Sunday August 10, 2014 Today is: National SMores Day, National Duran Duran Appreciation Day, Paul Bunyan Day, Skyscraper Appreciation Day, Smithsonian Day This Week is: Feeding Pets of the Homeless Week 10-16, National Resurrect Romance Week, 10-16 For my Catholic friends Today is a Feast Day for: St. Laurentinus, St. Lawrence - Martyr, St. Blane, St. Agilberta, St. Aredius, St. Asteria, St. Thiento & Companions, St. Deusdedit of Canterbury, St. Acrates (Aragawi), St. James of Manug On This Day in History: 1776 - News reaches London that the Americans had drafted theDeclaration of Independence. Until the Declaration of Independence formally transformed the 13 British colonies into states, both Americans and the British saw the conflict centered in Massachusetts as a local uprising within the British empire. To King George III, it was a colonial rebellion, and to the Americans, it was a struggle for their rights as British citizens. However, when Parliament continued to oppose any reform and remained unwilling to negotiate with the American rebels and instead hired Hessians, German mercenaries, to help the British army crush the rebellion, the Continental Congress began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the colonies. The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew generously from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of natural rights, and from the work of other British theorists. The declaration features the immortal lines We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It then goes on to present a long list of grievances that provided the American rationale for rebellion. 1793 - After more than two centuries as a royal palace, the Louvre is opened as a public museum in Paris by the French revolutionary government. Today, the Louvres collection is one of the richest in the world, with artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and culture. 1816 - After a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist, President James K. Polk signs the Smithsonian Institution Act into law. In 1829, James Smithson died in Italy, leaving behind a will with a peculiar footnote. In the event that his only nephew died without any heirs, Smithson decreed that the whole of his estate would go to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Smithsons curious bequest to a country that he had never visited aroused significant attention on both sides of the Atlantic. 1821 - Missouri enters the Union as the 24th state--and the first located entirely west of theMississippi River. Named for one of the Native American groups that once lived in the territory, Missouri became a U.S. possession as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1817, Missouri Territory applied for statehood, but the question of whether it would be slave or free delayed approval by Congress. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise was reached, admitting Missouri as a slave state but excluding slavery from the other Louisiana Purchase lands north of Missouris southern border. Missouris August 1821 entrance into the Union as a slave state was met with disapproval by many of its citizens. 1833 - Chicago, Illinois, was incorporated as a village, its population was about 200. 1877 - Amanda McFarland, a dedicated Presbyterian missionary, becomes the first white woman to settle at Fort Wrangell, Alaska. Though Alaska had been an American territory nearly a decade at that time, it was still almost unsettled beyond a few military and fur trapping outposts. McFarland was the first and only white woman at Fort Wrangell, she was the only Protestant missionary in all of Alaska. McFarland was equal to the task. For more than a year she served as the minister to the small settlement. She quickly won the trust of the native Alaskans, and the Indians turned to her for advice on spiritual, legal, and medical matters. She once presided over an Indian constitutional convention. In 1878, a male minister arrived at Fort Wrangell and took over many of McFarlands official duties. Until her death in 1912 at the age of 80, McFarland remained an immensely influential woman within both the white andNative American communities of southern Alaska. 1889 - Dan Rylands patented a screw cap for bottles. He was employed at the Hope Glass Works, Barnsley, Yorkshire, England. 1937 - Versatile, inexpensive and relatively easy to play, the acoustic guitar was a staple of American rural music in the early 20th century, particularly black rural music such as the blues. But a significant physical limitation made it a poor fit in ensembles made up of brass, woodwind and orchestral string instruments: The acoustic guitar was simply too quiet. What transformed the guitar and its place in popular music, and eventually transformed popular music itself, was the development of a method for transforming the sound of a vibrating guitar string into an electrical signal that could be amplified and re-converted into audible sound at a much greater volume. The electric guitar—the instrument that revolutionized jazz, blues and country music and made the later rise of rock and roll possible—was recognized by the United States Patent Office on this day in 1937 with the award of Patent #2,089.171 to G.D. Beauchamp for an instrument known as the Rickenbacker Frying Pan. 1949 - President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Bill, which establishes the Department of Defense. As the Cold War heated up, the Department of Defense became the cornerstone of Americas military effort to contain the expansion of communism. 1955 - Declaring that South Vietnam is the only legal state, Ngo Dinh Diem, Premier of the State of Vietnam, announces that he will not enter into negotiations with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) on elections as long as the Communist government remains in power in Hanoi. The elections had been scheduled for 1956 under the provisions of the Geneva Peace Accords of 1954 that brought an end to the First Indochina War. Diem reaffirmed the position laid down in his broadcast of July 6 in which he stated that South Vietnam was not bound by the Geneva Accords. 1972 - North Vietnamese forces block Routes 1, 4, and 13, all major South Vietnamese ground supply routes to Saigon. For the next two months, Communist forces repeatedly interdicted these and other key supply routes critical to Saigons survival in an attempt to strangle the city. This was all part of the Nguyen Hue Offensive, which had been launched in late March. In an invasion by more than 120,000 communist troops, the North Vietnamese had taken Quang Tri and lay siege to An Loc and Kontum. Despite desperate fighting on a level heretofore unseen in the war, the South Vietnamese forces, with American advisors and U.S. tactical air support, had withstood the invasion and were preparing to retake Quang Tri. At one point, the North Vietnamese forces had been less than 60 miles from Saigon, but were stopped by the South Vietnamese forces at An Loc, on Highway 13 north of the city. 1977 - Twenty-four-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested and charged with being the Son of Sam, the serial killer who terrorized New York City for more than a year, killing six young people and wounding seven others with a .44-caliber revolver. Because Berkowitz generally targeted attractive young women with long brown hair, hundreds of young women had their hair cut short and dyed blond during the time he terrorized the city. Thousands more simply stayed home at night. After his arrest, Berkowitz claimed that demons and a black Labrador retriever owned by a neighbor named Sam had ordered him to commit the killings. There was some question about whether Berkowitz was mentally fit to stand trial, but on May 8, 1978, he withdrew an insanity defense and pleaded guilty to the six .44-caliber murders. He was given six 25-years-to-life sentences for the crime, the maximum penalty allowed at the time. He has since been denied parole. Since 1987, he has been held at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where he allegedly converted to Christianity. 1978 - Three teenage girls die after their 1973 Ford Pinto is rammed from behind by a van and bursts into flames on an Indiana highway. The fatal crash was one of a series of Pinto accidents that caused a national scandal during the 1970s. The small and economical Pinto, which debuted in 1970, was Fords first subcompact car produced domestically, and its answer to popular imports like the Volkswagen Beetle and the Toyota Corolla. Lee Iacocca, then an executive vice president at Ford, spearheaded the Pintos development. Initial reviews of the Pintos handling and performance were largely positive, and sales remained strong, with Ford introducing new Pinto models such as the Runabout and the Sprint over the course of the early 1970s. By 1974, however, rumors began to surface in- and outside the company about the Pintos tendency to catch fire in rear-end collisions. In May 1972, a California woman was killed when her Pinto caught fire after being rear-ended on a highway. Her passenger, Richard Grimshaw, was burned over 90 percent of his body but survived; he sued Ford for damages. Grimshaws lawyer found that the Pintos gas tank sat behind the rear axle, where it was particularly vulnerable to damage by rear-end collisions. He also uncovered evidence that Ford had known about this weakness ever since the Pinto first went on sale, and had done nothing about it, mostly because changing the design would have been too costly. An article in Mother Jones magazine in the fall of 1977 exposed the Pinto safety concerns to a national audience, and a California jurys award of $128 million to Grimshaw in February 1978 spread the news still further. That June, Ford voluntarily recalled all 1.9 million 1971-1976 Pintos and 1975-1976 Mercury Bobcats (which had the same fuel-tank design). 1981 - The severed head of six-year-old Adam Walsh, who disappeared from a shopping mall two weeks earlier, is found in a canal in Vera Beach, Florida. Two years later, career criminal Ottis Ellwood Toole, then an inmate at a Raiford, Florida, prison, confessed to Adam’s abduction and murder. However, investigators were unable to locate Adam’s body where Toole claimed to have buried it and without any physical evidence the Florida state attorney couldn’t prosecute the case. Toole died of cirrhosis of the liver and AIDS in 1996 in a Florida prison, where he was on Death Row for another murder. On December 16, 2008, the police department in Hollywood, Florida, announced that the case against Toole was strong enough to close the investigation into Adams death. In the wake of Adam Walshs kidnapping and murder, Congress passed the Missing Childrens Act, giving the FBI greater authority to track the disappearance of children. A television movie about the case, Adam, aired a week before Toole confessed to the crime. John Walsh, Adams father, became a national spokesman against crime. He went on to host Americas Most Wanted, a television show that profiles fugitives whose capture is sought by the FBI. Since it debuted in 1988, nearly 1,000 criminals have been caught as a result of viewer tips. 1981 - Pete Rose of the Philadelphia Phillies gets the 3,631st hit of his baseball career, breaking Stan Musials record for most hits by a National Leaguer. The record-breaking hit came in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, the team with whom Musial had spent his entire career, and the former hits king was on hand to congratulate Rose. 1983 - A rare collision of three ships in Tampa Bay, Florida, results in a spill of 336,000 gallons of fuel oil on this day in 1993. Fortunately, a combination of favorable weather conditions and preparedness kept the damage to a minimum. It was about 6 a.m. when two fuel barges heading into Tampa Bays harbor and one phosphate freighter heading out collided. The collision caused a fire on the Maritrans barge Ocean 255, crippling the ship, which was carrying 8 million gallons of gas and diesel fuel. Although it took nearly 16 hours to put out, no one onboard was killed. However, more than 300,000 gallons of oil were dumped into Tampa Bay. This incident marked the first use of a computerized trajectory model to track an oil spill. Using data on wind, weather and the movement of tides, the extent of a spill could be predicted for the first time. Despite the limits of the data, the trajectory model proved to be accurate over a six-hour time period. On this day, the model showed that the tides and wind were pushing the massive spill away from the shore. 1984 - The action thriller Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze, opens in theaters as the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which oversees the movie rating system, had announced the new PG-13 category in July of that same year. 2003 - The United Kingdom records its first-ever temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. (Faversham, Kent - 101.3°F/38.5°C) Throughout the month, an intense heat wave scorched the European continent, claiming more than 35,000 lives. Born on This Day: 1814 - Henri Nestlé (Born Heinrich Nestle), A Swiss confectioner and the founder of Nestlé, the worlds largest food and beverage company, as well as one of the main creators of condensed milk. In 1867 he invented an infant formula, farine lactee, a substitute breast milk for infants unable to breast feed. He sold the company in 1875. The company kept the Nestle name. 1874 - Herbert Clark Hoover, The 31stPresident of the United States (1929–1933). Hoover, born to a Quaker family, was a professional mining engineer. He achieved American and international prominence in humanitarian relief efforts in war-time Belgium and served as head of the U.S. Food Administration during World War I. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business under the rubric economic modernization. In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no elected-office experience. Hoover is the most recent cabinet secretary to be elected President of the United States, as well as one of only two Presidents (along with William Howard Taft) elected without electoral experience or high military rank. America was at the height of an economic bubble at the time, facilitating a landslide victory for Hoover over Democrat Al Smith. 1889 - Charles Brace Darrow, An American best known as the claimed inventor of the Monopoly board game. 1898 - John Joseph Jack Haley, An American stage, radio, and film actor best known for his portrayal of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. 1913 - Noah Lindsey Beery (Known professionally as Noah Beery, Jr. or just Noah Beery), was an American actor specializing in warm, friendly character parts similar to the ones played by his uncle, Wallace Beery, although Noah Beery, Jr., unlike his uncle, seldom broke away from playing supporting roles. His father, Noah Nicholas Beery (known professionally as Noah Beery or Noah Beery, Sr.), enjoyed a similarly lengthy film career as a supporting actor. Beery was perhaps best known as James Garners father, Joseph Rocky Rockford, in the 1970s NBC television series The Rockford Files. 1923 - Rhonda Fleming (Born Marilyn Louis), An American film and television actress. She acted in more than forty films, mostly in the 1940s and 1950s, and became renowned as one of the most glamorous actresses of her day. She was nicknamed the Queen of Technicolor because her fair complexion and flaming red hair photographed exceptionally well in Technicolor. 1928 - Edwin Jack Eddie Fisher, An American entertainer. He was the most successful pop singles artist of the first half of the 1950s, selling millions of records and hosting his own TV show. Fisher left his first wife, actress Debbie Reynolds, to marry Reynolds best friend, actress Elizabeth Taylor, when Taylors husband, film producer Mike Todd, died. This event garnered scandalous and unwelcome publicity for Fisher. He later married Connie Stevens. Fisher is the father of actresses Carrie Fisher (with Reynolds), Joely Fisher (with Stevens), and Tricia Leigh Fisher (with Stevens). 1928 - Jimmy Ray Dean, An Americancountry music singer, television host, actor and businessman. Although he may be best known today as the creator of the Jimmy Dean sausage brand, he became a national television personality starting in 1957, rising to fame for his 1961 country crossover hit Big Bad John and his television series, The Jimmy Dean Show, which also gave puppeteer Jim Henson his first national media exposure. His acting career included a supporting role as Willard Whyte in the 1971 James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever. He lived near Richmond, Virginia, and was nominated for the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2010, although he was formally inducted posthumously. 1940 - Robert Lee Bobby Hatfield, An American singer, best known as one half of the Righteous Brothers. 1950 - Patti Austin, An American R&B, Pop and jazzsinger. In 2008 she received the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal album for Avant Gershwin recorded mostly live with The WDR Big Band in Germany. 1960 - José Antonio Domínguez Banderas, (aka Antonio Banderas), A Spanish film actor, film director, film producer and singer. He began his acting career with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar and then appeared in high-profile Hollywoodmovies, especially in the 1990s, including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire, Philadelphia, Desperado, The Mask of Zorro and Spy Kids. Banderas is also a voice artist, portraying the voice of Puss in Boots in theShrek sequels and Puss in Boots as well as the bee in the US Nasonexcommercials. Died on This Day: 1932 - Rin Tin Tin, A male German Shepherd Dog rescued from a World War I battlefield by an American soldier, Lee Duncan, who nicknamed him Rinty. Duncan trained Rin Tin Tin (often hyphenated as Rin-Tin-Tin) and obtained silent film work for the dog. Rin Tin Tin was an immediate box office success and went on to appear in 27 Hollywood films, gaining worldwide fame. Along with the earlier canine film star Strongheart, Rin Tin Tin was responsible for greatly increasing the popularity of German Shepherd Dogs as family pets. The immense profitability of his films made Warner Bros. studios a success and helped advance the career of Darryl F. Zanuck. In 1929, Rin Tin Tin may have received the most votes for the first Academy Award for Best Actor, but the Academy determined that a human should win. 1945 - Robert Hutchings Goddard, An American professor, physicist, and inventor who is credited with creating and building the worlds first liquid-fueled rocket, which he successfully launched on March 16, 1926. Goddard and his team launched 34 rockets[3]between 1926 and 1941, achieving altitudes as high as 2.6 km (1.6 mi) and speeds as high as 885 km/h (550 mph). 1998 - Massena Andy Gump, Inventor and portable toilet king of Southern California. 2007 - Henry Cabot Lodge Bohler, A member of the prestigious Tuskegee Airmen during World War II who would later aid the advancement of civil rights for African-Americansliving in the rural Southern United States. 2008 - Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr., An American singer-songwriter, actor, and producer. Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. Hayes, Porter, Bill Withers, the Sherman Brothers, Steve Cropper, and John Fogerty were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of writing scores of notable songs for themselves, the duo Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, and others. He was well known for his musical score for the film Shaft (1971). For the Theme from Shaft, he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1972. He became the third African-American, after Sidney Poitier andHattie McDaniel, to win an Academy Award in any competitive field covered byAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He also won two Grammy Awards for that same year. Later, he was given his third Grammy for his music album Black Moses. 2013 - Eydie Gormé (also spelled Gorme, Born Edith Gormezano), An American singer who performed solo as well as with her husband, Steve Lawrence, in popular ballads and swing. She earned numerous awards, including a Grammy and an Emmy. After retiring in 2009, she died in 2013, and is survived by Lawrence, who continues to perform as a solo act. If you were born on this day in 1967 your parents may have been listening to the radio when The Doors took the number one slot on Billboard Magazines Hot 100 with their hit single Light My Fire. https://youtube/watch?v=6O6x_m4zvFs Light My Fire was recorded in August 1966 and released the first week of January 1967 on the Doors debut album. Released as an edited single on June 1, 1967, it spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in late July, and one week on the Cash Box Top 100, nearly a year after its recording. It was their breakthrough hit, and is considered their signature song. A year later, it re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 following the success of Jose Felicianos version of the song (which peaked at number 3 on the Billboard chart), peaking at number 87. The song was largely written by Robby Krieger, and credited to the entire band. The single was certified gold by theRecording Industry Association of America in 1967, representing sales of one million units. A live version was released in 1983 on their album Alive, She Cried, the first of several live albums released in subsequent decades to include the song.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 12:06:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015