Today in History, 4/5

Who would you rather hang out with: Thomas Hobbes or Roger Corman? And remind me not to get on Cubby Broccoli's bad side.
1588: Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher is born. He was of the belief that people are weak and need to be led by a strong central authority. The 20th Century took that ball and ran with it.
1614: Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe.
1621: The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth on a return trip to Great Britain.
1792: President George Washington vetoes a bill from Congress, the first time a president does that.
1804: The first recorded meteorite in Scotland falls. The Scots blame England.
1856: Educator Booker T. Washington is born.1887: British historian Lord Acton writes in a letter, "All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
1887: Annie Sullivan teaches Helen Keller the meaning of the word "water."
1900: Spencer Tracy is born.
1908: Bette Davis is born.1909: Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli is born. He produced most of the classic James Bond movies. He is also alleged, along with Wallace Beery, to have beaten comedian Ted Healy to death behind the Trocadero Night Club in Hollywood in 1937. Ted Healy's death is one of the few times that the normally taciturn Stooge Moe Howard wept openly as Healy was close friends with all the Stooges.1916: Gregory Peck is born. He was great in all his movies, but especially The Omen and North by Northwest.1926: Roger Corman is born. He is the patron saint of bad movies, having produced or directed more than 350 films mostly with very low budgets. He also gave the first big break to a number of Hollywood heavy hitters such as Jack Nicholson (Little Shop of Horrors), Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13), James Cameron (Battle Beyond the Stars), Jonathan Demme (Caged Heat), Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha) and many more.1933: Frank Gorshin is born. He is most famous for playing The Riddler on the old Batman TV show, but he was also in the classic Star Trek race parable Let That Be Your Last Battlefield where he plays the guy with black on the left side of his face and white on the right side who hates people with white on the left and black on the right. When I was ten years old, this was mind-blowing stuff.

1937: General Colin Powell is born.1942: The Japanese Navy attacks Columbo in Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) sinking the cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire.
1940: Max Gail is born. He played Detective Stan "Wojo" Wojciehowicz on Barney Miller.1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union.
1952: Mitch Pileggi is born. He played Assistant Director Skinner on The X-Files but I also remember him as a heavy in the aborted TV show Knight Rider 2000.
1954: Stan Ridgway is born. He was the lead singer for one of my favorite no-hit wonders Wall of Voodoo. Their non-hit Mexican Radio used to be my theme song when I was a college radio DJ.

1987: The Fox Network debuts.
1994: Kurt Cobain commits suicide.1998: In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshu opens. It is the largest suspension bridge in the world.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.