Today in History, 7/24

1148: Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade.
1411: One of the bloodiest battles on Scottish soil, the Battle of Harlaw takes place. Surprisingly, the English had nothing to do with it - it was all inter-clan rivalry.
1567: Mary Queen of Scots is deposed and replaced by her 1 year old son James VI.
1701: Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit.1802: Alexandre Dumas, author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers is born.1832: Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass.1847: After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City.

1853: William Gillette is born in Hartford, CT. He is best known for his portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, but if you're ever in East Haddam, CT I highly recommend a stopover at his sweet pad Gillette Castle.1864: At the Battle of Kernstown, Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union army troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep them out of the Shenandoah Valley.

Jubal Early

1866: Tennessee becomes the first U.S. state to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.
1897: Amelia Earhart is born.
1911: Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu "the Lost City of the Incas."1935: The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1940: Dan Hedaya is born. He is best known for playing Nick Tortelli on Cheers.1942: Chris Sarandon is born. He played the wicked Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride and the vampire Jerry Dandridge in the 80's cult horror classic Fright Night.

1947: Robert Hays is born. He is best known for playing the beleagured Ted Striker in Airplane!

1949: Michael Richards is born. He played Kramer on Seinfeld.

1950: A V-2 rocket makes the first launch from Kennedy Space Center
1951: Lynda Carter is born. Best Wonder Woman ever.

1956: At New York City's Copacabana Club, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together which started on July 25, 1946.

1959: At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, US vice president Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have an impromptu "Kitchen Debate."1969: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
1969: Jennifer Lopez is born.1974: The United States Supreme Court unanimously rules that President Richard Nixon does not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
1981: Summer Glau is born.1983: George Brett, batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident."

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, 7/23

1632: 300 colonists bound for New France (aka Quebec) depart Old France.
1829: William Austin Burt patents the Typographer, a precursor to the typewriter.
1862: Henry W. Halleck takes command of the Union Army.1888: Raymond Chandler, author of the Philip Marlowe novels is born.
1904: The ice cream cone was invented by Charles E. Menches during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.
1914: Austria-Hungary issues an ultimatum to Serbia demanding they allow the Austrians to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. When Serbia denies Austria-Hungarian demands, mobilization for World War I begins on July 28.
1923: Another golden age sci-fi titan, Cyril Kornbluth is born.1926: Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.
1929: The fascist government in Italy bans the use of foreign words.
1933: Burt Convy is born.1938: Ronny Cox is born.1942: The Treblinka extermination camp is opened in Poland.
1961: Woody Harrelson is born.1962: Telstar relays the first live trans-Atlantic television signal.
1966: Slash, of Guns N' Roses is born.

1967: In Detroit, Michigan, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city (43 killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned).
1968: In Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization led by Ahmed Evans and the Cleveland Police Department occurred. During the shootout, a riot began that lasted for five days.
1971: Alison Kraus is born.

1972: The United States launches Landsat 1, first Earth-resources satellite.
1982: The International Whaling Commission decides to end commercial whaling by 1985-86.
1984: Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown after nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.

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, 7/22

1298: During the Wars of Scottish Independence, at the Battle of Falkirk, King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeat William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons (a band of men with outward-pointing pikes, used against cavalry charges).
1587: A second group of English settlers arrive off the coast of North Carolina to re-establish the colony of Roanoke. They would also disappear under mysterious circumstances.
1793: Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean becoming the first European to complete a transcontinental crossing north of Mexico.1796: Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio "Cleveland" after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.1849: Emma Lazarus is born. She wrote the sonnet The New Colossus, which appears on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

1864: Outside of Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate General John Bell Hood leads an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman on Bald Hill.
1882: Edward Hopper is born. He painted the iconic Nighthawks. Hopper started painting it immediately after Pearl Harbor and tried to capture the gloomy feeling that he felt had settled over the country.1889: James Whale is born. He directed such early horror classics as Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man.1890: Rose Kennedy is born.1933: Wiley Post becomes first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.1934: Outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.
1934: Louise Fletcher is born. She played the wicked Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (the movie version) and the even more wicked Kai Winn on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
1936: Tom Robbins is born.1937: The United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.
1938: Terence Stamp is born. He played General Zod in the Superman movies.

1940: Alex Trebek is born.

1940: George Clinton, of Parliament, Funkadellic, the P-Funk All Stars and Royal Funkmaster of the Known Universe is born.

1942: The United States government begins compulsory civilian gasoline rationing due to the wartime demands.1942: The systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.
1943: American forces under Patton capture Palermo, Sicily.
1943: Bobby Sherman is born.

1946: Danny Glover is born.
1947: Albert Brooks is born.

1947: Don Henley is born.1955: Willem Dafoe is born. Only his mama gets to call him "William."1964: David Spade 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, 7/21

356 BC: A young man called Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
1774: The Russo-Turkish War ends with the signing of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji. This was a humiliating blow to the once-mighty Ottoman Empire.
1861: The First Battle of Bull Run takes place at Manassass Junction, VA with a Confederate victory.
1865: In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots Dave Tutt dead in what is regarded as the first true western showdown.1873: At Adair, Iowa, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang pull off the first successful train robbery in the American West.
1899: Ernest Hemingway is born.1911: Marshall McLuhan is born.1919: The dirigible Wingfoot Air Express crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago, killing 12 people.
1924: Don Knotts is born.1926: Norman Jewison is born. He directed the original Rollerball.

1931: CBS's New York City station begins broadcasting the first regular seven days a week television schedule in the U.S.
1943: Edward Hermann is born. He played the evil head vampire in The Lost Boys and these days does voice overs for History Channel documentaries, even when not appropriate. For example, his broad Midwestern accent doesn't match well with Russia: Land of the Tsars.
1944: Tony Scott is born. He's RidleyScott's more profitable, less artsy brother. He directed Top Gun.
1946: Barry Whitwam, drummer for Herman's Hermits, is born.

1948: Yusef Islam, aka Cat Stevens, is born.

1948: Gary Trudeau is born.1951: Robin Williams is born. He he is on an old episode of Mork & Mindy guest starring a very young David Letterman.

1954: The Geneva Conference partitions Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
1957: Jon Lovitz is born. He's best known these days for beating up Andy Dick in a Los Angeles bar after Dick disparaged the memory of Phil Hartman.1960: Lance Guest, from The Last Starfighter is born.

1970: After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt is completed.1983: The world's lowest temperature is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at -129°F.
1997: The fully restored USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides") celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 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, 7/20

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.

Today in History, 7/19

1333: The final battle of the Wars of Scottish Independence takes place at Halidon Hill. England wins in overtime.
1545: One of the Royal Navy's earliest purpose-built warships, the Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth. Modern scholars think it may have been because of instability created when the number of guns was increased from 78 to 91.1692: Five women are hanged for witchcraft in Salem, MA.
1814: Samuel Colt, firearms inventor, is born in Hartford, CT.1834: Edward Degas is born.1843: The SS Great Britain is launched, becoming not only the largest ship in the world (at the time) but also the first ocean-going liner with a metal hull and screw propellers.1860: Lizzie Borden is born.
1879: Doc Holliday kills for the first time after a man shoots up his New Mexico saloon.1904: Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, the last descendant of Abraham Lincoln is born.
1912: A meteorite with an estimated mass of 418 pounds explodes over the town of Holbrook, Arizona causing approximately 16,000 pieces of debris to rain down on the town.
1924: Pat Hingle is born.1938: Richard Jordan is born. He played Duncan Idaho in Dune and Michael York's sidekick in Logan's Run.1941: Winston Churchill launches his "V For Victory" campaign in Great Britain.1942: During the Battle of the Atlantic, German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their United States Atlantic coast positions in response to the effective American convoy system.
1947: Brian May, guitarist for Queen is born. He made his guitar, the Red Special, out of old bicycle parts and wood from a disused fireplace with help from his Dad. He quit his Phd program in physics to go be a rock star and then went back many years later to finish it. Rolling Stone ranks him as the 39th greatest guitarist of all time. Here's one of his classic stadium anthems:

1962: Anthony Edwards is born. He was never better than as Gilbert in Revenge of the Nerds.

1969: Apollo 11 goes into orbit around the moon.

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, 7/18

64: The Great Fire of Rome starts in the merchants area and soon burns completely out of control. Emperor Nero allegedly plays his lyre (the fiddle hadn't been invented yet) and watches from a safe distance.
1536: The authority of the Pope is declared void in England.
1863: During the Civil War, the first African American military unit, the 54th Massachusetts assaults a Confederate battery. The charge in ultimately unsuccessful, but it does prove the fighting mettle of African Americans.
1887: Vidkun Quisling is born.1895: Machine Gun Kelly is born.1870: The First Vatican Council decrees the doctrine of Papal Infallibility.
1909: Harriet Nelson is born.

1911: Hume Cronyn is born.1913: Red Skelton is born.

1914: The US Congress forms the Aviation Section, US Signal Corps, giving a definite status to aircraft within the Army for the first time.
1918: Nelson Mandela is born.1921: John Glenn is born.1925: Adolph Hitler publishes his manifesto Mein Kampf. Like most manifestos, it's an unreadable mess.
1929: Screamin' Jay Hawkins is born.

1933: Syd Mead is born. He did vehicle designs for Bladerunner, Tron, Aliens and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (he did the V'Ger design). Here's the flying cop car from Bladerunner.1937: Hunter S. Thompson is born.1938: Paul Verhoeven is born. I was going to post a clip from his masterpiece Robocop, but I can't find the DVD anywhere. So just picture Ronny Cox and Miguel Ferrer screaming at each other in a men's room. I wonder if I did something stupid like throw it away. It's maddening!
1940: Former Yankees manager Joe Torre is born.1940: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is nominated for an unprecedented third term in office.
1941: Bluesman Lonnie Mack is born.

1941: Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas is born.

1942: The Messerschmitt 262 flies for the first time using only its jets.1950: Glenn Hughes is born. He was the Leather Man in The Village People.
1967: Vin Diesel is born.1969: After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy drives his car off a bridge into a tidal pond where, some hours later, his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne dies.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.