Today in History, 10/26

1640: The Treaty of Ripon is signed, restoring peace between Scotland and Charles I of England.
1774: The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1776: Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
1825: The Erie Canal opens with passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.1881: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, AZ. There have been dozen of fictional representations of the gunfight, including in Star Trek and Doctor Who.
1912: Don Siegel is born. He directed Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dirty Harry, among others.1914: Jackie Coogan is born. He played Uncle Fester on the old Addams Family show and also appeared in pair of disturbingly tiny shorts in MST3K Episode # 906, The Space Children. He got his start as a child star playing Charlie Chaplin's young sidekick in The Kid.
1940: The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.1942: During the the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet, is sunk and another aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, is heavily damaged. The Hornet was the carrier the B-25 bombers launched from for the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo earlier in 1942.1942: Bob Hoskins is born.

1943: The Dornier do 335 Pfeil ("Arrow") makes its first flight. Its pushmi-pullyu design made it one of the fastest propeller-driven planes of the war, but engine shortages meant that it never saw much action.1946: Pat Sajak is born.

1947: Hillary Clinton is born. Here she is discussing Sonny Corleone. 1951: Boxer Joe Louis comes out of retirement to fight Rocky Marciano. However, Marciano would win the fight in eight rounds.
1951: Bootsy Collins, of P-Funk, is born.

1962: Cary Elwes is born.1962: In one of the most dramatic verbal confrontations of the Cold War, American U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson asks his Soviet counterpart during a Security Council debate whether the USSR had placed missiles in Cuba.
1963: Natalie Merchant is born.

1965: The Beatles are appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBEs).
1977: The last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
1978: Independent Counsel Act is signed into law.

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, 10/25

1415: The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
1760: George III becomes King of Great Britain.1813: During the War of 1812, Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans in the Battle of Chateauguay.
1854: The "Charge of the Light Brigade" takes place during the Crimean War as an English brigade of more than 600 men, facing hopeless odds, charges the Russian army in the Battle of Balaclava and suffers heavy losses. Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote one of his most famous poems about it.1881: Pablo Picasso is born.1891: Father Coughlin, radio demagogue, is born. He started out in radio in the 1930's as a very pro-FDR, pro-New Deal kind of guy but as time went on he became more and more pro-Fascist, pro-Nazi until his career cratered by the end of the decade.1912: Minnie Pearl is born. The price of her hat was $1.98.

1917: The Winter Palace in Petrograd, Russia is seized during the October Reveolution.
1924: Billy Barty is born. For about 50 years, if you needed a person of diminutive stature in your movie you called Billy Barty's agent.
1928: Marion Ross is born. She played Mrs. Cunningham on Happy Days. I always suspected something was up between her and Fonzie.1936: Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini created the Rome-Berlin Axis.
1938: The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces Swing music as "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell".

1944: Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
1944: The USS Tang (SS-306) under Richard O'Kane (the top submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship's own torpedo. In his defense, torpedoes of the day were notoriously unreliable.1957: Nancy Cartwright is born. She provides the voice of Bart Simpson.

1983: Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters were executed in a coup d'état.
1986: The Boston Red Sox lose Game 6 of the World Series to the New York Mets when a routine ground ball goes through Boston first baseman Bill Buckner's legs, allowing the winning run to score in the 10th inning. You can watch the play here. Many people feel that that Sox manager, John McNamara, should have put in the backup first baseman - Buckner was a good hitter, but his knees and ankles were shot. But, as my mother never said, "If ifs and buts were candy and nuts it'd be Christmas every day." And the Sox lost Game 7 anyway.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, 10/24

1260: The spectacular Cathedral of Chartres is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.1360: The Treaty of Brétigny is ratified at Calais, marking the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years' War.
1593: Gil Perez, a Spanish soldier allegedly teleports from the Philippines to Mexico City. Maybe he jaunted.
1632: Anton van Leeuwenhoek is born. He improved on the microscope so much that he was the first person to see single-celled creatues.1648: The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War and, effectively, the Holy Roman Empire.
1861: The First Transcontinental Telegraph line across the United States is completed, spelling the end for the 18-month-old Pony Express. Abe Lincoln recieves the first telegraph message.
1901: Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
1903: Melvin Purvis is born. He was the most famous FBI agent (he lead the hunt for Dillinger) until he got more famous than J. Edgar Hoover, which spelled the end of his career.1915: Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, is born.1929: "Black Thursday" stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange.
1930: JP Richardson, aka The Big Bopper is born.

1931: The George Washington Bridge opens to public traffic.1939: F. Murray Abraham is born.

1939: Nylon stockings are sold for the first time.
1944: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1946: A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space.
1947: Kevin Kline is born.

1947: Walt Disney testifies to the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Disney employees he believes to be communists.
1952: Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower declares, "I shall go to Korea" as he promises to end the conflict
1962: The US blockade of Cuba takes effect.

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, 10/23

Happy Birthday, Julie!

4004 BC: The creation of the world begins according to the calculations of Archbishop James Ussher42 BC: During the Roman Republican civil wars, at the Second Battle of Philippi, Brutus's army is decisively defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian. Brutus commits suicide.
1642: The first major battle of the English Civil War, the Battle of Edgehill, takes place. The outcome is inconclusive, leading to four more years of war. Geez, there don't seem to be any glossy oil paintings of this battle. Where's the Mort Kunstler of the English Civil War?
1707: The first Parliament of Great Britain, i.e., the United Kingdom, meets.
1843: Samuel Morey is born. He invented a type of internal combustion engine and was a pioneer in steamships. Lake Morey, Vermont is named after him.1855: Kansas Free State forces set up a competing government under their Topeka, Kansas, constitution, which outlaws slavery in the United States territory.
1861: Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
1869: John Heisman is born. The Heisman Trophy is named after him.1893: Gummo Marx is born. He wasn't as into acting as his brothers, but he was known as an exceptionally fair theatrical agent.1911: First use of aircraft in war: An Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Turco-Italian War.
1915: In New York City, 25,000-33,000 women march on Fifth Avenue to advocate their right to vote.
1917: Lenin calls for the October Revolution.
1925: Johnny Carson is born. He was originally asked to play the role of The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles, but turned it down. Here he is doing one of his classic Karnak the Magnificent bits.

1923: Harold P. Warren is born. He was a fertilizer salesman who directed what is considered one of the worst movies of all time, "Manos" The Hands of Fate. Remember how I said that Ed Wood may have been a lousy director but at least his movies had heart? Well, Manos doesn't have any heart. Harold Warren just liked to see women wrestle in their skiviies. I don't recommend watching this movie unless it's the MST3K version.

1929: After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange begins to show signs of panic.
1930: The first miniature golf tournament was completed in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1941: Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov takes command of Red Army operations designed to prevent the further advance into Russia of German forces and to prevent the German armies from capturing Moscow.1942: Michael Crichton is born. He write Jurassic Park, Coma, The Andromeda Strain and a slew of other novels.1942: The Second Battle of El Alamein starts - At El Alamein in northern Egypt, the British Eighth Army under Field Marshal Montgomery begin a critical offensive to expel the Axis armies from Egypt.
1942: The Battle for Henderson Field begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on October 26.
1944: The Battle of Leyte Gulf begins. It is the largest naval battle in history.
1946: The United Nations General Assembly convened for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
1956: Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation. (The Hungarian Revolution is crushed on November 4).
1958: The Smurfs, a fictional race of blue dwarves later popularized in a Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon series appear for the first time, in the story Le flute à six schtroumpfs, a Johan and Peewit adventure by Peyo which is serialized in the weekly comics magazine Spirou. Yes, but do they lay eggs?

1959: Sam Raimi is born. He likes to film gals wrestling in their underpants as much as Harold Warren ever did, but he's good at it. His movies also have Bruce Campbell, which is always a plus. Evil Dead is still one of the scariest movies I've ever seen - even reading the script gave me the creeps.

1959: One of my personal heroes, Weird Al Yankovic is born.

1970: Grant Imahara, one of the second-string Mythbusters, is born.
1973: US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations about the Watergate Scandal.
1973: A United Nations sanctioned cease-fire officially ends the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Syria.
1983: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. Marines. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.
2001: Apple releases the iPod.

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, 10/22

1734: Daniel Boone is born.
1746: The College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University) receives its charter.
1784: Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
1797: One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, André-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump.
1836: Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.
1844: The Great Anticipation: Millerites, followers of William Miller, anticipated the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ. The following day became known as the Great Disappointment.
1903: Curly Howard, Stooge Titan, is born.
1910: Dr. Crippen is convicted at the Old Bailey of poisoning his wife and was subsequently hanged at Pentonville Prison in London.
1920: Timothy Leary is born.
1926: J. Gordon Whitehead sucker punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal.
1934: In East Liverpool, Ohio, notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd is shot and killed by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.
1938: Christopher Lloyd is born.
1942: Annette Funicello is born.
1944: At the Battle of Aachen, The city of Aachen falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, making it the first German city to fall to the Allies.
1948: Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme is born. She was a member of the Manson Family who attempted to assassinate President Ford.
1942: Jeff Goldblum is born.
1962: President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American spy planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.
1966: The Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A' Go-Go).
1976: Red Dye No. 4 is banned by the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs. The dye is still used in Canada.

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, 10/21

1520: Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan.

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1772: Samuel Taylor Coleridge is born.1774: First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts and which was in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.
1797: In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.1805: At the Battle of Trafalgar, A British fleet led by Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve. It signaled the virtual end of French maritime power and left Britain navally unchallenged until the twentieth century.1824: Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement.
1833: Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Prize, is born.1854: Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.1892: Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb (it lasted 13½ hours before burning out).
1917: Dizzy Gillespie is born.

1921: President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south.
1928: Whitey Ford is born.1940: Marnfred Mann is born.

1942: Judy Scheindlin, aka Judge Judy, is born.1944: The first kamikaze attack: HMAS Australia was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.
1945: Everett McGill is born. He played the Fremen leader Stilgar in the under-appreciated David Lynch Dune and Ed Hurley on Twin Peaks.1956: Carrie Fisher is born. How could I not post this picture?1959: In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.1966: More than 140 people, mostly children, are killed when a coal waste landslide engulfs a school and several houses in south Wales.
1972: Saffron Burrows is born. She played the doomed mad scientist Dr. Susan McAlester in Deep Blue Sea, who comes up with the great idea of genetically engineering super-smart giant mako sharks.
1975: Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk hits a ball that strikes the left field foul pole in Boston's Fenway Park for a home run, giving the Red Sox a 7-6 victory in 12 innings over the Cincinnati Reds in Game 6 of the World Series.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, 10/20

1632: Architect Christopher Wren is born. He designed St Paul's Cathedral.1803: The United States Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase.1818: The Convention of 1818 is signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the US-Canada border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.
1882: Bela Lugosi is born. Here he is swinging for the fences in Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster.

1889: Margaret Dumont is born. She was Groucho's foil in many of the Marx Brothers movies. Here she is in Animal Crackers.

1931: Mickey Mantle is born.1932: William Christopher is born. He played Father Mulcahy on MASH.
1935: Jerry Orbach is born. He is most famous for playing Detective Lennie Briscoe in the various Law & Order shows, but he also played Jennifer Grey's Dad in Dirty Dancing.
1937: The Queen of Rockabilly, Wanda Jackson is born.

1938: Ian Macmillan, the photographer for the cover of Abbey Road, is born.1944: General Douglas MacArthur steps ashore at Leyte in the Philippines, 2 1/2 years after he'd said, "I shall return."1947: The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.
1950: Tom Petty is born. Here is doing Refugee at Live Aid.

1958: Viggo Mortensen is born. He played Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings movies.1965: Billy Zabka is born. He played the wicked blond preppy bully in The Karate Kid and about a dozen other 80's classics. Ladies love a bad boy...

1968: Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
1973: The Sydney Opera House opens.1973: In the Saturday Night Massacre, President Nixon abolishes the office of special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, accepts the resignation of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and fires Deputy Attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus.
1977: A plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashes in Mississippi, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines along with backup singer Cassie Gaines, the road manager, pilot, and co-pilot.

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, 10/19

202 BC: Hannibal and Carthage are defeated at the Battle of Zarma.
1216: King John of England dies and is succeeded by his nine year-old son Henry.
1453: The French recapture of Bordeaux brings the Hundred Years' War to a close, with the English retaining only Calais on French soil.
1469: Ferdinand II of Aragon marries Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paves the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain.
1649: Wexford, Ireland, surrenders to Oliver Cromwell.
1789: Chief Justice John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.
1812: Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow.
1864: Confederate raiders launch an attack on Saint Albans, Vermont from Canada.
1873: Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers universities draft the first code of American football rules.
1903: Tor Johnson is born. He was an Swedish wrestler who made a name in Hollywood playing giant mute guys in The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Unearthly and Plan 9 From Outer Space.

1914: The First Battle of Ypres begins.
1933: Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.
1943: Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.
1945: Divine is born Harris Glenn Milstead.1945: John Lithgow is born. Here he is in the "Nightmare at 60000 Feet" segment of the Twilight Zone Movie. Everybody hates that kid!

1960: The United States government places an embargo on Communist Cuba.
1969: Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park, is born.
1973: Nixon rejects an Appeals Court demand to turn over the Watergate tapes.

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, 10/18

1009: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock.
1356: The Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps, destroys the town of Basel, Switzerland.
1648: The Boston Shoemakers form the first U.S. labor organization.
1685: Louis XIV of France revokes the Edict of Nantes, which had established the legal toleration of France's Protestant population, the Huguenots..
1767: The Mason-Dixon line, a survey separating Maryland from Pennsylvania, is completed.1775: The African-American poet Phillis Wheatley is freed from slavery.1851: Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London.
1867: The United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day.
1892: The first long distance telephone line between Chicago and New York is opened.
1908: Belgium annexes the Congo Free State.
1922: The British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) is founded by a consortium, to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.
1925: The Grand Ole Opry opens in Nashville, Tennessee.
1926: Chuck Berry is born.

1927: George C. Scott is born. He's most famous for playing Patton, but his turn as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is also great. Since I did Alistair Sim's confrontation with Marley's ghost for his birthday a few days ago, here's George's version of the same scene.

1935: Peter Boyle is born.

1938: Dawn Wells is born. She played Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan's Island. I liked her better than Ginger, but honorable men can disagree.1939: Lee Harvey Oswald is born.1945: The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the USA's plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1946: Howard Shore is born. He did the soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings movies as well as The Silence of the Lambs and a bunch of others.
1947: Joe Morton is born. He played the doomed cyberneticist Dr. Miles Dyson in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.1951: Pam Dawber is born.1954: Texas Instruments announces the first Transistor radio.
1967: The Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.1975: Alex Cora, utility infielder for the Boston Red Sox 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.