Today in History, 8/24

49 BC: Julius Caesar's general Gaius Scribonius Curio is defeated in the Second Battle of the Bagradas River by the Numidians under Publius Attius Varus and King Juba of Numidia. Curio commits suicide to avoid capture.
79: Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash.410: The Visigoths under Alaric begin to pillage Rome for three days.
1215: Pope Innocent III declares the Magna Carta invalid.
1456: The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.
1572: Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre takes place. On the orders of king Charles IX of France, a massacre of Huguenots (French Protestants) begins.
1608: The first official English representative to India lands in Surat.
1662: The Act of Uniformity requires England to accept the Book of Common Prayer.
1682: William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.1690: Calcutta, India is founded.
1759: William Wilberforce, English abolitionist, is born.1814: British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings.
1831: Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle.
1857: The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in U.S. history.
1875: Captain Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim the English Channel.1891: Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.
1905: Arthur Crudup, bluesman and guitar virtuoso is born.

1909: Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.
1912: Alaska becomes a United States territory.
1915: Science fiction titan, James Tiptree, Jr is born. James Tiptree was actually the pen name of Alice Sheldon, who wrote for years as a man and nobody was the wiser (including me until just now).
1916: Hal Smith is born. He is best know for playing Otis the loveable alcoholic on The Andy Griffith Show.
1922: Howard Zinn, historical revisionist is born.1929: Yasser Arafat is born.
1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).
1934: Kenny Baker is born. He was the guy in the R2-D2 outfit in the Star Wars movies.1938: Mason Williams is born. He did the popular guitar instrumental Classical Gas.

1939: The Nazi-Soviet Pact is signed between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. It would last a little under two years.
1942: During the The Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the Japanese aircraft carrier Ryujo is sunk and US carrier Enterprise heavily damaged.
1949: Charlie Rocket is born. He was one of the underappreciated comedic talents of his day.1951: Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game is born. I guess he's kind of insane but insanity and genius frequently go hand in hand.1954: The Communist Control Act goes into effect and the American Communist Party is outlawed. I assume that, at some point, this law was gotten rid of as there still is a CP/USA.
1958: Steve Guttenberg is born.
1960: A temperature of -127°F is measured in Vostok, Antarctica — a world-record low.
1960: Cal Ripken, Jr. is born.1962: Craig Kilborn, the first host of The Daily Show, is born.

1963: John Bush, singer for Anthrax is born.
1965: Marlee Matlin is born.1967: Led by Abbie Hoffman, a group of hippies temporarily disrupt trading at the NYSE by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing a cease in trading as the brokers scramble to grab them up.
1968: France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.
1973: Dave Chappelle is born.

1974: Jennifer Lien is born. She played Kes on Star Trek: Voyager until the producers booted her off in favor of Jeri Ryan for not being sexy enough. Frankly, I have no idea what they were talking about.1981: Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.
1989: Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose is banned from baseball for gambling by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.

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, 8/23

79: Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
1305: William Wallace, Scottish patriot, is executed for high treason by Edward I of England.1541: French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City on his third voyage to Canada.
1784: Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin; it wasn’t accepted into the United States, and only lasted for four years.
1839: The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares to war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.
1864: The Union Navy captures Fort Morgan, Alabama, thus breaking Confederate dominance of all ports on the Gulf of Mexico.
1889: First wireless message from a ship to the shore received.
1904: The automobile tire chain is patented.
1912: Gene Kelly is born.

1917: Tex Williams is born.

1923: Capt. Lowell Smith and Lt. John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling on De Havilland DH-4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.
1927: Sacco and Vanzetti are executed.
1932: Mark Russell is born.1934: Barbara Eden is born.1936: Henry Lee Lucas, serial killer, is born.
1939: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, Baltic states, Finland, Ukraine and Poland are divided between the two nations.
1940: The Germans start bombing London.
1946: Keith Moon, drummer for The Who is born.

1948: Daniel Ruettinger - the "Rudy" of Notre Dame legend is born.
1949: Shelley Long is born.

1949: Rick Springfield is born. Get this - Sony/BMG owns his catalog and they don't even care that people are posting his videos on YouTube! That's gotta hurt. Sony/BMG will go back in time to murder your grandparents for posting "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" by Vicki Lawrence but they don't bother enforcing their copyright on poor Rick Springfield.

1954: First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.1962: First live television connection between the United States and Europe, via the Telstar satellite.
1966: The Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
1970: Jay Mohr is born1970: River Phoenix is born.1985: Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany. Talk about bad timing!
1990: Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests" (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.
1990: West Germany and East Germany announce that they will unite on October 3.

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, 8/22

565: St. Columbia reports seeing a monster in Loch Ness, Scotland.
1485: The Battle of Bosworth Field ends with the death of Richard III and fall of the House of Plantagenet ending the War of the Roses. I think this is when the Tudors take over.1639: Madras (now Chennai), India, is founded by the British East India Company after buying a sliver of land from local Nayak rulers.
1642: The English Civil War begins when Charles I calls the English Parliament traitors
1654: Jacob Barsimson arrives in New Amsterdam. He is the first known Jewish immigrant to America.
1770: James Cook's expedition lands on the east coast of Australia.
1775: King George III declares the American colonies to be in open rebellion.
1780: James Cook's ship HMS Resolution returns to England (Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage).
1831: Nat Turner's slave rebellion revolt commences just after midnight in Southampton, Virginia, leading to the deaths of more than 50 whites and several hundred African Americans who were killed in retaliation for the uprising.
1848: The United States annexes New Mexico.
1849: The first air raid in history takes place as Austria launch pilotless balloons against the Italian city of Venice.
1864: Twelve nations sign the First Geneva Convention. The Red Cross is formed.
1880: George Herriman is born. He did the comic strip Krazy Kat.1893: Dorothy Parker is born.1902: Leni Riefenstahl is born. She is best known for directing the Nazi propaganda epic Triumph of the Will.1901: The Cadillac Motor Company founded.
1902: Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to ride in an automobile.
1902: The German Luger becomes the official German sidearm for both World Wars.1909: Julius J. Epstein is born. He co-wrote the script for Casablanca.
1904: Den Xiaoping, leader of China from the 1970's to 1997, is born.1910: Japan illicitly annexes Korea with the signing of the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty. The name Korea was abolished and replaced with the ancient name Joseon.
1914: During World War I, in Belgium, British and German troops clash for the first time in the war.
1917: John Lee Hooker is born.

1920: Ray Bradbury is born.1925: Honor Blackman is born. She played Cathy Gale in The Avengers and Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.1934: Norman Schwarzkopf is born.
1939: Carl Yastrzemski is born.1940: Valerie Harper is born.
1941: Bill Parcells is born.
1941: German troops reach Leningrad, leading to the siege of Leningrad.
1947: Cindy Williams is born. She played Shirley on Laverne & Shirley.1952: The penal colony on Devil's Island is permanently closed.1958: Vernon Reid, lead singer for Living Colour is born.

1963: Joe Walker, in an X-15 test plane, reaches altitude of 106 km (67 miles).
1963: Tori Amos is born.
1989: The first ring of Neptune is discovered.
1989: Nolan Ryan strikes out Rickey Henderson to become the first Major League Baseball pitcher to record 5,000 strikeouts.
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, 8/21

1680: Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe from Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt.
1754: William Murdoch is born. He invented one of my favorite pieces of archaic technology, the pneumatic message tube.
1770: James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.
1821: Jarvis Island is discovered by the crew of the Eliza Frances. It's an uninhabited rock in the middle of the Paciifc.
1831: Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion.
1858: The Lincoln-Douglas debates begin.
1863: Lawrence, Kansas is destroyed by Confederate guerrillas Quantrill's Raiders in the Lawrence Massacre.
1878: The American Bar Association is founded.
1888: The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs.
1904: Count Basie is born.

1906: Friz Freleng is born. He directed some of the best known Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes cartoons.

1911: The Mona Lisa is stolen by a Louvre employee.
1932: Melvin Van Peebles is born. He is credited with creating the blaxploitation genre with the film Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song (from which this blog humbly derives its name). The story of the making of the film is almost as entertaining as the film itself, as seen in the biopic made by Melvin's son Mario Van Peebles, BADASSSSS! or How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass.

1936: Speaking of badasssss brothers, Wilt Chamberlain is born. Here he is at 17, when he had only bedded 8,356 women.

1938: Kenny Rogers is born.

1939: Clarence Williams III is born. He got a generation of white kids to say, "Solid!" as Lincoln "Linc" Hayes on The Mod Squad.1942: The Battle of Stalingrad begins. For an entertaining, if ahistorical, look at the battle check out Enemy at the Gates.
1942: A Nazi flag is placed atop Mount Elbrus, in the Caucusus Mountains. At 18,510 feet, it is the highest summit in Europe. Actually, now that I read that, it makes a lot more sense. With all the doings in Georgia lately I had been boning up on my knowledge of the area and read somewhere that Elbrus is only 5,500 feet high. I thought. "....the Hell? I can climb a mountain that high!" But, as it turns out, it's actually 5,500 meters high. Not feet. Needless to say, I won't be climbing it anytime soon. Myth holds that this is the summit where Zeus chained Prometheus to get his entrails pecked out by birds for eternity as punishment for stealing fire.1942: Allied forces involved in the Guadalcanal campaign defeated an attack by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru.
1943: Hugh Wilson is born. He is the creator of WKRP in Cincinnati.
1944: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference, a prelude to the United Nations, begins.
1945: Basil Poledouris is born. He did the scores for such movies as Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, RoboCop, The Hunt for Red October and Starship Troopers.1952: Joe Strummer, of The Clash, is born.
1956: Kim Cattrall is born.1959: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union.
1967: Carrie-Ann Moss is born.1986: Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range. Volcanic activity under the lake caused the water to become saturated with carbon dioxide and an tremor caused the CO2 to come out of solution all at once.1991: Latvia declares renewal of its full independence after the occupation of Soviet Union.

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, 8/20

636: At the Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine away from the Byzantine Empire, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia.
917: At the Battle of Anchialus, Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria invades Thrace and drives the Byzantines out.
1000: Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary. This is the official founding of the Hungarian state.
1794: At the Battle of Fallen Timbers, American troops force a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat.
1804: The Lewis and Clark Expedition suffers its only death when Sergeant Charles Floyd dies, apparently from acute appendicitis.
1833: Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States is born.1866: President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.
1890: H.P. Lovecraft is born.1907: Alan Reed, original voice of Fred Flintstone is born.

1920: The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ), begins operations in Detroit, Michigan.
1938: Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam - a record that still stands.1940: Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded in Mexico City by an assassin. He dies the next day. There is some question as to whether it was an ice axe or an ice pick that was used to do the deed. Either way, having one stuck into your head would pretty much ruin your day.1940: Winston Churchill pays tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

1942: Isaac Hayes is born.

1943: Sylvester McCoy is born. He played the seventh, and last Doctor in the classic Doctor Who series.

1944: The Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet offensive.
1946: Connie Chung is born.
1946: Ralf Hutter, musician for Kraftwerk, is born.
1948: Robert Plant is born.
1953: The Soviet Union publicly acknowledges it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
1962: Sophie Aldred is born. She played Ace, the "punker from the future" companion during the Sylvester McCoy years of Doctor Who. Holy cats, they have the same birthday!1962: James Marsters is born. He played Spike on Buffy and Angel.
1968: 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to end the "Prague Spring" of political liberalization.
1969: All four Beatles come together in the recording studio for the final time as they finish the Abbey Road LP.
1970: John D Carmack is born. He was the lead programmer of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake.1974: Congress votes to reduce aid to South Vietnam from $1 Billion to $700 Million. Majority of the cuts are for military supplies.
1971: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
1998: The Supreme Court of Canada states Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.

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, 8/19

43 BC: Octavian, later known as Augustus, compels the senate to elect him Consul.
1561: An 18-year-old Mary Queen of Scots returns to Scotland, after spending 13 years in France.
1692: In Salem, Massachusetts, five people, one woman and four men, including a clergyman, are executed after being convicted of witchcraft.
1745: Prince Charles Edward Stuart (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie) lands from a French warship in Glenfinnan, Scotland, raises his standard and marches on London - the start of the Second Jacobite Rebellion known as "the 45".1768: Saint Isaac's Cathedral is founded in Saint Petersburg, Russia.1782: The last major engagement of the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Blue Licks takes place almost ten months after the surrender of the British commander Lord Cornwallis following the Siege of Yorktown.
1812: During the War of 1812, American frigate USS Constitution defeats the British frigate HMS Guerrière off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada earning her nickname "Old Ironsides".1839: Jacque Daguerre presents his new photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences.
1848: The New York Herald breaks the news to the East Coast of the United States of the gold rush in California (although the rush started in January).
1862: During an uprising in Minnesota, Lakota warriors decide not to attack heavily-defended Fort Ridgely and instead turn to the settlement of New Ulm, killing white settlers along the way.
1871: Orville Wright is born.1883: Coco Chanel is born.
1902: Ogden Nash is born.1906: Philo Farnsworth, inventor of modern television, is born. I wouldn't go saying that too loudly in certain circles unless you're spoiling for a fight. Much like powered flight, there are a slew of people who claim to have been the real inventor.1921: Gene Roddenberry "The Great Bird of the Galaxy" is born.1895: American frontier murderer and outlaw, John Wesley Hardin, is killed by an off-duty policeman in a saloon in El Paso, Texas.
1919: Afghanistan gains full independence from the United Kingdom.
1932: Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes, is born.1934: The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio.
1934: The creation of the position Führer approved by the German electorate with 89.9% of the popular vote.
1928: Diana Muldaur is born. She had was a guest star in a couple of classic Star Trek episodes ("Return to Tomorrow" and "Is The in Truth No Beauty?") and she also played the Bones McCoy pastiche Dr. Kate Pulaski on Star Trek: TNG.1929: The comedy "Amos 'n' Andy" makes its network radio debut on NBC
1939: Ginger Baker, drummer for Cream, is born.

1940: Jill St. John, Bond girl, is born.1942: About 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launch a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering about 50 percent casualties.
1944: Paris rises against German occupation with the help of Allied troops.
1945: Ian Gillan, singer for Deep Purple, is born.

1946: Bill Clinton is born.1945: The Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh take power in Hanoi, Vietnam.
1952: Jonathan Frakes is born. He is most famous for playing Commander Riker on Star Trek: TNG, but has also found success as a director where his nickname is "Two Takes Frakes" indicating the speed at which he moves productions along.

1960: In Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.
1960: The Soviet Union launches the Sputnik 5 with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants.
1977: Groucho Marx dies at age 86. Here he is doing one of his signature tunes on The Dick Cavett show.

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.