Today in History, 9/25

1066: William the Conqueror defeats Harold Godwin(son) at the battle of Stamford Bridge. This marks the end of the Anglo-Saxon Era in England.
1513: Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crosses the Isthmus of Panama to reach the Pacific Ocean.1764: Fletcher Christian, mutineer on the Bounty is born.
1775: American Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen is captured by the British as he leads an attack on Montreal.1789: The U.S. Congress passes twelve amendments to the United States Constitution: the Congressional Apportionment Amendment, the Congressional Compensation Amendment, and the ten that are known as the Bill of Rights. Only the Bill of Rights were ratified at the time, while the other two were proposed by James Madison but not ratified. In 1992, the Congressional Compensation Amendment was ratified as the 27th amendment to the Constitution.
1804: The Teton Sioux (a subdivision of the Lakota) demand one of the boats from the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a toll for moving further upriver. I wonder if it was one of those cool collapsible boats they carried.
1846: U.S. forces led by Zachary Taylor captured the Mexican city of Monterrey.
1890: Mormon president Wilford Woodruff issues a manifesto formally renouncing the practice of polygamy. This could be because the rest of the Union was adamant about not admitting a polygamist state.1897: William Faulkner is born.1911: Ground is broken for Fenway Park.1917: Phil Rizzuto, pitchman for The Money Store is born.

1929: Jimmy Doolittle performs the first blind flight from Mitchel Field proving that full Instrument Flying from take off to landing is possible.1929: Barbara Walters is born.

1930: Shel Silverstein is born.
1944: Michael Douglas is born.
1947: Cheryl Tiegs is born.1952: Christopher Reeve is born.

1957: Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated through the use of United States Army troops.
1958: Michael Madsen is born. He played the evil Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs.
1961: Heather Locklear is born.1968: Will Smith is born.
1969: Catherine Zeta-Jones is born. Hey, she and her husband Michael Douglas have the same birthday! Only 25 years apart.
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, 9/24

622: Prophet Muhammad completes his hegira from Mecca to Medina.
1664: The Netherlands surrenders New Amsterdam to England.
1755: John Marshall, 4th Chief Justice of the United States is born. He and Andrew Jackson spent much of their time at each other's throats. Jackson was reported to have said, after Marshall ruled against him, "Marshall has made his ruling, now let him enforce it."1789: The office of the Attorney General of the United States of America, and the United States Post Office Department are established.
1852: The first airship powered by (a steam) engine, created by Henri Giffard, travels 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to Trappes.1869: Financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk try to corner the gold market, sending Wall Street into a panic and leaving thousands of investors in financial ruin.1890: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially renounces polygamy.
1896: F. Scott Fitzgerald is born.
1906: U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower the nation's first National Monument.1912: Don Porter is born. He played the Dad on the TV version of Gidget. The mother, despite being alive in all three Gidget films was killed off by the producers when it went to series.

1918: Audra Lindley is born. She played Mrs. Roper on Three's Company.
1920: Richard Bong is born. He is, to date, America's highest scoring air ace with 40 kills to his credit.1936: Jim Henson is born.

1947: Majestic 12 is allegedly established by secret executive order of President Harry Truman.
1948: Phil Hartman is born. He was one of the funniest people ever.

1948: The Honda Motor Company is founded.
1950: Forest fires black out the sun over portions of Canada and New England. A Blue Moon (in the astronomical sense) is seen as far away as Europe.
1957: President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends 101st Airborne Division troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation.
1957: The Brooklyn Dodgers play their last game at Ebbets Field before moving to Los Angeles for the next season.
1958: Kevin Sorbo is born. He played Hercules in the Sam Raimi TV show.1960: The USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched at Newport News, Va.1962: United States court of appeals orders the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith.
1968: "60 Minutes" premieres on CBS.
1991: Nirvana releases their album "Nevermind."


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, 9/23

480 BC: Euripides, author of Medea and other Greek tragedies is born.
63 BC: Augustus Caesar is born.
1215: Kublai Khan is born.
1459: Battle of Blore Heath, the first major battle of the English Wars of the Roses, is fought at Blore Heath in Staffordshire.
1642: First commencement exercises occur at Harvard College.
1779: A squadron commanded by John Paul Jones in USS Bonhomme Richard wins the Battle of Flamborough Head, off the coast of England, against two British warships. This is where he declares "I have not yet begun to fight!"1780: British Major John André arrested as a spy by American soldiers exposing Benedict Arnold's treason.
1806: Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis, after exploring the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
1845: The Knickerbockers Baseball Club, the first baseball team to play under the modern rules, is founded in New York. Here's Conan O'Brien trying his hand at old school ball.

Conan O'Brien 1864 Baseball
by Youpinadi

1846: The planet Neptune is discovered by Johann Gottfried Galle.
1869: Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary is born. Over the course of her career, she infected 47 people with the disease.1884: Herman Hollerith patents his mechanical tabulating machine.1889: Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda.
1897: Walter Pidgeon, star of Forbidden Planet is born.1920: Mickey Rooney is born.1930: Ray Charles is born.

1938: Tom Lester is born. He played the slow-witted farmhand Eb Dawson on Green Acres. I always thought there was something going on between him and Lisa Douglas.1939: Roy Buchanan, bluesman is born. He came to a sorry end when he hung himself in his cell after being arrested for drunk and disorderly. It was seemingly a minor charge, but the black dog of depression was always nipping at his heels. Here's his classic "When a Guitar Plays the Blues." Man, that's some great stuff.

1941: The first gas murder experiments are conducted at Auschwitz.
1949: Bruce Springsteen is born.

1952: Richard Nixon makes his "Checkers speech". This was a minor scandal where Nixon was accused of taking inappropriate money from inappropriate people and Nixon was trying to defuse it.

1957: Rosalind Chao is born. She played Max Klinger's Korean wife on the later episodes of MASH and Miles O'Brien's nagging wife on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She was also in The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island. Tragically, it's not out on DVD. C'mon, Criterion, you released Armageddon on your label why not THGOGI?

1958: Lita Ford is born. When I was 14, she meant a lot to me.

1959: Jason Alexander is born. He is best known for playing George Costanza on Seinfeld, but I just watched him (with hair!) in the 1981 cheapo slasher The Burning.

1969: The Chicago Eight trial opens in Chicago.

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, 9/22

1499: Switzerland becomes an independent state.
1761: George III is crowned King of England.1776: Nathan Hale is hanged for spying.
1784: Russia establishes a colony at Kodiak, Alaska.
1789: The position of United States Postmaster General is established.
1862: A preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation is released.
1888: The first issue of National Geographic Magazine is published.
1895: Paul Muni is born. He starred in the early prison drama I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.

1896: Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather, King George III, as the longest reigning monarch in history.
1903: John Houseman is born.

1927: Tommy Lasorda is born.1949: The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.
1958: Joan Jett is born.

1961: Scott Baio is born.

1970: Sarah Jane Moore tries to assassinate Gerald Ford.1980: Iraq invades Iran.
1982: Billie Piper is born. She played the companion Rose Tyler in the rebooted Doctor Who. She's not my all-time favorite Doctor Who companion (that honor is reserved for Barbara Wright), but she's definitely in the top five. She's smoking hot, sharp as a tack and not afraid to tell the Doctor when he's being a dink. What more can you ask? 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, 9/21

454: Roman Emperor Valentinian III assassinates Aëtius in his own throne room.
1327: King Edward II of England dies under mysterious circumstances. Some say it was from having a red-hot iron poker thrust into his hinder, but there's really no evidence one way or another.
1745: At the Battle of Prestonpans, A Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope is defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
1765: Antoine de Beauterne announces he had killed the Beast of Gévaudan, but was later proved wrong by more attacks.1780: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.1827: According to Joseph Smith, Jr., the angel Moroni gave him a record of gold plates, one-third of which Joseph translated into The Book of Mormon.1866: H.G. Wells is born.
1897: The "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" letter is published in the New York Sun.
1898: Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform in China.
1912: Chuck Jones is born. Here's his classic short Duck Amuck.

1931: Larry Hagman is born.1934: Leonard Cohen is born.

1935: Henry Gibson is born.

1937: J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published.
1938: The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500-700 people.
1942: On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis sent over 1.000 Jews of Pidhaytsi (west Ukraine) to Belzec extermination camp.
1942: The B-29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight.1945: Jerry Bruckheimer is born.
1947: Stephen King is born.1950: George Marshall is sworn in as the 3rd Secretary of Defense of United States.
1950: Bill Murray is born.

1957: Ethan Coen is born. I'll admit it - I'm a total fanboy for the Coen brothers. Here's a scene from the classic Barton Fink.

1961: Maiden flight of the CH-47 Chinook transportation helicopter.1962: Rob Morrow is born. He was the uptight New York doctor on Northern Exposure. I never understood what Maggie saw in him.

1970: The New York Times starts the first modern op-ed page.
1970: NFL Monday Night Football debuts on ABC.
1981: Sandra Day O'Connor is unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female supreme court justice.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, 9/20

451: The Battle of Chalons, in Northeastern France takes place. It results in Flavius Aetius' victory over Attila the Hun in a day of combat and is considered to be the largest battle in the ancient world.
1187: Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem. It lasted from September 20th to October 2nd, which doesn't seem like much of a siege. But I wasn't there.
1519: Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.1633: Galileo Galilei is tried before the Inquisition for teaching that the Earth orbits the Sun.1854: At the Battle of Alma, British and French troops defeat the Russians in the Crimea.
1870: Italian troops take control of the Papal States, leading to the unification of Italy.
1873: Panic sweeps the New York Stock Exchange in the wake of railroad bond defaults and bank failures.
1881: Chester A. Arthur is inaugurated as the 21st President of the United States following the assassination of James Garfield. He's one of the two Vermont-born presidents.1891: The first gasoline-powered car debuts in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States.
1878: Upton Sinclair is born. He wrote The Jungle, which was about the abysmal conditions in meat packing plants and led directly to the passage of the Pure Food & Drug Act.1885: Jelly Roll Morton, jazz pianist and band leader is born.

1920: Jay Ward, creator of Bullwinkle J. Moose and about a dozen other classic cartoon characters is born.

1928: Joyce Brothers, psychologist and perennial talk-show guest ("I brought my own mike!") is born.1934: Sophia Loren is born.1939: A German Messerschmitt Bf 109 is shot down by Fairey Battle gunner Sgt. F. Letchard during a patrol near Aachen. This is the RAF's first aerial victory of the Second World War.
1946: The first Cannes Film Festival is held.
1948: George R.R. Martin is born. He writes these phonebook-sized fantasy novels.
1956: Gary Cole is born. He is best known, to me at least, as the villainous manager Bill Lumbergh in Office Space.
1962: James Meredith, an African-American, is barred from entering the University of Mississippi.1967: The RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched at John Brown & Company, Clydebank, Scotland. It is operated by the Cunard Line.1967: Kristen Johnston is born. Her legs were easily the best part of 3rd Rock From the Sun, especially in later seasons.

1973: Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in battle-of-sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Texas.1977: The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is admitted to the United Nations
1979: Lee Iacocca is elected president of the Chrysler Corporation.
1984: A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people.
1988: Boston Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs becomes the first player to get 200 hits in six consecutive seasons.
1990: South Ossetia declares its independence from Georgia.
1998: Baltimore Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken, Jr. chooses to sit out the Orioles' game against the New York Yankees, ending his record streak for consecutive Major League Baseball games played at 2,632.

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, 9/19

1676: Jamestown is burned to the ground by the forces of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacon's Rebellion. Mmm, bacon...1692: Giles Corey is pressed to death after refusing to plead in the Salem witch trials.1777: American soldiers win the first Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War.
1778: The Continental Congress passes the first budget of the United States.
1796: George Washington's farewell address is printed across America as an open letter to the public.
1870: During the Franco-Prussian War, the Siege of Paris begins, which will result on 28 January 1871 in the surrender of Paris and a decisive Prussian victory.
1900: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid commit their first robbery together.
1906: Addressing the annual dinner of The Associated Press in New York, Mark Twain said there were "only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe ... the sun in the heavens and The Associated Press down here." He sure could talk the birdies down from the trees, couldn't he?
1911: William Golding is born. He wrote Lord of the Flies.1926: James Lipton, avuncular host of Inside the Actor's Studio is born. He also, apparently, worked for a time as a pimp in Paris after WWII.1928: Adam West is born.

1934: Brian Epstein, manager for The Beatles is born.1934: Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the kidnap and murder of Charles Lindbergh III.
1940: Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz in order to smuggle out information and start a resistance within the camp. He survived his time in the camp and escaped in 1943 to help start the Warsaw Uprising. He survived that only to be tortured and murdered by the Soviets in 1948.1941: Mama Cass is born.

1945: Randolph Mantooth is born. He is best known for starring in the Jack Webb-iverse show Emergency! He's also got one of the coolest names around.1945: Lord Haw-Haw is sentenced to death.
1948: Jeremy Irons is born. Watch him slum it up in that terrible Dungeons & Dragons movie!

1949: Twiggy, English supermodel is born.

Not Twikki, Twiggy!

1957: The first underground nuclear test in the US takes place.
1959: Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland. Oh lighten up, Walt.
1970: The Mary Tyler Moore show debuted on CBS.

1974: Jimmy Fallon is born. God, I hate him.
1980: Tegan and Sara are born. They are identical twin Canadian rockers of some renown. I've never heard of them, but anybody named after Doctor Who companions is aces in my book.

1985: Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testify at U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music.

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.