From wikipedia.org:
Events
1782 - American Revolutionary War: In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized in the Treaty of Paris (1783))
1803 - At the Cabildo building in New Orleans, Spanish representatives Governor Manuel de Salcedo and the Marqués de Casa Calvo officially transfer Louisiana Territory to French representative Prefect Pierre Clément de Laussat (just 20 days later, France transferred the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase)
1804 - The Jeffersonian Republican-controlled United States Senate begin an impeachment trial against Federalist-partisan Supreme Court of the United States Justice Samuel Chase (he was charged with political bias but was acquitted by the Senate of all charges on March 1, 1805)
1872 - First ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Scotland
1886 - Folies Bergère stages its first revue
1902 - American Old West: Second-in-command of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, is sentenced to 20 years hard labor
1936 - In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed in a fire (it had been built for the 1851 Great Exhibition)
1954 - In Sylacauga, Alabama, an 8.5 pound sulfide meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges in her living room after bouncing off her radio, giving her a bad bruise (this is the only unequivocally known case of a human being hit by a space rock)
1960 - Production of the De Soto automobile brand ceases
1979 - Rock band Pink Floyd release the mega-selling rock opera The Wall
Births
539 - Gregory of Tours, bishop and historian (d. 594)
1466 - Andrea Doria, Italian naval leader (d. 1560)
1508 - Andrea Palladio, master builder (d. 1580)
1667 - Jonathan Swift, writer, satirist (d.1745)
1835 - Mark Twain, writer (d. 1910)
1874 - Sir Winston Churchill , British political leader, writer (d. 1965)
1874 - Lucy Maud Montgomery, author (d. 1942)
1915 - Brownie McGhee, musician (d.1996)
1918 - Efrem Zimbalist Jr., actor
1924 - Allan Sherman, comedian (d. 1973)
1927 - Richard Crenna, actor (d. 2003)
1927 - Robert Guillaume, actor
1929 - Dick Clark, television host
1952 - Mandy Patinkin, actor, singer
1962 - Bo Jackson, American football and baseball star
Deaths
1016 - King Ethelred the Unready
1718 - King Charles XII of Sweden
1830 - Pope Pius VIII (b. 1761)
1900 - Oscar Wilde, writer (b. 1854)
Holidays & observances
Saint Andrew’s day
30 November 2004
Today in History
29 November 2004
Could DNA Tests Solve the Mystery Of Miles Standish?
On wsj.com recently:
Could DNA Tests Solve the Mystery Of Miles Standish?
Thanks to Dick Eastman’s EOGN (Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter) for the pointer.
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1777 - San Jose, California, is founded as el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. It is the first civilian settlement, or pueblo, in Alta California
1877 - Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time
1890 - In West Point, New York, the United States Navy defeats the United States Army 24 to 0 in the first Army-Navy football game
1929 - US Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole
1944 - World War II: Albania is liberated from German occupation
1944 - The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome is performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas
1948 - The children's television program Kukla, Fran and Ollie debuts
1961 - Mercury-Atlas 5 is launched with Enos the chimp aboard (the spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed-down off the coast of Puerto Rico)
1963 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
1965 - Canadian Satellite Alouette 2 is launched
Births
1797 - Gaetano Donizetti, opera composer (d. 1848)
1803 - Christian Doppler, physicist (d. 1853)
1832 - Louisa May Alcott, writer (d. 1888)
1849 - Sir Ambrose Fleming, physicist (d. 1945)
1898 - C. S. Lewis, writer (d. 1963)
1917 - Merle Travis, country music singer (d. 1983)
1927 - Vin Scully, baseball announcer
1933 - John Mayall, blues musician
Deaths
1268 - Pope Clement IV
1643 - Claudio Monteverdi, Italian composer
1924 - Giacomo Puccini, composer
1954 - Enrico Fermi, physicist
1975 - Graham Hill, automobile racer
1979 - Zeppo Marx, actor, comedian (b. 1901)
On This Day
From the BBC:
1975: Graham Hill killed in air crash
1993: Secret meetings with IRA revealed
28 November 2004
Windows Strikes Again
From theregister.co.uk last Friday:
DWP kills 60k PCs in Windows XP upgrade lash-up
Now This Is Pretty Sad and Sorry
On theregister.com.uk tomorrow morning:
Woman blows $950k on Amex card (and sues AmEx)
It won’t be long before this shows up in This Is True; I can’t wait to hear Randy’s “take”.
Yoo Hoo, Feds: Get the H*ll Out of States’ Business!!
From the Christian Science Monitor’s Web site tomorrow morning:
Showdown over medical marijuana
Nothing Major. Yet.
From TechNewsWorld today:
Technology News: Science: Mount St. Helens Crater Shaken by Earthquake
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1095 - On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appointed bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land
1520 - After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific
1582 - In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a 40-pound bond for their marriage license
1660 - At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society
1895 - First American Automobile race. 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in about 10 hours
1905 - Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin as a political party whose goal is the independence for all of Ireland
1907 - In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater
1912 - Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire
1914 - World War I: Following a war-induced closure in July, the New York Stock Exchange re-opens for bond trading
1920 - The Mask of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. opens.
1925 - Country-variety show Grand Ole Opry makes its radio debut on station WSM
1964 - Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars
1984 - Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States
1995 - US President Bill Clinton signs a highway bill that ends the federal 55 mph speed limit
Births
1628 - John Bunyan, cleric, author (Pilgrim’s Progress) (d. 1688)
1632 - Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer (d. 1687)
1757 - William Blake, poet, painter (d. 1827)
1943 - Randy Newman, composer, musician
1949 - Alexander Godunov, composer, ballet dancer (d. 1995)
1988 - Scarlett Pomers, actress (Star Trek: Voyager, Reba)
Deaths
741 - St. Gregory III, Pope
1170 - Owain Gwynedd, Prince of Gwynedd
1939 - James A Naismith, creator of basketball
1945 - Dwight Davis, donator of the Davis cup
1954 - Enrico Fermi, physicist
1962 - Queen Mother Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
On This Day
From the BBC:
1967: Racing is latest victim of foot-and-mouth
1971: Farmer cracks “major smuggling ring”
1999: Nude swordsman attacks churchgoers
27 November 2004
Stupid Person Trick
On newsday.com tomorrow morning:
Allentown gunman steals Salvation Army Red Kettle
And as if that weren’t enough, WANE-TV’s Web site has this to say about the Salvation Army and Target: Salvation Army Predicts $9 Million Less Collected
If you’re so inclined, here’re the 2004 kettle locations, and here’s the online Red Kettle.
Take That, er, Them, Los Angeles!
on latimes.com today:
‘Outsourcing’ of Homeless Stirs Intercity Debate
What Comes Around…
On USATODAY.com today:
Father arrested after attempt to discipline daughter backfires
Here’s a Dad With His Act Together!
From Annie’s Mailbox, 5 October 2004:
Dear Annie: I had to respond to the letter from “Confused in California,” who asked if it was acceptable if her fiancé registered for their wedding at Home Depot for tools and gardening supplies. Thanks for saying it was OK.
I held a “man’s shower” for my son, asking the men to bring a tool to help him get started in his new home. They also had to explain how the tool was used and tell a story about it. It was enlightening, to say the least. My son received both knowledge and a good start on his tool collection. -- Dad of the Tool Man
Dear Dad: Sounds like fun, and we bet our readers will think so, too.
Soldier, Sailor, Flier, Marine: Phone Home!
Spotted in Annie’s Mailbox, 10 September:
Dear Annie: My husband is currently deployed in the U.S. Air Force, and there are days when I have no idea where he is. I am writing to let you know of a program set up by the Department of Defense to help our troops call home. We ran into problems with regular prepaid calling cards, because they were not designed for use outside the United States. Either they don't work, or they cost more to use. The Department of Defense has allowed the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) to sell prepaid calling cards that are designed for overseas use.
The 550-Unit Military Exchange Prepaid Phone Card can be purchased by anyone who wishes to make a donation to an individual service member or “any soldier” at http://www.aafes.com/ (1-800-527-2345). Just follow the icon on the right to “Help Our Troops Call Home.” Please get the word out to others concerning this great way to keep in touch. Hearing the voice of your loved one helps you make it through to the next phone call. Thank you, Annie. -- Proud Air Force Wife
Dear Proud Wife: We are more than happy to help our deployed troops call home. Readers who don’t personally know any military personnel, but would like to donate a card, can do this as well. Thank you.
----------------
Listening to: Alison Moyet - The Coventry Carol
via FoxyTunes
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
399 - St. Anastius I becomes Pope
1095 - Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont
1703 - The first Eddystone Lighthouse destroyed in storm
1839 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded
1895 - At the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies
1924 - In the New York City the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held
1926 - In Williamsburg, Virginia, the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg begins
1946 - Cold War: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appeals to the United States and the Soviet Union to end nuclear testing and to start nuclear disarmament, stating that such an action would “save humanity from the ultimate disaster”
1973 - The United States Senate votes 92 to 3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States (on 6 December, the House confirmed him 387 to 35)
1978 - In San Francisco, California, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White
2001 - A hydrogen atmosphere was discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet
Births
1576 - Shimazu Tadatsune, Japanese daimyo (d. 1638)
1630 - Archduke Sigismund Francis of Austria, Regent of Tyrol and Further Austria
1701 - Anders Celsius, inventor, astronomer (d. 1744)
1843 - Cornelius Vanderbilt, businessman, philanthropist (d. 1899)
1843 - Elizabeth Stride, third confirmed victim of Jack the Ripper (d. 1888)
1857 - Charles Scott Sherrington, physiologist, winner of 1932 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1952)
1907 - L. Sprague de Camp, science fiction writer (d. 2000)
1916 - Chick Hearn, sports announcer (d. 2002)
1942 - Jimi Hendrix, musician (d. 1970)
1942 - Henry Carr, American athlete
1944 - Eddie Rabbitt, singer (d. 1998)
1953 - Curtis Armstrong, actor
1957 - Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, journalist
Deaths
8 BC Horace, poet and satirist
1680 - Athanasius Kircher, German Jesuit scholar (b. 1601)
1895 - Alexandre Dumas fils, author
1953 - Eugene O’Neill, playwright
1975 - Ross McWhirter, Guinness Book of Records keeper
1978 - George Moscone, politician
1978 - Harvey Milk, politician
1988 - John Carradine, actor
Recorded this date
1945 “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” (w. Sammy Cahn m. Jule Styne)
- Connie Boswell with O/Russ Morgan
1947 “Galway Bay” (w.m. Dr Arthur Colahan)
- Bing Crosby with O/Victor Young
1947 “In The Still Of The Night” (w.m. Cole Porter)
- Jo Stafford with O/Paul Weston
On This Day
From the BBC:
1961: RAF flies aid to flood-stricken Somalia
1975: TV presenter Ross McWhirter shot dead
26 November 2004
As Ice Thaws, Arctic Peoples at Loss for Words
From Reuters UK recently:
As Ice Thaws, Arctic Peoples at Loss for Words
Again, thanks to today’s AWADmail (issue 145) for the pointer.
The Most Beautiful Word in (British-Influenced?) English
On smh.com.au today:
For all the world mother is most beautiful… but father from the thought
Thanks to today’s AWADmail (issue 145) for the pointer.
It’s Beginning…
On my way out to Menlo Park (to pick up KiNitrifier) down 17, and up 9, on the way home, there were a TON of cars heading out with evergreen trees strapped to the roof…
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1778 - In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to discover Maui
1805 - Official opening of Thomas Telford’s Pontcysyllte Aqueduct
1825 - At Union College in Schenectady, New York a group of college students form Kappa Alpha Society as the first college social fraternity
1862 - Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) sends the handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Underground to 10-year-old Alice Liddell
1872 - The San Francisco Evening Bulletin exposes one of the most notorious mining scandals in US history, The Great Diamond Hoax
1917 - The National Hockey League is formed, with the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, and Toronto Arenas as its first teams
1922 - Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun in over 3000 years
1922 - Toll of the Sea debuts as the first general release film to use two-tone Technicolor (The Gulf Between was the first film to do so but it was not widely distributed)
1941 - US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States
1941 - World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor - A fleet of six aircraft carriers commanded by Japanese Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo leaves Hitokapu Bay for Pearl Harbor under strict radio silence
1941 - World War II: The Hull note ultimatum is delivered to Japan by the United States
1942 - The film Casablanca premieres at the Hollywood Theater in New York City
1965 - In the Hammaguira launch facility in the Sahara Desert, France launches a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1, on board, becoming the third country to enter space
1983 - Brinks Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly UK£26 million are taken from the Brinks Mat vault at Heathrow Airport
1998 - Tony Blair becomes the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Republic of Ireland’s parliament
2003 - Last ever flight by Concorde
Births
1607 - John Harvard, cleric (d. 1638)
1792 - Sarah Grimke, abolitionist, feminist (d. 1873)
1832 - Mary Edwards Walker, feminist, physician (d. 1919)
1869 - Maud, Queen of Norway (d.1938)
1876 - Willis Carrier, engineer, inventor (d. 1950)
1894 - Norbert Wiener, mathematician, founder of Cybernetics (d. 1964)
1910 - Cyril Cusack, actor (d. 1993)
1912 - Eric Sevareid, journalist (d. 1992)
1922 - Charles M. Schulz, cartoonist (d. 2000)
1933 - Robert Goulet, singer, actor
1938 - Rich Little, comedian, actor
1939 - Tina Turner, singer, actress
1945 - John McVie, musician
1956 - Dale Jarrett, NASCAR race car driver
Deaths
399 - Pope Siricius
1252 - Blanche of Castile, wife of Louis VIII of France
1504 - Isabella, Queen of Castile and Aragon, wife of Ferdinand II and patron of Christopher Columbus
1836 - John MacAdam, road builder
1956 - Tommy Dorsey, Big Band leader
2002 - Verne Winchell, founder of Winchell's Donuts
Holidays & observances
Mongolia : Independence Day
On This Day
From the BBC:
1953: Lords vote for commercial television
1983: £25m gold heist at Heathrow
1992: Queen to be taxed from next year
25 November 2004
Thanksgiving Prayer
(Author Unknown)
We come to this table today, O Lord, humble and thankful and glad.
We thank Thee first for the great miracle of life, for the exaltation of being human, for the capacity to love.
We thank Thee for joys both great and simple --
For wonder, dreams and hope;
For the newness of each day;
For laughter and song and a merry heart;
For compassion waiting within to be kindled;
For the forbearance of friends and the smile of a stranger;
For the arching of the earth and trees and heavens and the fruit of all three;
For the wisdom of the old;
For the courage of the young;
For the promise of the child;
For the strength that comes when needed;
For this family united here today.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required. May we and our children remember this. Amen.
New Rabies Treatment?
On BBC.com this morning:
Girl survives rabies without jab
Of further interest:
Alert issued over rabies vaccine
Money ”would eradicate rabies”
Rabies used for HIV vaccine
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1034 - Malcolm II of Scotland died. Duncan, the son of his second daughter, instead of Macbeth, the son of his eldest daughter, inherited the throne
1177 - Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Chatillon defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard
1491 - The siege of Granada, last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins
1542 - Battle of Solway Moss. An English army invades Scotland and defeats a Scottish army
1783 - American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris
1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Missionary Ridge - At Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routing Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg
1874 - The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party made primarily of farmers financially hurt by the Panic of 1873
1940 - Woody Woodpecker first appeared in the film Knock Knock
1947 - New Zealand ratifies the Statute of Westminster and thus becomes independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom
1952 - Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London (as of 2003 it is the longest continuously running play in history)
1960 - The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic were assassinated
1963 - John F. Kennedy assassination: The late US President John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery
1984 - 36 of Britain and Ireland’s top pop musicians gathered in a Notting Hill studio as Band Aid to record the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas” in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia
1992 - The Czechoslovakia Federal Assembly votes to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia starting on 1 January 1993
1999 - The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution designating November 25 as the annual International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women
Births
1577 - Piet Hein (Netherlands), naval commander and folk hero (d. 1629)
1817 - John Bigelow, American statesman, author (d. 1911)
1835 - Andrew Carnegie, industrialist, philanthropist (d. 1919)
1844 - Karl Benz, engineer (d. 1929)
1881 - Pope John XXIII (d. 1963)
1904 - Lillian Copeland, American athlete
1914 - Joe DiMaggio, baseball player (d. 1999)
1920 - Ricardo Montalban, actor
1925 - Jeffrey Hunter, actor (d. 1969)
1926 - Poul Anderson, science fiction writer (d. 2001)
1940 - Joe Gibbs, Football Hall of Fame coach
1960 - Amy Grant, singer
1960 - John F. Kennedy, Jr., son of President John F. Kennedy (d. 1999)
1986 - Amber Hagerman, kidnapping, murder victim (d. 1996)
Deaths
311 - Peter of Alexandria, “The Seal of the Martyrs”, believed to be the last one to lose his life for the faith in the Diocletian Persecutions
1034 - King Malcolm II of Scotland (killed)
1185 - Pope Lucius III
1920 - Gaston Chevrolet, automobile pioneer
1748 - Isaac Watts, English hymnwriter
1884 - Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe, chemist
1920 - Gaston Chevrolet, automobile pioneer
1972 - Henri Coanda, aerodynamics pioneer
Holidays & observances
Feast day of St Catherine Laboure
24 November 2004
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
380 - Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople
1639 - Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus (November 24 in the Julian calendar, or 4 December in the Gregorian calendar)
1642 - Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania)
1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain - Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg
1904 - The first successful caterpillar track is made (it would later revolutionize construction vehicles and land warfare)
1922 - Popular author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers is executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver
1932 - In Washington, DC, the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens
1941 - World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French
1969 - Apollo program: The Apollo 12 spacecraft splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon
1971 - During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a man calling himself Dan Cooper (commonly remembered as D. B. Cooper) parachutes from the Northwest Orient Airlines plane he hijacked with US$200,000 in ransom money (he was never heard from again)
1976 - The Band gives its last public performance; Martin Scorsese is on hand to film it (see: The Last Waltz)
1998 - America Online announces it will acquire Netscape Communications in a stock-for-stock transaction worth US$4.2 billion
Births
1713 - Junipero Serra, founder of California missions (d. 1784)
1784 - Zachary Taylor, 12th President of the United States (d. 1850)
1787 - Franz Xaver Gruber, organist and composer (d. 1863)
1849 - Frances Hodgson Burnett, author (d. 1924)
1853 - Bat Masterson, gunslinger, policeman, sports reporter (d. 1921)
1859 - Cass Gilbert, architect, designer of U.S. Supreme Court Building (d. 1934)
1864 - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, painter (d. 1901)
1868 - Scott Joplin, musician (d. 1917)
1925 - William F. Buckley Jr., writer, political commentator
1941 - Pete Best, drummer
1947 - Dwight Schultz, actor (The A-Team, Star Trek: The Next Generation)
1957 - Denise Crosby, actress (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Deaths
1541 - Margaret Tudor
1916 - Hiram Stevens Maxim, inventor of Maxim Gun (b. 1840)
1922 - Robert Erskine Childers, author, Irish nationalist (executed)
1991 - Freddie Mercury, musician (Queen)
23 November 2004
I Can’t Start Christmas Shopping - It Isn’t Even Thanksgiving Yet
On mercurynews.com this morning:
Reclaim the real Christmas before it goes year-round
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1499 - Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London. In 1497 he invaded England claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV of England
1644 - Areopagitica by John Milton is published
1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga begins - Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee and counter-attack Confederate troops
1869 - In Dumbarton, Scotland the clipper Cutty Sark is launched (it was one of the last clippers to be built, and the only one still surviving)
1876 - Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain
1890 - King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir and a special law is passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to become Queen
1936 - The first edition of Life is published
1963 - The first episode of the sci-fi tv series Doctor Who debuts on the BBC
2003 - Berkeley Breathed begins comic strip Opus
Births
1804 - Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States (d. 1869)
1887 - Boris Karloff, actor (d. 1969)
1888 - Harpo Marx, comedian (d. 1964)
Deaths
1499 - Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the throne of England
1990 - Roald Dahl, author
21 November 2004
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
235 - Anterus is elected Pope
1783 - In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d'Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight (flight time: 25 minutes, Maximum height: 100m, distance: 9 km)
1789 - North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state
1877 - Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record sound (this is considered to be Edison’s first great invention)
1922 - Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first woman United States Senator
1941 - The radio program King Biscuit Time is broadcast for the first time (it would later become the longest running daily radio broadcast in history and the most famous live blues radio program)
1942 - The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (the “highway” was not usable by general vehicles until 1943, however)
1953 - Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the skull of the “Piltdown Man”, held to be one of the most famous fossil skulls in the world, was a hoax
1964 - The Verrazano Narrows Bridge opens to traffic (at the time it was the world’s longest suspension bridge)
1964 - Second Vatican Council: The third period of the Catholic Church’s ecumenical council closes
1969 - The first ARPANET link is established
1995 - Toy Story is released as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery
1995 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 5,000 (5,023.55) for the first time
Births
1694 - François-Marie Arouet (later known as Voltaire), French philosopher (d. 1778)
1787 - Samuel Cunard, shipping magnate (d. 1865)
1854 - Pope Benedict XV (d. 1922)
1920 - Stan Musial, Baseball Hall of Famer
1940 - Dr. John, musician
1965 - Björk, singer, songwriter, actress
1965 - Alexander Siddig, actor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
1966 - Troy Aikman, American football star
1969 - Ken Griffey, Jr., baseball player
Deaths
1695 - Henry Purcell, composer
1993 - Bill Bixby, American actor, director
19 November 2004
Attributed to Tim Allen (the comedian)…
…about Martha Stewart:
“Boy, I feel safer now that she’s behind bars. O.J. & Kobe are walking around, Scott Peterson’s going to be soon, but they take the one woman in America willing to cook and clean and work in the yard and haul her ass to jail.” (Thanks, Michelle!!)
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
461 - St. Hilarius becomes Pope
1493 - Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to go ashore on an island he only saw for the first time the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico)
1794 - The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay’s Treaty, which attempts to clear up some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War
1816 - Warsaw University established
1863 - American Civil War: Union President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the military cemetery dedication ceremony in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
1924 - In Los Angeles, California, famous silent film director Thomas Ince (“The Father of the Western”) dies of a heart attack in his bed (rumors soon surface that he was shot dead by publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst)
1944 - World War II: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort
1954 - Sammy Davis junior loses his left eye in an automobile accident in San Bernadino
1959 - Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel
1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”) and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon
1985 - Cold War: In Geneva, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time
1997 - In Carlisle, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive
1998 - Vincent van Gogh’s “Portrait of the Artist Without Beard” sells at auction for US$71.5 million
2004 - Wikipedia, which could be the largest website in the world, reaches 400,000 articles
Births
1831 - James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States (d. 1881)
1905 - Tommy Dorsey, bandleader (d. 1956)
1926 - Jeane Kirkpatrick, former United States ambassador to the United Nations
1961 - Meg Ryan, American actress
1962 - Jodie Foster, American actress
1963 - Terry Farrell, American actress (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
1966 - Gail Devers, American athlete
Deaths
498 - Pope Anastasius II
1703 - The Man in the iron mask
1798 - Wolfe Tone, Irish patriot
1828 - Franz Schubert, Austrian composer
Holidays & observances
France - Beaujolais Nouveau
Mali - Liberation Day
Monaco - Monegasque National Day
Puerto Rico - Discovery of Puerto Rico (1493)
United States - National Children's Book Week Begins
18 November 2004
My Heart Is Busted in Two…
From ABC News Australia tomorrow morning:
Microsoft boss the world’s most ‘spammed’ person
Does This Mean That If We Don’t Run, We’re Devolving?
On TechWorldNews today:
Running May Have Been Key to Evolution
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1095 - The Council of Clermont began. The council was called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land
1307 - According to legend, William Tell shoots an apple off his son’s head
1421 - A seawall at the Zuider Zee dike breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people in the Netherlands
1477 - William Caxton produces Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, the first English book printed on a printing press
1626 - St. Peter’s Basilica is consecrated
1865 - Mark Twain’s story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press
1883 - American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times
1926 - George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”
1928 - Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the second appearances of Cartoon stars Mickey and Minnie Mouse
1929 - 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: Off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula area
1971 - Hard rock band Led Zeppelin release an untitled album, often dubbed “Led Zeppelin IV,” featuring “Rock & Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven” and other classic songs
1985 - Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip by Bill Watterson, was first published
1991 - Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon set Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland free
Births
1786 - Carl Maria von Weber, composer (d. 1826)
1787 - Louis-Jacques Daguerre, inventor, photographer (d. 1851)
1836 - Sir William S. Gilbert, dramatist (d. 1911)
1860 - Ignacy Paderewski, pianist, composer (d. 1941)
1874 - Clarence Day, American author (d. 1935)
1897 - Patrick Blackett, English physicist, 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1974)
1899 - Eugene Ormandy, conductor (d. 1985)
1901 - George Gallup, statistician, opinion pollster (d. 1984)
1906 - George Wald, American chemist, 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1997)
1916 - Amelita Galli-Curci, opera soprano (d. 1963)
1923 - Alan Shepard, astronaut (d. 1998)
1946 - Alan Dean Foster, author
Deaths
1814 - William Jessop, canal and railway engineer
1886 - Chester A. Arthur, 21st President of the United States
1994 - Cab Calloway, band leader
Holidays & observances
In Catholicism, the feast of St. Odo of Cluny, St Romanus of Antioch, St Mawes, and St Rose Philippine Duchesne
17 November 2004
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
The Leonids are visible each year around this day
1292 - (Julian calendar) John Balliol becomes King of Scotland
1558 - Elizabethan era begins: Queen Mary I of England dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I of England
1603 - English explorer, writer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh went on trial for treason
1800 - The United States Capitol building in Washington, DC holds its first session of Congress
1820 - Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica (the Palmer Peninsula was later named after him)
1839 - Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio opens in Milan
1856 - American Old West: On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired in the Gadsden Purchase
1869 - In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony
1871 - The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the state of New York
1962 - In Washington, DC, US President John F. Kennedy dedicates Dulles International Airport
1968 - NBC preempts the final 1:05 minutes of a very close NFL football match between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders with Heidi, prompting an outrage amongst sport fans
1970 - Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and was released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft
1970 - Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse
2003 - Arnold Schwarzenegger is inaugurated Governor of California
Births
1717 - Jean le Rond d’Alembert, mathematician (d. 1783)
1790 - August Ferdinand Möbius, mathematician (d. 1868)
1906 - Soichiro Honda, automobile pioneer (d. 1992)
1925 - Charles Mackerras, conductor
1938 - Gordon Lightfoot, singer
1960 - RuPaul, actor
Deaths
1796 - Catherine the Great of Russia
1917 - Auguste Rodin, sculptor
1929 - Herman Hollerith, statistician
1940 - Eric Gill, sculptor, typographer and writer
16 November 2004
Not Quite Mach 10, but Awfully Darned Close!!
from the New York Times tomorrow morning:
NASA Jet Sets Record for Speed
Yes!!
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
534 - A second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus is published
1384 - Hedwig is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman
1532 - Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Incan Emperor Atahualpa and his nobles
1904 - John Ambrose Fleming invents the vacuum tube
1906 - Opera star Enrico Caruso is charged with an indecent act after allegedly pinching a woman's bottom in the monkey house of New York's Central Park Zoo
1907 - Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory become Oklahoma and are admitted as the 46th U.S. state
1914 - The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens for business
1940 - Holocaust: In Poland, Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world
1965 - Venera program: The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus, the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet
1973 - Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission
1977 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind opens in theaters
1989 - A death squad composed of El Salvadoran army troops kill six Jesuit priests and two others at Jose Simeon Canas University
1996 - Mother Teresa receives honorary US citizenship
Births
1717 - Jean le Rond d’Alembert
1922 - Gene Amdahl, computer scientist
1924 - James Bond, fictional character
1958 - Marg Helgenberger, American actress
1964 - Diana Krall, singer
Ceaths
1960 - Clark Gable, actor
2003 - Bettina Goislard, UNHCR relief worker
15 November 2004
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1777 - American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation
1806 - Pike expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains (it was later named Pikes Peak)
1854 - In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is given the needed royal concession by Said
1926 - The NBC radio network opens with 24 stations
1939 - In Washington, DC, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial
1940 - The Warsaw Ghetto, with a population of 400,000 Jews, is sealed off from the outside world by the Nazis
1941 - SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of all homosexuals in Germany, with the exception of certain top Nazi officials
1943 - German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies were to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.” (see Porajmos)
1960 - The Polaris missile is test launched
1966 - Gemini program: Gemini 12 splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean
1971 - Intel releases world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004
1990 - Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38
Births
1397 - Pope Nicholas V (d. 1455)
1738 - William Herschel, astronomer (d. 1822)
1887 - Georgia O’Keeffe, painter (d. 1986)
1889 - King Manuel II of Portugal (d. 1932)
1929 - Ed Asner, actor
1932 - Petula Clark, singer
1937 - Yaphet Kotto, actor (Homicide: Life on the Street)
1940 - Sam Waterston, actor (Law & Order)
1942 - Daniel Barenboim, pianist, conductor
1957 - Kevin Eubanks, musician
Deaths
1280 - Albertus Magnus, German philosopher
1630 - Johannes Kepler, astrologer, astronomer and mathematician
1787 - Christoph Willibald Gluck, composer
1954 - Lionel Barrymore, actor
Holidays & observances
Eastern Orthodoxy - Feast of Saint Philip the Apostle and the beginning of Winter Lent
14 November 2004
How a composer cowed McCarthy
From news.telegraph tomorrow morning:
How a composer cowed McCarthy
Got here from wikipedia’s article on Aaron Copland (whose birthday is today). Happy birthday!!
Go, Speed Racer, er, NASA!!
On the Washington Times Web site this morning:
Ramjet aims at record Mach 10 speed
From VOA: US Space Agency Aims for New Air Speed Record
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1851 - Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick is published in the US by Harper & Brothers, New York - after it was first published on October 18, 1851 by Richard Bentley, London
1889 - Pioneer woman Journalist Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to beat travel around the world in less than 80 days
1918 - Czechoslovakia becomes a republic
1922 - The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) begins radio service in the United Kingdom
1969 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon
1971 - Mariner program: Mariner 9 reaches Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet
1972 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 1,000 (1,003.16) for the first time
1982 - The leader of Poland’s outlawed Solidarity movement, Lech Walesa, is released from 11 months of internment near the Soviet border
2003 - Discovery of 90377 Sedna
Births
1719 - Leopold Mozart, Austrian musician, father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1765 - Robert Fulton, American inventor (d. 1815)
1771 - Marie François Xavier Bichat, French anatomist and physiologist
1805 - Fanny Mendelssohn, composer and pianist (d. 1847)
1840 - Claude Monet, French impressionist painter (d. 1926)
1891 - Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine 1923 (d. 1941)
1896 - Mamie Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States (d. 1979)
1900 - Aaron Copland, American composer (d. 1990)
1907 - Astrid Lindgren, Swedish writer (d. 2002)
1929 - McLean Stevenson, actor (d. 1996)
1930 - Edward White, American astronaut (d. 1967)
1935 - King Hussein of Jordan (d. 1999)
1947 - P. J. O’Rourke, writer
Deaths
1832 - Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Declaration of Independence signer, US Senator (b. 1732)
1915 - Booker T. Washington, inventor
1916 - H.H. “Saki” Munro, British writer (b. 1870)
13 November 2004
So Why Didn’t You Say It??
From washingtonpost.com tomorrow morning:
Firefox Leaves No Reason to Endure Internet Explorer
Quoth the columnist: “Internet Explorer, you’re fired.
“That should have been said a long time ago…”
Ireland Rugby Team Rocks!
From sportal.com.au:
Ireland stuns Springboks
Further commentary:
The Guardian - O'Gara gives Ireland that little edge
The Independent - Ireland stand tall to end the Bok dream
First US Citizen to Be Canonized
Today’s Saint of the Day, St Frances Xavier Cabrini, from AmericanCathlic.org:
At her canonization on July 7, 1946, Pius XII said, “Although her constitution was very frail, her spirit was endowed with such singular strength that, knowing the will of God in her regard, she permitted nothing to impede her from accomplishing what seemed beyond the strength of a woman.”
I Don’t Think Relief Is the Emotion We’re Talking About Here
From washingtonpost.com tomorrow morning:
Microsoft’s Search Falls Far Short of Google’s. You’re not surprised, are you??
The Motley Fool has a better grip on the concept.
Your Tax Dollars at Work, Boys & Girls
From cnn.com this morning:
Two U.S. airports partly evacuated on false alarms
Excuse Me?? We’re Really Supposed To Believe…
…she didn’t know it was bogus?? And the store clerk missed it, too???
On ABC News Internation this morning:
Charges Dropped in Case of ‘W’ Dollars
Further info, from PittsburghLIVE.com
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1775 - American Revolutionary War: Patriot revolutionary forces under Col. Ethan Allen capture Montreal from British General Guy Carleton
1805 - Johann Georg Lehner invents the hot dog
1851 - The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, the first settlers of what will become Seattle, Washington
1940 - The animated feature-length film Fantasia is released
1954 - Great Britain defeated France to capture the first ever Rugby League World Cup in Paris in front of around 30,000 spectators
1960 - Sammy Davis, Jr. marries Swedish actress May Britt. Interracial marriage is still illegal in 31 US states out of 50
1974 - Nuclear activist Karen Silkwood’s car is forced off the road while she is travelling to an interview with New York Times reporter David Burnham. Her files are missing from the carwreck; an FBI investigation later concludes accident, but is not generally believed to have been impartial
1982 - The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of Vietnam War veterans
1990 - The first known World Wide Web page is written
Births
354 - Saint Augustine of Hippo, theologian (d. 430)
1486 - Johann Eck, German theologian (d. 1543)
1826 - Charles Frederick Worth, couturier (d. 1895)
1848 - Albert I of Monaco (d. 1922)
1850 - Robert Louis Stevenson, writer (d. 1894)
1856 - Louis Brandeis, Justice of the United States Supreme Court (d. 1941)
Deaths
867 - St. Nicholas I, Pope
1460 - Henry the Navigator, Portuguese prince and patron of African exploration
1868 - Gioacchino Rossini, composer
1974 - Karen Silkwood, union activist
11 November 2004
From Whom Grandpa Hanrahan Got His Middle Name
Today’s Saint of the Day, St Martin of Tours, from AmericanCathlic.org:
A conscientious objector who wanted to be a monk; a monk who was maneuvered into being a bishop; a bishop who fought paganism as well as pleaded for mercy to heretics —such was Martin of Tours, one of the most popular of saints and one of the first not to be a martyr.
08 November 2004
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1519 - Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with great pomp as would befit a returning god
1837 - Formation of Mount Holyoke Seminary, first US college founded for women
1861 - American Civil War: The "Trent Affair" – The USS San Jacinto stops the United Kingdom mailship Trent and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the UK and US
1864 - U.S. presidential election, 1864: Abraham Lincoln is reelected in an overwhelming victory over George McClellan
1889 - Montana is admitted as the 41st U.S. state
1892 - U.S. presidential election, 1892: Grover Cleveland is elected over Benjamin Harrison and James B. Weaver to win the second of his non-consecutive terms
1895 - While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers x-rays
1932 - U.S. presidential election, 1932: Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory
1933 - Great Depression: New Deal - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million of the unemployed
1960 - U.S. presidential election, 1960: John F. Kennedy is elected over Richard M. Nixon, becoming the youngest man elected to that office
1988 - U.S. presidential election, 1988: George H. W. Bush is elected over Michael Dukakis
Births
1656 - Edmond Halley, British astronomer, mathematician (birthday according to the Gregorian calendar)
1836 - Milton Bradley, manufacturer, lithographer, game maker (d. 1911)
1847 - Bram Stoker, Irish novelist (Dracula) (d. 1912)
1848 - Gottlob Frege, German mathematician and logician
1866 - Herbert Austin, automobile pioneer (Austin-Healey)
1868 - Felix Hausdorff, German mathematician (d. 1942)
1884 - Hermann Rorschach, psychiatrist
1893 - Clarence Williams, American jazz pianist and composer (d. 1965)
1918 - Hermann Zapf, German designer
1922 - Christiaan Barnard, South African heart surgeon
1954 - Rickie Lee Jones, singer, composer
2003 - Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex
Deaths
955 - Pope Agapetus II
1226 - Louis VIII of France
1308 - John Duns Scotus, Scottish philosopher
1674 - John Milton, English poet
1890 - César Franck, composer and organist
1978 - Norman Rockwell, American illustrator
07 November 2004
San Diego, California, is named for…
…AmericanCathlic.org’s Saint of the Day for today, St. Didacus???
Marisa’s Prayer
Composed(?) by Marisa in sophomore religion class…
O Lord, in all that I do and in all that happens, let me never lose hope. Let me never think that You have forsaken me; let me not turn away from You, as You do not turn away from me.
Although Your ways are mysterious, may I believe that Your ways will always lead me to the places I ought to be. Let me understand enough of the trail that I may follow You, wherever that trail may go. Amen.
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1665 - The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published
1783 - A man convicted of forgery is the last to be publicly hanged at London’s Tyburn site
1837 - In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot to death by a mob while he was attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time
1848 - U.S. presidential election, 1848: Zachary Taylor is elected president in the first US presidential election held in every state on the same day
1874 - A cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly, is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party
1885 - In Craigellachie, British Columbia, construction ends on the Canadian Pacific Railway railway extending across Canada
1893 - Colorado women are granted the right to vote
1914 - The first issue of The New Republic magazine is published
1916 - Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives
1918 - The 1918 influenza epidemic spreads to Western Samoa, killing 7542 (about twenty percent of the population) by the end of the year
1940 - In Washington, the middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge’s completion
1944 - U.S. presidential election, 1944: Franklin D. Roosevelt wins reelection over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey to become the only U.S. president to be elected to a fourth term
1963 - The comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World premieres
1963 - Wunder von Lengede: In Germany, 11 miners are rescued from a collapsed mine after 14 days
1965 - The Pillsbury Doughboy makes its first public appearance
1967 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
1989 - In California, convicted murder Richard Ramirez (the “Night Stalker”) is sentenced to death
1991 - Basketball player Magic Johnson announces he tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, and that he was retiring
1996 - NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor
2000 - U.S. presidential election, 2000: Republican Texas Governor George W. Bush defeats Democrat Vice President Al Gore, but the final outcome is not known for over a month because of disputed votes in Florida
Births
1750 - Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg, German poet (d. 1819)
1832 - Andrew Dickson White, co-founder and first president of Cornell University (d. 1918)
1867 - Marie Curie, chemist, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1903 and in chemistry 1911 (d. 1934)
1888 - Sir C. V. Raman, Indian Physicist. Recipient of the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the "Raman" effect (d. 1970)
1903 - Konrad Lorenz, zoologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973 (d. 1989)
1926 - Dame Joan Sutherland, opera singer
1937 - Mary Travers, singer (Peter, Paul and Mary)
Deaths
1837 - Elijah P. Lovejoy, American abolitionist (b. 1809)
1962 - Eleanor Roosevelt, human rights activist, First Lady of the United States
1980 - Steve McQueen, actor
On This Day
From the BBC:
1956: Eisenhower re-elected with record vote
1984: Four more years for Reagan
1998: Oldest astronaut back on Earth
06 November 2004
Now Here’s a Specimen of True Manhood
From washingtonpost.com tomorrow:
Man Sentenced in Theft of Patient's Identity
Pssst… NASA, It’s the Martians…
From LATimes.com today:
Mars Rover Experiences Mysterious Power Boost
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1528 - Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot on Texas
1789 - Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States
1844 - The Dominican Republic gains its independence from Haiti
1860 - U.S. presidential election, 1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected as the 16th President of the United States, the first Republican to hold that office
1869 - In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first official intercollegiate American football game is played
1888 - U.S. presidential election, 1888: Democrat incumbent Grover Cleveland wins the overall popular vote, but is voted out of office because he loses in the Electoral College to Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison
1900 - U.S. presidential election, 1900: Republican incumbent William McKinley is reëlected by defeating Democrat challenger William Jennings Bryan
1928 - Swedes start a tradition of eating Gustavus Adolphus pastries to commemorate the king
1928 - U.S. presidential election, 1928: Republican Herbert Hoover wins by a wide margin over Democrat Alfred E. Smith
1935 - Before the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Edwin Armstrong presents his paper “A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation” (see: FM radio)
1947 - Meet The Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on 12 September 1948)
1956 - U.S. presidential election, 1956: Republican incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower is reelected by defeating Democrat challenger Adlai E. Stevenson in a rematch of their contest four years earlier
1999 - Australians vote to keep the British queen as their head of state
Births
1814 - Adolphe Sax, saxophone inventor (d.1894)
1854 - John Philip Sousa, composer (d. 1932)
1860 - Ignace Paderewski, composer, politician (d.1941)
1861 - James Naismith, inventor of basketball (d. 1939)
1916 - Ray Conniff, composer, conductor (d.2002)
1946 - Sally Fields, actress
1948 - Glenn Frey, singer (“The Eagles”)
1955 - Maria Shriver, journalist and First Lady of California
1976 - Pat Tillman, American football player (d. 2004)
Deaths
1796 - Catherine the Great of Russia
1893 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer
1991 - Gene Tierney, actress
05 November 2004
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1605 - Gunpowder Plot: A plot by Guy Fawkes to blow up the English Houses of Parliament is foiled when Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, finds Fawkes in a cellar below the Parliament building
1872 - Women’s suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time (she was later fined $100)
1895 - George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile
1912 - U.S. presidential election, 1912: Democratic challenger Woodrow Wilson wins a landslide victory over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft
1917 - St. Tikhon of Moscow was elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church
1930 - Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
1935 - Parker Brothers releases the board game Monopoly
1940 - U.S. presidential election, 1940: Democrat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican challenger Wendell Willkie and becomes the United States’ first third-term president
1968 - U.S. presidential election, 1968: Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace
1979 - The radio news program Morning Edition premieres on National Public Radio
1979 - Ayatollah Khomeini declares the USA to be “the great satan”
1994 - A letter by former US President Ronald Reagan is released that announces he has Alzheimer’s disease
1996 - U.S. presidential election, 1996: Democrat incumbent Bill Clinton defeats Republican challenger Bob Dole to win his second term
1998 - The journal Nature publishes a genetic study showing compelling evidence that Thomas Jefferson fathered his slave Sally Hemings’ son Eston Hemings Jefferson
1999 - Microsoft antitrust case: US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issues a preliminary ruling that softwaremaker Microsoft had “monopoly power”
Births
1742 - Richard Cosway, English artist (d. 1821)
1855 - Léon Teisserenc de Bort, meteorologist (d. 1913)
1863 - James Packard, automobile pioneer (d. 1928)
1912 - Roy Rogers, actor (d. 1998)
1941 - Art Garfunkel, musician
1949 - Armin Shimerman, actor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
1952 - Bill Walton, basketball star, commentator
Deaths
1942 - George M. Cohan, musician, actor, writer, composer
1979 - Al Capp, cartoonist
1989 - Vladimir Horowitz, pianist
1991 - Fred MacMurray, actor
Annual festivals
United Kingdom and New Zealand - Guy Fawkes night (also called Bonfire night; or Fireworks night): Failure of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament in 1605 is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks
04 November 2004
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1861 - The University of Washington opens in Seattle, Washington, as the Territorial University
1869 - The first issue of scientific journal Nature is published
1884 - U.S. presidential election, 1884: Democrat Grover Cleveland defeats Republican James G. Blaine in a very close contest to win the first of his non-consecutive terms
1922 - In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to King Tutankhamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings
1924 - Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming elected as the first woman governor in the United States
1948 - T.S. Eliot wins the Nobel Prize in Literature
1952 - U.S. presidential election, 1952: Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeats Democrat Adlai Stevenson
1956 - Soviet troops invade Hungary to crush the Hungarian revolution that started on 23 October. Thousands are killed, more are wounded and nearly a quarter million leave the country
1957 - The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2 with a dog named Laika on board, becoming the first country to launch a living creature into orbit. The capsule was not designed to be retrievable and she died a few hours later from stress and overheating
1966 - Two thirds of Florence, Italy are submerged as the Arno and Po rivers flood; 113 people die, 30,000 are rendered homeless, and countless rennaisance artworks and books are destroyed
1980 - U.S. presidential election, 1980: Republican challenger Ronald Reagan defeats incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter by a wide margin
1993 - A series of fires destroy 1000 homes in southern California, causing between 500 million and 1 billion USD of damage. Half of the fires turn out to be arson
2003 - The largest ever solar flare is recorded. (X28)
Births
1470 - King Edward V of England, one of the two Princes in the Tower
1874 - Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak, Russian military commander (d. 1920)
1879 - Will Rogers, American humorist and entertainer (d. 1935)
1916 - Walter Cronkite, news broadcaster
1918 - Art Carney, actor (d. 2003)
1923 - Freddy Heineken, Dutch businessman (d. 2002)
1937 - Loretta Swit, American actress
Deaths
1698 - Rasmus Bartholin, Danish mathematician
1847 - Felix Mendelssohn, German composer
1924 - Gabriel Fauré, French composer
On This Day
From the BBC:
1956: Soviet troops overrun Hungary
1980: Reagan beats Carter in landslide
03 November 2004
Thunderbolt & Lightning
Earlier this evening, before we left for the maCruzers meeting, it started hailing. “Gently” at first, but then, as hailstorms do, it got more intense. There was a flash of lightning and, even before the flash had quite faded, the thunder crash and roll.
Not very frightening, but loud (and close) enough to rattle the desks. 8-O
I’d Like to Split His Infinitive…
It’s this guy’s fault that we aren’t supposed to split infinitives, or end a sentence with a preposition.
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1838 - The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper was founded. It was then known as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce
1848 - A greatly revised constitution, drafted by Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, severely limiting the powers of the Dutch monarchy, and strengthening the powers of the parliament and the ministers, was proclaimed (and still in effect today)
1868 - U.S. presidential election: Republican Ulysses S. Grant is elected to the first of his two terms in a victory over Democrat Horatio Seymour
1883 - American Old West: Self-described "Black Bart the Po-8" gets away with his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves an incriminating clue that eventually leads to his capture
1896 - U.S. presidential election: Republican William McKinley is elected over Democrat William Jennings Bryan
1908 - U.S. presidential election: Republican William Howard Taft is elected over William Jennings Bryan, who was the Democratic candidate for the third and final time
1911 - Chevrolet officially entered the automobile market to compete with the Ford Model T
1913 - The USA introduce an income tax
1923 - Lady Louise Mountbatten marries Gustav, Crown Prince of Sweden
1935 - George II of Greece regains his throne
1936 - U.S. presidential election, 1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected to a second term in a landslide victory over Alf Landon
1954 - The first in the Godzilla series of films is released in Japan
1955 - The musical Guys and Dolls, starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, debuts
1956 - The Wizard of Oz is shown on television for the first time (the viewing audience was estimated at 45 million people)
1957 - Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter space - a dog named Laika
1964 - U.S. presidential election, 1964: Incumbent US President Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, Sr with over 60 percent of the popular vote
1971 - The UNIX Programmer’s Manual is published
1973 - Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury (on 29 March, 1974 it became the first space probe to reach that planet)
1992 - U.S. presidential election: Democratic challenger Bill Clinton defeats incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush and independent candidate Ross Perot
1994 - Red Hat Linux 1.0 is released
1995 - At Arlington National Cemetery, US President Bill Clinton dedicates a memorial to the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing
1998 - Former professional wrestler, Jesse Ventura is elected Governor of Minnesota
2004 - John Kerry calls George W. Bush to concede defeat in the 2004 U.S. presidential election
Births
1718 - John Montague, Earl of Sandwich (d. 1792)
1793 - Stephen F. Austin, American pioneer (d. 1836)
1794 - William Cullen Bryant, poet, journalist (d. 1878)
1801 - Vincenzo Bellini, Italian opera composer (d. 1835)
1895 - Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna Romanova (d. 1918)
1903 - Walker Evans, photographer
1921 - Charles Bronson, actor (d. 2003)
1960 - Karch Kiraly, volleyball star
Deaths
1580 - Jeronimo Zurita y Castro, Spanish historian
1787 - Robert Lowth, British bishop, grammarian
1918 - Aleksandr Mikhailovich Lyapunov, Russian scientist
1954 - Henri Matisse, French artist
1993 - Leon Theremin, Russian inventor
Holidays
Independence Day in Panama (1903), Dominica (1978) and Federated States of Micronesia (1986)
On This Day
From the BBC:
1957: Russians launch dog into space
1985: Rainbow warrior plea controversy
02 November 2004
“The Poor Voter on Election Day”
John Greenleaf Whittier
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
676 - Donus becomes Pope
1772 - American Revolutionary War: Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren form the first Committee of Correspondence
1783 - In Rocky Hill, New Jersey, US General George Washington gives his "Farewell Address to the Army"
1817 - The Bank of Montreal, Canada's oldest chartered bank, openes in Montreal, Quebec
1868 - Time zone: New Zealand officially adopses a standard time to be observed nationally, and is perhaps the first country to do so
1889 - North and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states
1920 - In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast was the results of the U.S. presidential election, 1920
1936 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established
1947 - In California, Designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built (flight lasted only eight minutes)
1948 - U.S. presidential election, 1948: Harry S. Truman defeats Thomas E. Dewey for the US presidency
1959 - Ice Hockey: After being struck in the face with a puck, goalkeeper Jacques Plante returns to play wearing a protective mask for the first time in professional play
1960 - Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case
1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis ends as President John F. Kennedy announces that Soviet nuclear missiles are to be withdrawn from Cuba
1976 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Ford to become first candidate from deep south to win since the Civil War
1995 - The Hubble space telescope takes a picture of a gas plume 7000 lightyears away from Earth that appears to contain an image of Jesus of Nazareth to many people
2000 - The first crew arrives at the International Space Station
Births
1667 - James Sobieski, Crown Prince of Poland (d. 1737)
1734 - Daniel Boone, frontiersman (d. 1820)
1795 - James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States (d. 1849)
1815 - George Boole, mathematician and philosopher (d.1864)
1865 - Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States (d. 1923)
1913 - Burt Lancaster, actor (d. 1994)
1914 - Ray Walston, actor (d. 2001)
Deaths
1944 - Thomas Midgley, chemist and inventor
1950 - George Bernard Shaw, playwright
1966 - Peter Debye, chemist
2004 - Theo van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker (b. 1957)
Holidays & observances
Catholicism - All Souls Day
Ancient Latvia - Dveselu Diena held
Mexico and the United States - Day of the Dead (Spanish: El Dia de los Muertos), a Mexican and Mexican-American celebration of dead ancestors
01 November 2004
Today in History
From wikipedia.org:
Events
1512 - The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time
1521 - The Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of mainland South America, connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, was first navigated by Ferdinand Magellan during his global circumnavigation voyage
1530 - An approximated 400,000 die after the Netherlands' dikes fail
1604 - At Whitehall Palace in London, the William Shakespeare tragedy Othello is presented for the first time
1611 - At Whitehall Palace in London, William Shakespeare's romantic comedy The Tempest is presented for the first time
1683 - The British crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties
1755 - Lisbon earthquake: In Portugal, Lisbon is destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between sixty and ninety thousand people
1800 -In the United States, the Executive Mansion (later renamed the White House). Construction was completed
1848 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with Boston University School of Medicine), opens
1859 - The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina, lighthouse was lighted for the first time. Its first-order Fresnel lens can be seen for nineteen miles
1861 - American Civil War: US President Abraham Lincoln appoints George McClellan as commander of the Union Army, replacing the aged General Winfield Scott
1870 - In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast
1894 - Nicholas II becomes the new Tsar of Russia after his father, Alexander III, dies
1896 - A picture showing the naked breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time
1963 - The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with the largest radio telescope ever constructed, officially opened
Births
1798 - Sir Henry Lee Guinness, brewer
1871 - Stephen Crane, writer (d. 1900)
1923 - Gordon R. Dickson, science fiction author (d. 2001)
1923 - Victoria de los Angeles, soprano
Deaths
1979 - Mamie Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States
1983 - Anthony van Hoboken, musicologist
1985 - Phil Silvers, actor, comedian
1999 - Walter Payton, American football player
Holidays
Catholicism - Holy Day of Obligation All Saints Day. Holiday in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Lithuania and Croatia.
Lá Samhna the traditional first day of Winter in modern Ireland, see also Samhain
Mexico and United States - The Day of the Dead
Shake, Rattle, & Roll Redux
From the PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT e-mail:
PRINCIPAL EARTHQUAKE PARAMETERS
_______________________________
Magnitude : 3.57 ML (A minor quake)
Event Date & Time : 11/01/2004 02:02:33 PM PST
11/01/2004 22:02:33 UTC
Coordinates : 37.0745 N, 122.2770 W
: (37 deg. 4.47 min. N, 122 deg. 16.62 min. W)
Depth : 5.9 miles ( 9.6 km)
Location Quality : Fair
15 km ( 9 miles) WSW (245 degrees) of Boulder Creek, CA
17 km ( 11 miles) W (267 degrees) of Ben Lomond, CA
20 km ( 12 miles) W (277 degrees) of Felton, CA
24 km ( 15 miles) W (276 degrees) of Scotts Valley, CA
25 km ( 16 miles) WNW (297 degrees) of Santa Cruz, CA
40 km ( 25 miles) SW (214 degrees) of Sunnyvale, CA
We missed this one…
