Today in History, 9/7

1251 BC: A solar eclipse on this date might mark the birth of legendary Heracles at Thebes, Greece.70: A Roman army under General Titus occupies and plunders Jerusalem.
1191: During the Third Crusade, at the Battle of Arsuf, Richard I of England defeats Saladin at Arsuf.
1533: Queen Elizabeth I of England is born.1776: The American submersible craft Turtle attempts to attach a time bomb to the hull of British Admiral Richard Howe's flagship HMS Eagle in New York Harbor. It is the world's first submarine attack.1822: Brazil declares its independence from Portugal.
1860: The Steamship Lady Elgin sinks on Lake Michigan, with the loss of around 400 lives.1860: Grandma Moses is born.1864: Atlanta, Georgia, is evacuated on orders of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.
1876: In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are surrounded by an angry mob and are nearly killed.
1901: The Boxer Rebellion in China officially ends with the signing of the Boxer Protocol.
1909: Elia Kazan is born.
1909: Eugene Lefebvre, while test piloting a new French-built Wright biplane, crashes at Juvisy France when his controls jam. Lefebvre dies, becoming the first pilot in the world to lose his life in a powered-heavier-than-air-craft.
1911: French poet Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and put in jail on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum.
1912: David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett Packard is born.1915: Former cartoonist Johnny Gruelle is given a patent for his Raggedy Ann doll.
1921: In Atlantic City, New Jersey, the first Miss America Pageant is held.
1923: Peter Lawford, second string member of the Rat Pack is born.1927: The first fully electronic television system is achieved by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.
1936: The last surviving member of the thylacine species dies at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.1936: Buddy Holly is born.

1937: John Phillip Law is born. He's most famous for playing the Angel in Barbarella, but he's been in far, far worse movies than that.1940: The Blitz begins as Nazi Germany begins to rain bombs on London. This will be the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing.
1942: First flight of the Consolidated B-32 Dominator. It was developed as a fallback design to the B-29 Superfortess and didn't get delivered to the Pacific Theater until summer of 1945 - too late to be of any use.1943: The German 17th Army begins its evacuation of the Kuban River (Taman Peninsula) bridgehead in southern Russia and moves across the Strait of Kerch to the Crimea. The move signals the beginning of full retreat of German forces along the Eastern Front.
1945: Japanese forces on Wake Island, which they had held since December of 1941, surrender to U.S. Marines.
1949: Gloria Gaynor is born. She did the song "I Will Survive."

1950: Julie Kavner is born. She provides the voice of Marge Simpson.1951: Chrissie Hynde, guitarist and singer for The Pretenders, is born.

1953: Nikita Khrushchev becomes head of the Soviet Central Committee.1954: Corbin Bernsen is born.
1973: Shannon Elizabeth from American Pie is born.1978: While walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is assassinated by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Giullino by means of a ricin pellet fired from in a specially-designed umbrella.
1979: The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) makes its debut.
1979: The Chrysler Corporation asks the United States government for USD $1 billion to avoid bankruptcy.
1997: The first test flight of the F-22 Raptor takes place.1998: Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University

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, 9/6

3114 BC: According to the proleptic Julian calendar the current era in the Maya Long Count Calendar started.
1492: Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic for the first time.
1522: The Victoria, one of the surviving ships of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.
1620: The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower to settle in North America.
1628: Puritans settle Salem, which will later become part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1861: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant bloodlessly capture Paducah, Kentucky, which gives the Union control of the mouth of the Tennessee River.
1888: Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr, Kennedy family patriarch, is born.1893: Claire Chennault is born. He commanded the Flying Tigers during WWII.1901: Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.1925: Jimmy Reed, electric blues pioneer, is born.

1928: Robert M. Pirsig is born. He wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.1937: Sergio Aragones is born. He does those great little cartoons in the margins of Mad Magazine.1937: Jo Anne Worley is born.

1939: David Allen Coe is born. He wrote the proletarian anthem "Take This Job And Shove It."

1943: Roger Waters of Pink Floyd is born.
1944: Swoosie Kurtz is born.
1947: Jane Curtain is born.

1949: Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control.
1949: A former sharpshooter in World War II, Howard Unruh kills 13 neighbors in Camden, New Jersey, with a souvenir Luger to become the first U.S. single-episode mass murderer.
1958: Jeff Foxworthy is born.
1958: Michael Winslow is born. He's the sound effects guy from the Police Academy movies!

1964: Rosie Perez is born.1966: In Cape Town, South Africa, the architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death during a parliamentary meeting.
1976: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido- in Japan and requests political asylum in the United States.
1991: The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia's second largest city, which had been renamed Leningrad in 1924.
1995: Cal Ripken Jr of the Baltimore Orioles plays in his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking a record that stood for 56 years.

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, 9/5

1698: In an effort to move his people away from archaic customs, Tsar Peter I (aka Peter the Great) of Russia imposes a tax on beards.1774: The First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1793: During the French Revolution, the French National Convention initiates the Reign of Terror.
1800: Malta is conquered by Great Britain.
1836: Sam Houston is elected as the second president of the Republic of Texas.1839: The First Opium War begins in China.
1877: Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse is bayoneted by a United States soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson in Nebraska. If I had the money, I would have that big statue of him finished.1882: The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City.
1902: Darryl F. Zanuck is born. He is one of the co-founders of 20th Century Fox.
1905: In New Hampshire the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt, ends the Russo-Japanese War.
1906: The first legal forward pass in American football is thrown by Bradbury Robinson of St. Louis University to teammate Jack Schneider in a 22-0 victory over Carroll College (Wisconsin).
1912: Frank Thomas is born. He was one of Disney's "Nine Old Men" of animation. Chuck Jones called him "the Laurence Olivier of animation."

1914: During World War I, the First Battle of the Marne begins. Northeast of Paris, the French attack and defeat German forces who are advancing on the capital.
1929: Bob Newhart is born.

1939: The United States declares its neutrality in World War II.
1940: Racquel Welch is born.1942: Japanese high command orders withdrawal at Milne Bay, the first Japanese defeat in the Pacific War.
1945: Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist Tokyo Rose, is arrested in Yokohama.1946: Freddie Mercury is born.1946: Loudon Wainwright III is born.1950: Cathy Guisewite, creator of the Cathy comic strip is born. Ack!1951: Michael Keaton is born.1969: U.S. Army Lt. William Calley is charged with six specifications of premeditated murder for the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre.
1972: A Palestinian terrorist group called "Black September" murders 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games.
1973: Rose McGowan is born.1975: A follower of incarcerated cult leader Charles Manson, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempts to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, CA.
1980: The St. Gotthard Tunnel opens in Switzerland as the world's longest highway tunnel at 10.14 miles stretching from Goschenen to Airolo.


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, 8/4

1781: Los Angeles, California, is founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula (the City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of the Little Portion) by 44 Spanish settlers.
1862: General Lee takes the Army of Northern Virginia, and the war, into the North.
1870: Emperor Napoleon III of France is deposed and the Third Republic is declared.1884: Britain ends its policy of penal transportation to New South Wales in Australia.
1886: After almost 30 years of fighting, Apache leader Geronimo surrenders with his remaining warriors to General Nelson Miles in Arizona.
1888: George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak, and receives a patent for his camera which uses roll film.1894: In New York City, 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions.
1913: Mickey Cohen, gangster, is born.1918: Paul Harvey is born. Page 2!1919: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the Republic of Turkey, gathers a congress in Sivas to take decisions of the future of Anatolia and Thrace.1927: John McCarthy is born. He invented the term "Artificial Intelligence."
1932: Dinsdale Landen is born. He played the wheelchair-bound genius Dr. Judson in the Doctor Who episode The Curse of Fenric.1940: A German submarine makes the first attack of World War II against a United States ship (the USS Greer) despite US neutrality.
1951: The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, California, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.
1956: The IBM RAMAC 305 is introduced. It is the first commercial computer that uses magnetic disk storage. It had a storage capacity of about 4 megabytes.1957: Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls out the National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling in Central High School in Little Rock. Here he is in his controversial appearance on Match Game '56. 1957: Khandi Alexander is born. She played Catherine Duke on Newsradio.
1957: Patricia Tallman is born. She played the altogether more useful version of Barbara in the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead.
1957: The Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel.
1964: Scotland's Forth Road Bridge, spanning the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, officially opens.1968: John DiMaggio is born. He provided the voice of Bender on Futurama.


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, 9/3

301: San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world's oldest republic still in existence, is founded by Saint Marinus.

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1181: Richard I of England (a.k.a. Richard the Lionheart) is crowned at Westminster.1260: The Mamluks defeat the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, marking their first decisive defeat and the point of maximum expansion of the Mongol Empire.
1658: During a raging tempest, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England dies.1777: The Flag of the United States is flown in battle for the first time at the Cooch's Bridge skirmish.
1783: The American Revolution ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1838: Dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a Free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery.1855: In Nebraska, 700 soldiers under American General William S. Harney avenge the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village, killing 100 men, women, and children.
1861: Confederate General Leonidas Polk invades neutral Kentucky, prompting the state legislature to ask for Union assistance.
1910: Kitty Carlisle, perpetual game show panelist, is born.

1913: Alan Ladd is born.
1923: Mort Walker is born. He is best known for creating Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois. Did you know that Lois Flagston is Beetle Bailey's sister?
1929: The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches all time high at the time (381.17), which was shortly followed by the Crash of 1929.
1931: Albert DeSalvo, The Boston Strangler, is born.
1933: Yevgeniy Abalakov reaches the highest point of the Soviet Union - Communism Peak. (24,985 feet) The name was changed to Ismoil Somoni Peak in 1998.1935: Sir Malcolm Campbell reaches 304.331 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over 300 mph.1938: Eileen Brennan is born.
1939: World War II begins when France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland,
1943: Mainland Italy is invaded by Allied forces for the first time in World War II.
1943: Valerie Perrine is born. She played Lux Luthor's moll Miss Teschmacher in the first Superman movie.1954: The German U-Boat U-505 began its move from a specially constructed dock to its final site at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
1955: Steve Jones, guitarist for The Sex Pistols, is born.
1959: Merritt Butrick is born. He played Captain Kirk's ill-fated son in the Star Trek movies.1965: Charlie Sheen is born.
1976: The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars.
1995: eBay is founded.

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, 9/2

1666: The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings including St. Paul's Cathedral. Scholars now know that it was started by The Doctor when he allowed a Tereleptil weapon to overload in the back of a bakery in Pudding Lane in the episode The Visitation.
1752: The United Kingdom adopts the Gregorian Calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe. The Gregorian Calendar was invented by Pope Greg (or something like that) and Britain resisted it furiously for being a Papist plot.
1789: The United States Department of the Treasury is founded.
1792: During what became known as the September Massacres of the French Revolution, rampaging mobs slaughter three Roman Catholic Church bishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to be royalist sympathizers.
1807: The Royal Navy bombards Copenhagen with fire bombs and phosphorus rockets to prevent Denmark from surrendering its fleet to Napoleon.
1838: Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii is born.1863: President Abraham Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Second Bull Run.
1885: In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners, who were struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack their Chinese fellow workers, killing 28, wounding 15, and forcing several hundred more out of town.
1901: Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
1925: The zeppelin the USS Shenandoah crashes, killing 14.1939: Following the invasion of Poland, Freie Stadt Danzig Danzig (now Gdan'sk, Poland) is annexed to Nazi Germany.
1944: Navy pilot George H.W. Bush is shot down by Japanese forces as he completes a bombing run over the Bonin Islands.1945: Combat in World War II ends in the Pacific Theater: The final official surrender of Japan is accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.1963: CBS Evening News becomes U.S. network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.
1963: Alabama Governor George C. Wallace prevents the integration of Tuskegee High School by encircling the building with state troopers
1964: Keanu Reeves is born.

1966: Selma Hayek is born.1967: The Principality of Sealand is established, ruled by Prince Paddy Roy Bates. This is one of the most famous (and bizarre) micronations on Earth.1969: The first automatic teller machine in the United States is installed in Rockville Center, New York.

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, 9/1

1715: King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years—the longest of any major European monarch.1752: The Liberty Bell arrives in Philadelphia.1804: Juno, one of the largest main belt asteroids, was discovered by German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding.
1807: Former US Vice President Aaron Burr is acquitted of treason.1836: Narcissa Whitman, one of the first white women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington. She would wind up getting killed by natives in the Whitman Massacre of 1847.
1859: A solar superstorm disrupts electrical telegraph service.
1864: Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuates Atlanta, Georgia after a four-month siege by General Sherman.1875: A murder conviction effectively forces the violent Irish anti-owner coal miners, the "Molly Maguires", to disband.
1875: Edgar Rice Burroughs is born.1894: The Great Hinckley Fire in Hinckley, Minnesota kills more than 400 people.
1897: The Boston subway opens, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.
1902: A Trip to the Moon, considered one of the first science fiction films, is released in France.

1914: The last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.1922: Yvonne De Carlo is born. She played Lily Munster on The Munsters.1923: Rocky Marciano is born.1929: Anne Ramsey is born. She played Momma in Throw Momma From the Train.

1931: Boxcar Willie is born - allegedly! Saavy conspiracy theorists know that he's really a shape-shifting lizard bent on world domination.

1933: Conway Twitty is born. As far as anyone knows, he's 100% human.1937: Ron O'Neal is born. He played the main character Youngblood Priest in Superfly.1939: Lily Tomlin is born.

1939: Nazi Germany attacks Poland, beginning World War II.
1939: George C. Marshall becomes Chief of Staff of the United States Army.
1942: C.J. Cherryh, science fiction author is born.
1969: A revolution in Libya brings Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi to power.
1972: In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky and becomes the world chess champion.
1974: The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London: 1 hour 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds.1979: Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes the planet at a distance of 21,000 km.
1983: Korean Air Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board are killed, including US Congressmen Lawrence McDonald.
1985: A joint American-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic.

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.