concert
The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a counterculture-era rock concert held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, between Tracy and Livermore. The event is best known for considerable violence, including the death of Meredith Hunter and three accidental deaths: two caused by a hit-and-run car accident and one by drowning in an irrigation canal. Scores were injured, numerous cars were stolen and then abandoned, and there was extensive property damage.
The concert featured (in order of appearance): Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with the Rolling Stones taking the stage as the final act. The Grateful Dead were also scheduled to perform, but declined to play shortly before their scheduled appearance due to the increasing violence at the venue. "That's the way things went at Altamont — so badly that the Grateful Dead, prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn't even get to play," staff at Rolling Stone magazine wrote in a detailed narrative on the event, terming it in an additional follow-up piece "rock and roll's all-time worst day, December 6th, a day when everything went perfectly wrong."
Approximately 300,000 people attended the concert, and some anticipated that it would be a "Woodstock West." Filmmakers Albert and David Maysles shot footage of the event and incorporated it into a documentary film titled Gimme Shelter (1970)
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December 7, 1993
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/commute-of-terror (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/commute-of-terror)
Commute of terror
Colin Ferguson opens fire on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train from New York City, killing 6 and injuring 19. Other train passengers stopped the perpetrator by tackling and holding him down. Ferguson later attributed the shooting spree to his deep-seated hatred of white people.
Colin Ferguson was a mentally unbalanced man from Jamaica who spent years on the West Coast before coming to New York in 1993. On December 7, he boarded a 5:33 p.m. train out of Penn Station carrying an automatic pistol, and as the train pulled into Garden City, Ferguson began running down the aisle and shooting passengers at random.
Famous defense attorney William Kunstler initially represented Ferguson, but his strategy of arguing that Ferguson was not responsible due to “black rage” infuriated even Ferguson himself. After firing Kunstler, Ferguson decided to act as his own lawyer.
In the resulting trial, which took place in January and February 1996, Ferguson opened by claiming that he was not the shooter. He argued that a white man had stolen his gun and shot the commuters, then pinned the crime on Ferguson. But he later changed his story, stating that a man who shared Ferguson’s name and facial features was the real killer.
When Ferguson asked nearly all of the surviving victims, in turn, to identify the killer under oath, they each pinned the blame squarely on him. After the judge denied Ferguson’s request that President Clinton and Governor Cuomo testify, Ferguson decided to forego his own right to testify. On February 17, 1996, the jury convicted Ferguson of 6 counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder. He received six life terms and will not be eligible for parole.
(http://cdn.newsday.com/polopoly_fs/1.8866946.1436404701!/httpImage/image._gen/derivatives/display_960/image.)
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December 8, 1942
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/auto-factory-architect-albert-kahn-dies (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/auto-factory-architect-albert-kahn-dies)
Auto-factory architect Albert Kahn dies
On December 8, 1942, the architect and engineer Albert Kahn–known as “the man who built Detroit”–dies at his home there. He was 73 years old. Kahn and his assistants built more than 2,000 buildings in all, mostly for Ford and General Motors. According to his obituary in The New York Times, Kahn “revolutionized the concept of what a great factory should be: his designs made possible the marvels of modern mass production, and his buildings changed the faces of a thousand cities and towns from Detroit to Novosibirsk.”
Albert Kahn was born in Germany in 1869. When he was 11, his family moved to the United States and settled in Detroit, where the teenager took a job as an architect’s apprentice. In 1902, after working at a number of well-known architectural firms in Detroit, Kahn started his own practice.
While building factories for Packard, the young architect found that swapping reinforced concrete for wood or masonry sped up the construction of manufacturing plants considerably. It also made them sturdier and less combustible. Moreover, reinforced-concrete buildings needed fewer load-bearing walls; this, in turn, freed up floor space for massive industrial equipment. Kahn’s first concrete factory, Packard Shop No. 10, still stands today on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit.
“Architecture,” Kahn liked to say, “is 90 percent business and 10 percent art.” His buildings reflected this philosophy: they were sleek, flexible, and above all functional. Besides all that utilitarian concrete, they incorporated huge metal-framed windows and garage doors and acres of uninterrupted floor space for conveyor belts and other machines. Kahn’s first Ford factory, the 1909 Highland Park plant, used elevators and dumbwaiters to spread the Model T assembly line over several floors, but most of his subsequent factories were huge single-story spaces: Ford’s River Rouge plant (1916), the massive Goodyear Airdock in Akron (1929), the Glenn Martin aeronautics factory in Maryland (built in 1937 around an assembly floor the size of a football field) and, perhaps most famous of all, the half-mile–long Willow Run “Arsenal of Democracy,” the home of Ford’s B-29 bomber in Ypsilanti.
Though Kahn designed a number of non-factory buildings, including the Ford and GM office towers in downtown Detroit, he is best known for building factories that reflected the needs of the industrial age. We still celebrate his innovations today.
(https://assets.blog.hemmings.com/wp-content/uploads//2016/03/Kahn_1500.jpg)
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WWW2PPV0L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
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December 9, 1983
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pacino-stars-in-scarface (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pacino-stars-in-scarface)
Pacino stars in Scarface
The actor Al Pacino stars as a Cuban refugee who becomes a Miami crime boss in Scarface, which opens in theaters on this day in 1983.
In Scarface, Pacino played Tony Montana, who arrives in Florida from Cuba in 1980 and eventually becomes wealthy from his involvement in the booming cocaine business. Things fall apart when Tony becomes addicted to the drug and his world collapses in violence. Directed by Brian De Palma from a screenplay by Oliver Stone, Scarface co-starred Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Robert Loggia. The film was loosely based on a 1932 gangster film of the same name, directed by Howard Hawks and reportedly inspired in part by the real-life mobster Al “Scarface” Capone. Though De Palma’s Scarface received mixed reviews upon its initial release and was criticized for its violence, it proved to be a success at the box-office and went on to achieve pop-culture status.
Tony Montana is just one of many notable roles in the career of Pacino, who was born on April 25, 1940, in New York City. He first gained notice for his portrayal as a young drug addict in 1971’s The Panic in Needle Park, which was produced by Dominick Dunne and written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. Pacino’s next film (just the third of his career) was the director Francis Ford Coppola’s now-iconic crime-family drama The Godfather (1972), co-starring Marlon Brando, James Caan, Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall. Pacino received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as the conflicted crime boss Michael Corleone, a role he would reprise in the acclaimed sequels The Godfather: Part II (1974) and The Godfather: Part III (1990).
Throughout the rest of the 1970s, Pacino turned in a number of acclaimed performances, garnering three Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, for Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and …And Justice for All (1979). In the ensuing decades, the prolific actor continued to rack up an impressive list of credits in such films as the 1989 hit Sea of Love, opposite Ellen Barkin; Dick Tracy (1990), for which he earned yet another Best Actor Oscar nomination; and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), for which he received a nod for Best Supporting Actor. He took home his first Best Actor Oscar for his performance as a blind, retired Army officer in Scent of a Woman (1992). Among Pacino’s other memorable films are the 1970s-era gangster drama Carlito’s Way (1993); the New York mafia drama Donnie Brasco (1997); the Oscar-nominated The Insider (1999), with Russell Crowe; and director Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday (1999), in which Pacino played a pro football coach. In 2008, Pacino teamed up with another Italian-American screen legend, Robert De Niro, to play New York City police detectives in Righteous Kill.
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December 10, 1901
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-nobel-prizes-awarded (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-nobel-prizes-awarded)
First Nobel Prizes awarded
The first Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The ceremony came on the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other high explosives. In his will, Nobel directed that the bulk of his vast fortune be placed in a fund in which the interest would be “annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” Although Nobel offered no public reason for his creation of the prizes, it is widely believed that he did so out of moral regret over the increasingly lethal uses of his inventions in war.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born in Stockholm in 1833, and four years later his family moved to Russia. His father ran a successful St. Petersburg factory that built explosive mines and other military equipment. Educated in Russia, Paris, and the United States, Alfred Nobel proved a brilliant chemist. When his father’s business faltered after the end of the Crimean War, Nobel returned to Sweden and set up a laboratory to experiment with explosives. In 1863, he invented a way to control the detonation of nitroglycerin, a highly volatile liquid that had been recently discovered but was previously regarded as too dangerous for use. Two years later, Nobel invented the blasting cap, an improved detonator that inaugurated the modern use of high explosives. Previously, the most dependable explosive was black powder, a form of gunpowder.
Nitroglycerin remained dangerous, however, and in 1864 Nobel’s nitroglycerin factory blew up, killing his younger brother and several other people. Searching for a safer explosive, Nobel discovered in 1867 that the combination of nitroglycerin and a porous substance called kieselguhr produced a highly explosive mixture that was much safer to handle and use. Nobel christened his invention “dynamite,” for the Greek word dynamis, meaning “power.” Securing patents on dynamite, Nobel acquired a fortune as humanity put his invention to use in construction and warfare.
In 1875, Nobel created a more powerful form of dynamite, blasting gelatin, and in 1887 introduced ballistite, a smokeless nitroglycerin powder. Around that time, one of Nobel’s brothers died in France, and French newspapers printed obituaries in which they mistook him for Alfred. One headline read, “The merchant of death is dead.” Alfred Nobel in fact had pacifist tendencies and in his later years apparently developed strong misgivings about the impact of his inventions on the world. After he died in San Remo, Italy, on December 10, 1896, the majority of his estate went toward the creation of prizes to be given annually in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The portion of his will establishing the Nobel Peace Prize read, “[one award shall be given] to the person who has done the most or best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Exactly five years after his death, the first Nobel awards were presented.
Today, the Nobel Prizes are regarded as the most prestigious awards in the world in their various fields. Notable winners have included Marie Curie, Theodore Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela. Multiple leaders and organizations sometimes receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and multiple researchers often share the scientific awards for their joint discoveries. In 1968, a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was established by the Swedish national bank, Sveriges Riksbank, and first awarded in 1969.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decides the prizes in physics, chemistry, and economic science; the Swedish Royal Caroline Medico-Surgical Institute determines the physiology or medicine award; the Swedish Academy chooses literature; and a committee elected by the Norwegian parliament awards the peace prize. The Nobel Prizes are still presented annually on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. In 2006, each Nobel Prize carried a cash prize of nearly $1,400,000 and recipients also received a gold medal, as is the tradition.
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December 11, 1964
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sam-cooke-dies-under-suspicious-circumstances-in-la (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sam-cooke-dies-under-suspicious-circumstances-in-la)
Sam Cooke dies under suspicious circumstances in LA
On December 11, 1964, in response to a reported shooting, officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were dispatched to the Hacienda Motel, where they found Sam Cooke dead on the office floor, shot three times in the chest by the motel’s manager, Bertha Franklin. The authorities ruled Cooke’s death a case of justifiable homicide, based on the testimony of Ms. Franklin, who claimed that Cooke had threatened her life after attempting to rape a young woman with whom he had earlier checked in.
Even as the lurid details of the case were becoming common knowledge, some 200,000 fans turned out in the streets of Los Angeles and Chicago to mourn the passing of Sam Cooke, a man whose legacy seemed able to transcend the scandal surrounding his death. That legacy was built during a brief but spectacular run as a singer, songwriter, producer and music publisher in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Born in 1931 to a Baptist minister and his wife, Cooke’s early musical development took place in the church. Like other early figures in what would eventually be called “soul” music, Cooke began his professional career singing gospel. A member of the legendary Soul Stirrers since the age of 19, Cooke was given permission by his record label to begin recording secular music in 1956.
“You Send Me” (1957) was Sam Cooke’s first pop smash, and it was followed by such classics as “Chain Gang” (1960), “Cupid” (1961), “Twistin’ the Night Away” (1962) and the Dylan-inspired posthumous release that became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement: “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1964). His voice has been called the most important in the history of soul music, but just as important to Sam Cooke’s historical standing is the fact that he also wrote all of the aforementioned hits—a remarkable fact for any popular singer of his time.
In the years since his death, the circumstances surrounding Cooke’s shooting have been called into question by his family and others. Though the truth of what happened on this day in 1964 might remain uncertain, Sam Cooke’s place in the history of popular music is anything but.
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/0f/3f/61/0f3f614290717bade94f21dede0c352b.jpg)
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December 12, 1989
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-queen-of-mean-is-sentenced-to-the-slammer (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-queen-of-mean-is-sentenced-to-the-slammer)
The Queen of Mean is sentenced to the slammer
Leona Helmsley, nicknamed the “Queen of Mean” by the press, receives a four-year prison sentence, 750 hours of community service, and a $7.1 million tax fraud fine in New York. For many, Helmsley became the object of loathing and disgust when she quipped that “only the little people pay taxes.”
Leona’s husband, Harry, was one of the world’s wealthiest real estate moguls, with an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion in property holdings. The couple lived in a dazzling penthouse overlooking Central Park and also maintained an impressive mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Leona, who operated the Helmsley Palace on Madison Avenue, was severely disliked by her employees.
Though they lavishly furnished their homes and hotel, the Helmsleys were curiously diligent about evading the required payments and taxes for their purchases. Much of their personal furniture was written off as a business expense, and there were claims that the Helmsleys extorted free furnishings from their suppliers. Contractors were hardly ever paid on time-if at all-and many filed lawsuits to recover even just a portion of what they were owed. Leona reportedly also purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry in New York City but insisted that empty boxes be sent to Connecticut so that she could avoid the sales tax.
Given her offensive personality, many were quite pleased by Leona’s legal troubles. Even celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz could not win her immunity from the law. Following her conviction, Federal Judge John Walker publicly reprimanded her, saying, “Your conduct was the product of naked greed [and] the arrogant belief that you were above the law.” Leona Helmsley was sent to jail in 1992 and was released in 1994. In 2002, Helmsley, whose husband Harry died in 1997, again found herself in court after being sued by Charles Bell, a former employee who accused Leona of firing him soley because he was homosexual. A jury ordered Helmsley to pay him more than $11 million in damages.
Helmsley died in August 2007 at age 87. She famously left $12 million to her dog, Trouble.
(http://www.economicpopulist.org/files/u2764/the-little-people.jpg)
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December 13, 2000
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/texas-seven-prison-break (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/texas-seven-prison-break)
Texas Seven prison break
On this day in 2000, seven convicts break out of a maximum-security prison in South Texas, setting off a massive six-week manhunt. The escapees, dubbed the “Texas Seven” by the media, overpowered civilian employees and prison guards in the maintenance shop where they worked and stole clothing, guns and a vehicle. The men left a note saying: “You haven’t heard the last of us yet.”
Soon after escaping from the Connally Unit lockup in Kenedy, Texas, the fugitives picked up another getaway vehicle, allegedly provided by the father of one of the men, and robbed a Radio Shack store in Pearland, Texas, making off with cash and police scanners. On Christmas Eve, the escapees, who had been convicted for a long list of violent crimes, including murder, rape and robbery, struck a sporting-goods store in Irving, Texas, where they stole a large amount of cash and weapons. In the process, the men killed police officer Aubrey Hawkins, shooting him multiple times with multiple weapons and running him over. The Texas Seven then fled to Colorado, where they purchased a motor home, told people they were Christian missionaries and spent the month at a trailer park near Woodland Park, Colorado.
On January 22, 2001, a tip from someone who had seen the Texas Seven profiled on the TV program America’s Most Wanted led police to the fugitives.Ringleader George Rivas was captured along with three of the other men. A fifth fugitive committed suicide after being surrounded by police.Two days later, law enforcement officials closed in on the two remaining escapees at a hotel in Colorado Springs.A standoff ensued, during which the fugitives conducted phone interviews with a TV news station and claimed their escape was a protest against Texas’ criminal justice system. The men then surrendered to authorities.
In February 2001, the six surviving memebers of the Texas Seven were indicted on capital murder charges in the death of Officer Hawkins. Each man was later convicted and sentenced to death.
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I would like to thank Princess L, for helping out in this thread. Pictures and videos really enhance the experience.
It adds a human layer to it all.
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December 14, 1977
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/saturday-night-fever-gets-its-world-premiere-and-launches-a-musical-juggernaut (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/saturday-night-fever-gets-its-world-premiere-and-launches-a-musical-juggernaut)
Saturday Night Fever gets its world premiere and launches a musical juggernaut
In a 2008 interview on BBC Radio 4, Robin Gibb confessed to making it through only the first 30 minutes of the world premiere, and to never having seen the rest of the picture in the decades that followed. Millions of Americans did, however, make it through the film that made a movie star out of 23-year-old John Travolta and propelled the already famous Mr. Gibb, along with his brothers Maurice and Barry, to a level of superstardom rarely achieved before or since. The film, of course, was Saturday Night Fever, a pop-cultural juggernaut that had its world premiere at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on this day in 1977.
Well-cast, well-acted and well-directed, Saturday Night Fever earned positive reviews from many critics, including the late Gene Siskel, who called it his favorite film ever. But whatever its other cinematic merits, even the film’s strongest proponents would agree that it was the pulsing disco soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever that made it a work of lasting historical significance. From its iconic opening sequence featuring John Travolta strutting down a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, sidewalk to the tune of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” to its unforgettable dance numbers set in the fictional 2001 Odyssey discotheque, the music complemented the action in Saturday Night Fever as perfectly as if it were written for the movie, even though most of it wasn’t. In fact, other than “Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever,” every song that appeared in Saturday Night Fever had been written, recorded and in some cases released before the film ever went into production. Among those songs were: The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” (1976); KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Boogie Shoes” (1975); Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” (1976); and the Bee Gees’ own “You Should Be Dancin'” (1976).
Two songs the Bee Gees wrote shortly before hearing about Saturday Night Fever—””If I Can’t Have You” and “How Deep Is Your Love”—would be among the four #1 pop hits launched by the movie’s landmark soundtrack album. “How Deep Is Your Love” was the debut single from the album, released fully a month before the movie itself and hitting #1 on the Billboard pop chart just a week after the movie’s opening. This now-familiar approach to marketing a movie through its soundtrack, and vice versa, was highly innovative at the time. Indeed, the promotional synergy between the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and movie is widely credited with helping to revolutionize both movie and music marketing.
(http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/whitesuit.jpg)
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Worst thread on getbig, 32 pages of shit from the worst poster ever on here
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Worst thread on getbig, 32 pages of shit from the worst poster ever on here
Thanks for the praise :D
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Thanks for the praise :D
Joke of you like but my persitant efforts to ruin this thread will annoy you whether you admit it or not
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On this day my balls itched. :-[
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On this day my balls itched. :-[
First geniunley interesting thing posted in this thread so far
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First geniunley interesting thing posted in this thread so far
Believe it or not I scratched them again today!
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January 7th, 1789
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-u-s-presidential-election (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-u-s-presidential-election)
First U.S. presidential election
On this day in 1789, America’s first presidential election is held. Voters cast ballots to choose state electors; only white men who owned property were allowed to vote. As expected, George Washington won the election and was sworn into office on April 30, 1789.
As it did in 1789, the United States still uses the Electoral College system, established by the U.S. Constitution, which today gives all American citizens over the age of 18 the right to vote for electors, who in turn vote for the president. The president and vice president are the only elected federal officials chosen by the Electoral College instead of by direct popular vote.
Today political parties usually nominate their slate of electors at their state conventions or by a vote of the party’s central state committee, with party loyalists often being picked for the job. Members of the U.S. Congress, though, can’t be electors. Each state is allowed to choose as many electors as it has senators and representatives in Congress. The District of Columbia has 3 electors. During a presidential election year, on Election Day (the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November), the electors from the party that gets the most popular votes are elected in a winner-take-all-system, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, which allocate electors proportionally. In order to win the presidency, a candidate needs a majority of 270 electoral votes out of a possible 538.
On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a presidential election year, each state’s electors meet, usually in their state capitol, and simultaneously cast their ballots nationwide. This is largely ceremonial: Because electors nearly always vote with their party, presidential elections are essentially decided on Election Day. Although electors aren’t constitutionally mandated to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state, it is demanded by tradition and required by law in 26 states and the District of Columbia (in some states, violating this rule is punishable by $1,000 fine). Historically, over 99 percent of all electors have cast their ballots in line with the voters. On January 6, as a formality, the electoral votes are counted before Congress and on January 20, the commander in chief is sworn into office.
Critics of the Electoral College argue that the winner-take-all system makes it possible for a candidate to be elected president even if he gets fewer popular votes than his opponent. This happened in the elections of 1876, 1888 and 2000. However, supporters contend that if the Electoral College were done away with, heavily populated states such as California and Texas might decide every election and issues important to voters in smaller states would be ignored.
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January 9th, 2017
King Shizzo was banned from Getbig!
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January 9th, 2017
King Shizzo was banned from Getbig!
Truly a great day!
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(https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/17158884_10154094901911184_4470844370591540249_o.jpg?oh=20d12498bf388b25f579fedfca0cb9be&oe=59654700)
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you will be sucking dicks in hell, Shizzo :-*