No pics today - the network connection is on the fritz.
356 BC: Alexander the Great is born.
1304: More Wars of Scottish Independence, this time back at the beginning. King Edward I (aka Longshanks, aka The Hammer of the Scots) takes Stirling Castle, the last rebel stronghold of the war.
1714: The Riot Act comes into effect in Great Britain. This gives the authorities the ability to declare that any group of more than twelve people constitutes a riot and to punish them accordingly. Authorities were, however, required to read the proclamation to the crowd and give them ten minutes to disperse. This is where our modern phrase "reading the riot act" came from.
1738: French explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan.
1822: Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, is born.
1864: At the Battle of Peachtree Creek, near Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate forces led by General John Bell Hood unsuccessfully attack Union troops under General William T. Sherman.
1881: Sioux Chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to US troops at Fort Buford, North Dakota
1903: The Ford Motor Company ships its first car.
1917: The World War I draft lottery begins.
1919: Sir Edmund Hillary is born.
1921: Air Mail service begins between New York and San Francisco.
1924: Teheran, Persia comes under martial law after the American vice consul, Robert Imbrie, is killed by a religious mob enraged by rumors he had poisoned a fountain pen and killed several people.
1932: In Washington, DC tear gas is fired upon unruly members of the Bonus Expeditionary Force who attempt to march on the White House.
1938: Diana Rigg is born. As Emma Peel on The Avengers, she taught a generation of young men why cat suits are important.
1938: Natalie Wood is born.
1938: The Justice Department files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of anti-trust law. The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.
1944: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is nominated for a fourth term.
1944: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt (known as the July 20 Plot) led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg brought a bomb in a briefcase into a conference room with Hitler, then made up an excuse to leave. The briefcase was in Hitler's way, so he moved it to the other side of the conference table leg. The table, being of stout German construction, absorbed most of the blast and Hitler lived.
1946: The US Congress's Pearl Harbor Committee says Franklin D. Roosevelt was completely blameless for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and calls for a unified command structure in the armed forces.
1947: Carlos Santana is born. Here is in in 1971 doing the classic Oye Como Va.
1947: Lord Mountbatten, the Viceroy of India declares that the citizens of the Northwest Province of India overwhelmingly voted to join the new state of Pakistan.
1948: Muse Watson is born. He played the vengeful Gorton's fisherman in the just terrible I Know What You Did Last Summer and the even worse I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. But not in I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, which is so bad even I haven't seen it. Yet. It's in my Netflix queue.
1956: Paul Cook, drummer for The Sex Pistols, is born. He was one of maybe two of the Sex Pistols who actually knew how to play his instrument. Glen Matlock knew how to play the bass, but he was thrown under the bus in favor of Sid Vicious. I can't remember if Steve Jones knew how to play or not.
1957: Donna Dixon is born. She was the unattainable love interest for Tom Hanks (or maybe Peter Scolari - I can't remember) in Bosom Buddies and generic eye-candy in Spies Like Us. She's Mrs. Dan Aykroyd these days.
1960: The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
1969: Apollo 11 successfully lands the first man on the Moon.
1971: The Soviet Union says it will support the People's Republic of China's admission to the United Nations.
1973: The US Senate passes the War Powers Act.
1976: The Viking 1 robot lands on Mars.
1977: The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments.
1980: Giselle Bundchen 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.
