1803: Lewis and Clark start their expedition from Pittsburgh at 11 o clock in the morning. 1864: During the American Civil War, Union forces led by General William T. Sherman launch an assault on Atlanta, Georgia. 1870: Maria Montessori, founder of the Montessori school of education is born.1888: Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper's known victims. 1897: Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector. 1904: Arthur Godfrey is born.1914: Richard Basehart is born.1924: Buddy Hackett is born.
1927: Bill Daily is born. He played the sidekick on I Dream of Jeannie and the neighbor on The Bob Newhart Show.1928: James Coburn is born.1935: Eldridge Cleaver, civil rights activist is born.1939: Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on a Gleiwitz radio station, giving them an excuse to attack Poland the following day. 1943: The USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named for a black person, is commissioned. It was named after Mess Attendant Leonard Roy Harmon, who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on the USS San Francisco during the battle of Guadalcanal.1945: Van Morrison is born.
1945: Itzhak Perlman is born.
1948: Actor Robert Mitchum was arrested in a Hollywood drug raid. He would later be found guilty of criminal conspiracy to possess marijuana and was sentenced to 60 days in prison.1948: Rudolf Schenker, guitarist for the Scorpions is born.
1954: Julie Brown is born.
1957: Gina Schock, drummer for The Go-Go's is born. 1963: Walter Cronkite began his stint as anchor of the CBS Evening News. 1965: The Aero Spacelines Super Guppy makes its first flight.1970: Debbie Gibson is born. 1997: Diana, Princess of Wales and her companion Dodi Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul died as a result of a car crash in Paris.
1797: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, is born.1800: Gabriel Prosser leads a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia1813: Creek Red Sticks Indians carry out the Fort Mims Massacre. 1835: Melbourne, Australia is founded. 1862: At the Battle of Richmond, Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout a Union army under General Horatio Wright. 1862: Union forces are defeated in Second Battle of Bull Run. 1873: Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic Sea.
View Larger Map 1893: Huey Long, populist Governor of Louisiana is born. His nickname was The Kingfish and his motto was "Every man a King." Many people think that he was the one person who could have brought about a Communist regime in the US, but I have my doubts about that. In any event, he wound up getting assassinated on September 8, 1935 by Dr. Carl Weiss in the lobby of the Louisiana State House for reasons that are still unclear.1905: Ty Cobb makes his major league debut with the Detroit Tigers.1906: Joan Blondell is born. She was a sexpot in pre-Hayes Code Hollywood.1908: Fred MacMurray is born. He is best known for playing the dad on My Three Sons, but check out his performance sometime as a real scumbag in The Caine Mutiny.
1909: The Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott. 1918: Ted Williams is born.1918: Fanya Kaplan, an assassin, shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror. 1919: Kitty Wells is born. She is considered the Queen of Country Music.
1935: John Phillips, of The Mamas and the Papas is born.
1941: Ben Jones is born. He played Cooter on The Dukes of Hazzard. 1941: The Siege of Leningrad begins 1943: Robert Crumb is born.1944: Molly Ivins is born.1944: Tug McGraw is born. He's the guy who said, during the 1973 pennant race, "Ya gotta believe!"1945: General Douglas MacArthur arrives in Japan to set up the Allied occupation headquarters. 1946: Peggy Lipton is born. 1956: The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana opens.1963: The hotline between U.S. and Soviet leaders goes into operation. 1967: Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court.1972: Cameron Diaz is born.1974 A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan. 8 are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities. 1984: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
708: Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time. 1521: The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár, now known as Belgrade. 1526: At the Battle of Mohács, the Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.1541: The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom. 1786: Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens. 1811: Henry Bergh, founder of American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is born.1825: Portugal recognizes the Independence of Brazil. 1831: Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.1833: The United Kingdom legislates the abolition of slavery in its empire. 1869: The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first rack railway.1876: Charles F. Kettering is born. Among his more than 300 patents are the electric starting motor for cars and leaded gasoline. 1885: Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle. 1898: The Goodyear tire company is founded. 1898: Preston Sturges is born. He was pioneer of the screwball comedy. 1910: Japan changes Korea's name to Cho-sen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony. 1915: Ingrid Bergman is born. Who couldn't feel for Rick when he told her "you're getting on that plane."
1917: Isabel Sanford is born. She played Weezy on The Jeffersons.1920: Charlie Parker is born.
1923: Richard Attenborough is born.1928: Charles Gray is born. He played Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever and The Criminologist in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
1930: The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.
View Larger Map 1938: Elliot Gould is born. 1939: William Friedkin is born. He directed The Exorcist and The French Connection.
1939: Joel Schumacher is born. These days, he's best known for torpedoing the Tim Burton-era Batman movies below the waterline. But he also did The Lost Boys which is still a heck of a movie. 1941: Robin Leach, host of Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous is born. 1944: The Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis. 1958: United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 1958: Michael Jackson is born. He's hit a rough patch (to put it mildly) but Thriller is still one of the greatest albums of the 1980's.
1959: Rebecca De Mornay is born.1966: The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. 1991: The Supreme Soviet suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
1189: The Crusaders begin the Siege of Acre under Guy of Lusignan 1349: 6,000 Jews are killed in Mainz, Germany, accused of being the cause of the plague. 1565: St. Augustine, Florida, established. It is the oldest surviving European settlement in the United States. 1592: George Villers, 1st Duke of Buckingham is born. He was pals (some say lovers) with James I of England. After Jimmy died, George took up with Jimmy's son Charles I. Interpret "took up" as you will. Everybody hated Buckingham except for Charles mostly because Bucky was showered with gifts, money, titles and land but also because he was an astonishingly inept military commander. When Buckingham wound up mysteriously stabbed to death Charles took great offense at the spontaneous national celebration that took place. 1609: Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay. 1640: King Charles I's English army loses to a Scottish Covenanter force at the Battle of Newburn. 1828: Leo Tolstoy is born.1830: The Tom Thumb presages the first railway service in the United States.1845: Scientific American magazine publishes its first issue. 1859: A geomagnetic storm causes the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly that it is seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe, and even as further afield as Japan. 1862: Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the battle of Second Manassas takes place.1867: The United States occupies Midway Island.
View Larger Map 1898: Caleb Bradham renames his carbonated soft drink "Pepsi-Cola".1907: UPS is founded by James E. Casey in Seattle, Washington. 1917: Ten suffragists are arrested when picketing the White House. 1917: Jack Kirby "The King" is born. He is arguably one of the most influential writers and artists in comic books. He was the co-creator of The Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and the Silver Surfer - and that's just for Marvel. Cataloging his work on the New Gods series for DC would take up a whole blog unto itself. This is what Gil Kane had to say about his influence:
Everybody recognized Jack's contribution to comics generally and to Marvel specifically, in the same way they recognize that God created the heavens and the Earth... it wasn't merely that Jack conceived most of the characters that are being done, but more than that - Jack's point of view and philosophy of drawing became the governing philosophy of the entire publishing company and, beyond the publishing company, of the entire field... In order to broaden the scope of their publishing, what they managed to do was to take Jack and use him as a primer. They [Marvel] would get artists, regardless of whether they had done romance or anything else and they taught them the ABCs, which amounted to learning Jack Kirby. So, whether it was John Romita, whether it was anyone who ultimately joined the company, Jack was used as the yardstick by which they could measure their own progress. Jack was like the Holy Scripture and they simply had to follow him without deviation. That's what was told to me... it was how they taught everyone to reconcile all those opposing attitudes to one single master point of view.
1921: Nancy Kulp is born. She played the efficient Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies.
1924: Georgian opposition stages the August Uprising against the Soviet Union. 1937: Toyota Motors becomes an independent company. 1955: Emmett Till, a black teen-ager from Chicago, is abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss., by two white men after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. He was found murdered three days later.1957: Daniel Stern is born. 1961: Motown releases what would be its first number one hit, "Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes.
1963: During a 200,000-person civil rights rally in at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
1963: Jennifer Coolidge is born. She is best known for playing "Stifler's Mom," the consummate MILF in the American Pie movies, but she's also a regular player in Christopher Guest's movies.1965: Shania Twain is born. 1968: Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention. 1968: Billy Boyd is born. He played Pippin in the Lord of the Rings movies.1981: The National Centers for Disease Control announce a high incidence of Pneumocystis and Kaposi's sarcoma in gay men. Soon, these will be recognized as symptoms of an immune disorder, which will be called AIDS.
1776: Battle of Long Island, in present day Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeat Americans under General George Washington. 1813: Napoleon defeats the Austrians, Russians and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden. 1859: Petroleum discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania. It is the world's first successful oil well. 1896: Anglo-Zanzibar War: the shortest war in world history (09:00 to 09:45) between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar. 1906: Ed Gein, serial killer is born. 1908: Lyndon B. Johnson is born.1916: Martha Raye is born. 1929: Ira Levin is born. He wrote Deathtrap, The Boys From Brazil and Rosemary's Baby. 1932: Antonia Fraser is born. She wrote the definitive biography of Mary, Queen of Scots. 1939: First flight of the Heinkel He 178, the first modern jet aircraft. 1942: Daryl Dragon, the Captain of Captain & Tennille is born.
1945: GW Bailey is born. He played Sgt. Rizzo on Mash and the wicked drill sergeant in the Police Academy movies.1947: Barbara Bach, Bond girl and Mrs. Ringo Starr, is born.1950: Charles Fleischer is born. He provided the voice of Roger Rabbit.
1952: Paul Reubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman is born.
1953: Alex Lifeson, guitarist for Rush, is born. 1953: Peter Stomare is born. He is most famous for playing the quiet and ruthless killer Gaear Grimsrud in Fargo. 1963: "Downtown" Julie Brown is born.1972: Mike Smith is born. He plays Bubbles on Trailer Park Boys. 1979: An IRA bomb kills Lord Mountbatten and 3 others on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Another near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland kills 18 British soldiers.2003: Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing approximately 34,646,416 miles from Earth.
1346: During the Hundred Years' War, The military supremacy of the English longbow over the French combination of crossbow and armored knights is established at the Battle of Crécy. 1498: Michelangelo is commissioned to carve the Pietà. It depicts Mary cradling the body of Christ after the crucifixion.It has become one of the most used images in comic books since it was used to depict the death of Supergirl in Crisis on Infinite Earths:1740: Joseph Montgolfier, inventor of the hot air balloon is born.1768: The HMS Bark Endeavour expedition under Captain James Cook sets sail from England. 1789: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by Constituent Assembly at Palace of Versailles. 1839: The slave ship Amistad is captured off Long Island. 1883: Krakatoa erupts.1910: Mother Teresa is born. 1914: During World War I, the Germans defeat the Russians in Battle of Tannenberg, a decisive engagement which resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian 2nd Army. 1920: Brant Parker, co-creator of The Wizard of Id, is born. 1920: The 19th amendment to United States Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote. 1935: Geraldine Ferraro is born. 1936: Yvette Vickers is born. She played the trampy girl who gets a gruesome comeuppance in Attack of the Giant Leeches.1939: The first Major League Baseball game is telecast, a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, in Brooklyn, New York. 1940: Don LaFontaine is born. If you've seen a movie trailer in the last 30 years, odds are you've heard his voice.
1941: Chris Curtis, drummer for The Searchers, is born.
1952: Michael Jeter is born. He was great in one of my favorite moves, The Fisher King.
1980: Chris Pine is born. He is playing James T. Kirk in the upcoming Star Trek reboot.1987: Ronald Reagan proclaims September 11, 1987 as 9-1-1 Emergency Number Day. 1996: Bill Clinton signs welfare reform into law, representing major shift in US welfare policy.
1537: The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed. 1609: Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers. 1718: Hundreds of French colonists arrive in Louisiana, with some of them settling in present-day New Orleans. 1768: James Cook begins his first voyage. 1819: Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, is born. They're still around, but I bet they're not the hired goons (Hired goons?) they were in their strikebreaking days.1835: The New York Sun perpetrates the Great Moon Hoax, involving life on the moon including bison, goats, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers and bat-like winged humanoids. 1894: Shibasaburo Kitasato discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.1909: Michael Rennie is born. He is most famous for playing the alien visitor Klaatu in The Day The Earth Stood Still.
1910: Yellow Cab is founded. 1912: The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded. 1913: Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, is born.1916: The United States National Park Service is created. 1916: Van Johnson is born. He's a real actor having appeared in movies like The Caine Mutiny but I remember him best as the pouty newspaper columnist in the MST3K episode San Francisco International. He was, apparently, as gay as Paris in the spring, which I wasn't aware of. 1918: Leonard Bernstein is born.1919: George Wallace is born. He was governor of Alabama and a bigot in ways that we can barely comprehend these days. Towards the end of his life he underwent a "Road to Damascus" type conversion. His most famous quote is:
I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!
1921: The first skirmishes of the Battle of Blair Mountain occur. This was the largest organized armed uprising in American labor history and led almost directly to the labor laws currently in effect in the United States. 1921: Monty Hall is born.
1930: Sean Connery is born. My saintly mother has raised an eyebrow at the number of cheesecake pictures I was posting, so here's something for the ladies.1931: Regis Philbin is born. 1933: Tom Skerritt is born. 1938: Frederick Forsyth is born. He wrote The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa file. 1944: Paris is liberated by the Allies. 1944: Anthony Heald is born. He is best known for portraying Hannibal Lecter's smarmy jail nemesis, Dr. Frederick Chilton in The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon.1945: Ten days after World War II ended with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China killed Baptist missionary John Birch, He is regarded by a portion of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War. 1946: Rollie Fingers, relief pitcher from the 70's and 80's is born. He's one of the few people outside of the 19th Century who could really make a handlebar mustache work.1948: The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. 1949: John Savage is born. He played the eye-spinningly crazy Captain Ransom in the Star Trek: Voyager episode Equinox. 1949: Gene Simmons of KISS is born.1950: President Harry Truman orders the US Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike. 1954: Elvis Costello is born.
1958: Tim Burton is born.1962: David Packer is born. He played the human traitor to the lizard overlords in the epic 80's miniseries V.1968: Rachel Ray is born. Everybody hates her these days, but I think she's just as cute as a button. She still doesn't make my short list of wives for my polygamy ranch. I think she would say "yum-o" one too many times and I'd sic Tina Fey on her.1975: The album "Born to Run" is released by Bruce Springsteen.
1888: Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper's known victims.
1914: Richard Basehart is born.
1924: Buddy Hackett is born.
1928: James Coburn is born.
1935: Eldridge Cleaver, civil rights activist is born.
1939: Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on a Gleiwitz radio station, giving them an excuse to attack Poland the following day..jpg)
1945: Van Morrison is born.
1948: Rudolf Schenker, guitarist for the Scorpions is born.
1970: Debbie Gibson is born.
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