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.

Today in History, 11/27

1295: The first elected representatives from Lancashire were called to Westminster by King Edward I to attend what later became known as "The Model Parliament".
1701: Andres Celsius is born. He invented the temperature scale that bears his name.1703: The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703.1901: U.S. Army War College is established.
1910: New York's Pennsylvania Station opens.1924: In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.
1934: Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI.1940: Bruce Lee is born.

1942: At Toulon, the French navy scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of Nazi hands.
1942: Jimi Hendrix is born.

1953: Curtis Armstrong is born.1954: Patricia McPherson is born. She played the lovely mechanic Bonnie Barstow on Knight Rider.1954: Kimmy Robertson is born.

1955: Bill Nye, science guy, is born.

1966: Andy Merrill is born. He provides the voice of Brak on The Brak Show.

1973: The Senate votes 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned.


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, 11/26

1476: Vlad "The Impaler" Dracula defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Bathory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time. I bet he relaxed afterwards by having somebody impaled. 1778: In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.
1789: A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress.
1910: Cyril Cusack is born. He was in dozens of movies, but I remember him as the duplicitous Charrington in the 1984 version of Nineteen Eighty Four.
1922: Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun in over 3000 years.
1922: Charles M. Schulz is born.1933: Robert Goulet is born.

1938: Rich Little is born.

1939: Tina Turner is born.

1942: President Roosevelt orders nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning December 1
The A sticker is lowest priority and gets you 3-4 gallons a week. Yikes!
The B sticker was issued to workers in war-related industry. They got 8 gallons a week.
C stickers were given to those deemed "essential" to the war effort, like doctors.
T stickers were for truckers.
Finally the S (or sometimes X) sticker was for high priority people like police and civil defense workers. They got unlimited supplies. A minor scandal broke out when 200 Congressmen mysteriously wound up with X stickers. 1942: Casablanca has its world premiere in New York City.

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, 11/25

1120: The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of Henry I of England.
1177: The siege of Granada, last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins.
1542: Battle of Solway Moss. The English army defeats the Scots.
1703: The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, reaches its peak intensity which it maintains through November 27. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people perish in the mighty gale.
1758: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is founded.
1783: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
1835: Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist and philanthropist who led the expansion of the American steel industry, is born.1846: Carrie Nation, temperance advocate, is born.1864: A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.
1867: Alfred Nobel patents dynamite.
1874: The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.
1876: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.
1914: Joe DiMaggio is born.1920: Ricardo Montalban is born.1926: Jeffery Hunter is born. He played Captian Christopher Pike in the first pilot of Star Trek.

1940: First flight of the deHavilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder.1941: Percy Sledge is born.

1944: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's store in Deptford, United Kingdom, killing 160 shoppers.
1944: Ben Stein is born.

1947: John Larroquette is born.

1947: Tracy Walter is born.
1950: The "Storm of the Century", a violent snowstorm, paralyzes the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, records 57 inches of snow. 323 people die due to the storm.
1950: The People's Republic of China joins the Korean War, sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river border to fight United Nations forces.
1963: President John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.1971: Christina Applegate is born. She played the easy sister on Married With Children.

1984: 36 top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

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, 11/24

1784: Zachary Taylor, 12th President of the United States is born.1853: Bat Masterson, gunfighter, is born.1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1863: The Battle of Lookout Mountain takes place near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.
1916: Forry Ackerman is born. He is the founder of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and runs a massive museum in Hollywood. Giving him a walk on part is almost required for low-budget B monster pictures.1916: Irwin Allen, creator of the modern disaster picture is born. Here's the trailer for The Towering Inferno.

1925: Conservative lion, William F. Buckley, Jr. is born.1932: In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
1941: Pete Best is born.1942: Billy Connolly is born.

1947: Dwight Schultz is born. He played "Howlin' Mad" Murdock on The A-Team and the solcially awkard Lt. Reginald Barclay on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I always liked Barclay, because he wasn't one of these perfect 24th Century Star Trek characters.

1957: Denise Crosby is born. She played the doomed Lt. Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

1960: Amanda Wyss is born. She played Beth, the cheatin' girlfriend in the movie Better Off Dead and also Woody's Indiana girlfriend on Cheers.
1963: Lee Harvey Oswald is assassinated by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters on live television.
1971: During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D.B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money - neither he nor the money have ever been found.
1978: Katherine Heigl 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, 11/23

1499: Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for attempting to escape from the Tower of London. He had invaded England in 1497, claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV of England.1644: Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship, and written by John Milton is published.
1804: Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States, is born.
1859: Billy the Kid is born.
1869: In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched - one of the last clippers ever to be built, and the only one still surviving to this day. It recently suffered a massive fire because the security guards were forging their log books and left a shop vac running for 48 hours. Nice job, guys.1876: Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.1887: Boris Karloff is born.1888: Harpo Marx is born.

1889: The first jukebox goes into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco.
1912: George O'Hanlon is born. He provided the voice of George Jetson.
1914: Michael Gough is born. He was in a ton of the trashy Hammer horror films and played Alfred the butler in all four of the original Batman movies.1936: The first edition of Life is published.
1944: Joe Eszterhas is born. His trashy movies (like Showgirls and Basic Instinct) make Joe D'Amato (Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals and Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade) look like John Ford.1951: David Rappaport is born. He was the Billy Barty of the modern age.1954: For the first time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the peak it reached just before the 1929 crash.
1963: One of the greatest shows ever, Doctor Who is first broadcast.

1979: In Dublin, Ireland, Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon is sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.


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.