Cervantes

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 30

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 30 on December 30, 2009 |

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 30, the 364th day of 2009. There is 1 day left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 30, 1853, the United States and Mexico signed a treaty under which the U.S. agreed to buy some 45,000 square miles of land from Mexico for $10 million in a deal known as the Gadsden Purchase.

On this date

In 1813, the British burned Buffalo, N.Y., during the War of 1812.

In 1865, author Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India.

In 1873, Alfred Smith, the four-time governor of New York State and 1928 presidential candidate, was born.

In 1902, a new southing record was set by Robert Falcon Scott, in company with Ernest Henry Shackleton and E.A. Wilson, as they reached the Ross Ice Shelf at the head of the Ross Sea in Antarctica.

In 1903, about 600 people died when fire broke out at the recently opened Iroquois Theater in Chicago.

In 1907, the Mills Commission issued its final report, concluding that Abner Doubleday had invented baseball, a view few sports historians, if any, agree with.

In 1911, Sun Yat-sen was elected the first president of the Republic of China.

In 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, formed this day in 1922 with its capital in Moscow, eventually incorporated 15 republics and constituted (in area) the largest country in the world until its dissolution in 1991.

In 1928, Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Bo Diddley was born Ellas Bates in McComb, Miss.

In 1936, the United Auto Workers union staged its first “sit-down” strike, at the Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint, Mich.

In 1940, California’s first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena, was officially opened.

In 1947, King Michael of Romania agreed to abdicate, but charged he was being forced off the throne by Communists.

In 1948, the Cole Porter musical “Kiss Me, Kate” opened on Broadway.

In 1972, the United States halted its heavy bombing of North Vietnam.

In 1978, Ohio State University fired Woody Hayes as its football coach, one day after Hayes punched a Clemson University player during a game.

In 1979, Broadway composer Richard Rodgers died in New York at age 77.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan and President-elect George H.W. Bush were subpoenaed to testify as defense witnesses in the pending Iran-Contra trial of Oliver North. (The subpoenas were subsequently quashed.)

In 1989, a Northwest Airlines DC-10, which had been the target of a telephoned threat, flew safely from Paris to Detroit with 22 passengers amid extra-tight security.

In 1993, Israel and the Vatican agreed to recognize one another.

In 1994, a gunman walked into a pair of suburban Boston abortion clinics and opened fire, killing two employees. (John C. Salvi III was later convicted of murder; he died in prison, an apparent suicide.)

In 1997, armed men massacred 412 men, women and children in four mountain villages in Algeria.

In 1999, ten years ago, former Beatle George Harrison fought off a knife-wielding intruder who broke into his mansion west of London and stabbed him in the chest. (Michael Abram was later acquitted of attempted murder by reason of insanity.)

In 1999, in Tampa, Fla., a gunman opened fire inside a hotel, killing four co-workers before shooting a fifth person dead as he tried to escape. (A suspect, housekeeper Silvio Izquierdo-Leyva, later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.)

In 2003, the federal government announced it would ban the sale of ephedra, an herbal stimulant linked to 155 deaths and dozens of heart attacks and strokes.

In 2004, five years ago, Democrat Christine Gregoire was declared victor of Washington’s gubernatorial election over Republican Dino Rossi by a mere 129 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast.

In 2004, a fire broke out during a rock concert at a nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 194 people.

In 2004, dandleader and clarinetist Artie Shaw died in Thousand Oaks, Calif., at age 94.

In 2006, former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was hanged.

In 2007, Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of an election that opponents and observers alleged was rigged; violence flared in Nairobi slums and coastal resort towns, killing scores in the following days.

In 2008, one year ago, in a surprise move, a defiant Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich named former state Attorney General Roland Burris to Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

In 2008, Israeli aircraft kept up a relentless string of attacks on Hamas-ruled Gaza, smashing a government complex, security installations and the home of a top militant commander.

In 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a law extending presidential terms from four years to six.

Today’s Birthdays

Actor Joseph Bologna is 75. Actor Russ Tamblyn is 75. Baseball Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax is 74. Actor Jack Riley is 74. Folk singer Noel Paul Stookey is 72. TV director James Burrows is 69. Actor Fred Ward is 67. Singer-musician Michael Nesmith is 67. Singer Davy Jones is 64. Actress Concetta Tomei is 64. Singer Patti Smith is 63. Rock singer-musician Jeff Lynne is 62. TV host Meredith Vieira is 56. Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph is 54. Actress Patricia Kalember is 53. Country singer Suzy Bogguss is 53. “Today” show anchor Matt Lauer is 52. Actress-comedian Tracey Ullman is 50. Rock musician Rob Hotchkiss is 49. Radio-TV commentator Sean Hannity is 48. Track star Ben Johnson is 48. Actor George Newbern is 46. Singer Jay Kay (Jamiroquai) is 40. Rock musician Byron McMackin (Pennywise) is 40. Actress Meredith Monroe is 40. Actor Daniel Sunjata is 38. Actress Maureen Flannigan is 37. Actor Jason Behr is 36. Golfer Tiger Woods is 34. TV personality-boxer Laila Ali is 32. Singer-actress Tyrese Gibson is 31. Actress Eliza Dushku is 29. Rock musician Tim Lopez (Plain White T’s) is 29. Actress Kristin Kreuk is 27. Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James is 25.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

John Milne
12/30/1850 – 7/30/1913
English seismologist and geologist; inventor of the seismograph

Asa Griggs Candler
12/30/1851 – 3/12/1929
American developer of Coca-Cola

Rudyard Kipling
12/30/1865 – 1/18/1936
English writer

Alfred Smith
12/30/1873 – 10/4/1944
American politician and four-time governor of New York State

Ramana Maharshi
12/30/1879 – 4/14/1950
Hindu philosopher and yogi

Alfred Einstein
12/30/1880 – 2/13/1952
German-born American musicologist and critic

Sir Carol Reed
12/30/1906 – 4/25/1976
English film director

Bert Parks
12/30/1914 – 2/2/1992
American game show host

Thought for Today

“Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all.” – Rose Macaulay, English poet and essayist (1881-1958).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/30/AR2009123000003.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 29

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 29 on December 29, 2009 |

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 29, the 363rd day of 2009. There are 2 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 29, 1170, Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights loyal to King Henry II.

On this date

In 1808, the 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson, and the first American president to be impeached, was born in Raleigh, N.C.

In 1809, British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone was born in Liverpool.

In 1845, Texas was admitted as the 28th state.

In 1851, the first YMCA in the U.S. was organized, in Boston.

In 1890, the Wounded Knee massacre took place in South Dakota as an estimated 300 Sioux Indians were killed by U.S. troops sent to disarm them.

In 1916, Grigory Rasputin, the so-called “Mad Monk” who’d wielded great influence with Czar Nicholas II, was murdered by a group of Russian noblemen in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1934, Japan formally renounced the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

In 1940, during World War II, Germany dropped incendiary bombs on London, setting off what came to be known as “The Second Great Fire of London.”

In 1957, singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were wed in Las Vegas.

In 1975, a bomb exploded in the main terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 people.

In 1986, former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan died at his home in Sussex, England, at age 92.

In 1989, playwright Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia by the country’s Federal Assembly, becoming the first non-Communist to hold the post in more than four decades.

In 1996,war-weary guerrilla and government leaders in Guatemala signed an accord ending 36 years of civil conflict.

In 1998, Khmer Rouge leaders apologized for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed 1 million lives.

In 1999, ten years ago, the Nasdaq composite index closed above 4,000 for the first time, ending the day at 4,041.46.

In 2004, five years ago, President George W. Bush assembled a four-nation coalition to organize humanitarian relief for Asia and made clear the United States would help bankroll long-term rebuilding in the region leveled by a massive earthquake and tsunamis.

In 2004, Bush denounced Osama bin Laden’s call to boycott the Iraqi elections, saying that the balloting would mark a crossroads for Iraq.

In 2007, the New England Patriots became the first NFL team in 35 years to finish the regular season undefeated when they beat the New York Giants 38-35 to go 16-0.

In 2008, one year ago, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s lawyer responded to impeachment charges, saying a vague array of charges and evidence did not merit removing his client from office.

In 2008, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf resigned, saying he had lost control of the country to Islamic insurgents.

In 2008, the African Union suspended Guinea after a coup in the West African nation.

In 2008, Grammy-winning jazz musician Freddie Hubbard died in Sherman Oaks, Calif., at age 70.

In 2008, French fashion designer Ted Lapidus died in Cannes at age 79.

Today’s Birthdays

Actress Inga Swenson is 77. ABC newscaster Tom Jarriel is 75. Actress Mary Tyler Moore is 73. Actor Jon Voight is 71. Country singer Ed Bruce is 70. Rock musician Ray Thomas is 68. Singer Marianne Faithfull is 63. Jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. is 63. Actor Ted Danson is 62. Actor Jon Polito is 59. Singer-actress Yvonne Elliman is 58. Actress Patricia Clarkson is 50. Comedian Paula Poundstone is 50. Rock singer-musician Jim Reid (The Jesus and Mary Chain) is 48. Actor Michael Cudlitz is 45. Rock singer Dexter Holland (The Offspring) is 44. Actor-comedian Mystro Clark is 43. Actor Jason Gould is 43. Movie director Andy Wachowski is 42. Actress Jennifer Ehle is 40. Actor Patrick Fischler is 40. Rock singer-musician Glen Phillips is 39. Actor Kevin Weisman is 39. Actor Jude Law is 37. Actor Mekhi Phifer is 35. Actor Shawn Hatosy is 34. Actress Katherine Moennig is 32. Actor Diego Luna is 30. Country singer Jessica Andrews is 26.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Jeanne-Antoinette Pompadour
12/29/1721 – 4/15/1764
French mistress of Louis XV

Charles Macintosh
12/29/1766 – 7/25/1843
Scottish chemist and inventor

Charles Goodyear
12/29/1800 – 7/1/1860
American inventor; pioneered commercial use of rubber

Andrew Johnson
12/29/1808 – 7/31/1875
17th President of the United States (1865-69)

William Gladstone
12/29/1809 – 5/19/1898
English statesman and four-time prime minister (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94)

Pablo Casals
12/29/1876 – 10/22/1973
Spanish cellist and conductor

William Mitchell
12/29/1879 – 2/19/1936
U.S. Army officer and early advocate of a separate air force

Jess Willard
12/29/1881 – 12/15/1968
American prizefighter

Klaus Fuchs
12/29/1911 – 1/28/1988
German-born American physicist and spy

William Gaddis
12/29/1922 – 12/16/1998
American novelist

Thought for Today

“The wise man must be wise before, not after.” – Epicharmus, Sicilian Greek comic poet (? – c.450 B.C.)

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122900002.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 28

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 28 on December 28, 2009 |

Today is Monday, Dec. 28, the 362nd day of 2009. There are 3 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 28, 1832, John C. Calhoun became the first vice president of the United States to resign, stepping down because of differences with President Andrew Jackson.

On this date

In 1065, the original Westminster Abbey, located in London, was consecrated and opened this day in 1065 by Edward the Confessor and became the site of coronations and other ceremonies of national significance in England.

In 1694, Queen Mary II of England died after more than five years of joint rule with her husband, King William III.

In 1832, John C. Calhoun became the first vice president of the United States to resign, stepping down over differences with President Andrew Jackson.

In 1846, Iowa became the 29th state to be admitted to the Union.

In 1856, the 28th president of the United States, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, was born in Staunton, Va.

In 1895, cinema was born. The organisers of the showing were the brothers August and Louis Lumière, the sons of the well known photographer Antoine Lumière from Lyon.

The two brothers are now viewed as being the inventors of the cinema. There had however been public film showings before this: the German brothers Skladonowsky for instance had presented a programme of films in the Berlin Varieté Wintergarten in November 1895.

In addition to the French brothers, Georges Mélies is also seen to have decisively paved the way for the cinema. Whilst the brothers principally shot those films that are now described as documentary films, Mélies added the dimension of fantasy to the film business which is perhaps not surprising given that he had previously earned his living as a magician.

Mélies was present at that legendary showing in the Grand Café at the end of December. Years later he recalled his encounter with Lumière: “‘Monsieur Mélies, you have the habit of astonishing your audiences. I would like to see in the Grand Café this evening’- ‘ Why?’ I asked him. ‘You will see something that will astonish you.’ To begin with he projected static images with his projector, as we usually did during our showings. I said: ‘We have been doing that for 20 years!” He had deliberately let the image stand still for some time. I then suddenly saw that the people on the screen were moving towards us. We were all completely baffled!”

30 years later the next quantum leap in the history of cinema was achieved with the introduction of sound films. The voice of the American singer Al Jolson was the first thing to be heard in a sound film.

Now cinema, which then went from strength to strength, has overtaken theatre, arts and literature in terms of his impact upon the public. Only the heroes of popular music are still able to keep up in terms of their mass suggestion and popularity.

What keeps the cinema together, why is the seventh art so attractive? One of most attractive definitions of film was provided by the American producer Sam Fuller in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Pierrot le Fou”.

Nowadays cinema sometimes reminds us of a giant, extravagant ocean liner, that is magnificent to watch, full of luxury items, but somehow immobile and on a collision course.

But there is still hope. In recent years many filmmakers have reflected on the cinema’s beginnings with the objective of astonishing the viewers with the most simple means, just as the Lumière brothers did – it is not a bad approach!

In 1897, brothers Charles and Emile Pathé founded the first film production company in the world, “Pathé Cinéma”. By 1908, the brothers already controlled a third of the world cinema market. The first Pathé producers were Ferdinand Zecca, Léon Gaumont and his secretary Alice Guy – the world’s first female producer. They usually shot one or two films per week, and motivated by profit, had no time to make complex or artistic films. The “Pathé Cinéma” held onto its monopoly until the rise of the US company that made Hollywood into a “film factory”.

In 1897, the play “Cyrano de Bergerac,” by Edmond Rostand, premiered in Paris.

In 1905, Earl “Fatha” Hines, the father of modern jazz piano, was born.

In 1905, the forerunner of the NCAA, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, was founded in New York City.

In 1908, a major earthquake followed by a tsunami devastated the Italian city of Messina, killing at least 70,000 people.

In 1917, the New York Evening Mail published “A Neglected Anniversary,” a facetious, as well as fictitious, essay by H.L. Mencken recounting the history of bathtubs in America.

In 1937, composer Maurice Ravel died in Paris.

In 1944, the musical “On the Town,” with music by Leonard Bernstein and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, opened on Broadway.

In 1945, Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance.

In 1958, the Baltimore Colts won the NFL championship, defeating the New York Giants 23-17 in overtime at Yankee Stadium, in what has been dubbed the greatest football game ever played.

In 1973, Alexander Solzhenitsyn published “Gulag Archipelago,” an expose of the Soviet prison system.

In 1981, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American test-tube baby, was born in Norfolk, Va.

In 1982, Nevell Johnson Jr., a black man, was mortally wounded by a police officer in a Miami video arcade, setting off three days of race-related disturbances that left another man dead.

In 1989, Alexander Dubcek, the former Czechoslovak Communist leader who was deposed in a Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, was named president of the country’s parliament.

In 1999, ten years ago, Clayton Moore, television’s “Lone Ranger,” died in West Hills, Calif., at age 85.

In 2004, five years ago. the U.S. Agency for International Development said it was adding $20 million to an initial $15 million contribution for Asian tsunami relief as Secretary of State Colin Powell bristled at a U.N. official’s suggestion the United States was being “stingy.”

In 2004, activist and author Susan Sontag died in New York at age 71.

In 2004, actor Jerry Orbach died in New York at age 69.

In 2005, former top Enron Corp. accountant Richard Causey pleaded guilty to securities fraud and agreed to help pursue convictions against Enron founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

In 2008, one year ago, a bomb-loaded SUV exploded at a military checkpoint in Afghanistan, claiming the lives of 14 schoolchildren in a heartbreaking flash captured by a U.S. security camera.

In 2008, the Detroit Lions completed an 0-16 season – the NFL’s worst ever – with a 31-21 loss to the Green Bay Packers.

Today’s Birthdays

Comic book creator Stan Lee is 87. Former United Auto Workers union president Owen Bieber is 80. Actor Martin Milner is 78. Actress Nichelle Nichols is 77. Actress Dame Maggie Smith is 75. Rock singer-musician Charles Neville is 71. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., is 65. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., is 63. Rock singer-musician Edgar Winter is 63. Rock singer-musician Alex Chilton (The Box Tops; Big Star) is 59. Actor Denzel Washington is 55. Country singer Joe Diffie is 51. Country musician Mike McGuire (Shenandoah) is 51. Actor Chad McQueen is 49. Country singer-musician Marty Roe (Diamond Rio) is 49. Actor Malcolm Gets is 45. Actor Mauricio Mendoza is 40. Comedian Seth Meyers is 36. Actor Brendan Hines is 33. R&B singer John Legend is 31. Actress Sienna Miller is 28. Actor Thomas Dekker is 22. Actress Mackenzie Rosman is 20. Pop singer David Archuleta (“American Idol”) is 19.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Thomas Henderson
12/28/1798 – 11/23/1844
Scottish astronomer

Edward Levy-Lawson Burnham
12/28/1833 – 1/9/1916
English creator of London Daily Telegraph newspaper

Woodrow Wilson
12/28/1856 – 2/3/1924
28th President of the United States (1913-21)

Frederick Pethick-Lawrence
12/28/1871 – 9/10/1961
English women’s suffrage movement leader

William Draper Harkins
12/28/1873 – 3/7/1951
American chemist

Sir Arthur Eddington
12/28/1882 – 11/22/1944
English astrophysicist

Carl-Gustaf Rossby
12/28/1898 – 8/19/1957
Swedish meteorologist

Earl “Fatha” Hines
12/28/1905 – 4/22/1983
American jazz pianist, bandleader and composer

Lew Ayres
12/28/1908 – 12/30/1996
American actor

Manuel Puig
12/28/1932 – 7/22/1990
Argentine novelist and screenwriter

Thought for Today

“Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.” – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian statesman (1889-1964).

___________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/28/AR2009122800004.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 27

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 27 on December 27, 2009 |

Today is Sunday, Dec. 27, the 361st day of 2009. There are four days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 27, 1968, Apollo 8 and its three astronauts made a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific.

On this date

In 1512, Ferdinand II issued the Laws of Burgos to “regulate the relations” between Spaniards and Indians in Spain’s American colonies.

In 1822, scientist Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, France.

In 1831, British naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a voyage to the Pacific Ocean aboard the HMS Beagle. Darwin’s discoveries during the nearly five-year journey helped form the basis of his theories on evolution.

In 1900, prohibitionist Carry Nation carried out her first public smashing of a bar, at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kan.

In 1901, Marlene Dietrich, the magnetic movie star and singer who was considered an international symbol of glamour, was born.

In 1904, James Barrie’s play “Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” opened at the Duke of York’s Theater in London.

In 1927, the musical “Show Boat,” with music by Jerome Kern and libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II, opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York.

In 1932, Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City.

In 1945, 28 nations signed an agreement creating the World Bank.

In 1949, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed an act recognizing Indonesia’s sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.

In 1959, the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants 31-16 to win the NFL championship.

In 1968, Apollo 8, the first spaceflight to orbit the moon, returned to Earth.

In 1970, “Hello, Dolly!” closed on Broadway after a run of 2,844 performances.

In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal.

In 1985, Palestinian guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; a total of 20 people were killed, including four of the attackers, who were slain by police and security personnel.

In 1985, naturalist Dian Fossey, who had studied gorillas in the wild, was found hacked to death at a research station in Rwanda.

In 1999, ten years ago, space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew returned to Earth after fixing the Hubble Space Telescope.

In 1999, former television executive Leonard H. Goldenson, who’d built ABC into a network powerhouse, died in Longboat Key, Fla., at age 94.

In 2001, U.S. officials announced that Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners would be held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2002, North Korea ordered U.N. nuclear inspectors to leave the country and said it would restart a laboratory capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.

In 2004, five years ago, the death toll continued to rise in southern Asia in the wake of a huge tsunami triggered by a monster earthquake underneath the Indian Ocean.

In 2004, opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko declared victory in Ukraine’s fiercely contested presidential election.

In 2004, in an audiotape, a man purported to be Osama bin Laden endorsed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as his deputy in Iraq and called for a boycott of January’s elections.

In 2005, Indonesia’s Aceh rebels formally abolished their 30-year armed struggle for independence under a peace deal born out of the 2004 tsunami.

In 2007, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan by an attacker who shot her after a campaign rally and then blew himself up.

In 2008, one year ago, Israel bombed security sites in Hamas-ruled Gaza in retaliation for rocket fire aimed at civilians in southern Israeli towns, opening one of the Mideast conflict’s bloodiest assaults in decades.

In 2008, tens of thousands of people in Pakistan paid homage to Benazir Bhutto on the one-year anniversary of her assassination.

In 2008, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s 18-year-old daughter Bristol gave birth to a son, Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston.

In 2008, sculptor Robert Graham died in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 70.

Today’s Birthdays

Former U.S. Sen. James A. McClure, R-Idaho, is 85. Rockabilly musician Scotty Moore is 78. Actor John Amos is 70. Actress Charmian Carr (“The Sound of Music”) is 67. ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts is 66. Rock musician Mick Jones (Foreigner) is 65. Singer Tracy Nelson is 65. Actor Gerard Depardieu is 61. Jazz singer-musician T.S. Monk is 60. Singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff is 58. Actress Tovah Feldshuh is 57. Rock musician David Knopfler (Dire Straits) is 57. Journalist-turned-politician Arthur Kent is 56. Actress Maryam D’Abo is 49. Country musician Jeff Bryant is 47. Actor Ian Gomez is 45. Actress Theresa Randle is 45. Actress Eva LaRue is 43. Pro wrestler and actor Bill Goldberg is 43. Actress Tracey Cherelle Jones is 40. Bluegrass singer-musician Darrin Vincent (Dailey & Vincent) is 40. Rock musician Guthrie Govan is 38. Musician Matt Slocum is 37. Actor Wilson Cruz is 36. Singer Olu is 36. Actor Masi Oka is 35. Actress Emilie de Ravin is 28. Christian rock musician James Mead (Kutless) is 27. Rock singer Hayley Williams (Paramore) is 21.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Johannes Kepler
12/27/1571 – 11/15/1630
German astronomer

William Johnson
12/27/1771 – 8/4/1834
American Supreme Court justice

Sir George Cayley
12/27/1773 – 12/15/1857
English aerial navigator

Louis Pasteur
12/27/1822 – 9/28/1895
French biologist and chemist; invented pasteurization process

Sir Mackenzie Bowell
12/27/1823 – 12/10/1917
Canadian prime minister

Cyrus Eaton
12/27/1883 – 5/9/1979
Canadian-born American industrialist and philanthropist

Louis Bromfield
12/27/1896 – 3/18/1956
American novelist and essayist

Marlene Dietrich
12/27/1901 – 5/6/1992
German-born American actress

Thought for Today

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” – Gertrude Stein, American author (1874-1946).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/27/AR2009122700003.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 26

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 26 on December 26, 2009 |

Today is Saturday, Dec. 26th, the 360th day of 2009. There are 5 days left in the year. The seven-day African-American holiday Kwanzaa begins today. This is Boxing Day.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 26, 1799, former President George Washington was eulogized by Col. Henry Lee as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

On this date

In 1647, Charles I and the Scots reached a secret agreement, whereby the Scots offered to support the king’s restoration to power in return for his acceptance of Presbyterianism in Scotland and its establishment in England for three years.

In 1776, the British suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Trenton during the Revolutionary War.

In 1865, James H. Nason of Franklin, Mass., received a patent for a coffee percolator.

In 1893, Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese statesman who led the communist revolution in China and became its first communist leader, was born.

In 1908, Jack Johnson became the first African-American boxer to win the world heavyweight championship as he defeated Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.

In 1909, illustrator Frederic Remington died in Ridgefield, Conn., at age 48.

In 1917, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation authorizing the government to take over operation of the nation’s railroads.

In 1941, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

In 1943, the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst was sunk by the British battleship Duke of York during World War II.

In 1944, during the World War II Battle of the Bulge, the embattled U.S. 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne, Belgium, was relieved by units of the 4th Armored Division.

In 1944, Tennessee Williams’ play “The Glass Menagerie” premiered at the Civic Theatre in Chicago.

In 1947, heavy snow blanketed the Northeast, burying New York City under 26.4 inches of snow in 16 hours; the severe weather was blamed for some 80 deaths.

In 1972, the 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, died in Kansas City, Mo., at age 88.

In 1974, comedian Jack Benny died at age 80.

In 1996, 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colo. (To date, the slaying remains unsolved, despite a widely publicized “confession” by John Mark Karr.)

In 1999, ten years ago, the crew of space shuttle Discovery packed up its tools and prepared to return home after an eight-day mission of repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope that NASA declared a success.

In 1999, Alfonso Portillo, a populist lawyer, scored a resounding victory in Guatemala’s first peacetime presidential elections in nearly 40 years.

In 1999, soul singer and songwriter Curtis Mayfield died in Roswell, Ga., at age 57.

In 2004, five years ago, more than 200,000 people, mostly in southern Asia, were killed by a tsunami triggered by a powerful earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean.

In 2004, an unmanned cargo ship docked at the international space station, ending a shortage that forced astronauts to ration supplies.

In 2004, Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts broke Dan Marino’s single-season touchdown pass record when he threw his 48th and 49th of the season against San Diego. (The Colts defeated San Diego in overtime, 34-31.)

In 2004, Reggie White, one of the greatest defensive players in NFL history, died in North Carolina at age 43.

In 2006, former President Gerald R. Ford died in Rancho Mirage, Calif., at age 93.

In 2008, One year ago: Caroline Kennedy emerged from weeks of near-silence about her bid for a New York Senate seat; in an interview with The Associated Press and NY1 television, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy said she felt compelled to answer the call to service issued by her father a generation earlier. (Kennedy later dropped her bid; Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed by New York Gov. David Paterson.)

Today’s Birthdays

Actor Donald Moffat is 79. Actor Caroll Spinney (Big Bird on “Sesame Street”) is 76. R&B singer Abdul “Duke” Fakir (The Four Tops) is 74. Record producer Phil Spector is 70. “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh is 64. Country musician Bob Carpenter (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) is 63. Baseball Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk is 62. All-Star baseball player Chris Chambliss is 61. Baseball Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith is 55. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., is 54. Humorist David Sedaris is 53. Rock musician James Kottak (The Scorpions) is 47. Country musician Brian Westrum (Sons of the Desert) is 47. Rock musician Lars Ulrich (Metallica) is 46. Actress Nadia Dajani is 44. Rock musician J is 42. Country singer Audrey Wiggins is 42. Rock musician Peter Klett (Candlebox) is 40. Rock singer James Mercer (The Shins; Flake) is 39. Actor-singer Jared Leto is 38. Rock singer Chris Daughtry is 30. Actress Eden Sher is 18. Actor Zach Mills is 14.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Frederick II, the Great king of Prussia, who remains one of the most famous German rulers of all time, was born. His military successes and his domestic reforms made Prussia one of the leading nations in Europe.

Thomas Gray
12/26/1716 – 7/30/1771
English poet

Charles Babbage
12/26/1791 – 10/18/1871
English mathematician and inventor

Dion Boucicault
12/26/1820 – 9/18/1890
Irish-born American playwright and actor

George Dewey
12/26/1837 – 1/16/1917
American naval commander

Sir Norman Angell
12/26/1872 – 10/7/1967
English economist and Nobel Peace Prize winner

Henry Miller
12/26/1891 – 6/7/1980
American novelist

Mao Tse-tung
12/26/1893 – 9/9/1976
Chinese statesman and leader of his nation’s communist revolution

Leopold Mannes
12/26/1899 – 8/11/1964
American co-developer of Kodachrome film

Thought for Today

“Christmas has come and gone, and I – to speak selfishly – am glad of it. The season always gives me the blues in spite of myself, though I manage to get a good deal of pleasure from thinking of the multitudes of happy kids in various parts of the world.” – Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet (1869-1935).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/26/AR2009122600002.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 25

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 25 on December 25, 2009 |

Today is Friday, Dec. 25th, the 359th day of 2009. There are 6 days left in the year. This is Christmas Day.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 25, 1818, “Silent Night,” written by Franz Gruber and Father Joseph Mohr, was performed for the first time, at the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.

On this date

In A.D. 336, the first recorded celebration of Christmas on Dec. 25 took place in Rome. Though the precise origin of the date is unclear, Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, is celebrated on this day, having been first identified as the date of Jesus’ birth by Sextus Julius Africanus in 221.

In 800, while Charlemagne knelt in prayer in Saint Peter’s in Rome, Pope Leo III placed a golden crown on the bowed head of the king. becoming the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1066, William the Conqueror was crowned king of England.

In 1223, St. Francis of Assisi assembled one of the first Nativity scenes, in Greccio, Italy.

In 1776, Gen. George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River for a surprise attack against Hessian forces at Trenton, N.J.

In 1821, Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was born in Oxford, Mass.

In 1830, the first regularly scheduled passenger train in the United States began operation. Chartered in 1827, the same year as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company steamed out of Charleston along a six mile line of track. According to the previous day’s Charleston Mercury regular times for leaving the station would be “8 o’clock, at 10 A.M., at 1, and at half past 3.”

The new service’s locomotive steam engine, named Best Friend, purchased from one Mr. E. L. Miller, was the first in the U.S. to pull an entire string of cars. According to the Mercury article, “It is said to have moved on some occasions at the rate of 30 miles per hour…When drawing two Cars with 41 Passengers, it went at the average rate of nearly 16 and where the Road was straight, at the rate of 20…per hour.” This breakneck speed was achieved by a six horse power engine weighing three tons “exclusive of the wood and water for keeping it in continued action.”

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson granted an unconditional pardon to everyone involved in the Southern rebellion that resulted in the Civil War.

In 1918, Anwar el-Sadat, the Egyptian president who won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a peace treaty with Israel, was born.

In 1926, Hirohito became emperor of Japan, succeeding his father, Emperor Yoshihito. (Hirohito was formally enthroned almost two years later.)

In 1941, during World War II, Japan announced the surrender of the British-Canadian garrison at Hong Kong.

In 1946, comedian W.C. Fields died in Pasadena, Calif., at age 66.

In 1977, comedian Charlie Chaplin died in Switzerland at age 88.

In 1979, the Soviet Union began its occupation of Afghanistan during the Afghan War.

In 1989, ousted Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed following a popular uprising.

In 1989, former baseball manager Billy Martin died in a traffic accident in Fenton, N.Y.

In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on television to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of a communist superpower that had already gone out of existence.

In 1999, ten years ago, space shuttle Discovery’s astronauts finished their repair job on the Hubble Space Telescope and released it back into orbit.

In 1999, a Cuban airplane crashed in northern Venezuela, killing all 22 aboard.

In 2002, Katie Hnida became the first woman to play in a Division I football game when she attempted an extra point for New Mexico against UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl.

In 2004, five years ago, President George W. Bush urged Americans to help the neediest among them by volunteering to care for the sick, the elderly and the poor in a Christmas day call for compassion.

In 2006, James Brown, the “Godfather of Soul,” died of heart failure in Atlanta at age 73.

In 2008, one year ago, Pope Benedict XVI urged a world confronting a financial crisis, conflict, and increasing poverty not to lose hope at Christmas, but to join in “authentic solidarity” to prevent global ruin.

In 2008, President-elect Barack Obama spent a private Christmas Day with family and close friends in Hawaii.

In 2008, singer, dancer and actress Eartha Kitt died in Weston, Conn., at 81.

In 2008, actress Ann Savage died in Los Angeles at 87.

Today’s Birthdays

Singer Tony Martin is 96. Actor Dick Miller is 81. Author Anne Roiphe is 74. Actress Hanna Schygulla is 66. R&B singer John Edwards (The Spinners) is 65. Actor Gary Sandy is 64. Singer Jimmy Buffett is 63. Pro and College Football Hall-of-Famer Larry Csonka is 63. Country singer Barbara Mandrell is 61. Actress Sissy Spacek is 60. Former White House adviser Karl Rove is 59. Actress CCH Pounder is 57. Singer Annie Lennox is 55. Reggae singer-musician Robin Campbell (UB40) is 55. Country singer Steve Wariner is 55. Singer Shane MacGowan (The Pogues, The Popes) is 52. Baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson is 51. The Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, is 51. Actress Klea Scott is 41. Rock musician Noel Hogan (The Cranberries) is 38. Singer Dido is 38. Rock singer Mac Powell (Third Day) is 37. R&B singer Ryan Shaw is 29. Country singer Alecia Elliott is 27. Pop singers Jess and Lisa Origliasso (The Veronicas) are 25.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Clara Barton
12/25/1821 – 4/12/1912
Founder of the American Red Cross

Louis Chevrolet
12/25/1878 – 6/6/1941
French-born American automobile designer

Maurice Utrillo
12/25/1883 – 11/5/1955
French painter

Franz Rosenzweig
12/25/1886 – 12/10/1929
German-Jewish philosopher

Conrad Hilton
12/25/1887 – 1/3/1979
American businessman; founded Hilton Hotels chain

Robert Ripley
12/25/1890 – 5/27/1949
American newspaper cartoonist; founded “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”

Humphrey Bogart
12/25/1899 – 1/14/1957
American actor

Cab Calloway
12/25/1907 – 11/18/1994
American jazz composer, singer and bandleader

Anwar el-Sadat
12/25/1918 – 10/6/1981
Egyptian president (1970-81); signed historic peace treaty with Israel

Rod Serling
12/25/1924 – 6/28/1975
American television writer and producer

Thought for Today

“It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you … yes, it is Christmas every time you smile at your brother and offer him your hand.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/25/AR2009122500002.html

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 24

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 24 on December 24, 2009 |

Today is Thursday, Dec. 24, the 358th day of 2009. There are 7 days left in the year. This is Christmas Eve.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 24, 1809, legendary American frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson was born in Madison County, Ky.

On this date

In 1524, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama who had discovered a sea route around Africa to India died in Cochin, India.

In 1814, the War of 1812 officially ended as the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium.

In 1818, the German Christmas carol “Silent night” is a symbol of the festive season for millions of people all over the world. The carol was first performed on 24 December 1818 under conditions of great poverty in a small Austrian village -predominantly home to raftsmen and boat builders – near the German border. There was a famine.

In 1822, ‘Tis December 24, the day before Christmas, and all through the land, families will send excited children to bed with a reading of Clement Moore’s classic poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

Moore is thought to have composed the tale, now popularly known as “The Night Before Christmas,” on December 24, 1822, while traveling home from Greenwich Village, where he had bought a turkey for his family’s Christmas dinner.

Inspired by the plump, bearded Dutchman who took him by sleigh on his errand through the snow-covered streets of New York City, Moore penned A Visit from St. Nicholas for the amusement of his six children, with whom he shared the poem that evening. His vision of St. Nicholas draws upon Dutch-American and Norwegian traditions of a magical, gift-giving figure who appears at Christmas time, as well as the German legend of a visitor who enters homes through chimneys.

In 1851, fire devastated the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroying about 35,000 volumes.

In 1865, several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tenn., called the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1871, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Aida” had its world premiere in Cairo, Egypt.

In 1906, Canadian physicist Reginald A. Fessenden became the first person to broadcast a music program over radio, from Brant Rock, Mass.

In 1907, I. F. Stone, the American journalist famous for his witty commentary in his newsletter, “I.F. Stone’s Weekly”, was born.

In 1920, Enrico Caruso gave his last public performance, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

In 1942, Admiral François Darlan, a leading figure in Marshal Philippe Pétain’s Vichy government, was assassinated in Algiers.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces as part of Operation Overlord.

In 1951, Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” the first opera written specifically for television, was first broadcast by NBC.

In 1962, more than 1,000 men taken prisoner at the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba return to the United States in time for Christmas.

In 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve telecast.

In 1980, Americans remembered the U.S. hostages in Iran by burning candles or shining lights for 417 seconds one second for each day of captivity.

In 1989, ousted Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega, who had succeeded in eluding U.S. forces, took refuge at the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City.

In 1992, President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.

In 1994, militants hijacked an Air France Airbus A-300 at the Algiers airport; three passengers were slain during the siege before all four hijackers were killed by French commandos in Marseille two days later.

In 1997, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the aging revolutionary known as Carlos the Jackal, was sentenced by a French court to life in prison for the 1975 murders of two French investigators and a Lebanese national.

In 1999, ten years ago, five hijackers seized an Indian Airlines jet, forcing the aircraft on a journey across South Asia and into the Middle East. (The eight-day ordeal resulted in the death of one passenger and India’s release of three jailed pro-Kashmir militants in exchange for the rest of the hostages.)

In 2002, Laci Peterson was reported missing from her Modesto, Calif., home, by her husband, Scott, who was later convicted of murdering her and their unborn son.

In 2004, five years ago, bearing gifts of praise and encouragement, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld paid a surprise Christmas Eve visit to U.S. troops in some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq.

In 2004, Afghan President Hamid Karzai swore in a new cabinet.

In 2004, the international Cassini spacecraft launched a probe on a three-week free-fall toward Saturn’s mysterious moon Titan.

In 2008, one year ago, a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit shot his way into the Covina, Calif., home of his former in-laws and set it on fire, killing nine people (the attacker, identified as Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, committed suicide the next day).

In 2008, the Federal Reserve granted a request by the financing arm of General Motors Corp. to tap the government’s $700 billion rescue fund, bolstering the automaker’s ability to survive.

In 2008, army Capt. Moussa Camara, the leader of a coup in Guinea, entered the country’s capital, hours after saying his group would hold power until elections in two years.

In 2008, Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter died in London at age 78.

Today’s Birthdays

Songwriter-bandleader Dave Bartholomew is 89. Author Mary Higgins Clark is 82. Federal health administrator Anthony S. Fauci is 69. Recording company executive Mike Curb is 65. Rock singer-musician Lemmy (Motorhead) is 64. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is 63. Actor Grand L. Bush is 54. Actor Clarence Gilyard is 54. Actress Stephanie Hodge is 53. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is 52. Rock musician Ian Burden (The Human League) is 52. Actor Anil Kapoor is 50. Actor Wade Williams is 48. Designer Kate Spade is 47. Rock singer Mary Ramsey (10,000 Maniacs) is 46. Actor Mark Valley is 45. Actor Diedrich Bader is 43. Actor Amaury Nolasco is 39. Singer Ricky Martin is 38. Author Stephenie Meyer (“Twilight”) is 36. “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest is 35.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

King John of England (1199–1216), born this day in 1167, lost Normandy and almost all his other French possessions in a war with France and was forced to seal the Magna Carta (1215) following an English baronial revolt.

William Paterson
12/24/1745 – 9/9/1806
Irish-born American governor of New Jersey

Kit Carson
12/24/1809 – 5/23/1868
American frontiersman and folk hero

Matthew Arnold
12/24/1822 – 4/15/1888
English poet and social critic

Michael Curtiz
12/24/1886 – 4/10/1962
Hungarian-born American film director

Georges-Marie Guynemer
12/24/1894 – 9/11/1917
French World War I combat pilot

Baby Dodds
12/24/1898 – 2/14/1959
American jazz musician

Howard Hughes
12/24/1905 – 4/5/1976
American manufacturer and aviator

I. F. Stone
12/24/1907 – 6/18/1989
American journalist

Ava Gardner
12/24/1922 – 1/25/1990
American actress

Thought for Today

”Christmas is the day that holds all time together.” Alexander Smith, Scottish poet and essayist (1830-1867).

__________

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8871093

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/default.stm

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 23

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 23 on December 23, 2009 |

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2009. There are 8 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 23, 1968, 82 crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo were released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.

On this date

In 1783, George Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retired to his home at Mount Vernon, Va.

In 1788, Maryland passed an act to cede an area “not exceeding ten miles square” for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area became the District of Columbia.

In 1823, the poem “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” was published anonymously in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel; the verse, more popularly known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” was later attributed to Clement C. Moore.

In 1867, Sarah Breedlove Walker, the American businesswoman and philanthropist considered to be the first black female millionaire , was born.

In 1893, the Engelbert Humperdinck opera “Haensel und Gretel” was first performed, in Weimar, Germany.

In 1928, NBC set up a permanent, coast-to-coast network.

In 1941, during World War II, American forces on Wake Island surrendered to the Japanese.

In 1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders were executed in Tokyo.

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson held an unprecedented meeting with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican.

In 1972, the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Oakland Raiders 13-7 in an NFL playoff game on a last-second touchdown catch by Franco Harris that was dubbed the “immaculate reception.”

In 1975, Richard S. Welch, the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Athens, Greece, was shot and killed outside his home by the militant group November 17.

In 1986, the experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first nonstop, non-refueled, round-the-world flight as it landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

In 1995, a fire in Dabwali, India, killed 540 people, including 170 children, during a year-end party being held near the children’s school.

In 1997, a jury in Denver convicted Terry Nichols of involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

In 1999, ten years ago, President Bill Clinton pardoned Freddie Meeks, 80, a black sailor court-martialed for mutiny during World War II after he and other sailors refused to load live ammunition following a deadly explosion at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine near San Francisco that had claimed more than 300 lives. (Meeks died in 2003 at age 83.)

In 1999, the Nasdaq composite index briefly crossed 4,000 and closed at a record high for the 58th time in 1999.

In 2003, the government announced the first suspected case of mad cow disease in United States.

In 2003, a jury in Chesapeake, Va., sentenced teen sniper Lee Boyd Malvo to life in prison, sparing him the death penalty.

In 2003, New York Gov. George Pataki pardoned the late comedian Lenny Bruce for his 1964 obscenity conviction.

In 2004, five years ago, Democrat Christine Gregoire won the Washington governor’s race by 130 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, according to final recount results announced from Seattle’s King County.

In 2004, former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland pleaded guilty to a corruption charge (he was later sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison – he served 10 months).

In 2004, assailants claiming to be members of a revolutionary group opposed to the death penalty ambushed a bus in Honduras, killing 28 people, including six children.

In 2004, two men were convicted in Houston for their role in a smuggling attempt that resulted in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants crammed in a tractor-trailer. (Fredy Giovanni Garcia-Tobar was later sentenced to 15 years in prison; Victor Jesus Rodriguez, 20 years and seven months.)

In 2008, one year ago, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, founder of an investment fund that lost $1.4 billion in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, was discovered dead after committing suicide at his Madison Avenue office.

In 2008, a military-led group seized control of the airwaves in Guinea and declared a coup after the death of the country’s longtime dictator, Lansana Conte.

Today’s Birthdays

Actor Gerald S. O’Loughlin is 88. Actor Ronnie Schell is 78. Emperor Akihito of Japan is 76. Pro Football Hall of Famer Paul Hornung is 74. Actor Frederic Forrest is 73. Actor James Stacy is 73. Rock musician Jorma Kaukonen is 69. Rock musician Ron Bushy is 68. Actor-comedian Harry Shearer is 66. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark is 65. Actress Susan Lucci is 63. Singer-musician Adrian Belew is 60. Rock musician Dave Murray (Iron Maiden) is 53. Actress Joan Severance is 51. Singer Terry Weeks is 46. Rock singer Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) is 45. The first lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is 42. Actor Corey Haim is 38. Rock musician Jamie Murphy is 34. Jazz musician Irvin Mayfield is 32. Actress Estella Warren is 31. Actress Anna Maria Perez de Tagle is 19.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Robert Barclay
12/23/1648 – 10/3/1690
English-born American Quaker leader

James Gibbs
12/23/1682 – 8/5/1754
Scottish architect

Jean-Francois Champollion
12/23/1790 – 3/4/1832
French historian and linguist

Joseph Smith
12/23/1805 – 6/27/1844
American founder of the Mormon Church

Oscar Solomon Straus
12/23/1850 – 5/3/1926
American member of President Wilson’s cabinet

James Buchanan Duke
12/23/1856 – 10/10/1925
American tobacco magnate

Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
12/23/1858 – 4/25/1943
Russian playwright

Sarah Breedlove Walker
12/23/1867 – 5/25/1919
American philanthropist

Emil Brunner
12/23/1889 – 4/6/1966
Swiss theologian

Thought for Today

“You can always spot a well-informed man – his views are the same as yours.” – Ilka Chase, author, actress and humorist (1905-1978).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/23/AR2009122300005.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 22

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 22 on December 22, 2009 |

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 22, the 356th day of 2009. There are 9 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

In 1944, during the World War II Battle of the Bulge, U.S. Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe rejected a German demand for surrender, writing “Nuts!” in his official reply.

On this date

In 1775, Esek Hopkins was appointed the commander in chief of the Continental Navy.

In 1808, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, and Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, also known as the “Pastoral Symphony,” had their world premieres in Vienna, Austria.

In 1858, opera composer Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy.

In 1864, during the Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman wrote a message to President Abraham Lincoln which said in part: “I beg to present you as a Christmas-gift the city of Savannah.”

In 1894, French army officer Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in a court-martial that triggered worldwide charges of anti-Semitism. (Dreyfus was eventually vindicated.)

In 1907, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, the British stage actress , was born.

In 1912, Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson, was born Claudio Alta Taylor in Karnack, Texas.

In 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington, D.C., for a wartime conference with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1968, Julie Nixon married David Eisenhower in a private ceremony in New York.

In 1977, three dozen people were killed when a 250-foot-high grain elevator at the Continental Grain Company plant in Westwego, La., exploded.

In 1984, New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shot and wounded four youths on a Manhattan subway, claiming they were about to rob him.

In 1989, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, the last of Eastern Europe’s hard-line Communist rulers, was toppled from power in a popular uprising.

In 1989, playwright Samuel Beckett died in Paris at age 83.

In 1989, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was reopened, signifying the reunion of East and West Germany.

In 1990, Lech Walesa took the oath of office as Poland’s first popularly elected president.

In 1999, ten years ago, President Bill Clinton urged Americans not to panic despite enhanced security measures prompted by fears of terrorism.

In 1999, an Algerian accused of trying to smuggle nitroglycerin and other bomb-making materials into the United States from Canada pleaded innocent in Seattle to all five counts of a federal indictment. (Ahmed Ressam was convicted in April 2001 of terrorist conspiracy and eight other charges.)

In 1999, two astronauts from the shuttle Discovery went on a spacewalk to replace broken instruments in the Hubble Space Telescope.

In 2000, pop singer Madonna married film director Guy Ritchie in Scotland. (The couple announced in October 2008 that they were divorcing.)

In 2001, Richard C. Reid, a passenger on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, tried to ignite explosives in his shoes, but was subdued by flight attendants and other passengers. (Reid is serving a life sentence.)

In 2002, rock musician Joe Strummer of The Clash died at age 50.

In 2004, five years ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, stung by criticism that he’d been insensitive to the needs of troops and their families, offered an impassioned defense, saying when he would meet wounded soldiers or relatives of those killed in battle, “their grief is something I feel to my core.”

In 2004, Vancouver Canucks forward Todd Bertuzzi received a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to assault, more than nine months after slugging Colorado forward Steve Moore from behind during a game.

In 2005, New York transit workers ended their three-day strike without a new contract.

In 2005, astronomers announced the discovery of two more rings encircling the planet Uranus.

In 2008, one year ago, five Muslim immigrants accused of scheming to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were convicted of conspiracy in Camden, N.J. (Four were later sentenced to life in prison; one received a 33-year sentence.)

In 2008, Toyota projected its first operating loss in 70 years due to the global economic slowdown.

In 2008, the president of Guinea, Lansana Conte, died nearly a quarter of a century after seizing power in a coup; he was believed to be in his 70s.

Today’s Birthdays

Actress Barbara Billingsley is 94. Former House Speaker Jim Wright is 87. Actor Hector Elizondo is 73. Country singer Red Steagall is 71. Former World Bank Group President Paul Wolfowitz is 66. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Steve Carlton is 65. ABC News correspondent Diane Sawyer is 64. Rock singer-musician Rick Nielsen (Cheap Trick) is 63. Rock singer-musician Michael Bacon is 61. Baseball All-Star Steve Garvey is 61. Singer Robin Gibb is 60. Golfer Jan Stephenson is 58. Actress BernNadette Stanis is 56. Rapper Luther Campbell is 49. Country singer-musician Chuck Mead is 49. Actor Ralph Fiennes is 47. Actress Lauralee Bell is 41. Country singer Lori McKenna is 41. Actress Dina Meyer is 41. Actress Heather Donahue is 35. Actor Chris Carmack is 29. Actor Logan Huffman is 20. Singer Jordin Sparks is 20.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

James Oglethorpe
12/22/1696 – 6/30/1785
English founder of the British colony of Georgia

Jean Henri Fabre
12/22/1823 – 10/11/1915
French entomologist

Thomas Higginson
12/22/1823 – 5/9/1911
American abolitionist

Frank Kellogg
12/22/1856 – 12/21/1937
American secretary of state

Giacomo Puccini
12/22/1858 – 11/29/1924
Italian composer

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
12/22/1876 – 12/2/1944
Italian-born French novelist, poet, and dramatist; founded Futurist artistic movement

Dame Peggy Ashcroft
12/22/1907 – 6/14/1991
English actress

Giacomo Manzu
12/22/1908 – 1/17/1991
Italian sculptor

Thought for Today

“Time is the thief you cannot banish.” – Phyllis McGinley, American poet and author (1905-1978).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/22/AR2009122200044.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 21

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 21 on December 21, 2009 |

Today is Monday, Dec. 21, the 355th day of 2009. There are 10 days left in the year. Winter arrives at 12:47 p.m. EST.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 21, 1620, Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower went ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth, Mass.

On this date

In 1804, British statesman Benjamin Disraeli was born in London.

In 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Savannah, Georgia, during his “March to the Sea” in the American Civil War.

In 1879, Joseph Stalin, the Soviet statesman who was leader of the Communist Party and dictator of the Soviet Union for 25 years , was born.

In 1898, scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium.

In 1937, the first feature-length animated cartoon in Technicolor, Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” had its world premiere in Los Angeles.

In 1945, Gen. George S. Patton died in Heidelberg, Germany, of injuries from a car accident.

In 1948, the state of Eire, or Ireland, passed an act declaring itself a republic.

In 1958, Charles de Gaulle was elected to a seven-year term as the first president of the Fifth Republic of France.

In 1968, Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon.

In 1969, Vince Lombardi coached his last football game as his team, the Washington Redskins, lost to the Dallas Cowboys 20-10.

In 1970, Elvis Presley met with President Richard M. Nixon in the Oval Office to discuss fighting drugs.

In 1971, the U.N. Security Council chose Kurt Waldheim to succeed U Thant as secretary-general.

In 1976, the Liberian-registered tanker Argo Merchant broke apart near Nantucket Island, off Massachusetts, almost a week after running aground, spilling 7.5 million gallons of oil into the North Atlantic.

In 1978, police in Des Plaines, Ill., arrested John W. Gacy Jr. and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys whom Gacy was later convicted of murdering.

In 1988, 270 people were killed when a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pam Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, sending wreckage crashing to the ground.

In 1991, eleven of the 12 former Soviet republics proclaimed the birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

In 1995, the city of Bethlehem passed from Israeli to Palestinian control.

In 1996, after two years of denials, House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted violating House ethics rules.

In 1999, ten years ago, amid heightened concerns about the possibility of a holiday terrorist attack, security was ordered tightened at American airports and the Pentagon said it was taking “appropriate action” to protect U.S. forces overseas.

In 2004, five years ago, a suicide bombing at a mess hall tent near Mosul, Iraq, killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. service members and three American contractors.

In 2004, two French reporters held hostage for four months in Iraq were released.

In 2004, the Associated Press told the Bowl Championship Series to stop using its college football poll to determine which teams would play for the national title and in the most prestigious bowl games.

In 2004, the NFL fined Jacksonville safety Donovin Darius $75,000 for a hit across the neck of Green Bay’s Robert Ferguson that left the wide receiver temporarily paralyzed.

In 2006, four Marines were charged with murder in the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, and four Marine officers were accused of failures in investigating and reporting the deaths. (Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich has pleaded not guilty to voluntary manslaughter; one of the officers was acquitted and charges against the rest were dropped.)

In 2008, one year ago, a multi-faith ceremony was held to mark the reopening of the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai, India, three weeks after it was targeted in a militant rampage.

In 2008, Detroit became the first 0-15 team when it was routed 42-7 by the New Orleans Saints.

In 2008, playwright Dale Wasserman, who’d written the book for the Tony-winning musical “Man of La Mancha,” died in Paradise Valley, Ariz., at age 94.

Today’s Birthdays

Country singer Freddie Hart is 83. Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno is 83. Actor Ed Nelson is 81. Talk show host Phil Donahue is 74. Movie director John Avildsen is 74. Actress Jane Fonda is 72. Actor Larry Bryggman is 71. Singer Carla Thomas is 67. Musician Albert Lee is 66. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is 65. Actor Josh Mostel is 63. Actor Samuel L. Jackson is 61. Movie producer Jeffrey Katzenberg is 59. Singer Betty Wright is 56. Tennis Hall-of-Famer Chris Evert is 55. Actress Jane Kaczmarek is 54. Country singer Lee Roy Parnell is 53. Entertainer Jim Rose is 53. Actor-comedian Ray Romano is 52. Country singer Christy Forester (The Forester Sisters) is 47. Rock musician Murph (The Lemonheads; Dinosaur Jr.) is 45. Actor-comedian Andy Dick is 44. Rock musician Gabrielle Glaser is 44. Actor Kiefer Sutherland (“24″) is 43. Actress Karri Turner is 43. Actress Khrystyne Haje is 41. Country singer Brad Warren (The Warren Brothers) is 41. Actress Julie Delpy is 40. Country singer-musician Rhean Boyer (Carolina Rain) is 39. Contemporary Christian singer Natalie Grant is 38. Actor Glenn Fitzgerald is 38. Singer-musician Brett Scallions is 38. Rock singer Lukas Rossi (Rock Star Supernova) is 33. Country singer Luke Stricklin is 27.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Masaccio
12/21/1401 – //1428
Italian artist

Robert Brown
12/21/1773 – 6/10/1858
Scottish botanist

Benjamin Disraeli
12/21/1804 – 4/19/1881
Two-time English prime minister (1868,1874-80)

Frederick Bonfils
12/21/1860 – 2/2/1933
American publisher of the Denver Post

Henrietta Szold
12/21/1860 – 2/13/1945
American Jewish leader; founded Hadassah (Women’s Zionist Organization of America)

Josef Stalin
12/21/1879 – 3/5/1953
Soviet dictator (1941-53)

Dame Rebecca West
12/21/1892 – 3/15/1983
English journalist and novelist

Josh Gibson
12/21/1911 – 1/20/1947
American baseball player

Andre Eglevsky
12/21/1917 – 12/4/1977
Russian-born American ballet dancer and instructor

Heinrich Boll
12/21/1917 – 7/16/1985
German novelist and Nobel Prize winner

American sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, considered one of the fastest women in track and holder from 1988 of the world record in the 100 metres (10.49 seconds) and 200 metres (21.34 seconds), was born this day in 1959. She died on September 21, 1998.

Thought for Today

“The time will come when winter will ask us: ‘What were you doing all the summer?’” – Bohemian proverb.

___________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/21/AR2009122100008.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html

Today in History – December 20

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 20 on December 20, 2009 |

Today is Sunday, Dec. 20, the 354th day of 2009. There are 11 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 20, 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed as ownership of the territory was formally transferred from France to the United States during ceremonies in New Orleans.

On this date

In 1790, the first successful cotton mill in the United States began operating at Pawtucket, R.I.

In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed as the territory was formally transferred from France to the United States during ceremonies in New Orleans.

In 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union.

In 1864, Confederate forces evacuated Savannah, Ga., as Union Gen. William T. Sherman continued his “March to the Sea.”

In 1881, Branch Rickey, the American baseball executive famous for creating the farm team system and hiring the first black players, was born.

In 1945, the Office of Price Administration announced the end of tire rationing, effective Jan. 1, 1946.

In 1946, the Frank Capra film “It’s A Wonderful Life” had a preview showing for charity at New York City’s Globe Theatre, a day before its official premiere.

In 1963, the Berlin Wall was opened for the first time to West Berliners, who were allowed one-day visits to relatives in the Eastern sector for the holidays.

In 1968, author John Steinbeck died at age 66.

In 1976, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley died at age 74.

In 1978, former White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman was released from prison after serving 18 months for his role in the Watergate cover-up.

In 1987, more than 4,300 people were killed when the Dona Paz, a Philippine passenger ship, collided with the tanker Vector off Mindoro island.

In 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause, sending troops into Panama to topple the government of Gen. Manuel Noriega.

In 1994, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk died at age 85.

In 1996, astronomer Carl Sagan died at age 62.

In 1998, Nkem Chukwu gave birth in Houston to five girls and two boys, 12 days after giving birth to another child, a girl. (However, the tiniest of the octuplets died a week later.)

In 1999, ten years ago, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples were entitled to the same benefits and protections as wedded couples of the opposite sex.

In 1999, country music legend Hank Snow died in Nashville, Tenn., at age 85.

In 1999, 12 years after an agreement was reached between China and Portugal, several centuries of Portuguese rule ended in Macau when it became a special administrative region under Chinese sovereignty.

In 2002, Trent Lott resigned as Senate Republican leader two weeks after igniting a political firestorm with racially charged remarks.

In 2004, five years ago, in a sobering assessment of the Iraq war, President George W. Bush acknowledged during a news conference that Americans’ resolve had been shaken by grisly scenes of death and destruction, and he pointedly criticized the performance of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops.

In 2004, attorneys presented opening statements in the Robert Blake murder trial in Los Angeles.

In 2005, New York City transit workers began a three-day strike.

In 2008, one year ago, a Continental Airlines Boeing 737-500 taking off from Denver veered off the runway into a ravine, injuring 37 people.

In 2008, Olga Lepeshinskaya, the Bolshoi Ballet’s prima ballerina for three decades during Soviet times, died in Moscow at age 92.

In 2008, filmmaker Robert Mulligan (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) died in Lyme, Conn., at age 83.

Today’s Birthdays

Actress Audrey Totter is 92. Comedian Charlie Callas is 82. Actor John Hillerman is 77. Actress Kathryn Joosten is 70. Rock musician-music producer Bobby Colomby is 65. Rock musician Peter Criss is 64. Psychic/illusionist Uri Geller is 63. Producer Dick Wolf (“Law & Order”) is 63. Rock musician Alan Parsons is 61. Actress Jenny Agutter is 57. Actor Michael Badalucco is 55. Actress Blanche Baker is 53. Rock singer Billy Bragg is 52. Rock singer-musician Mike Watt (The Secondmen, Minutemen) is 52. Actor Joel Gretsch is 46. Country singer Kris Tyler is 45. Rock singer Chris Robinson (Black Crowes) is 43. Actress Nicole deBoer is 39. Movie director Todd Phillips is 39. Singer David Cook (“American Idol”) is 27. Actor Jonah Hill is 26. Singer JoJo is 19.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Dan Leno
12/20/1860 – 10/31/1904
English entertainer

Harvey Firestone
12/20/1868 – 2/7/1938
American industrialist

Branch Rickey
12/20/1881 – 12/9/1965
American baseball executive

Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman
12/20/1886 – 12/5/1974
American tennis champion

Sir Robert Menzies
12/20/1894 – 5/16/1978
Australian prime minister (1939-41, 1949-66)

Irene Dunne
12/20/1898 – 9/4/1990
American actress

Robert Van de Graaff
12/20/1901 – 1/16/1967
American physicist and inventor

Max Lerner
12/20/1902 – 6/5/1992
American educator and columnist

Sidney Hook
12/20/1902 – 7/12/1989
American social philosopher

Jean Marchand
12/20/1918 – 8/28/1988
Canadian politician

Thought for Today

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. … It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” – C.S. Lewis, British author (1898-1963).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122000030.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091219.html

Today in History – December 19

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 19 on December 19, 2009 |

Today is Saturday, Dec. 19, the 353rd day of 2009. There are 12 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 19, 1843, “A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens, was first published in England.

On this date

In 1732, Benjamin Franklin began publishing “Poor Richard’s Almanac.”

In 1776, Thomas Paine published his first “American Crisis” essay, writing: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

In 1777, Gen. George Washington led his army of about 11,000 men to Valley Forge, Pa., to camp for the winter.

In 1813, British forces captured Fort Niagara in upstate New York during the War of 1812.

In 1906, Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet statesman who was the leader of the Soviet Union for 18 years, was born.

In 1907, 239 workers died in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pa.

In 1932, the BBC began transmitting overseas with its Empire Service to Australia.

In 1946, war broke out in Indochina as troops under Ho Chi Minh launched widespread attacks against the French.

In 1957, Meredith Willson’s musical play “The Music Man” opened on Broadway.

In 1966, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the Outer Space Treaty, an international treaty binding the parties to use outer space only for peaceful purposes.

In 1972, Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific, winding up the Apollo program of manned lunar landings.

In 1974, Nelson A. Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States.

In 1984, a fire at the Wilberg Mine near Orangeville, Utah, killed 27 people.

In 1984, Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.

In 1986, the Soviet Union announced it had freed dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal exile and pardoned his wife, Yelena Bonner.

In 1996, the school board of Oakland, Calif., voted to recognize Black English, also known as “ebonics.”

In 1997, “Titanic,” the highest-grossing movie of all-time, opened in American theaters.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republican-controlled House for perjury and obstruction of justice (he was later acquitted by the Senate).

In 1998, two days after his confession of marital infidelity, Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., told the House he wouldn’t serve as its next speaker.

In 1999, ten years ago, space shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts roared into the night toward the crippled Hubble Space Telescope.

In 1999, Macau spent its last day under Portuguese control before being handed back to China, ending 442 years of colonial rule.

In 1999, Cleveland Browns offensive tackle Orlando Brown was ejected for pushing referee Jeff Triplette to the ground during a game against Jacksonville after accidentally being hit in the eye with Triplette’s weighted penalty flag.

In 1999, actor Desmond Llewelyn, who’d starred as the eccentric gadget expert Q in a string of James Bond films, was killed in a car crash in East Sussex, England; he was 85.

In 2000, the U.N. Security Council voted to impose broad sanctions on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers unless they closed terrorist training camps and surrendered U.S. embassy bombing suspect Osama bin Laden.

In 2002, after a prosecutor cited new DNA evidence, a judge in New York threw out the convictions of five young men in a 1989 attack on a Central Park jogger who had been raped and left for dead.

In 2003, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi agreed to halt his nation’s drive to develop nuclear and chemical weapons.

In 2004, five years ago, in Iraq, car bombs tore through a Najaf funeral procession and Karbala’s main bus station, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than 120 in the two Shiite holy cities.

In 2004, in Baghdad, three Iraqi election officials were killed execution-style by insurgents.

In 2004, Time magazine named President George W. Bush its Person of the Year for the second time.

In 2004, opera singer Renata Tebaldi died in San Marino at age 82.

In 2005, Afghanistan’s first democratically elected parliament in more than three decades convened.

In 2008, one year ago, citing imminent danger to the national economy, President George W. Bush ordered an emergency bailout of the U.S. auto industry.

In 2008, an unwavering Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich served notice he had no intention of quitting over his corruption arrest, declaring: “I have done nothing wrong.”

In 2008, militants in Gaza fired rockets into Israel as Hamas ended a six-month truce.

Today’s Birthdays

Country singer Little Jimmy Dickens is 89. Composer-lyricist Robert Sherman (“Mary Poppins”) is 84. Actress Cicely Tyson is 76. R&B singer-musician Maurice White (Earth, Wind and Fire) is 68. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is 68. Actress Elaine Joyce is 66. Actor Tim Reid is 65. Paleontologist Richard E. Leakey is 65. Rock singer Alvin Lee (Ten Years After) is 65. Musician John McEuen is 64. Singer Janie Fricke is 62. Jazz musician Lenny White is 60. Actor Mike Lookinland is 49. Actress Jennifer Beals is 46. Actor Scott Cohen is 45. Actor Robert MacNaughton is 43. Magician Criss Angel is 42. Rock musician Kevin Shepard is 41. Actress Kristy Swanson is 40. Model Tyson Beckford is 39. Actress Amy Locane is 38. Actress Rosa Blasi is 37. Actress Alyssa Milano is 37. Actor Jake Gyllenhaal is 29. Actress Marla Sokoloff is 29. Rapper Lady Sovereign is 24.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Charles-Julien Brianchon
12/19/1783 – 4/29/1864
French mathematician

Edwin Stanton
12/19/1814 – 12/24/1869
American Secretary of War under President Lincoln

A.A. Michelson
12/19/1852 – 5/9/1931
German-born American physicist

Barry Byrne
12/19/1883 – 12/17/1967
American architect

Fritz Reiner
12/19/1888 – 11/15/1963
Hungarian-born American conductor

Sir Ralph Richardson
12/19/1902 – 10/10/1983
English actor

George Davis Snell
12/19/1903 – 6/6/1996
American geneticist and Nobel Prize winner

Leonid Brezhnev
12/19/1906 – 11/10/1982
Russian statesman

Jean Genet
12/19/1910 – 4/15/1986
French novelist

Edith Piaf
12/19/1915 – 10/11/1963
French singer and actress

Thought for Today

“I never could see why people were so happy about Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ because I never had any confidence that Scrooge was going to be different the next day.” – Dr. Karl Menninger, American psychiatrist (1893-1990).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/19/AR2009121900023.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091218.html

Today in History – December 18

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 18 on December 18, 2009 |

Today is Friday, Dec. 18, the 352nd day of 2009. There are 13 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 18, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in effect by Secretary of State William H. Seward.

On this date

In 1787, New Jersey became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

In 1886, Baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb was born in Narrows, Ga.

In 1888, Robert Moses, the American public servant who supervised the construction of many New York landmarks, including the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Shea Stadium , was born.

In 1892, Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” publicly premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1912, the discovery of fossil remains of Piltdown man, an extinct human species, was announced at a meeting of the Geological Society of London, but the remains were later proved to be a fraud.

In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson, widowed the year before, married Edith Bolling Galt at her Washington home.

In 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered secret preparations for Nazi Germany to invade the Soviet Union. (Operation Barbarossa was launched in June 1941.)

In 1944, in a pair of rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the wartime relocation of Japanese-Americans, but also said undeniably loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry could not continue to be detained.

In 1956, Japan was admitted to the United Nations.

In 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first public, full-scale commercial nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went on line. (It was taken out of service in 1982.)

In 1958, the world’s first communications satellite, SCORE, or Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment, nicknamed “Chatterbox,” was launched by the United States aboard an Atlas rocket.

In 1969, Britain’s House of Lords joined the House of Commons in making permanent a 1965 ban on the death penalty for cases of murder.

In 1972, the United States began heavy bombing of North Vietnamese targets during the Vietnam War. (The bombardment ended 11 days later.)

In 1980, former Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin died at age 76.

In 1987, Ivan F. Boesky was sentenced to three years in prison for plotting Wall Street’s biggest insider-trading scandal.

In 1997, comedian and “Saturday Night Live” alum Chris Farley was found dead at age 33 of an accidental overdose of morphine and cocaine.

In 1998, the House of Representatives began debate on four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.

In 1999, ten years ago, in St. Martinville, La., the last of the federal immigration detainees who’d taken a jail warden and three others hostage for almost a week surrendered.

In 1999, after living atop an ancient redwood in Humboldt County, Calif., for two years, environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill came down to earth, ending her anti-logging protest.

In 1999, French film director Robert Bresson died in Paris at age 98.

In 2003, a judge in Seattle sentenced confessed Green River killer Gary Ridgeway to 48 consecutive life terms.

In 2004, five years ago, the former Iraqi general known as “Chemical Ali,” Ali Hassan al-Majid, went before a judge in the first investigative hearings of former members of his regime.

In 2004, former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was hospitalized after suffering a stroke.

In 2008, one year ago, A U.N. court in Tanzania convicted former Rwandan army Col. Theoneste Bagosora of genocide and crimes against humanity for masterminding the killings of more than half a million people in a 100-day slaughter in 1994.

In 2008, W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who’d revealed himself as “Deep Throat” three decades after the Watergate scandal, died in Santa Rosa, Calif., at age 95.

In 2008, ”Star Trek” actress Majel Barrett Roddenberry, widow of series creator Gene Roddenberry, died in Los Angeles at age 76.

Today’s Birthdays

Television writer-producer Hal Kanter is 91. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark is 82. Actor Roger Smith is 77. Blues musician Lonnie Brooks is 76. Actor Roger Mosley is 71. Rock singer-musician Keith Richards is 66. Writer-director Alan Rudolph is 66. Movie producer-director Steven Spielberg is 63. Blues artist Ron Piazza is 62. Movie director Gillian Armstrong is 59. Movie reviewer Leonard Maltin is 59. Rock musician Elliot Easton is 56. Actor Ray Liotta is 54. Comedian Ron White is 53. Actor Brad Pitt is 46. Actor and professional wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin is 45. Actor Shawn Christian is 44. Actress Rachel Griffiths is 41. Singer Alejandro Sanz is 41. Country/rap singer Cowboy Troy is 39. Rapper DMX is 39. Tennis player Arantxa Sanchez Vicario is 38. DJ Lethal (Limp Bizkit) is 37. Actress Katie Holmes is 31. Singer Christina Aguilera is 29. Christian rock musician Dave Luetkenhoelter (Kutless) is 27. Actress Ashley Benson is 20.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Sir J. J. Thompson
12/18/1856 – 8/30/1940
English physicist

Francis Ferdinand
12/18/1863 – 6/28/1914
Austrian archduke

Paul Klee
12/18/1879 – 6/29/1940
Swiss painter

Ty Cobb
12/18/1886 – 7/17/1961
American baseball player

Dame Gladys Cooper
12/18/1888 – 11/17/1971
English actress

Robert Moses
12/18/1888 – 7/29/1981
American public works planner; supervised construction of Lincoln Center and Shea Stadium

George Stevens
12/18/1904 – 3/8/1975
American film director

Willy Brandt
12/18/1913 – 10/8,9/1992
German statesman

Betty Grable
12/18/1916 – 7/2/1973
American actress

Thought for Today

“No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.” – Sara Teasdale, American author and poet (1884-1933).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/18/AR2009121800003.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091217.html

Today in History – December 17

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 17 on December 17, 2009 |

Today is Thursday, Dec. 17, the 351st day of 2009. There are 14 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, conducted the first successful manpowered airplane flights, near Kitty Hawk, N.C., using their experimental craft, the Wright Flyer.

On this date

In 1777, France recognized American independence.

In 1830, South American patriot Simon Bolivar died in Colombia.

In 1843, English novelist Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol.

In 1892, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker was first presented at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

In 1894, Arthur Fiedler, the American conductor who conducted the Boston Pops Orchestra , was born.

In 1925, Col. William “Billy” Mitchell was convicted at his court-martial in Washington, D.C., of insubordination for accusing senior military officials of incompetence and criminal negligence; he was suspended from active duty.

In 1933, in the first NFL championship game, the Chicago Bears defeated the New York Giants 23-21 at Wrigley Field.

In 1939, the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by its crew, ending the World War II Battle of the River Plate off Uruguay.

In 1944, the U.S. Army announced the end of its policy of excluding Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.

In 1957, the United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.

In 1959, Stanley Kramer’s anti-nuclear war drama “On the Beach,” starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, premiered on all seven continents (including Antarctica).

In 1969, the U.S. Air Force closed its Project “Blue Book” by concluding there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.

In 1969, an estimated 50 million viewers watched singer Tiny Tim marry his fiancee, Miss Vicky, on NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

In 1975, Lynette Fromme was sentenced in Sacramento, Calif., to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford. (She was paroled in August 2009.)

In 1979, in a case that aggravated racial tensions, Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive, was fatally injured after leading police on a chase with his motorcycle in Miami. (Four white police officers accused of beating McDuffie were later acquitted, sparking riots.)

In 1986, Eugene Hasenfus, an American convicted by Nicaragua for his part in running guns to the Contras, was pardoned and released.

In 1989, the animated TV series “The Simpsons” premiered on Fox with a Christmas-themed episode.

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in separate ceremonies.

In 1996, Kofi Annan of Ghana became United Nations secretary-general.

In 1999, ten years ago, President Bill Clinton signed a law letting millions of disabled Americans retain their government-funded health coverage when they take a job.

In 1999, the U.N. Security Council ended a yearlong deadlock and voted to send weapons inspectors back to Iraq and consider suspending sanctions if Baghdad cooperated.

In 2002, Congo’s government, rebels and opposition parties signed a peace agreement to end four years of civil war.

In 2004, five years ago, President George W. Bush signed into law the largest overhaul of U.S. intelligence-gathering in 50 years.

In 2004, Pfizer Inc. said it had found an increased risk of heart problems with patients taking Celebrex.

In 2005, President George W. Bush acknowledged he’d personally authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. following Sept. 11, calling it “crucial to our national security.”

In 2007, Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed a measure making New Jersey the first state to abolish the death penalty in more than 40 years.

In 2008, one year ago, President-elect Barack Obama named former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary and Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado to head the Interior Department.

In 2008, OPEC agreed to slash 2.2 million barrels from daily production – its single largest cut ever.

In 2008, pro Football Hall of Famer Sammy Baugh died in Rotan, Texas, at age 94.

Today’s Birthdays

Actor Armin Mueller-Stahl is 79. Magazine publisher Bob Guccione is 79. Actor George Lindsey is 74. Singer-actor Tommy Steele is 73. Rock singer-musician Art Neville is 72. Actor Christopher Cazenove is 66. Actor Bernard Hill is 65. Actor Ernie Hudson is 64. MSNBC political commentator Chris Matthews is 64. Comedian-actor Eugene Levy is 63. Actress Marilyn Hassett is 62. Actor Wes Studi is 62. Pop musician Jim Bonfanti (The Raspberries) is 61. Actor Joel Brooks is 60. Rock singer Paul Rodgers is 60. R&B singer Wanda Hutchinson (The Emotions) is 58. Actor Bill Pullman is 56. Actor Barry Livingston is 56. Country singer Sharon White is 56. Producer-director-writer Peter Farrelly is 53. Rock musician Mike Mills (R.E.M.) is 51. Pop singer Sarah Dallin (Bananarama) is 48. Country musician Tim Chewning is 47. Country singer Tracy Byrd is 43. Country musician Duane Propes is 43. DJ Homicide (Sugar Ray) is 39. Actor Sean Patrick Thomas is 39. Pop-rock musician Eddie Fisher (OneRepublic) is 36. Actress Sarah Paulson is 35. Actress Marissa Ribisi is 35. Actor Giovanni Ribisi is 35. Actress Milla Jovovich is 34. Singer Bree Sharp is 34. Actress Jennifer Carpenter is 30. Actress Shannon Marie Woodward is 25. Actress Vanessa Zima is 23. Actor-singer Nat Wolff is 15.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Sir Roger L’Estrange
12/17/1616 – 12/11/1704
English journalist and pamphleteer

Domenico Cimarosa
12/17/1749 – 1/11/1801
Italian composer

In 1787 Ludwig van Beethoven, born on this day in 1770, went to Vienna, where he met Mozart and became his pupil. From 1790 Haydn also taught him. Beethoven’s early compositions, like those of his teachers Mozart and Haydn, are in the tradition of the Viennese classical period. Then the composer began to develop his own style. This was characterised by Beethoven’s joy of experimentation with traditional forms such as symphony, sonata and string quartet, and is regarded as a link between the Viennese classical period and romanticism. Among his most well known works are the nine symphonies, the opera “Fidelio” and his piano sonatas. He died on March 26, 1827.

Joseph Henry
12/17/1797 – 5/13/1878
American scientist

John Greenleaf Whittier
12/17/1807 – 9/7/1892
American poet and abolitionist

Ford Madox Ford
12/17/1873 – 6/26/1939
English novelist and editor

Mackenzie King
12/17/1874 – 7/22/1950
Canadian prime minister (1921-26, 1926-30, 1935-48)

Edwin Cohn
12/17/1892 – 10/1/1953
American biochemist

Arthur Fiedler
12/17/1894 – 7/10/1979
American conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra

Erskine Caldwell
12/17/1903 – 4/11/1987
American author

On December 17, 1908, Willard Frank “Wild Bill” Libby was born on a farm in Grand Valley, Colorado. Libby won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of the technique known as radiocarbon dating.

Carbon dating is now a tool of many trades—archeology, geology, history, geophysics, and preservation among others. The technique uses an unstable isotope of carbon, carbon-14, to discern the age of physical phenomena as diverse as the end of the Ice Age, an old shoe, or funerary objects from a pharaoh’s tomb.

As early as 1939 researchers discovered that neutron showers occur when cosmic rays hit atoms. They also learned that the neutrons were absorbed by nitrogen which then decayed into the unstable radioactive element carbon-14. Libby realized a series of additional facts:

- radioactive carbon-14 oxidized to carbon dioxide;

- plants absorbed carbon dioxide through photosynthesis;

- plants, directly or indirectly, were digested by all living organisms.

Therefore, he concluded, all living organisms, and all carbon containing products, were slightly radioactive.

Libby and others built increasingly sensitive Geiger counters to measure that radioactivity. The devices measured the half-life of radioactive carbon-14 in objects. Age was deduced based on the fact that about every 5,000 years carbon-14′s radioactivity decays by one-half (over the next 5,000 by half again, and so on). Among the items Libby tested and dated were prehistoric sloth dung, charcoal from Stonehenge, and the parchment wrappings of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Libby, who received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1933, joined the Manhattan Project after the U.S. entered World War II. After the war, he became a professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago where he did his work on radiocarbon dating. In 1954, Libby was appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower to the Atomic Energy Commission. He subsequently returned to academia at UCLA and passed away in 1980.

Thought for Today

“A fool and his money are soon parted, but you never call him a fool till the money is gone.” – Anonymous.

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121700006.html

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html

http://www.todayinhistory.de/index.php?lang=en&sdt=20091218&day=prev

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091216.html

Today in History – December 16

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 16 on December 16, 2009 |

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 16, the 350th day of 2009. There are 15 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 16, 1773, the Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes.

On this date

In 1631, more than 3,000 people were killed by a major eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

In 1653, Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

In 1770, composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany.

In 1809, the French Senate granted a divorce decree to Emperor Napoleon I and Empress Josephine (the dissolution was made final the following month).

In 1859, Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the story-writing Brothers Grimm, died in Berlin at age 73.

In 1899, playwright Noel Coward was born in London.

In 1901, Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist who authored 44 books and over 1000 articles , was born.

In 1907, 16 U.S. Navy battleships, which came to be known as the “Great White Fleet,” set sail on a 14-month round-the-world voyage to demonstrate American sea power.

In 1909, Nicaraguan President Jose Santos Zelaya resigned in the face of a U.S.-backed revolution.

In 1916, Gregory Rasputin, the monk who had wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was murdered by a group of noblemen.

In 1917, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, England.

In 1944, the World War II Battle of the Bulge began as German forces launched a surprise attack against Allied forces in Belgium (the Allies were eventually able to beat the Germans back).

In 1950, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “world conquest by Communist imperialism.”

In 1960, a United Air Lines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided over New York City, killing 134 people.

In 1976, the government halted its swine flu vaccination program following reports of paralysis apparently linked to the vaccine.

In 1985, reputed organized-crime chief Paul Castellano was shot to death outside a New York City restaurant.

In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti in the country’s first democratic elections.

In 1991, the U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a vote of 111-25.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered a sustained series of airstrikes against Iraq by American and British forces in response to Saddam Hussein’s continued defiance of UN weapons inspectors.

In 1999, ten years ago, Israel and Syria ended two days of inconclusive peace talks in Washington and agreed to resume early in the new year.

In 1999, a second day of torrential rains and mudslides plagued Venezuela’s Caribbean coast; the disaster left thousands dead.

In 2000, President-elect George W. Bush selected Colin Powell to become the first African-American secretary of state.

In 2004, five years ago, Bobby Jo Stinnett, 23, of Skidmore, Mo., was found dying in her home, her unborn baby cut from her womb (Lisa Montgomery was later convicted of kidnapping resulting in death, and was sentenced to death).

In 2004, Britain’s highest court dealt a huge blow to the government’s anti-terrorism policy by ruling that it could not detain foreign suspects indefinitely without trial.

In 2004, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein met with a lawyer for the first time since his capture a year earlier.

In 2004, Agnes Martin, one of the world’s foremost abstract artists, died in Taos, N.M, at age 92.

In 2007, British forces formally handed over to Iraq responsibility for Basra, the last Iraqi region under their control.

In 2008, one year ago, President-elect Barack Obama announced his choice of Arne Duncan to be his education secretary.

In 2008, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of Somalia.

In 2008, the Cleveland Clinic announced its surgeons had performed the nation’s first near-total face transplant on a severely disfigured woman. (The woman, Connie Culp, went public with her identity in May 2009.)

In 2008, police in Hollywood, Fla., closed their investigation into the 1981 abduction-slaying of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, saying a serial killer who’d died more than a decade earlier in prison was responsible.

Today’s Birthdays

Civil rights attorney Morris Dees is 73. Actress Joyce Bulifant is 72. Actress Liv Ullmann is 71. CBS news correspondent Lesley Stahl is 68. TV producer Steven Bochco is 66. Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons is 65. Pop musician Tony Hicks (The Hollies) is 64. Pop singer Benny Andersson (ABBA) is 63. Actor Ben Cross is 62. Rock singer-musician Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top) is 60. Rock musician Bill Bateman (The Blasters) is 58. Actress Alison LaPlaca is 50. Actor Sam Robards is 48. Actor Jon Tenney is 48. Actor Benjamin Bratt is 46. Country singer-songwriter Jeff Carson is 46. Actor Daniel Cosgrove is 39. R&B singer Michael McCary is 38. Country musician Chris Scruggs is 27. Actress Hallee Hirsh is 22. Actress Anna Popplewell is 21.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Catherine of Aragon
12/16/1485 – 1/7/1536
English queen

Jane Austen
12/16/1775 – 7/18/1817
English novelist

Francois Boieldieu
12/16/1775 – 10/8/1834
French composer

Josephine Shaw Lowell
12/16/1843 – 10/12/1905
American social reformer

Hans Buchner
12/16/1850 – 4/5/1902
German bacteriologist

George Santayana
12/16/1863 – 9/26/1952
Spanish-American philosopher and poet

Sir John Berry Hobbs
12/16/1882 – 12/21/1963
English athlete

Sir Noel Coward
12/16/1899 – 3/26/1973
English actor and playwright

V.S. Pritchett
12/16/1900 – 3/20/1997
English author

Margaret Mead
12/16/1901 – 11/15/1978
American anthropologist

James McCracken
12/16/1926 – 4/29/1988
American operatic tenor

Ludwig van Beethoven
12/16/1770 – 3/26/1827
German composer and pianist

Thought for Today

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – British science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke (born this date in 1917, died in 2008).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/16/AR2009121600004.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091215.html

Today in History – December 15

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 15 on December 15, 2009 |

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 15, the 349th day of 2009. There are 16 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights went into effect following ratification by Virginia.

On this date

In 1890, Sioux Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, S.D., during a confrontation with Indian police.

In 1892, J. Paul Getty, the American businessman and oil tycoon who controlled the Getty Oil Company, was born.

In 1893, Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World,” was rehearsed before the public at New York’s Carnegie Hall (the official world premiere was held the next day).

In 1916, the French defeated the Germans in the World War I Battle of Verdun.

In 1938, groundbreaking ceremonies for the Jefferson Memorial took place in Washington, D.C., with President Franklin D. Roosevelt taking part.

In 1939, the motion picture “Gone With the Wind” had its world premiere in Atlanta.

In 1944, a single-engine plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, a major in the U.S. Army Air Forces, disappeared over the English Channel while en route to Paris.

In 1944, American forces invaded Mindoro Island in the Philippines.

In 1948, former State Department official Alger Hiss was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on charges of perjury. (He was convicted in 1950.)

In 1961, former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death by an Israeli court.

In 1964, Canada’s House of Commons approved dropping the “Red Ensign” flag in favor of a new design.

In 1965, two U.S. manned spacecraft, Gemini 6A and Gemini 7, maneuvered to within 10 feet of each other while in orbit.

In 1966, movie producer Walt Disney died at age 65.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter announced he would grant diplomatic recognition to Communist China on New Year’s Day and sever official relations with Taiwan.

In 1979, the deposed Shah of Iran left the United States for Panama, the same day the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, issued a provisional order for Iran to release all its American hostages.

In 1989, a popular uprising began in Romania; it led to the downfall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

In 1997, Janet Rosenberg Jagan was elected president of Guyana, becoming the first elected female president in South America and the first white president of Guyana.

In 1999, ten years ago, with President Bill Clinton’s close mediation, Syria reopened peace talks with Israel in Washington.

In 2003, the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s family acknowledged Essie Mae Washington-Williams’ claim that she was Thurmond’s illegitimate mixed-race daughter.

In 2004, five years ago, Time Warner Inc. agreed to pay over $500 million to resolve federal securities fraud and accounting investigations of its America Online unit.

In 2004, U.S. telecommunications giants Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc. announced they would merge in a $35 billion deal.

In 2004, Pauline Gore, mother of former Vice President Al Gore, died in Carthage, Tenn.; she was 92.

In 2005, millions of Iraqis turned out to choose a parliament in a mostly peaceful election.

In 2008, one year ago, President George W. Bush wrapped up a whirlwind trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2008, President-elect Barack Obama said a review by his own lawyer showed he had no direct contact with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich about the appointment of a Senate replacement, and that transition aides “did nothing inappropriate.”

In 2008, Illinois lawmakers took the first steps toward removing Blagojevich, a Democrat, from office.

Today’s Birthdays

Actor-comedian Tim Conway is 76. Singer Cindy Birdsong ( The Supremes) is 70. Rock musician Dave Clark (The Dave Clark Five) is 67. Rock musician Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge) is 63. Actor Don Johnson is 60. Actress Melanie Chartoff is 59. Movie director Julie Taymor is 57. Movie director Alex Cox is 55. Actor Justin Ross is 55. Rock musician Paul Simonon (The Clash) is 54. Political strategist Donna Brazile is 50. Country singer Doug Phelps (Brother Phelps; Kentucky Headhunters) is 49. Movie producer-director Reginald Hudlin is 48. Actress Helen Slater is 46. Actress Molly Price is 44. Actor Michael Shanks is 39. Actor Stuart Townsend is 37. Figure skater Surya Bonaly is 36. “Crowd-hyper” Kito Trawick (Ghostown DJs) is 32. Actor Adam Brody is 30. Actor George O. Gore II is 27.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Nero
12/15/AD 37 – 6/9/AD 68
Roman emperor

George Romney
12/15/1734 – 11/15/1802
English portrait painter

Joseph Moses Levy
12/15/1812 – 10/12/1888
English newspaperman; founded the London newspaper Daily Telegraph

Franklin Sanborn
12/15/1831 – 2/24/1917
American journalist and biographer

Gustave Eiffel
12/15/1832 – 12/28/1923
French civil engineer and designer of the Eiffel Tower

Niels Ryberg Finsen
12/15/1860 – 9/24/1904
Danish physician, founder of modern phototherapy and Nobel prize winner

Charles Duryea
12/15/1861 – 9/28/1938
American automobile inventor

Maxwell Anderson
12/15/1888 – 2/28/1959
American playwright

Kaare Klint
12/15/1888 – 3/28/1954
Danish architect and furniture designer

J. Paul Getty
12/15/1892 – 6/6/1976
American oil tycoon

Harold Abrahams
12/15/1899 – 1/14/1978
English athlete and Olympic gold medalist

Thought for Today

“Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.” — Minna Antrim, American writer (1856-1950).

__________

Full article: http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/sns-ap-history-2009dec15,0,1479679.story

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091214.html

Today in History – December 14

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 14 on December 14, 2009 |

Today is Monday, Dec. 14, the 348th day of 2009. There are 17 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 14, 1799, the first president of the United States, George Washington, died at his Mount Vernon, Va., home at age 67.

On this date

In 1568, the Casket Letters, found to be damaging to the career of Mary, Queen of Scots, were produced at Westminster before a body of English commissioners appointed by Queen Elizabeth I.

In 1819, Alabama joined the Union as the 22nd state.

In 1861, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, died in London.

In 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his group became the first men to reach the South Pole, beating out an expedition led by Robert F. Scott.

In 1919, Shirley Jackson, the American writer best known for her story “The Lottery”, was born.

In 1939, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland.

In 1946, the U.N. General Assembly voted to establish its headquarters in New York.

In 1960, the convention establishing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was signed by 18 European countries, the United States, and Canada.

In 1962, the U.S. space probe Mariner 2 approached Venus, transmitting information about the planet.

In 1975, six South Moluccan extremists surrendered after holding 23 hostages for 12 days on a train near the Dutch town of Beilen.

In 1979, the album “London Calling” by the Clash was released.

In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, which it had seized from Syria in 1967.

In 1985, Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe as she took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

In 1989, Nobel Peace laureate Andrei D. Sakharov died in Moscow at age 68.

In 1993, a Colorado judge struck down as unconstitutional the state’s voter-approved ban on gay rights laws.

In 1995, presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia signed the Bosnian peace treaty in Paris.

In 1997, Cuban President Fidel Castro declared Christmas 1997 an official holiday to ensure the success of Pope John Paul II’s upcoming visit to the communist country.

In 1999, ten years ago, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national, was arrested after authorities found nitroglycerin in the trunk of his car as he arrived from Canada by ferry at Port Angeles, Wash. (Ressam was convicted in April 2001 of terrorist conspiracy and eight other charges.)

In 1999, U.S. and German negotiators agreed to establish a $5.2 billion fund for Nazi-era slave and forced laborers.

In 1999, Charles M. Schulz announced he was retiring the “Peanuts” comic strip.

In 2000, the Federal Trade Commission unanimously approved the $111 billion merger of America Online and Time Warner.

In 2004, five years ago, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the fifth time since June 2004.

In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three figures who were central to his Iraq policy: former CIA Director George Tenet, former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer and retired Gen. Tommy Franks.

In 2006, South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon was sworn in as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations.

In 2008, one year ago, an Iraqi journalist hurled each of his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad; Bush ducked the flying footwear as they whizzed past his head and landed against the wall behind him. (The shoe-thrower, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, ended up spending nine months in prison.)

Today’s Birthdays

Jazz musician Clark Terry is 89. Singer-actress Abbe Lane is 78. Actor Hal Williams is 71. Actress-singer Jane Birkin is 63. Actress Patty Duke is 63. Pop singer Joyce Vincent-Wilson (Tony Orlando and Dawn) is 63. Entertainment executive Michael Ovitz is 63. Actress Dee Wallace is 61. R&B singer Ronnie McNeir (The Four Tops) is 60. Rock musician Cliff Williams (AC/DC) is 60. Actor-comedian T.K. Carter is 53. Rock singer-musician Mike Scott (The Waterboys) is 51. Singer-musician Peter “Spider” Stacy (The Pogues) is 51. Actress Cynthia Gibb is 46. Actress Natascha McElhone is 40. Actress-comedian Michaela Watkins is 38. R&B singer Brian Dalyrimple (Soul For Real) is 34. Actress KaDee Strickland is 34. Actress Tammy Blanchard is 33. Actress Sophie Monk is 30. Actress Vanessa Hudgens is 21.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Nostradamus
12/14/1503 – 7/2/1566
French astrologer and physician

Tycho Brahe
12/14/1546 – 10/24/1601
Danish astronomer

James Bruce
12/14/1730 – 4/27/1794
Scottish explorer of Ethiopia

Pierre du Pont
12/14/1739 – 8/6/1817
French economist

Louis Marshall
12/14/1856 – 9/11/1929
American lawyer and activist

Roger Fry
12/14/1866 – 9/9/1934
English artist and art critic

James Doolittle
12/14/1896 – 9/27/1993
American aviator and World War II army general

Shirley Jackson
12/14/1916 – 8/8/1965
American author

Lee Remick
12/14/1935 – 7/2/1991
American actress

Thought for Today

“True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world.” – Felix Emmanuel Schelling, American educator and scholar (1858-1945).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121400841.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091213.html

Today in History – December 13

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 13 on December 13, 2009 |

Today is Sunday, Dec. 13, the 347th day of 2009. There are 18 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 13, 1862, Union forces suffered a major defeat to the Confederates in the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg.

On this date

In 1545, the Council of Trent, the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic church, which helped revitalize the church in many parts of Europe after the Protestant Reformation, opened in Trent, Italy.

In 1577, Sir Francis Drake of England set out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey that would take him around the world.

In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sighted present-day New Zealand.

In 1769, Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., received its charter.

In 1835, Phillips Brooks, the American Episcopal bishop who wrote the words to “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” was born in Boston.

In 1862, Confederate forces dealt Union troops a major defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia.

In 1903, Carlos Montoya, the Spanish-American guitarist who popularized flamenco guitar music, was born.

In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.

In 1921, the Four-Power Pact was signed during the Washington Conference by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and France, stipulating that all the signatories would be consulted in the event of a controversy between two of them over “any Pacific question.”

In 1928, George Gershwin’s musical work “An American in Paris” had its premiere, at Carnegie Hall in New York.

In 1934, British astronomer J.P.M. Prentice discovered Nova Herculis, one of the brightest novas of the 20th century.

In 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army seized Nanjing, China, during the Sino-Japanese War, leading to the Nanjing Massacre, in which up to 300,000 Chinese may have been killed.

In 1944, during World War II, the U.S. cruiser Nashville was badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze attack that claimed more than 130 lives.

In 1978, the Philadelphia Mint began stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which went into circulation in July 1979.

In 1981, authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. (Martial law formally ended in 1983.)

In 1988, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where it had reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a visa to visit New York.

In 1989, South African President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk’s office in Cape Town.

In 1994, an American Eagle commuter plane crashed short of Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, killing 15 of the 20 people on board.

In 1996, the U.N. Security Council chose Kofi Annan of Ghana to be the world body’s seventh secretary-general.

In 1999, ten years ago, in a spirited presidential campaign debate, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain fought over tax policy and farm subsidies, while McCain was pushed to defend his centerpiece campaign finance proposals.

In 1999, a group of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service detainees, mostly Cubans, took the warden of the St. Martin Parish Jail in Louisiana and three guards hostage, demanding freedom. (Two hostages were released as two detainees surrendered on Dec. 15; the remaining hostage-takers surrendered Dec. 18.)

In 2000, Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency 36 days after Election Day.

In 2001, the Pentagon released a captured videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaida leader said the deaths and destruction achieved by the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded his “most optimistic” expectations.

In 2001, five suspected Islamic militants killed nine people in an attack on India’s parliament before being killed themselves.

In 2001, President George W. Bush served formal notice that the United States was pulling out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

In 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Boston archbishop because of the priest sex abuse scandal.

In 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole at a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.

In 2004, five years ago, a jury in Redwood City, Calif., recommended the death penalty for Scott Peterson for the murders of his wife and unborn child.

In 2004, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe resigned.

In 2004, a Chilean judge indicted former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet on charges of kidnapping nine political dissidents and killing one of them during his 17-year military regime. (However, Pinochet never faced trial, and died in 2006 at age 91.)

In 2007, shareholders of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, approved a takeover by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

In 2008, one year ago, the White House weighed its options for preventing a collapse of the troubled U.S. auto industry.

In 2008, Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford won the Heisman Trophy after guiding the highest-scoring team in major college football history to the national championship game.

Today’s Birthdays

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz is 89. Actor-comedian Dick Van Dyke is 84. Actor Christopher Plummer is 80. Country singer Buck White is 79. Music/film producer Lou Adler is 76. Movie producer Richard Zanuck is 75. Singer John Davidson is 68. Actress Kathy Garver (“Family Affair”) is 64. Rock musician Ted Nugent is 61. Rock musician Jeff “Skunk” Baxter is 61. Country musician Ron Getman is 61. Actor Robert Lindsay is 60. Country singer-musician Randy Owen is 60. Actress Wendie Malick is 59. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is 59. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is 56. Country singer John Anderson is 55. Singer-songwriter Steve Forbert is 55. Singer-actor Morris Day is 53. Actor Steve Buscemiis 52. Actor Johnny Whitaker is 50. Actor-comedian Jamie Foxx is 42. Actor Bart Johnson is 39. TV personality Debbie Matenopoulos is 35. Rock singer-musician Thomas Delonge is 34. Actor James Kyson Lee is 34. Actress Chelsea Hertford is 28. Rock singer Amy Lee (Evanescence) is 28. Country singer Taylor Swift is 20.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Carlos Gozzi
12/13/1720 – 4/4/1806
Italian poet and dramatist

Sir William Hamilton
12/13/1730 – 4/6/1803
English diplomat and archaeologist

Joseph Howe
12/13/1804 – 6/1/1873
Canadian statesman and publisher

Lawrence Lowell
12/13/1856 – 1/6/1943
American lawyer, educator, and president of Harvard University (1909-1933)

Emily Carr
12/13/1871 – 3/2/1945
Canadian painter and writer

Alvin York
12/13/1887 – 9/2/1964
American military hero of World War I

Marc Connelly
12/13/1890 – 12/21/1980
American playwright and journalist

Carlos Montoya
12/13/1903 – 3/3/1993
Spanish-American flamenco guitarist

Archie Moore
12/13/1913 – 12/9/1998
American boxer

Thought for Today

“A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.” – Judge Learned Hand, American jurist (1872-1961).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/13/AR2009121300002.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091212.html

Today in History – December 12

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 12 on December 13, 2009 |

Today is Saturday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2009. There are 19 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 12, 1917, Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb.

On this date

In 1745, John Jay, American statesman and the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, was born in New York City.

In 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

In 1846, New Granada (now Colombia and Panama) signed the Bidlack Treaty with the United States, granting U.S. right-of-way across the Isthmus of Panama in exchange for a guarantee of neutrality for the isthmus and the sovereignty of New Granada.

In 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1897, “The Katzenjammer Kids,” the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, made its debut in the New York Journal.

In 1901, the first telegraphic message across the Atlantic.

Marconi had started trying to achieve wireless telegraphy approximately 40 years earlier. It was only possible to transmit messages with the aid of a cable until almost 100 years ago. It was laid on the seabed and linked the population centres with telegraph networks. Texts and figures were transmitted as Morse signals. In this process each letter consisted of short or long electrical impulses. It was still silent on the air waves – there were no links to ships in distress, no wireless radio communications to other continents.

Guglielmo Marconi, who was born in Bologna on 25 April 1874 had a passionate interest in electricity at a young age. But it wasn’t until he read an article on the experiments of German physicist Heinrich Hertz that he began working to the clear objective of transmitting messages via electromagnetic waves.

Marconi set up his own laboratory at home. His mother financed his experiments, but his father thought his son’s efforts were a waste of time. Two years later he was able to make a bell ring from a distance of nine metres and receive Morse signals with the aid of a square metal plate aerial. He soon replaced this with a wire aerial in order to bridge larger distances with larger waves. Then he managed to increase the range to several hundred metres in one swoop.

Just shortly afterwards he put it to the test: Guglielmo constructed a transmission installation in their own garden and stationed his brother two and a half kilometres away – on the other side of a hill. He was to fire a shot when he received the signal. In this way he proved that his signals went through forests, walls, over seas and hills.

But as is so often the case a prophet is without honour in his own country – in 1896 Marconi the inventor went to England where the value of his invention was soon regognized, above all for shipping navigation. A short time later the King of Italy also started to pay attention and had his warships equipped with Marconi appliances. The frequency range between the transmitter and the receiver was still very small, but it was enough to call the rescue services.

Guglielmo Marconi’s big breakthrough came on 12 December 1901, when a signal sent from England was received in Newfoundland – 3,600 kilometres away. He had attached the aerial to a kite, disproving a doctrine of the physicists. Until this time they had assumed that radio waves were spread in a straight line and that they would thus simply disappear in space. Now Marconi had defied this theory by proving that certain radio waves followed the earth’s curve. This marked the start of global radio communication.

In 1909 the physicist was awarded the Nobel prize.

It was to take another ten years to broadcast the first radio programme. To this end the diode was invented, followed by the triode, the early precursors of the transistor. A short time later Marconi became one of the founding members of the “BBC”. Music and language on the air became an everyday thing, although scientists couldn’t explain the phenomenon. Upon the launch of “Radio Vatican” Guglielmo Marconi was asked by the pope to explain how it all happened: “You should actually be better placed to answer that question. You are closer to God. I don’t know the answer,” Marconi said.

Short wave radio, which could be transmitted over huge distances, still mystified people. Marconi could not have known that short waves radiate towards the ground as well as to the skies and are then reflected by the ionosphere. This electrically loaded layer is 100 to 400 kilometres above the ground. The diffusion is carried out at the speed of light – seven times around the world per second.

When his death was announced on 20 July 1937, all the radio stations in the world remained silent. For a short time it was just as quiet on the air waves as it had been before Marconi came up with his invention.

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt nominated Oscar Straus to be Secretary of Commerce and Labor; Straus became the first Jewish Cabinet member.

In 1914, the New York Stock Exchange re-opened for the first time since July 30. The market had shut down when World War I broke out.

In 1915, Frank Sinatra, the American singer and actor who elevated popular song into an art, was born.

In 1925, the first motel – the Motel Inn – opened in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

In 1937, Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat Panay on China’s Yangtze River. (Japan apologized, and paid $2.2 million in reparations.)

In 1939, swashbuckling actor Douglas Fairbanks died in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 56.

In 1946, a United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of U.N. headquarters.

In 1947, the United Mine Workers union withdrew from the American Federation of Labor.

In 1963, Kenya gained its independence from Britain.

In 1975, Sara Jane Moore pleaded guilty to trying to kill President Gerald R. Ford.

In 1985, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.

In 1989, in New York, hotel queen Leona Helmsley, 69, was sentenced to four years in prison and fined $7.1 million for tax evasion. (Helmsley served 18 months behind bars, plus a month at a halfway house and two months of house arrest.)

In 1998, the House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth and final article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton and submitted the case to the full House.

In 1999, ten years ago, author Joseph Heller, whose darkly comic first novel “Catch-22″ defined the paradox of the no-win dilemma and added a phrase to the American language, died in East Hampton, N.Y., at age 76.

In 2000, the Marine Corps grounded all eight of its high-tech V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft following a fiery crash in North Carolina that killed four Marines.

In 2000, a divided U.S. Supreme Court halted the presidential recount in Florida, effectively making Republican George W. Bush the winner.

In 2003, Keiko, the killer whale made famous by the “Free Willy” movies, died in a Norwegian fjord.

In 2004, five years ago, a bomb exploded in a market in southern Philippines, killing at least 14 people.

In 2004, militants blew up an Israeli base at the Gaza-Egypt crossing, killing five soldiers.

In 2004, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas apologized to Kuwaitis for Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

In 2008, one year ago, a bomb exploded inside the West Coast Bank in Woodburn, Ore., killing Woodburn Police Capt. Thomas Tennant and Oregon State Police Senior Trooper William Hakim. (Two suspects, Bruce Aldon Turnidge, 58, and his son, Joshua Abraham Turnidge, 32, face murder charges.)

In 2008, actor Van Johnson died in Nyack, N.Y. at 92.

Today’s Birthdays

TV host Bob Barker (“The Price Is Right”) is 86. Former New York City Mayor Edward Koch is 85. Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Pettit is 77. Singer Connie Francis is 71. Singer Dionne Warwick is 69. Rock singer-musician Dickey Betts is 66. Former race car driver Emerson Fittipaldi is 63. Actor Wings Hauser is 62. Actor Bill Nighy is 60. Actor Duane Chase (“The Sound of Music”) is 59. Country singer LaCosta is 59. Gymnast-turned-actress Cathy Rigby is 57. Author Lorna Landvik is 55. Singer-musician Sheila E. is 52. Actress Sheree J. Wilson is 51. Pop singer Daniel O’Donnell is 48. Rock musician Eric Schenkman (Spin Doctors) is 46. Rock musician Nicholas Dimichino (Nine Days) is 42. News anchor Maggie Rodriguez is 40. Actress Jennifer Connelly is 39. Actress Madchen Amick is 39. Country singer Hank Williams III is 37. Actress Mayim Bialik is 34. Model Bridget Hall is 32.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Alvaro de Bazan Santa Cruz
12/12/1526 – 2/9/1588
Spanish naval commander

John Jay
12/12/1745 – 5/17/1829
First chief justice of the United States

William Lloyd Garrison
12/12/1805 – 5/24/1879
American abolitionist

Stand Watie
12/12/1806 – 9/9/1871
Cherokee chief

Gustave Flaubert
12/12/1821 – 5/8/1880
French novelist

Edvard Munch
12/12/1863 – 1/23/1944
Norwegian painter

Arthur Garfield Brisbane
12/12/1864 – 12/25/1936
American editor and writer

Alvin Kraenzlein
12/12/1876 – 1/6/1928
American Olympic athlete; first competitor to win four gold medals in a single Olympics

Arthur Garfield Hays
12/12/1881 – 12/14/1954
American lawyer and defender of civil liberties

Edward G. Robinson
12/12/1893 – 1/26/1973
American actor and singer

Henry Armstrong
12/12/1912 – 10/24/1988
American boxer

Frank Sinatra
12/12/1915 – 5/14/1998
American actor and singer

John Osborne
12/12/1929 – 12/24/1994
English playwright

Thought for Today

“Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar.” – Ellen Glasgow, American author (1874-1945).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/12/AR2009121200043.html

http://www.todayinhistory.de/index.php?lang=en&sdt=20091213&day=prev

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091211.html

Today in History – December 11

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 11 on December 11, 2009 |

Today is Friday, Dec. 11, the 345th day of 2009. There are 20 days left in the year. The Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, begins at sunset.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 11, 1936, Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.

On this date

In 1792, France’s King Louis XVI went before the Convention to face charges of treason. (Louis was convicted, and executed the following month.)

In 1816, Indiana became the 19th state.

In 1882, Boston’s renamed Bijou Theatre, the first American playhouse to be lighted exclusively by electricity, debuted with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Iolanthe.”

In 1882, Fiorello H. La Guardia, the former mayor of New York City for three consecutive terms, was born.

In 1918, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia.

In 1928, police in Buenos Aires announced they had thwarted an attempt on the life of President-elect Herbert Hoover.

In 1936, Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.

In 1937, Italy announced it was withdrawing from the League of Nations.

In 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.

In 1946, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, or UNICEF, was established.

In 1961, a U.S. aircraft carrier carrying Army helicopters arrived in Saigon – the first direct American military support for South Vietnam’s battle against Communist guerrillas.

In 1972, man landed on the moon for the last time during the Apollo 17 mission.

In 1981, the U.N. Security Council chose Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru to be the fifth secretary-general of the world body.

In 1983, Pope John Paul II visited a Lutheran church in Rome, the first visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to a Protestant church in his own diocese.

In 1994, Russian troops rolled into breakaway republic of Chechnya in a failed bid to restore Moscow’s control over the region.

In 1997, more than 150 countries agreed at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to control the Earth’s greenhouse gases.

In 1997, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams became the first political ally of the Irish Republican Army to meet a British leader in 76 years as he conferred with Prime Minister Tony Blair in London.

In 1998, the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives recommended three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, adding a fourth article the following day, for actions taken in connection to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

In 1999, ten years ago, agreeing with his wife, Hillary, President Bill Clinton told CBS Radio his 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military wasn’t working, and he pledged to work with the Pentagon to find a way to fix it.

In 1999, Ron Dayne, Wisconsin’s record-setting tailback, was a landslide winner in the Heisman Trophy balloting.

In 2000, shortstop Alex Rodriguez agreed to a $252 million 10-year deal with the Texas Rangers, the most lucrative sports contract in history to date.

In 2002, a congressional report found that intelligence agencies before Sept. 11, 2001, were poorly organized, poorly equipped and slow to pursue clues that might have prevented that day’s terrorist attacks.

In 2004, five years ago, doctors in Austria determined that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko had been poisoned with dioxin, which caused the severe disfigurement and partial paralysis of his face.

In 2004, Vitali Klitschko stopped Danny Williams in the eighth round to retain his WBC heavyweight title.

In 2004, Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart won the 70th Heisman Trophy.

In 2008, one year ago, former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff was arrested, accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that destroyed thousands of people’s life savings and wrecked charities. (Madoff is serving a 150-year federal prison sentence.)

In 2008, the remains of missing Florida toddler Caylee Anthony were found six months after she disappeared. (Her mother, Casey Anthony, is charged with first-degree murder.)

In 2008, a suicide bomber killed at least 55 people near Kirkuk, Iraq.

In 2008, former Teamsters Union president Ron Carey died in New York at age 72.

In 2008, former pinup model Bettie Page died in Los Angeles at age 85.

Today’s Birthdays

Composer Elliott Carter is 101. Actor Jean-Louis Trintignant is 79. Actress Rita Moreno is 78. Former California state lawmaker Tom Hayden is 70. Pop singer David Gates (Bread) is 69. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is 68. Actress Donna Mills is 67. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is 66. Singer Brenda Lee is 65. Actress Lynda Day George is 65. Music producer Tony Brown is 63. Actress Teri Garr is 62. Movie director Susan Seidelman is 57. Actress Bess Armstrong is 56. Singer Jermaine Jackson is 55. Rock musician Mike Mesaros (The Smithereens) is 52. Rock musician Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue) is 51. Rock musician Darryl Jones (The Rolling Stones) is 48. Actor Ben Browder is 47. Singer-musician Justin Currie (Del Amitri) is 45. Rock musician David Schools (Gov’t Mule, Widespread Panic) is 45. Actor Gary Dourdan is 43. Actress-comedian Mo’Nique (“The Parkers”) is 42. Actor Max Martini is 40. Rapper-actor Mos Def is 36. Actor Rider Strong is 30.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Leo X
12/11/1475 – 12/1/1521
Italian pope

Sir David Brewster
12/11/1781 – 2/10/1868
Scottish physicist

(Louis-) Hector Berlioz
12/11/1803 – 3/8/1869
French composer and conductor

Alfred de Musset
12/11/1810 – 5/2/1857
French poet and playwright

Robert H.H. Koch
12/11/1843 – 5/27/1910
German physician

Annie Jump Cannon
12/11/1863 – 4/13/1941
American astronomer

Fiorello H La Guardia
12/11/1882 – 9/20/1947
New York City mayor

Erskine (Hamilton) Childers
12/11/1905 – 11/17/1974
Irish statesman and fourth president (1973-74)

Born this day in 1918, Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—best known for The Gulag Archipelago, which chronicles the U.S.S.R.’s vast system of prisons and labour camps—received the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1970. He died on August 3, 2008.

Sir Kenneth MacMillan
12/11/1929 – 10/29/1992
Scottish-English choreographer

Thought for Today

“The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.”- William Lyon Phelps, American educator and journalist (1865-1943).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121000906.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091210.html

Today in History – December 10

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 10 on December 10, 2009 |

Today is Thursday, Dec. 10, the 344th day of 2009. There are 21 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 10, 1884, Mark Twain’s novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was first published, in Canada as well as England (the book was not released in the United States until February 1885).

On this date

In 1520, Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict demanding that he recant, or face excommunication.

In 1817, Mississippi was admitted as the 20th state.

In 1851, Melvil Dewey, the American librarian famous for creating the Dewey Decimal Classification system , was born.

In 1869, women were granted the right to vote in the Wyoming Territory.

In 1898, a treaty ending the Spanish-American War was signed in Paris.

In 1901, the first Nobel Prizes were distributed on this day in 1901, the fifth anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who founded and endowed the awards through his will.

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

In 1931, Jane Addams became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (the co-recipient was Nicholas Murray Butler).

In 1946, Baseball Hall of Famer Walter Johnson died at age 59.

In 1948, the U.N. General Assembly adopted its Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

In 1950, Ralph J. Bunche was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first black American to receive the award.

In 1958, the first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the United States as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flew 111 passengers from New York City to Miami.

In 1964, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1965, the Grateful Dead played their first concert, at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.

In 1967, singer Otis Redding, 26, and six others were killed when their plane crashed into Wisconsin’s Lake Monona.

In 1980, Rep. John W. Jenrette, D-S.C., resigned to avoid being expelled from the House following his conviction on charges related to the FBI’s Abscam investigation.

In 1982, a treaty codifying the Law of the Sea was signed by 117 countries.

In 1984, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1994, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1998, six astronauts opened the doors to the new international space station.

In 1998, the Palestinian leadership scrapped constitutional clauses rejecting Israel’s right to exist.

In 1999, ten years ago, after three years under suspicion as a spy for China, computer scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested and charged with removing secrets from secure computers at the Los Alamos weapons lab. (Lee was later freed after pleading guilty to one count of downloading restricted data to tape; 58 other counts were dropped.)

In 1999, more than two million people marched in Cuba to demand the return of Elian Gonzalez.

In 1999, death claimed Croatian President Franjo Tudjman at 77, rock singer-musician Rick Danko at 56, actress Shirley Hemphill at 52.

In 2002, former President Jimmy Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomacy in the Middle East in the 1970s.

In 2004, five years ago, President George W. Bush picked Samuel Bodman to be the new energy secretary.

In 2004, Bernard Kerik withdrew his name from consideration to be President Bush’s homeland security secretary.

In 2004, an Italian court cleared Premier Silvio Berlusconi of corruption charges in his long-running trial.

In 2004, sprinter Michelle Collins was suspended for eight years for a doping violation linked to the BALCO scandal. (Collins was reinstated in May 2008.)

In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with a call for humanity to rise up against a looming climate crisis and stop waging war on the environment.

In 2007, NFL star Michael Vick was sentenced by a federal judge in Richmond, Va., to 23 months in prison for bankrolling a dogfighting operation and killing dogs that underperformed.

In 2007, Cristina Fernandez was sworn in as Argentina’s first elected female president.

In 2008, one year ago, defying calls for his resignation, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich showed up for work on his 52nd birthday despite charges he’d schemed to enrich himself by offering to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

In 2008, the House approved a plan, 237-170, to speed $14 billion in loans to Detroit’s automakers.

In 2008, U.S. Special Forces killed six Afghan police in a case of mistaken identity by both sides after the police fired on the Americans during an operation against an insurgent commander.

Today’s Birthdays

Actor Harold Gould is 86. Former Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter is 79. Actor Tommy Kirk is 68. Actress Fionnula Flanagan is 68. Pop singer Chad Stuart (Chad and Jeremy) is 68. Actress-singer Gloria Loring is 63. Pop-funk musician Walter “Clyde” Orange (The Commodores) is 63. R&B singer Ralph Tavares is 61. R&B singer Jessica Cleaves (Friends of Distinction) is 61. Country singer Johnny Rodriguez is 58. Actress Susan Dey is 57. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is 53. Actor Michael Clarke Duncan is 52. Jazz musician Paul Hardcastle is 52. Actor-director Kenneth Branagh is 49. Actress Nia Peeples is 48. TV chef Bobby Flay is 45. Rock singer-musician J Mascis is 44. Country singer Kevin Sharp is 39. Rock musician Scot Alexander (Dishwalla) is 38. Actress-comedian Arden Myrin is 36. Rock musician Meg White (The White Stripes) is 35. Violinist Sarah Chang is 29. Actress Raven-Symone is 24.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

(Giovanni) Battista Guarini
12/10/1538 – 10/7/1612
Italian poet and dramatist

Adriaen von Ostade
12/10/1610 – ?/2/1685
Dutch painter and printmaker

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
12/10/1787 – 9/10/1851
American philanthropist

Cesar Franck
12/10/1822 – 11/8/1890
Belgian-French Romantic composer

George Macdonald
12/10/1824 – 9/18/1905
Scottish novelist

Emily Dickinson
12/10/1830 – 5/15/1886
American poet

Melvil Dewey
12/10/1851 – 12/26/1931
American librarian and inventor of the Dewey Decimal classification system

Adolf Loos
12/10/1870 – 8/23/1933
Austrian architect

Nelly Sachs
12/10/1891 – 5/12/1970
German poet and dramatist

Mary Norton
12/10/1903 – 8/29/1992
English children’s author

Morton Gould
12/10/1913 – 2/21/1996
American composer and pianist

Thought for Today

“Originality and a feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.” – Feodor Dostoyevsky, Russian author (1821-1881).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121000003.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091209.html

Today in History – December 9

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 9 on December 9, 2009 |

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 9, the 343rd day of 2009. There are 22 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 9, 1854, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” was published in England.

On this date

In 1608, English poet John Milton was born in London.

In 1892, “Widowers’ Houses,” Bernard Shaw’s first play, opened at the Royalty Theater in London.

In 1907, Christmas seals went on sale for the first time, at the Wilmington, Del., post office. The proceeds went to fight tuberculosis.

In 1909, actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was born in New York.

In 1912, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, the American politician who was the Speaker of the U.S House of Representatives for 11 years , was born.

In 1940, British troops opened their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II.

In 1941, China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.

In 1958, the anti-Communist John Birch Society was formed in Indianapolis.

In 1961, Tanganyika became independent, with Julius Nyerere as its first prime minister, and in 1964 the territory united with the island of Zanzibar to form Tanzania.

In 1965, Nikolai V. Podgorny replaced Anastas I. Mikoyan as president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford signed a $2.3 billion seasonal loan authorization to prevent New York City from having to default.

In 1984, the five-day-old hijacking of a Kuwaiti jetliner that claimed the lives of two Americans ended as Iranian security men seized control of the plane, which was parked at Tehran airport.

In 1987, the first Palestinian intefadeh, or uprising, began as riots broke out in Gaza and spread to the West Bank, triggering a strong Israeli response.

In 1990, Solidarity founder Lech Walesa won Poland’s presidential runoff by a landslide.

In 1992, Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation. (The couple’s divorce became final Aug. 28, 1996.)

In 1993, the Air Force destroyed the first of 500 Minuteman II missile silos marked for elimination under an arms control treaty.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton fired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders after she told a conference that masturbation should be discussed in school as a part of human sexuality.

In 1995, Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., was chosen to head the NAACP.

In 1998, the United Nations General Assembly declared anti-Semitism a form of racism.

In 1999, ten years ago, in Worcester, Mass., six firefighters who had died in a warehouse blaze were honored as fallen heroes by thousands of their brethren from around the world.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt in the Florida presidential vote count.

In 2002, United Airlines filed the biggest bankruptcy in aviation history after losing $4 billion in the previous two years.

In 2004, five years ago, President George W. Bush ruled out raising taxes to finance a Social Security overhaul.

In 2004, Bush announced he was keeping the heads of the Transportation, Interior, Housing and Labor departments.

In 2004, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was constitutional.

In 2008, one year ago, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested after prosecutors said he was caught on wiretaps scheming to sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat for cash or a plum job for himself in the new administration.

In 2008, NBC announced that “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno would be moving to prime time.

Today’s Birthdays

Actress Frances Reid is 95. Actor Kirk Douglas is 93. Actor Dick Van Patten is 81. Actor-writer Buck Henry is 79. Actress Dame Judi Dench is 75. Actor Beau Bridges is 68. Jazz singer-musician Dan Hicks is 68. Football Hall of Famer Dick Butkus is 67. Author Joe McGinniss is 67. Actor Michael Nouri is 64. Former Sen. Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., is 62. World Golf Hall of Famer Tom Kite is 60. Singer Joan Armatrading is 59. Actor Michael Dorn is 57. Actor John Malkovich is 56. Country singer Sylvia is 53. Singer Donny Osmond is 52. Rock musician Nick Seymour (Crowded House) is 51. Comedian Mario Cantone is 50. Actor David Anthony Higgins is 48. Actor Joe Lando is 48. Actress Felicity Huffman is 47. Crown Princess Masako of Japan is 46. Country musician Jerry Hughes (Yankee Grey) is 44. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is 43. Rock singer-musician Thomas Flowers (Oleander) is 42. Rock musician Brian Bell (Weezer) is 41. Rock singer-musician Jakob Dylan (Wallflowers) is 40. Country musician Brian Hayes (Cole Deggs and the Lonesome) is 40. Actress Allison Smith is 40. Songwriter and “American Idol” judge Kara DioGuardi is 39. Country singer David Kersh is 39. Rock musician Tre Cool (Green Day) is 37. Rapper Canibus is 35. Rock musician Eric Zamora (Save Ferris) is 33. Rock singer Imogen Heap is 32. Actor Jesse Metcalfe is 31. Actor Simon Helberg is 29.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

John Milton
12/9/1608 – 11/8/1674
English poet and scholar

Carl Wilhelm Scheele
12/9/1742 – 5/21/1786
Swedish chemist

Comte Claude-Louis Berthollet
12/9/1748 – 11/6/1822
French chemist

Clarence Birdseye
12/9/1886 – 10/7/1956
American businessman and pioneer of frozen foods

Emmett Kelly
12/9/1898 – 3/28/1979
American circus clown

Dalton Trumbo
12/9/1905 – 9/10/1976
American screenwriter and novelist

Grace Murray Hopper
12/9/1906 – 1/1/1992
American admiral

Thomas B. “Tip” O’Neill
12/9/1912 – 1/5/1994
American politician and longest serving speaker of the House of Representatives (1977-86)

John Cassavetes
12/9/1929 – 2/3/1989
American actor and film director

Thought for Today

“All sins are attempts to fill voids.” – Simone Weil, French philosopher (1909-1943).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/08/AR2009120800983.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091208.html

Today in History – December 8

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 8 on December 8, 2009 |

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 8, the 342nd day of 2009. There are 23 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 8, 1941, the United States entered World War II as Congress declared war against Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

On this date

In 1776, during the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington’s retreating army crossed the Delaware River from New Jersey into Pennsylvania.

In 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was free of original sin from the moment of her own conception.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln announced his plan for the reconstruction of the South.

In 1886, the American Federation of Labor was founded in Columbus, Ohio.

In 1925, Sammy Davis Jr., the American performer famous for his singing, dancing and comedy routines , was born.

In 1949, the Chinese Nationalist government moved from the Chinese mainland to Formosa as the Communists pressed their attacks.

In 1978, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir died in Jerusalem at age 80.

In 1980, rock star John Lennon was shot to death outside his New York City apartment building by Mark David Chapman, an apparently deranged fan.

In 1982, a man demanding an end to nuclear weapons held the Washington Monument hostage, threatening to blow it up with explosives he claimed were inside a van. (After a 10-hour standoff, Norman D. Mayer was shot dead by police; it turned out there were no explosives.)

In 1986, House Democrats selected Jim Wright to be the chamber’s 48th speaker, succeeding Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty at the White House calling for destruction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

In 1987, Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories began an intefadeh, or uprising.

In 1991, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine declared the Soviet national government dead, forging a new alliance, the Commonwealth of Independent States.

In 1991, Kimberly Bergalis, who had contracted AIDS from her dentist, died in Florida at age 23.

In 1992, Americans saw live TV coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia as Operation Restore Hope began.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed into U.S. law the North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect at the start of 1994.

In 1995, The Grateful Dead announced they were breaking up after 30 years of making music. The news came four months after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia.

In 1999, ten years ago, a Memphis, Tenn., jury hearing a lawsuit filed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s family found that the civil rights leader had been the victim of a vast murder conspiracy, not a lone assassin.

In 1999, a Russian diplomat was ordered to leave the U.S. after he was allegedly caught gathering information from the State Department with an eavesdropping device.

In 2004, five years ago, the Senate completed congressional approval of the biggest overhaul of U.S. intelligence in a half-century, voting 89-2 to send the measure to President George W. Bush, who signed it nine days later.

In 2004, disgruntled U.S. soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a question-and-answer session in Kuwait about long deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other equipment.

In 2004, Treasury Secretary John Snow accepted President Bush’s offer to remain in the Cabinet.

In 2004, “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, 38, an influential heavy metal guitarist, was fatally shot with three other people during a performance in Columbus, Ohio; the gunman was then shot dead by a police officer.

In 2oo8, one year ago, in a startling about-face, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal he would confess to masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks; four other men also abandoned their defenses. (The Obama administration has since decided to try the defendants in federal civilian court.)

In 2008, a malfunctioning F/A-18D Hornet military jet trying to reach Marine Corps Air Station Miramar slammed into a densely populated San Diego neighborhood, killing four members of a family and incinerating two homes; the pilot ejected safely.

In 2008, mystery writer Hillary Waugh died in Torrington, Conn., at age 88.

In 2008, character actor Robert Prosky died in Washington, D.C., five days short of his 78th birthday.

Today’s Birthdays

Actor-director Maximilian Schell is 79. Actor James MacArthur is 72. Flutist James Galway is 70. Singer Jerry Butler is 70. Pop musician Bobby Elliott (The Hollies) is 68. Actress Mary Woronov is 66. Actor John Rubinstein is 63. Rock singer-musician Gregg Allman is 62. Reggae singer Toots Hibbert (Toots and the Maytals) is 61. Actress Kim Basinger is 56. Rock musician Warren Cuccurullo is 53. Rock musician Phil Collen (Def Leppard) is 52. Country singer Marty Raybon is 50. Rock musician Marty Friedman is 47. Actor Wendell Pierce is 46. Actress Teri Hatcher is 45. Rapper Bushwick Bill (The Geto Boys) is 43. Singer Sinead O’Connor is 43. Actor Matthew Laborteaux is 43. Rock musician Ryan Newell (Sister Hazel) is 37. Actor Dominic Monaghan is 33. Actor Ian Somerhalder is 31. Rock singer Ingrid Michaelson is 30. R&B singer Chrisette Michele is 27. Rock singer-actress Kate Voegele is 23. Actress AnnaSophia Robb is 16.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Queen of Scots Mary
12/8/1542 – 2/8/1587
Scottish queen

Queen of Sweden Christina
12/8/1626 – 4/19/1689
Swedish queen

Eli Whitney
12/8/1765 – 1/8/1825
American inventor of the cotton gin

Richard Carlile
12/8/1790 – 2/10/1843
English journalist

Aristide Maillol
12/8/1861 – 9/27/1944
French artist

Camille Claudel
12/8/1864 – 10/19/1943
French sculptor

Jean Sibelius
12/8/1865 – 9/20/1957
Finnish composer

Diego Rivera
12/8/1886 – 11/25/1957
Mexican painter

James Thurber
12/8/1894 – 11/2/1961
American writer and cartoonist

Elzie (Crisler) Segar
12/8/1894 – 10/13/1938
American cartoonist and creator of Popeye

Josephine Bell
12/8/1897 – 4/24/1987
English physician and novelist

Sammy Davis Jr.
12/8/1925 – 5/16/1990
American entertainer

Thought for Today

“Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man.” – St. Teresa of Avila, Spanish Carmelite nun (1515-1582).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/08/AR2009120800983.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091207.html

Today in History – December 7

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 7 on December 7, 2009 |

Today is Monday, Dec. 7, the 341st day of 2009. There are 24 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 7, 1941, Imperial Japanese warplanes attacked the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, as well as other American and British bases in the Pacific; the pre-emptive raids prompted the United States to enter World War II.

On this date

In 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

In 1796, electors chose John Adams to be the second president of the United States.

In 1808, electors chose James Madison to be the fourth president of the United States.

In 1836, Martin Van Buren was elected the eighth president of the United States.

In 1842, the New York Philharmonic gave its first concert.

In 1873, Willa Cather, the American novelist famous for her descriptions of life on the American frontier, was born.

In 1909, in his State of the Union address, President William Howard Taft defended the decision to base U.S. naval operations in the Pacific at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, instead of in the Philippines.

In 1909, chemist Leo H. Baekeland received a U.S. patent for Bakelite, the first totally synthetic plastic.

In 1941, Adolf Hitler issued his Night and Fog Decree, a secret order for the arrest and execution of “persons endangering German security.”

In 1946, fire broke out at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta; the blaze killed 119 people, including hotel founder W. Frank Winecoff.

In 1963, videotaped instant replay was used for the first time in a live sports telecast during the Army-Navy football game on CBS.

In 1972, America’s last moon mission to date was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

In 1982, a U.S. prisoner was executed by injection for the first time, in Huntsville, Texas.

In 1983, in Madrid, Spain, an Aviaco DC-9 collided on a foggy runway with an Iberia Air Lines Boeing 727 that was accelerating for takeoff, killing all 42 people aboard the DC-9 and 51 aboard the Iberia jet.

In 1985, retired Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart died at age 70.

In 1987, 43 people were killed after a gunman aboard a Pacific Southwest Airlines jetliner in California apparently opened fire on a fellow passenger, the two pilots and himself, causing the plane to crash.

In 1988, a major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia; official estimates put the death toll at 25,000.

In 1993, a gunman opened fire on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train, killing six people and wounding 17. Colin Ferguson was later sentenced to a minimum of 200 years in prison.

In 1995, a 746-pound probe from the Galileo spacecraft hurtled into Jupiter’s atmosphere, sending back data to the mothership before it was destroyed.

In 1999, ten years ago, NASA scientists all but gave up hope of contacting the Mars Polar Lander, last heard from four days earlier as it began its descent toward the Red Planet.

In 2001, Taliban forces abandoned their last bastion in Afghanistan, fleeing the southern city of Kandahar.

In 2002, Iraq denied it had weapons of mass destruction in a declaration to the United Nations.

In 2004, five years ago, Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president.

In 2004, the House of Representatives passed an intelligence network overhaul measure, 336-75.

In 2004, Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel died in Ada, Mich., at age 80.

In 2004, singer Jerry Scoggins, who performed “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” the theme song to “The Beverly Hillbillies,” died at age 93.

In 2007, Baseball home run king Barry Bonds pleaded not guilty in San Francisco to charges he’d lied to federal investigators about using performance-enhancing drugs.

In 2008, one year ago, President-elect Barack Obama introduced retired Gen. Eric Shinseki as his choice to head the Veterans Affairs Department.

In 2008, actress-singer Barbra Streisand, actor Morgan Freeman, country singer George Jones, dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp and musicians Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The Who received Kennedy Center Honors.

Today’s Birthdays

Actor Eli Wallach is 94. Linguist and political philosopher Noam Chomsky is 81. Bluegrass singer Bobby Osborne is 78. Actress Ellen Burstyn is 77. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is 72. Broadcast journalist Carole Simpson is 69. Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Bench is 62. Country singer Gary Morris is 61. Singer-songwriter Tom Waits is 60. Sen. Susan M. Collins, R-Maine, is 57. Basketball Hall of Famer Larry Bird is 53. Actress Priscilla Barnes is 52. Former “Tonight Show” announcer Edd Hall is 51. Rock musician Tim Butler (The Psychedelic Furs) is 51. Actor Jeffrey Wright is 44. Actor C. Thomas Howell is 43. Buffalo Bills wide receiver Terrell Owens is 36. Pop singer Nicole Appleton (All Saints) is 34. Country singer Sunny Sweeney is 33. Actress Shiri Appleby is 31. Pop-rock singer Sara Bareilles is 30. Singer Aaron Carter is 22.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Gian Lorenzo Bernini
12/7/1598 – 11/28/1680
Italian sculptor

Allan Cunningham
12/7/1784 – 10/30/1842
Scottish poet

Sir Joseph Cook
12/7/1860 – 7/30/1947
Australian prime minister (1913-14)

Pietro Mascagni
12/7/1863 – 8/2/1945
Italian operatic composer

R.W. Sears
12/7/1863 – 9/28/1914
American merchant and founder of Sears, Roebuck retail company

Willa Cather
12/7/1873 – 4/24/1947
American novelist

Rudolf Friml
12/7/1879 – 11/12/1972
American operetta composer

Hamilton Fish
12/7/1888 – 1/18/1991
American politician

Joyce Cary
12/7/1888 – 12/18/1957
English novelist

Heywood Broun
12/7/1888 – 12/18/1939
American journalist

Thought for Today

“What man strives to preserve, in preserving himself, is something which he has never been at any particular moment.” – George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher (1863-1952).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/07/AR2009120701039.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091206.html

Today in History – December 6

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 6 on December 6, 2009 |

Today is Sunday, Dec. 6, the 340th day of 2009. There are 25 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 6, 1884, Army engineers completed construction of the Washington Monument by setting an aluminum capstone atop the obelisk.

On this date

In 1790, Congress moved to Philadelphia from New York.

In 1889, Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, died in New Orleans.

In 1898, Alfred Eisenstaedt, the German-born photographer whose pioneering images for Life magazine helped define American photojournalism, was born.

In 1907, the worst mining disaster in U.S. history occurred as 362 men and boys died in a coal mine explosion in Monongah, W.Va.

In 1917, some 2,000 people died when an explosives-laden French cargo ship collided with a Norwegian vessel at the harbor in Halifax, Nova Scotia, setting off a blast that devastated the city.

In 1917, Finland declared itself independent of Russia, following the Bolshevik Revolution.

In 1921, the British government and Irish leaders Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and others signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, establishing the Irish Free State as an independent member of the British Commonwealth.

In 1922, the Irish Free State came into being under terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

In 1923, a presidential address was broadcast on radio for the first time as President Calvin Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.

In 1939, the Cole Porter musical comedy “Du Barry Was a Lady” opened on Broadway.

In 1947, Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Harry S. Truman.

In 1957, America’s first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed as Vanguard TV3 rose about four feet off a Cape Canaveral launch pad before crashing down and exploding.

In 1957, AFL-CIO members voted to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

In 1969, a free concert by the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Alameda County, Calif., was marred by the deaths of four people, including one who was stabbed by a Hell’s Angel.

In 1973, House minority leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned after pleading no contest to income tax evasion.

In 1982, a bomb planted by the Irish National Liberation Army exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, killing 11 soldiers and six civilians.

In 1989, 14 women were shot to death at the University of Montreal’s school of engineering by a man who then took his own life.

In 1992, thousands of Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque in India, setting off two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting that claimed at least 2,000 lives.

In 1994, Orange County, Calif., filed for bankruptcy protection due to investment losses of about $2 billion.

In 1998, Hugo Chavez, who had staged a bloody coup attempt against the Venezuelan government six years earlier, was elected president.

In 1999, ten years ago, the Supreme Court, reconsidering its landmark Miranda ruling, agreed to decide whether police were still required to warn criminal suspects that they had a “right to remain silent.” (The justices upheld that right the following June.)

In 1999, SabreTech, an aircraft maintenance company, was convicted of mishandling the oxygen canisters blamed for the cargo hold fire that caused the 1996 ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades that killed 110 people. (Eight of the nine counts were later thrown out on appeal.)

In 2003, Army became the first team to finish 0-13 in major college football history after a 34-6 loss to Navy.

In 2004, five years ago, militants struck the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, with explosives and machine guns, killing nine people in an attack claimed by al-Qaida.

In 2004, Ohio certified President George W. Bush’s 119,000-vote victory over Democrat John Kerry, even as the Kerry campaign and third-party candidates prepared to demand a statewide recount.

In 2004, a dozen expensive homes under construction in Indian Head, Md., were deliberately burned down. (Five men either pleaded guilty or were convicted in the case; prosecutors had cited a variety of motives, including anger by some of the white perpetrators that most of the new homeowners were black.)

In 2006, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group concluded that President George W. Bush’s war policies had failed in almost every regard, and said the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating.”

In 2008, one year ago, President-elect Barack Obama said in a Saturday radio and Internet address that he’d asked his economic team for a recovery plan that would save or create more than 2 million jobs.

In 2008, indicted Democratic U.S. Rep. William Jefferson was ousted from his New Orleans area district in a special election won by Republican attorney Anh “Joseph” Cao, who became the first Vietnamese-American in Congress.

In 2008, a Greek youth, 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was shot to death during a confrontation with police in Athens, sparking two weeks of riots.

In 2008, heiress Martha “Sunny” von Bulow, who’d spent the last 28 years of her life in a coma, died in New York City at age 76.

Today’s Birthdays

Jazz musician Dave Brubeck is 89. Pro Football Hall of Famer Andy Robustelli is 84. Comedy performer David Ossman is 73. Actor Patrick Bauchau is 71. Country singer Helen Cornelius is 68. Actor James Naughton is 64. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is 64. R&B singer Frankie Beverly (Maze) is 63. Former Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., is 61. Actress JoBeth Williams is 61. Actor Tom Hulce is 56. Actor Kin Shriner is 56. Actor Wil Shriner is 56. Actor Miles Chapin is 55. Rock musician Rick Buckler (The Jam) is 54. Comedian Steven Wright is 54. Country singer Bill Lloyd is 54. Singer Tish Hinojosa is 54. Rock musician Peter Buck (R.E.M.) is 53. Rock musician David Lovering (Pixies) is 48. Actress Janine Turner is 47. Rock musician Ben Watt (Everything But The Girl) is 47. Writer-director Judd Apatow is 42. Rock musician Ulf “Buddha” Ekberg (Ace of Base) is 39. Writer-director Craig Brewer is 38. Actress Colleen Haskell is 33. Actress Lindsay Price is 33. Christian rock musician Jacob Chesnut (Rush of Fools) is 20.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Baldassare Castiglione
12/6/1478 – 2/2/1529
Italian diplomat and writer

Niccoli Zucchi
12/6/1586 – 5/21/1670
Italian astronomer

Sophie von La Roche
12/6/1731 – 2/18/1807
German writer

Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin
12/6/1805 – 6/13/1871
French magician

(Friedrich) Max Muller
12/6/1823 – 10/28/1900
German orientalist scholar

John Singleton Mosby
12/6/1833 – 5/30/1916
American Confederate guerrilla leader

Evelyn Underhill
12/6/1875 – 6/15/1941
English mystical poet

(Alfred) Joyce Kilmer
12/6/1886 – 7/30/1918
American poet

Sir Osbert Sitwell
12/6/1892 – 5/4/1969
English writer

Ira Gershwin
12/6/1896 – 8/17/1983
American lyricist of Broadway musicals and films

Alfred Eisenstaedt
12/6/1898 – 8/23/1995
German photojournalist

James J. Braddock
12/6/1905 – 11/29/1974
American boxing champion

Thought for Today

“Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.” – Madame Virginie de Rieux, 16th-century French writer.

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/06/AR2009120600049.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091205.html

Today in History – December 5

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 5 on December 6, 2009 |

Today is Saturday, Dec. 5, the 339th day of 2009. There are 26 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 5, 1933, national Prohibition came to an end as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment.

On this date

In 1484, Innocent VIII condemned witchcraft this day in 1484 via papal bull, and subsequently he dispatched inquisitors to Germany to try witches and persecuted a chief exponent of Renaissance Platonism, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

In 1757, in his greatest victory, Prussian King Frederick II (the Great) defeated the Austrians at Leuthen during the Seven Years’ War.

In 1776, the first scholastic fraternity in America, Phi Beta Kappa, was organized at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

In 1782, the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, was born in Kinderhook, N.Y., the first chief executive to be born after American independence.

In 1784, Phillis Wheatley, the first African American woman poet of note in the United States, died in Boston.

In 1791, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna, Austria, at age 35.

In 1792, George Washington was re-elected president; John Adams was re-elected vice president.

In 1831, former President John Quincy Adams took his seat as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1848, President James K. Polk triggered the Gold Rush of ’49 by confirming that gold had been discovered in California.

In 1901, Walt Disney, the pioneer of animated cartoon films and founder of the Disney theme parks, was born.

In 1932, German physicist Albert Einstein was granted a visa, making it possible for him to travel to the United States.

In 1947,American boxer Joe Louis defended his heavyweight title against challenger Jersey Joe Walcott in New York City.

In 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO under its first president, George Meany.

In 1979, feminist Sonia Johnson was formally excommunicated by the Mormon Church because of her outspoken support for the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

In 1994, Republicans chose Newt Gingrich to be the first GOP speaker of the House in four decades.

In 1996, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan questioned whether the stock market was overvalued, saying in a speech in Washington, “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly inflated asset values?”

In 1999, ten years ago, AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney welcomed the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, asserting that “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

In 1999, Cuban President Fidel Castro demanded that the United States return 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez, who had been rescued at sea, to his father in Cuba within 72 hours.

In 2002, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond’s pro-segregation 1948 presidential campaign. The ensuing uproar led to Lott’s resignation from the Senate leadership.

In 2004, five years ago, gunmen ambushed a bus carrying unarmed Iraqis to work at a U.S. ammo dump near Tikrit, killing 17.

In 2004, Egypt freed an Israeli Arab man convicted of spying in exchange for Israel’s release of six Egyptian students who were suspected of trying to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

In 2004, Carlos Moya beat Andy Roddick 6-2, 7-6 (1), 7-6 (5) to clinch Spain’s second Davis Cup title.

In 2006, New York became the first city in the nation to ban artery-clogging trans fats at restaurants.

In 2007, a teenage gunman went on a shooting rampage at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., killing six store employees and two customers; Robert A. Hawkins, 19, then took his own life.

In 2008, one year ago, the Labor Department reported that an alarming half-million jobs had vanished in Nov. 2008 as unemployment hit a 15-year high of 6.7 percent.

In 2008, hundreds of workers laid off on short notice from the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago began a six-day sit-in. (Republic ultimately agreed to the workers’ demands for severance and accrued vacation pay; the factory was later sold to a California company, Serious Materials.)

In 2008, a judge in Las Vegas sentenced O.J. Simpson to 33 years in prison (with eligibility for parole after nine) for an armed robbery at a hotel room.

In 2008, Alexy II, the Russian Orthodox patriarch who’d presided over a vast post-Soviet revival of the faith, died at his residence outside Moscow at age 79.

In 2008, death claimed actresses Nina Foch at age 84 and Beverly Garland at age 82.

Today’s Birthdays

Singer Little Richard is 77. Author Joan Didion is 75. Author Calvin Trillin is 74. Musician J.J. Cale is 71. Actor Jeroen Krabbe is 65. Opera singer Jose Carreras is 63. Pop singer Jim Messina is 62. College Football Hall of Famer Jim Plunkett is 62. World Golf Hall of Famer Lanny Wadkins is 60. Actress Morgan Brittany is 58. Actor Brian Backer is 53. Pro Football Hall of Famer Art Monk is 52. Country singer Ty England is 46. Rock singer-musician John Rzeznik (The Goo Goo Dolls) is 44. Country singer Gary Allan is 42. Comedian-actress Margaret Cho is 41. Writer-director Morgan J. Freeman is 40. Actress Alex Kapp Horner is 40. Rock musician Regina Zernay (Cowboy Mouth) is 37. Actress Paula Patton is 34. Actress Amy Acker is 33. Actor Nick Stahl is 30. R&B singer Keri Hilson is 27. Actor Frankie Muniz is 24. Actor Ross Bagley is 21.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Pope Julius II
12/5/1443 – 2/21/1513
Italian pope

Martin Van Buren
12/5/1782 – 7/24/1862
Eighth President of the United States (1837-41)

Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz
12/5/1822 – 6/27/1907
American naturalist and educator

Christina Rossetti
12/5/1830 – 12/29/1894
English poet

George Armstrong Custer
12/5/1839 – 6/25/1876
American cavalry officer

Marcus Daly
12/5/1841 – 11/12/1900
American mining tycoon

Clyde Vernon Cessna
12/5/1879 – 11/20/1954
American aircraft manufacturer

Fritz Lang
12/5/1890 – 8/2/1976
Austrian-American motion picture director

Werner Heisenberg
12/5/1901 – 2/1/1976
German physicist and philosopher

Walt Disney
12/5/1901 – 12/15/1966
American television producer and creator of Mickey Mouse

Kate Simon
12/5/1912 – 2/4/1990
American travel writer

Thought for Today

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney (born this date in 1901, died 1966).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120401474.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091204.html

Today in History – December 4

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 4 on December 4, 2009 |

Today is Friday, Dec. 4, the 338th day of 2009. There are 27 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 4, 1619, settlers from Bristol, England, arrived at Berkeley Hundred in present-day Charles City County, Va., where they held a service thanking God for their safe arrival. (Some suggest that this was America’s true first Thanksgiving.)

On this date

In 1154, Adrian IV was elected pope, becoming the only Englishman to occupy the papal throne.

In 1533, the three-year-old who became Ivan the Terrible was proclaimed grand prince of Moscow upon the death of his father, Grand Prince Vasily III, with his mother ruling in Ivan’s name until her death in 1538.

In 1783, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York.

In 1816, James Monroe of Virginia was elected the fifth president of the United States.

In 1875, William Marcy Tweed, the “Boss” of New York City’s Tammany Hall political organization, escaped from jail and fled the country.

In 1892, Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator who overthrew the democratic republic and headed an authoritarian regime in Spain for 36 years, was born.

In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson left Washington on a trip to France to attend the Versailles Peace Conference.

In 1942, U.S. bombers struck the Italian mainland for the first time in World War II.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the dismantling of the Works Progress Administration, which had been created to provide jobs during the Depression.

In 1945, the Senate approved U.S. participation in the United Nations.

In 1965, the United States launched Gemini 7 with Air Force Lt. Col. Frank Borman and Navy Cmdr. James A. Lovell aboard.

In 1978, San Francisco got its first female mayor as City Supervisor Dianne Feinstein was named to replace the assassinated George Moscone.

In 1980, the rock group Led Zeppelin announced it was disbanding, after the death in September of drummer John Bonham.

In 1980, the bodies of four American nuns slain in El Salvador two days earlier were unearthed. (Five national guardsmen were later convicted of murder.)

In 1984, a five-day hijack drama began as four armed men seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and forced it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers killed American passenger Charles Hegna.

In 1991, the original Pan American World Airways ceased operations.

In 1991, Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon, was released after nearly seven years in captivity.

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush ordered American troops to lead a mercy mission to Somalia, threatening military action against warlords and gangs who were blocking food for starving millions.

In 1993, Rock musician Frank Zappa died at age 52.

In 1995, The first NATO troops landed in the Balkans to begin setting up a peace mission.

In 1996, the Mars Pathfinder lifted off from Cape Canaveral and began speeding toward Mars on an odyssey of 310 million miles. (It arrived on Mars in July 1997.)

In 1999, ten years ago, NASA scientists continued to wait in vain for a signal from the Mars Polar Lander, raising questions about the whereabouts of NASA’s $165 million probe. (It’s believed the spacecraft was destroyed after it plunged toward the Red Planet.)

In 2000, a Florida state judge refused to overturn Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush’s certified victory in Florida, and the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a ruling that had allowed manual recounts.

In 2001, the United States froze the financial assets of organizations allegedly linked to the terrorist group Hamas.

In 2004, five years ago, President George W. Bush received the president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in the Oval Office; afterward, Bush pronounced himself “very pleased” with Pakistan’s efforts to flush out terrorists.

In 2006, lacking the Senate votes to keep his job, embattled U.N. Ambassador John Bolton offered his resignation to President George W. Bush, who accepted it.

In 2008, one year ago, U.S. automakers drew fresh skepticism from lawmakers during a Senate Banking Committee hearing over their pleas for an expanded $34 billion rescue package they said was needed for them to survive.

In 2008, for the first time, an NFL game was broadcast live in 3-D to theaters in Boston, New York and Los Angeles. (Although the telecast was marred by technical glitches, fans were mostly forgiving as they watched the San Diego Chargers beat the Oakland Raiders 34-7.)

Today’s Birthdays

Actress-singer Deanna Durbin is 88. Game show host Wink Martindale is 76. Pop singer Freddy Cannon is 73. Actor-producer Max Baer Jr. is 72. Actress Gemma Jones is 67. Rock musician Bob Mosley (Moby Grape) is 67. Singer-musician Chris Hillman is 65. Musician Terry Woods (The Pogues) is 62. Rock singer Southside Johnny Lyon is 61. Actor Jeff Bridges is 60. Rock musician Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd; the Rossington Collins Band) is 58. Actress Patricia Wettig is 58. Actor Tony Todd is 55. Jazz singer Cassandra Wilson is 54. Country musician Brian Prout (Diamond Rio) is 54. Rock musician Bob Griffin (The BoDeans) is 50. Rock singer Vinnie Dombroski (Sponge) is 47. Actress Marisa Tomei is 45. Actress Chelsea Noble is 45. Actor-comedian Fred Armisen is 43. Rapper Jay-Z is 40. Actor Kevin Sussman is 39. Actress-model Tyra Banks is 36. Country singer Lila McCann is 28. Actress Lindsay Felton is 25. Actor Orlando Brown is 22.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

John Cotton
12/4/1585 – 12/23/1652
American Puritan leader

Thomas Carlyle
12/4/1795 – 2/5/1881
English philosopher and historian

Crazy Horse
12/4/1849 – 9/5/1877
American Indian Chief

Lillian Russell
12/4/1861 – 6/6/1922
American singer and actress

Wassily Kandinsky
12/4/1866 – 12/13/1944
Russian abstract painter

Rainer Maria Rilke
12/4/1875 – 12/29/1926
German poet

Francisco Franco
12/4/1892 – 11/20/1975
Spanish dictator

Fung Yu-lan
12/4/1895 – 11/26/1990
Chinese philosopher

Alfred Hershey
12/4/1908 – 5/22/1997
American psychologist

Pappy Boyington
12/4/1912 – 1/11/1988
American flying ace

Thought for Today

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.” – Stendahl (Henri Beyle), French author and critic (1783-1842).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120401474.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091203.html

Today in History – December 3

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 3 on December 4, 2009 |

Today is Thursday, Dec. 3, the 337th day of 2009. There are 28 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On Dec. 3, 1984, thousands of people died after a cloud of methyl isocyanate gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.

On this date

In 1818, Illinois was admitted as the 21st state.

In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States by the Electoral College.

In 1833, Oberlin College in Ohio – the first truly coeducational school of higher learning in the United States – began holding classes.

In 1857, novelist Joseph Conrad was born in Berdychiv, Poland.

In 1861, in a battle during the American Civil War, Federal troops ousted the Confederates from Salem, Missouri.

In 1895, Anna Freud, the Austrian-born psychologist who pioneered the field of child psychoanalysis, was born.

In 1925, Concerto in F by George Gershwin had its world premiere at New York’s Carnegie Hall, with Gershwin himself at the piano.

In 1947, the Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire” opened on Broadway.

In 1948, the House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.

In 1953, the musical “Kismet” opened on Broadway.

In 1960, the musical “Camelot” opened on Broadway.

In 1964, police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after the students stormed the administration building and staged a massive sit-in.

In 1965, the album “Rubber Soul” by the Beatles was released.

In 1967, surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who lived 18 days with the new heart.

In 1967, the 20th Century Limited, the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York to Chicago.

In 1979, 11 people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, where The Who were performing.

In 1989, East German Communist leader Egon Krenz, the ruling Politburo and the party’s Central Committee resigned.

In 1992, the Greek tanker Aegean Sea spilled 21.5 million gallons of crude oil when it ran aground off northwestern Spain.

In 1994,Elizabeth Glaser, who became an AIDS activist after she and her two children were infected with HIV via a blood transfusion, died at age 47.

In 1997, South Korea struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $55 billion bailout of its foundering economy.

In 1999, ten years ago, World Trade Organization talks collapsed in Seattle.

In 1999, six firefighters died while battling a fire in an abandoned Worcester, Mass., industrial building.

In 1999, scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the Red Planet; the spacecraft is presumed destroyed.

In 1999, Tori Murden of the United States became the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean alone as she arrived at the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, 81 days after leaving the Canary Islands near the coast of Africa.

In 1999, billionaire banker Edmond Safra suffocated in a smoke-filled bathroom in his Monaco apartment; American nurse Ted Maher confessed to setting the fire that killed the 67-year-old Safra.

In 1999, Oscar-nominated actress Madeline Kahn died at age 57.

In 2004, five years ago, it was announced that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was staying on the job.

In 2004, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson resigned, warning as he left of a possible terror attack on the nation’s food supply.

In 2004, the Ukraine Supreme Court ordered a rerun of the head-to-head presidential contest, setting off rejoicing by supporters of Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko, who ended up the winner.

In 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez won re-election.

In 2008, one year ago, President-elect Barack Obama selected New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as his commerce secretary. (Richardson withdrew a month later when it appeared his confirmation hearings would be complicated by a grand jury investigation over how state contracts were issued to political donors; Gary Locke replaced him at commerce.)

In 2008, theological conservatives upset by liberal views of U.S. Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans formed a rival North American province.

Today’s Birthdays

Country singer Ferlin Husky is 84. Singer Andy Williams is 82. Movie director Jean-Luc Godard is 79. Singer Jaye P. Morgan is 78. Actor Nicolas Coster is 76. Actress Mary Alice is 68. Rock singer Ozzy Osbourne is 61. Actress Heather Menzies is 60. Rock singer Mickey Thomas is 60. Country musician Paul Gregg (Restless Heart) is 55. Actor Steven Culp is 54. Actress Daryl Hannah is 49. Actress Julianne Moore is 49. Olympic gold medal figure skater Katarina Witt is 44. Actor Brendan Fraser is 41. Singer Montell Jordan is 41. Actor Royale Watkins is 40. Actor Bruno Campos is 36. Actress Holly Marie Combs is 36. Actress Lauren Roman is 34. Pop-rock singer Daniel Bedingfield is 30. Actress Anna Chlumsky is 29. Actor Brian Bonsall is 28. Actress Amanda Seyfried is 24. Actor Michael Angarano is 22. Actor Jake T. Austin is 15.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Gilbert Stuart
12/3/1755 – 7/9/1828
American portrait painter

George Brinton McClellan
12/3/1826 – 10/29/1885
American general

Cleveland Abbe
12/3/1838 – 10/28/1916
American meteorologist

Octavia Hill
12/3/1838 – 8/13/1912
English activist and leader of the British open-space movement

Charles Alfred Pillsbury
12/3/1842 – 9/17/1899
American flour miller and food products manufacturer

Ellen Swallow Richards
12/3/1842 – 3/30/1911
American chemist

Joseph Conrad
12/3/1857 – 8/3/1924
English novelist

Carl Koller
12/3/1857 – 3/21/1944
Czech-born American eye surgeon

Anton von Werbern
12/3/1883 – 9/15/1945
Austrian composer

Anna Freud
12/3/1895 – 10/9/1982
Austrian/English psychoanalyst

Hayato Ikeda
12/3/1899 – 8/13/1965
Japanese prime minister (1960-4)

Richard Kuhn
12/3/1900 – 8/1/1967
German biochemist and Nobel Prize winner

John von Neumann
12/3/1903 – 2/8/1957
Hungarian-American mathematician

Thought for Today

“It is right noble to fight with wickedness and wrong; the mistake is in supposing that spiritual evil can be overcome by physical means.” – Lydia Maria Child, American author (1802-1880).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/03/AR2009120301026.html

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20091202.html

Today in History – December 2

Posted in This day in history, tagged December 2 on December 3, 2009 |

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 2, the 336th day of 2009. There are 29 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlights in History

On Dec. 2, 1859, militant abolitionist John Brown was hanged for his raid on Harpers Ferry the previous October. Artist Georges-Pierre Seurat was born in Paris.

On this date

In 1763, members of the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island witnessed the dedication of the Touro Synagogue, the first synagogue in what became the United States. Designed in the Georgian style by English architect Peter Harrison, the synagogue was named for Isaac Touro, its first officiating rabbi.

In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French.

In 1816, the first savings bank in the United States, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opened.

In 1823, President James Monroe outlined his doctrine opposing European expansion in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1923, Maria Callas, the legendary American soprano opera singer, was born.

In 1927, Ford Motor Co. formally unveiled its second Model A automobile, the successor to its Model T.

In 1939, New York Municipal Airport-LaGuardia Field (later LaGuardia Airport) went into operation as an airliner from Chicago landed at one minute past midnight.

In 1942, an artificially created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated for the first time, at the University of Chicago.

In 1954, the Senate voted to condemn Wisconsin Republican Joseph R. McCarthy for conduct that “tends to bring the Senate into disrepute.”

In 1961, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist who would lead Cuba to Communism.

In 1967, Cardinal Francis Spellman died in New York City at age 78.

In 1969, the Boeing 747 jumbo jet got its first public preview as 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, flew from Seattle to New York City.

In 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency began operating under director William Ruckelshaus.

In 1971, the United Arab Emirates was formed by the union of six small emirates on the Arabian Peninsula, with a seventh emirate joining in February 1972.

In 1980, four American churchwomen were raped and murdered outside San Salvador. (Five national guardsmen were convicted in the killings.)

In 1982, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center performed the first implant of a permanent artificial heart in a human. Barney Clark lived 112 days with the device.

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev held the first talks of their wind-tossed Malta summit aboard the Soviet cruise ship Maxim Gorky.

In 1990, composer Aaron Copland died at age 90.

In 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot to death by security forces in Medellin.

In 1999, ten years ago, relative calm was restored in Seattle, where a meeting of the World Trade Organization was greeted earlier with sometimes violent demonstrations.

In 1999, all six Republican presidential hopefuls, including Texas Gov. George W. Bush, debated in Manchester, N.H.

In 1999, in Northern Ireland, a power-sharing cabinet of Protestants and Catholics sat down together for the first time.

In 2001, Enron filed for Chapter 11 protection in one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history.

In 2001, a bomb went off aboard a bus in Haifa, killing 15 Israelis.

In 2004, five years ago, President George W. Bush chose former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik to run the Department of Homeland Security. (Kerik withdrew his name days later, citing immigration problems with a former nanny; he later pleaded guilty to eight felonies, including lying to the White House.)

In 2004, Bush announced that Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns was his choice as the next agriculture secretary, replacing Ann Veneman.

In 2004, U.N. ambassador John Danforth resigned after five months representing the U.S. at the world body.

In 2004, Dame Alicia Markova, one of the 20th century’s greatest ballerinas, died in Bath, England, a day after turning 94.

In 2004, Pulitzer-winning poet Mona Van Duyn, the nation’s first female poet laureate, died in University City, Mo., at age 83.

In 2008, one year ago, President-elect Barack Obama promised swift action on an economic plan “to solve this crisis and to ease the burden on our states.”

In 2008, Republican Saxby Chambliss won a Georgia runoff, denying Democrats a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (until Al Franken’s belated victory over Norm Coleman in Minnesota).

In 2008, folk singer Odetta died in New York at age 77.

In 2008, Henry Molaison, the patient known as “H.M.” whose severe amnesia led to groundbreaking studies of how memory works, died in Connecticut at age 82.

Today’s Birthdays

Character actor Bill Erwin is 95. Former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig is 85. Actress Julie Harris is 84. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III is 78. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is 70. Actress Cathy Lee Crosby is 65. Movie director Penelope Spheeris is 64. Actor Ron Raines is 60. Country singer John Wesley Ryles is 59. Actor Keith Szarabajka is 57. Actor Dan Butler is 55. Broadcast journalist Stone Phillips is 55. Actor Dennis Christopher is 54. Actor Steven Bauer is 53. Figure skater Randy Gardner is 52. Country singer Joe Henry is 49. Rock musician Rick Savage (Def Leppard) is 49. Rock musician Nate Mendel (Foo Fighters) is 41. Actress Rena Sofer is 41. Rock singer Jimi HaHa (Jimmie’s Chicken Shack) is 41. Actress Lucy Liu is 41. Rapper Treach (Naughty By Nature) is 39. Tennis player Monica Seles is 36. Singer Nelly Furtado is 31. Pop singer Britney Spears is 28. Actress Daniela Ruah (“NCIS: Los Angeles”) is 26. Actor Alfie Enoch (“Harry Potter”) is 21. Actresses Daniella and Deanna Canterman are 17.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

John Breckinridge
12/2/1760 – 12/14/1806
American politician

Rene Waldeck-Rousseau
12/2/1846 – 8/10/1904
French premier

Georges Seurat
12/2/1859 – 3/29/1891
French painter

Charles Ringling
12/2/1863 – 12/3/1926
American circus owner

Ruth Draper
12/2/1884 – 12/30/1956
American entertainer

George Richards Minot
12/2/1885 – 2/25/1950
American physician and Nobel Prize winner

Sir John Barbirolli
12/2/1899 – 7/29/1970
English conductor and cellist

Peter Carl Goldmark
12/2/1906 – 12/7/1977
Hungarian-American engineer; developed the first commercial color television

Maria Callas
12/2/1923 – 9/16/1977
Greek-American opera singer

Gianni Versace
12/2/1946 – 7/15/1997
Italian-American fashion designer

Thought for Today

“Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.” – Addison Mizner, American architect (1872-1933).

__________

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/02/AR2009120200697.html

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/dec02.html