Today in History, 12/7

Hi Gang - Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of this blog. I'd like to thank everyone for reading it and giving me so much support. I've learned a lot just by writing it every day. I'm going to take a few weeks off (till Jan 1) and then come back with some new stuff. I'm going to retire the "Today in History" thing because I've gone through the year and there's not much else to say. (Fun fact: I called it "Today in History" rather than "This Day in History" because The History Channel already has a feature called that and I was concerned that Roger Mudd and Edward "Ed" Herrmann were going to show up at my door and kick the snot out of me.) In January, I'm going to start a "Spotlight on This Day in History" (hopefully I can think of a better name) where I do a little essay on a certain event from that day. Maybe some other stuff too.
Have a happy holiday and thanks for reading!

1545: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, consort of Mary I of Scotland, is born.1696: Connecticut Route 108, one of the oldest highways in the U.S. is completed to Trumbull.
1776: Marquis de Lafayette attempts to enter the American military as a major general.
1787: Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the US Constitution.
1863: Richard Sears, American department store founder, is born.1915: Eli Wallach is born. He played Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but he's been in a ton of other stuff.

1917: The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary.
1923: Ted Knight is born.

1928: Noam Chomsky is born.1930: W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts broadcasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The broadcast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.
1941: The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the US Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1942: Harry Chapin is born.

1947: Johnny Bench is born.1949: Tom Waits is born.

1963: Videotaped instant replay is used for the first time in a live sports telecast as CBS re-showed a touchdown run during the Army-Navy football game.
1972: Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as "The Blue Marble" as they leave the Earth.

Click for larger image.

1982: In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.
1988: Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 12/6

1240: During the Mongol invasion of Russia, Kiev falls to the Mongols under Batu Khan.
1608: George Monck is born. He's the English general who decided that, after the disastrous reign of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector, the Stuarts really needed to be restored to the throne.1648: Colonel Pride of the New Model Army purges the Long Parliament of MPs sympathetic to King Charles I of England, in order for the King's trial to go ahead.
1768: The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.
1790: The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia.
1849: American abolitionist Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.1865: The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, banning slavery.
1877: The first edition of the Washington Post is published.
1884: The Washington Monument is completed.
1896: Ira Gershwin is born.

1900: Agnes Moorehead is born. She is most famous for playing Endora on Bewitched but she was in tons of movies too.1907: The worst mining disaster in U.S. history occurrs as 362 men and boys die in a coal mine explosion in Monongah, W.Va.
1917: A munitions explosion kills more than 1900 people and destroys part of the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
1923: A presidential address is broadcast on radio for the first time as President Calvin Coolidge speaks to a joint session of Congress.
1924: Wally Cox is born.
1933: U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that the James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not obscene.
1941: Richard Speck, mass murderer, is born.
1953: Tom Hulce is born.

1955: Steven Wright is born.

1957: A launchpad explosion of Vanguard TV3 thwarts the first United States attempt to launch a satellite into Earth orbit.
1958: Nick Park, creator of Wallace & Gromit is born.

1962: Janine Turner is born. I worshiped the ground she walked upon on Northern Exposure. Hell, I still do. Here she is on Arsenio back in 1990.

1969: Meredith Hunter is killed by the Hells Angels during a The Rolling Stones's concert at the Altamont Speedway in California.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 12/5

1360: The French Franc is created.
1484: Pope Innocent VIII issues the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and leads to one of the severest witch hunts in European history.
1766: In London, James Christie holds his first sale.
1775: At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1782: Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United States is born.
1791: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies in Vienna at age 35.
1831: Former US President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives.
1839: George Armstrong Custer is born.
1848: In a message before the U.S. Congress, US President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.
1879: Clyde Cessna, airplane manufacturer, is born.
1890: Fritz Lang is born.
1901: Walt Disney is born.
1906: Otto Preminger is born.
1926: Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin premieres.
1932: Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.
1932: Little Richard is born.
1933: Prohibition in the United States ends as Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had outlawed alcohol in the United States).
1941: In the Battle of Moscow Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre.
1955: The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge and form the AFL-CIO.
1956: Brian Backer is born. He played the nebbishy Mark Ratner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
1978: The Soviet Union signs a "friendship treaty" with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 12/4

771: Austrasian King Carloman dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne King of the now complete Frankish Kingdom.
1259: Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels.
1585: John Cotton, American Puritan leader, is born.
1619: 38 colonists from Berkeley Parish in England disembark in Virginia and give thanks to God (this is considered by many to be the first Thanksgiving in the Americas).
1674: Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek (the mission would later grow into the city of Chicago, Illinois).
1783: At Fraunces Tavern in New York City, US General George Washington formally bids his officers farewell.
1840: Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux chief, is born.
1867: Former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange).
1872: The crewless American ship Mary Celeste is found by the British brig Dei Gratia (the ship was abandoned for 9 days but was only slightly damaged).
1875: Notorious New York City politician Boss Tweed escapes from prison and flees to Cuba, then Spain.
1912: Pappy Boyington is born.
1918: President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.
1921: The Virginia Rappe manslaughter trial against Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle ends in a hung jury.
1943: President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes down the Works Progress Administration, because of the high levels of wartime employment in the United States.
1945: By a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approves United States participation in the United Nations
1949: Jeff Bridges is born.

1952: Great Smog of 1952: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow.
1954: The first Burger King is opened in Miami, Florida.
1964: Marisa Tomei is born.

1969: Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot and killed in their sleep during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers.
1971: The Montreux Casino in Switzerland is set ablaze by someone wielding a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert; the incident would be noted in the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water".
1973: Supermodel Tyra Banks is born.Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 12/3

1805: The Lewis and Clark Expedition mark their explorations from the Missouri River overland to the Columbia River on a pine tree.
1818: Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.
1826: George B. McClellan, Civil War general, is born.1857: Joseph Conrad is born.1901: President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking the Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
1917: After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.1929: President Herbert Hoover announces to the U.S. Congress that the worst effects of the recent stock market crash are behind the nation and the American people have regained faith in the economy.
1931: Jaye P. Morgan, Gong Show panelist, is born.

1947: "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams opens on Broadway.
1948: Ozzy Osbourne is born.

1960: Daryl Hannah is born1964: The Berkeley Free Speech Movement begins as police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest at the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property.
1967: The luxury train 20th Century Limited completes its last run from New York City to Chicago (the train was inaugurated on June 15, 1902).1973: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
1976: An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, but plays a concert two days later
1979: In Cincinnati, Ohio, eleven fans are killed during a stampede for seats before a Who concert at Riverfront Coliseum.
1984: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000-600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
1989: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, US President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the cold war between their nations may be coming to an end (some commentators from both nations exaggerated the wording and independently declared the Cold War over).

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 12/2

1755: The second Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed by fire.1804: At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the French, the first French Emperor in a thousand years.
1805: At the Battle of Austerlitz, French troops under Napoleon defeat a joint Russo-Austrian force.
1823: President James Monroe outlines his doctrine opposing European expansion in the Western Hemisphere.
1845: President James K. Polk announces to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West.
1859: Militant abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his October 16th raid on Harper's Ferry.
1867: In a New York City theater, British author Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the United States.
1914: Ray Walston is born.

1924: Alexander Haig is born.1927: Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, the Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A as its new automobile.
1930: President Herbert Hoover goes before the United States Congress and asks for a US$150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.
1939: New York City's La Guardia Airport opens.
1942: A team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
1954: The United States Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."
1956: The Granma yacht reaches the shores of Cuba's Oriente province and Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the 26th of July Movement disembark to initiate the Cuban Revolution.
1961: In a nationally-broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism.
1968: Lucy Liu is born.1969: The Boeing 747 jumbo jet debuts.1970: The United States Environmental Protection Agency begins operations.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 12/1

1761: Marie Tussaud, French creator of wax sculptures, is born.1824: Since no presidential candidate receives a majority of electoral college votes in the election, the House of Representatives is given the task to decide the winner (as stipulated by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution). Eventually, John Quincy Adams is chosen over Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay.
1864: In his State of the Union Address President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.
1913: The Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.
1913: Mary Martin is born. She played Peter Pan on Broadway.1918: Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom.
1933: Lou Rawls is born.

1934: In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergei Kirov is shot dead at the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad by Leonid Nikolayev. This was all the excuse Stalin needed to start a massive purge that would cost tens of millions of lives.1935: Woody Allen is born.

1937: Chuck Lowe is born. He is most famous for playing Morrie in Goodfellas.

1940: Richard Pryor is born.

1945: Bette Midler is born.

1946: Gilbert O'Sullivan is born. He is responsible for one of the worst songs ever written.

1949: Pablo Escobar, drug lord, is born.1951: Treat Williams is born.1955: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1956: Julee Cruise is born. Her haunting voice has been a favorite of David Lynch for soundtracks for years.

1959: The Antarctic Treaty is signed , which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on that continent.
1960: Paul McCartney and Pete Best are arrested and then deported from Hamburg, Germany for accusation of attempted arson.
1960: Carol Alt, supermodel, is born. This is her iconic 80's poster: 1963: The Beatles' first single, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," is released in the United States.
1970: Sarah Silverman is born. Here she is doing standup in 1992.

1981: The AIDS virus is officially recognized.
1988: Benazir Bhutto is appointed Prime Minister of Pakistan.1990: Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the seabed.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 11/30

30 BC: Cleopatra commits suicide by sticking her arm in a basket full of poisonous snakes.
1667: Johnathan Swift, Irish writer and satirist, is born. One of his more biting pieces is A Modest Proposal, about what to do with excess babies.1782: The United States and Britain sign preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.
1803: In New Orleans, Spanish representatives officially transfer Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.
1804: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase goes on trial, accused of political bias. He was acquitted by the Senate.1824: Ground is broken at Allenburg for the building of the original Welland Canal.
1829: The first Welland Canal opens for a trial run, 5 years to the day from the ground breaking. It allows ships to go from Lake Ontarion to Lake Erie without having to deal with Niagara Falls.
1935: Mark Twain is born.
1864: At the Battle of Franklin, the Army of Tennessee led by General John Bell Hood mounts a dramatically unsuccessful frontal assault on Union positions commanded by John McAllister Schofield around Franklin, Tennessee (Hood lost six generals and almost a third of his troops).
1874: Winston Churchill is born.1912: Gordon Parks is born. He was an acclaimed photographer longer before he directed the classic blaxploitation flick Shaft.
1924: Allan Sherman is born.

1929: Dick Clark is born.

1930: G. Gordon Liddy is born.1934: The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman becomes the first to officially exceed 100mph.
1936: In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.
1937: Ridley Scott is born. This is teh ad he directed for Apple back in 1984.

1940: Lucille Ball marries Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut.
1943: At the Tehran Conference, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agree to the planned June 1944 invasion of Europe code-named Operation Overlord.
1947: David Mamet is born.
1954: In Sylacauga, Alabama, the Hodges Meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap in the only documented case of a human being hit by a rock from space. She survived with a nasty bruise.
1955: Billy Idol is born. That's right, Billy Idol is 53 years old.

1965: Ben Stiller is born.

1979: One of my all-time favorite albums, The Wall by Pink Floyd is released.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 11/29

1781: The crew of the slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea in order to claim insurance.
1803: Christian Doppler, Austrian physicist, is born. He discovered the doppler effect.1831: Louisa May Alcott is born. She wrote Little Women.1847: The Whitman Massace occurs as Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed in the Oregon Territory by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War.
1864: The Sand Creek Massacre occurs as Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants inside Colorado Territory.
1890: At West Point, the United States Naval Academy defeats the United States Military Academy 24-0 in the first Army-Navy football game.
1895: Busby Berkeley, choreographer, is born.

1898: C.S. Lewis is born.1910: The first US patent for inventing the traffic lights system is issued to Ernest Sirrine.
1915: Fire destroys most of the buildings on Santa Catalina Island, California.
1915: Billy Strayhorn is born. He is the composer of Duke Ellington's "Take the A-Train."

1918: Madeleine L'Engle is born. She wrote the A Wrinkle in Time series.
1927: Vin Scully is born.1929: U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.
1939: Peter Bergman, of The Firesign Theater, is born. I don't remember which one he was, but Everything You Know is Wrong is one of my favorite albums.

1940: Chuck Mangione is born.

1947: The U.N. General Assembly passes a resolution calling for Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews
1949: Garry Shandling is born.

1952: U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfills a campaign promise by traveling to Korea to find out what can be done to end the conflict.
1954: Joel Coen is born.1955: Howie Mandel is born.

1956: Leo Laporte is born.

1963: President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
1972: Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) releases Pong (the first commercially successful video game) in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.1981: Actress Natalie Wood drowns in a boating accident at age 43.Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.

Today in History, 11/28

1095: On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appoints Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land.
1489: Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV of Scotland, is born.1520: After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
1582: In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage license.
1660: At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society.1729: Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern-day Natchez, Mississippi.
1757: Romantic poet William Blake is born.1814: The Times in London is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.
1837: John Wesley Hyatt is born. He invented plastic in an effort to make a better billiard ball.
1907: In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater.
1923: Gloria Grahame is born. She played the alluring Violet Bick in It's A Wonderful Life.1927: Chuck Mitchell is born. He played Porky in the epic Porky's movie saga (Porky's, Porky's II: The Next Day and Porky's Revenge). He also played Rocko, the owner of the Pig Burger restaurant in Better Off Dead.
1929: Berry Gordy, Jr. is born. He is the founder of the Motown record label. Here's Smokey Robinson and The Miracles doing one of my favorites, Tracks of My Tears.

1942: In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 491 people.
1943: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran to discuss war strategy.
1949: Paul Shaffer is born.

1950: Ed Harris is born.1959: Judd Nelson is born. He is best known for his cavernous nostrils.1962: Jon Stewart is born.

1967: Anna Nicole Smith is born. She died before her 40th birthday. 1994: In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death by an inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.