This Day in History

omeg · Dec 23, 2010

12/23On this day in 1888, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, suffering from severe depression, cuts off the lower part of his left ear with a razor while staying in Arles, France. He later documented the event in a painting titled Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Today, Van Gogh is regarded as an artistic genius and his masterpieces sell for record-breaking prices; however, during his lifetime, he was a poster boy for tortured starving artists and sold only one painting.On this day in 1783, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, General George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retires to his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia. On this day in 1982, the Missouri Department of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) inform residents of Times Beach, Missouri that their town was contaminated when the chemical dioxin was sprayed on its unpaved roads, and that the town will have to be evacuated and demolished. By February, the federal and state governments had spent $36 million to buy every house in town except one (its owners, lifelong residents of Times Beach, refused to sell). In 1985, the city was officially disincorporated.Bernhard Goetz, who shot four young black men on a subway car the previous day, flees New York City and heads for New Hampshire after becoming the central figure in a media firestormOn this day in 1972, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua, kills more than 10,000 people and leaves 250,000 homeless.After nine days and four minutes in the sky, the experimental aircraft Voyager lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing the first nonstop flight around the globe on one load of fuel. Piloted by Americans Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, Voyager was made mostly of plastic and stiffened paper and carried more than three times its weight in fuel when it took off from Edwards Air Force Base on December 14. By the time it returned, after flying 25,012 miles around the planet, it had just five gallons of fuel left in its remaining operational fuel tank. On December 23, 1972, in a controversial play that is known as the Immaculate Reception, rookie running back Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers grabs a deflected pass from quarterback Terry Bradshaw to score a touchdown, winning the game for the Steelers 13-7 over the Oakland Raiders.history.com

omeg · Dec 25, 2010

12/25.......Just after midnight on Christmas morning, the majority of German troops engaged in World War I cease firing their guns and artillery and commence to sing Christmas carols. At certain points along the eastern and western fronts, the soldiers of Russia, France, and Britain even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing.At the first light of dawn, many of the German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no-man's-land, calling out Merry Christmas in their enemies' native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings and sang carols and songs. There was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of soccer.The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe and was one of the last examples of the outdated notion of chivalry between enemies in warfare. In 1915, the bloody conflict of World War I erupted in all its technological fury, and the concept of another Christmas Truce became unthinkable.On this day in 1880, Layne Hall is born in Mississippi. Some records indicate that he was actually born in 1884; either way, when he died in November 1990, Hall was the oldest licensed driver in the United States.Mikhail Gorbachev announces that he is resigning as president of the Soviet Union. In truth, there was not much of a Soviet Union from which to resignjust four days earlier, 11 of the former Soviet republics had established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), effectively dismembering the USSR. The Soviet Union, for all intents and purposes, had already ceased to exist.Six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey is killed in her Boulder, Colorado, home. John and Patsy Ramsey, her parents, called police at 5:52 the following morning to report that their daughter was missing. Although police found a ransom note demanding $118,000, the money would never be necessary, because JonBenet's body was found under a blanket in the basement that afternoon. The crime soon became a national sensation.Although most Christians celebrate December 25 as the birthday of Jesus Christ, few in the first two Christian centuries claimed any knowledge of the exact day or year in which he was born. The oldest existing record of a Christmas celebration is found in a Roman almanac that tells of a Christ's Nativity festival led by the church of Rome in 336 A.D. The precise reason why Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25 remains obscure, but most researchers believe that Christmas originated as a Christian substitute for pagan celebrations of the winter solstice.On this day in 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird, a film based on the 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Harper Lee, opens in theaters. The Great Depression-era story of racial injustice and the loss of childhood innocence is told from the perspective of a young Alabama girl named Scout Finch, played in the film by Mary Badham, who lives with her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford) and their widowed attorney father Atticus (Peck). While Scout, Jem and their friend Dill (John Megna) become fascinated by the mysterious shut-in Boo Radley (Robert Duvall), Atticus goes to court to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Directed by Robert Mulligan (Love with the Proper Stranger, Inside Daisy Clover, Summer of 42, The Man in the Moon), To Kill a Mockingbird was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won three Oscars, including Best Actor (Peck). The American Film Institute has rated Atticus Finch as the greatest movie hero of the 20th century, and in 1995 the United States National Film Registry picked To Kill a Mockingbird for preservation in the Library of Congress as a culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant film.White Christmas, written by the formidable composer and lyricist Irving Berlin receives its world premiere on this day in 1941 on Bing Crosby's weekly NBC radio program, The Kraft Music Hall. It went on to become one of the most commercially successful singles of all time, and the top-selling single ever until being surpassed by Elton John's Candle in the Wind 1997. On this day in 2002, the University of New Mexico junior place-kicker Katie Hnida attempts to kick an extra point in a game against UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl. Though her kick was blocked by UCLA, Hnida became the first woman to play in a Division I football game.history.com

omeg · Dec 26, 2010

12/26.............On December 26, 1946, in Las Vegas, Nevada, mobster Benjamin Bugsy Siegel opens The Pink Flamingo Hotel & Casino at a total cost of $6 million. The 40-acre facility wasn't complete and Siegel was hoping to raise some revenue with the grand opening.On December 26, 1956, the visionary carmaker Preston Tucker dies of lung cancer. He was just 53 years old.A powerful earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, on this day in 2004 sets off a tsunami that wreaks death and devastation across the Indian Ocean coastline. The quake was the second strongest ever recorded and the estimated 230,000 dead made this disaster one of the 10 worst of all time.Jack Johnson becomes the first African American to win the world heavyweight title when he knocks out Canadian Tommy Burns in the 14th round in a championship bout near Sydney, Australia. Johnson, who held the heavyweight title until 1915, was reviled by whites for his defiance of the Jim Crow racial conventions of early 20th-century America.On this day in 1973, The Exorcist, a horror film starring the actress Linda Blair as a girl possessed by an evil spirit, makes its debut in theaters; it will go on to earn a reputation as one of the scariest movies in history. The Exorcist was based on William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel of the same name, about the last sanctioned Catholic exorcism to take place in the United States, in the late 1940s. In the film, Blair played Regan, a sweet 12-year-old girl who begins suffering bouts of bizarre behavior. When her concerned mother (Ellen Burstyn), contacts a priest, he recommends performing an exorcism. Max Von Sydow and Jason Miller played the two priests who eventually conduct the exorcism at the home where Regan is living in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.[video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDGw1MTEe9k](Now that was one scary movie...anyone agree?)After a stint in the U.S. Army and a creatively unfulfilling stretch as a session musician and sideman to acts like Little Richard and The Isley Brothers, 21-year-old Jimi Hendrix moved to New York City in 1964 to set about building a solo career. Discovered two years later by the British manager/producer Chas Chandler, a former member of the The Animals, Hendrix moved to England in 1966 and teamed up with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell to form The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The group scored an almost immediate UK hit with Hey Joe, which was released in mid-December. It was 10 days later, however, on December 26, 1966, that Hendrix wrote Purple Haze the song that would not only give him his breakthrough hit in the United States, but also go on to define an entire musical era. [video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFSaqFzSO8]On this day in 1972, former President Harry S. Truman dies in Independence, MissouriOn this day in 1908, the boxer John Arthur Johnson defeats Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, becoming the first black heavyweight champion of the world and an international icon.history.com/youtube.com[/video][/video]

omeg · Dec 27, 2010

12/27.......At the height of the Great Depression, thousands turn out for the opening of Radio City Music Hall, a magnificent Art Deco theater in New York City. Radio City Music Hall was designed as a palace for the people, a place of beauty where ordinary people could see high-quality entertainment. Since its 1932 opening, more than 300 million people have gone to Radio City to enjoy movies, stage shows, concerts, and special events.On this day in 1941, the federal Office of Price Administration initiates its first rationing program in support of the American effort in World War II: It mandates that from that day on, no driver will be permitted to own more than five automobile tires.A coal mine explosion followed by a flood kills at least 372 workers in Dhanbad, India, on this day in 1975.Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, returns safely to Earth after an historic six-day journey.Murder and mayhem have been the subject of many popular songs over the years, though more often than not, the tales around which such songs revolve tend to be wholly fictional. Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno, and the events related in such famous story songs as El Paso and I Shot The Sheriff never actually took place. The same cannot be said, however, about Stagger Lee a song that has drifted from the facts somewhat over the course of its many lives in the last 100-plus years, but a song inspired by an actual murder that took place on this day in 1895, in a St. Louis, Missouri, barroom argument involving a man named Billy and another named Stag Lee.On December 27, 2004, in a game against the San Diego Chargers, quarterback Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts finds wide receiver Brandon Stokely in the end zone for his 49th touchdown pass of the season, breaking the previous National Football League (NFL) single-season record held by Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins.history.com

omeg · Dec 28, 2010

12/28........On this day in 1895, the world's first commercial movie screening takes place at the Grand Cafe in Paris. The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French brothers who developed a camera-projector called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief film showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory. On December 28, the entrepreneurial siblings screened a series of short scenes from everyday French life and charged admission for the first time.On December 28, 1938, the silent-film star Florence Lawrence commits suicide in Beverly Hills. She was 52 years old. Though she was best known for her roles in nearly 250 films, Lawrence was also an inventor: She designed the first auto signaling arm, a mechanical turn signal, along with the first mechanical brake signal. She did not patent these inventions, however, and as a result she received no credit for--or profit from--either one.An earthquake in Sicily kills over 100,000 people and destroys several towns on this day in 1908. The 7.5-magnitude tremor off the coast of the large island was also responsible for deaths on the Italian mainland.Citing political differences with President Andrew Jackson and a desire to fill a vacant Senate seat in South Carolina, John C. Calhoun becomes the first vice president in U.S. history to resign the office.The Knights of Labor, a labor union of tailors in Philadelphia, hold the first Labor Day ceremonies in American history. The Knights of Labor was established as a secret society of Pennsylvanian tailors earlier in the year and later grew into a national body that played an important role in the labor movement of the late 19th century.The first annual observance of Labor Day was organized by the American Federation of Labor in 1884, which resolved in a convention in Chicago that the first Monday in September be set aside as a laborer's national holiday. In 1887, Oregon became the first state to designate Labor Day a holiday, and in 1894 Congress designated the first Monday in September a legal holiday for all federal employees and the residents of the District of Columbia. It doesn't take an Einstein to know that young people attending a rap concert...who have paid as much as $20 a ticket, would not be very happy and easy to control if they were unable to gain admission to the event because it was oversold. Those were the words of Judge Louis C. Benza of the New York State Court of Claims in sorting out the question of civil liability for one of the worst music-related tragedies in recent American history. Judge Benza's 73-page decision, issued seven years after nine young people died in a crowd stampede on this day in 1991, placed 50 percent of the blame for those deaths on the venue's owner, the City University of New York, and 50 percent on the event's promoters, rapper Dwight Heavy D Myers and the then largely unknown hip-hop impresario Sean Puff Daddy Combs.On this day in 1856, future President Woodrow Wilson is born in Staunton, Virginia. He attended private schools and graduated from Princeton University in 1879 before studying law at the University of Virginia and earning his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He was hired by Princeton as a professor of political science in 1899 and went on to serve as the institution's president from 1902 to 1910. As Princeton's head administrator, he revolutionized its teaching program and was largely responsible for elevating Princeton to its current prestige. Wilson's management of Princeton also earned the attention of Democratic Party leaders, who encouraged him to run for political office. Wilson once admitted that if he hadn't entered politics he would have been happy to live out his life teaching and playing golf, his favorite past time.history.com

omeg · Dec 29, 2010

12/29......A bridge in Ashtabula, Ohio, collapses on this day in 1876, causing a train to fall into a gorge, killing 80 passengers.Six months after the congress of the Republic of Texas accepts U.S. annexation of the territory, Texas is admitted into the United States as the 28th state.On the evening of December 29, 1940, London suffers its most devastating air raid when Germans firebomb the city. Hundreds of fires caused by the exploding bombs engulfed areas of London, but firefighters showed a valiant indifference to the bombs falling around them and saved much of the city from destruction. The next day, a newspaper photo of St. Paul's Cathedral standing undamaged amid the smoke and flames seemed to symbolize the capital's unconquerable spirit during the Battle of Britain.In the tragic final chapter of America's long war against the Plains Indians, the U.S. Cavalry kills 146 Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.On this day in 1808, future President Andrew Johnson is born in Raleigh, North Carolina.On December 29, 1878, the first game is played between two teams of the first professional baseball league in Cuba, later known as the Cuban League. Representing the city of Havana, the Habana club faced off against their greatest rivals, a club from the neighboring suburb of Almendares. Habana, coached by Esteban Bellán, the first Cuban to play professional baseball in the United States, won that inaugural game 21-20.history.com

omeg · Dec 30, 2010

12/30...............In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation (divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan, and Armenian republics). Also known as the Soviet Union, the new communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire and the first country in the world to be based on Marxist socialism.At 8 p.m. on December 30, 1936, in one of the first sit-down strikes in the United States, autoworkers occupy the General Motors Fisher Body Plant Number One in Flint, Michigan. The autoworkers were striking to win recognition of the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the only bargaining agent for GM's workers; they also wanted to make the company stop sending work to non-union plants and to establish a fair minimum wage scale, a grievance system and a set of procedures that would help protect assembly-line workers from injury. In all, the strike lasted 44 days.A fire in the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, Illinois, kills more than 600 people on this day in 1903. It was the deadliest theater fire in U.S. history. Blocked fire exits and the lack of a fire-safety plan caused most of the deaths.Within a year, they'd be big. Within two, they'd be huge. And within three, they'd be the biggest band in the world. But on December 30, 1968, the quartet of British rockers preparing for their fifth-ever gig in the United States were using propane heaters to keep themselves and their equipment warm while they waited to go on as the opening act for Vanilla Fudge at a concert in a frigid college gymnasium in western Washington State. A few serious rock fans in attendance had at least heard about the new band formed around the former guitarist from the now-defunct Yardbirds, but if those fans even knew the name of this new group, they might not have recognized it in the ads that ran in the local newspaper. The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Washington, ran an advertisement on this day in 1968 for a concert at Gonzaga University featuring The Vanilla Fudge, with Len Zefflin a concert of which a bootleg recording would later emerge that represents the first-ever live Led Zeppelin performance captured on tape.[video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Z2jaPN2dU]On December 30, 1978, Ohio State University (OSU) makes the decision to fire its 65-year-old football coach, Woody Hayes, one day after Hayes punched a player on the opposing team near the end of the Gator Bowl.history.com[/video]

omeg · Dec 31, 2010

12/31..........On this day in 1999, the United States, in accordance with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, officially hands over control of the Panama Canal, putting the strategic waterway into Panamanian hands for the first time. Crowds of Panamanians celebrated the transfer of the 50-mile canal, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and officially opened when the SS Arcon sailed through on August 15, 1914. Since then, over 922,000 ships have used the canal.Bernhard Goetz, the white man dubbed the subway vigilante after he shot four young black men on a New York City subway train, turns himself in at a police station in Concord, New Hampshire. Goetz claimed that the men, all of whom had criminal records, were trying to rob him and that he had acted in self-defense. At the time, New York was in the midst of a crime wave and Goetz was viewed by some people as a hero, an ordinary citizen fighting back against his attackers.Roberto Clemente, future Hall of Fame baseball player, is killed along with four others when the cargo plane in which he is traveling crashes off the coast of Puerto Rico. Clemente was on his way to deliver relief supplies to Nicaragua following a devastating earthquake there a week earlier.In the first public demonstration of his incandescent lightbulb, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison lights up a street in Menlo Park, New Jersey. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company ran special trains to Menlo Park on the day of the demonstration in response to public enthusiasm over the event.The Soviet Union's TU-144 supersonic airliner makes its first flight, several months ahead of the Anglo-French Concorde. The TU-144 so closely resembled the Concorde that the Western press dubbed it the Konkordski. Former teen idol Rick Nelson dies in plane crash in De Kalb, Texas, on December 31, 1985.[video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hrwJvdPtwI]On this day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued a statement extending his sincere wishes and those of the American people to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and the people of the Soviet Union for a peaceful and prosperous New Year. It was the height of the Cold War and the United States and Soviet Union were locked in a nuclear arms race.history.com[/video]

Mben · Dec 31, 2010

This day in history, Mben has partied like a rock star bringing in the new year. History mind you! That ain't happening no more. lol

omeg · Jan 1, 2011

01/01........On this day in 1919, Edsel Ford, the son of Model T inventor and auto industry pioneer Henry Ford, succeeds his father as president of the Ford Motor Company. The younger Ford ascended to the top spot after his father resigned the position in December 1918, following a disagreement with stockholders However, father and son soon managed to purchase these dissenting investors' stock and regain control of the company.President Lincoln signs the final Emancipation Proclamation, which ends slavery in the rebelling states. A preliminary proclamation was issued in September, following the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Maryland. The act signaled an important shift in the Union's war aims, changing the goal of the war from reunification to the eradication of slavery. An Air India Boeing 747 jet crashes into the sea just after takeoff from a Bombay airport on this day in 1978, killing all 213 people on board. The crash was apparently the result of pilot error and equipment malfunction.In 45 B.C., New Year's Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar takes effect. Folsom Prison Blues gave Johnny Cash his first top-10 country hit in 1956, and his live concert performance at Folsomdramatized memorably in the film Walk The Linegave his flagging career a critical jump-start in 1968. But the prison with which Johnny Cash was most closely associated wasn't Folsom, it was San Quentin, a maximum-security penitentiary just outside of San Francisco. San Quentin is where Cash played his first-ever prison concert on January 1, 1958a concert that helped set Merle Haggard, then a 20-year-old San Quentin inmate, on the path toward becoming a country music legend. [video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHF9itPLUo4][video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHk4DLvz9AA]A farmer named Daniel Freeman submits the first claim under the new Homestead Act for a property near Beatrice, Nebraska.On this day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issue a declaration, signed by representatives of 26 countries, called the United Nations. The signatories of the declaration vowed to create an international postwar peacekeeping organization.history.com[/video][/video]

omeg · Jan 2, 2011

01/02...................On this day in 1971, 66 football (soccer) fans are killed in a stampede at a stadium in Glasgow, Scotland, as they attempt to leave a game after a late goal by the home team. Initial reports suggested that the disaster was caused by fans returning to their seats after hearing of the last goal, but in fact it was simply the crush of spectators all leaving at the same time on the same stairway that led to tragedy. This was not the first time that disaster had struck the stadium.Georgia votes to ratify the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fourth state in the modern United States. Named after King George II, Georgia was first settled by Europeans in 1733, when a group of British debtors led by English philanthropist James E. Oglethorpe traveled up the Savannah River and established Georgia's first permanent settlement--the town of Savannah. In 1742, as part of a larger conflict between Spain and Great Britain, Oglethorpe defeated the Spanish on St. Simons Island in Georgia, effectively ending Spanish claims to the territory of Georgia.Senator Timothy Pickering, a Federalist from Massachusetts, becomes the first senator to be censured when the Senate approves a censure motion against him by a vote of 20 to seven. Pickering was accused of violating congressional law by publicly revealing secret documents communicated by the president to the Senate.Former Model Named Head of Fox Productions ran the headline in the January 2, 1980, issue of the New York Times, over an article announcing that Sherry Lansing had been selected to lead the production department at 20th Century Fox. After signing a three-year contract at a minimum of $300,000 per year (plus the possibility of hefty bonuses based on box-office returns), Lansing became not only the first woman to head production at a major movie studio, but also one of the highest-paid female executives in any industry.On this day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon signs the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, setting a new national maximum speed limit. On January 2, 1956, Oklahoma Universitys champion football team, the Sooners, defeat Maryland 20-6 in the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida, winning the national championship and scoring their 30th straight victory in the middle of a winning streak that went on to stretch to 47 games.history.com

omeg · Jan 3, 2011

01/03......On this day in 1990, Panama's General Manuel Antonio Noriega, after holing up for 10 days at the Vatican embassy in Panama City, surrenders to U.S. military troops to face charges of drug trafficking. Noriega was flown to Miami the following day and crowds of citizens on the streets of Panama City rejoiced. On July 10, 1992, the former dictator was convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering and sentenced to 40 years in prison.Michael Schumacher, who won a record seven Formula One (F1) world championships, is born on January 3, 1969, near Cologne, Germany. In a 16-year Formula One career that began in the early 1990s, Schumacher's numerous F1 accomplishments also included records for most Grand Prix victories (91), most pole positions (68; the most favorable place to start a race, the pole position is awarded to the driver with the fastest qualifying time for the race) and most career points (1,369; an F1 driver earns points based on where he places in a race).In the climax of deteriorating relations between the United States and Fidel Castro's government in Cuba, President Dwight D. Eisenhower closes the American embassy in Havana and severs diplomatic relations. Matthew Stuart meets with Boston prosecutors and tells them that his brother, Charles, was actually the person responsible for murdering Charles's wife, Carol. The killing of Carol Stuart, who was pregnant at the time, on October 23, 1989, had touched off a national outrage when Charles Stuart told authorities that the couple had been robbed and shot by an African-American man while driving through a poor Boston neighborhood.After three days of high winds and heavy snow, people in the Great Lakes region begin digging out from one of the worst blizzards on record on this day in 1999. More than 100 people died in storm-related accidents.On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issues the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, which excommunicates Martin Luther from the Catholic Church.Martin Luther, the chief catalyst of Protestantism, was a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Wittenberg in Germany when he drew up his 95 theses condemning the Catholic Church for its corrupt practice of selling indulgences, or the forgiveness of sins. He followed up the revolutionary work with equally controversial and groundbreaking theological works, and his fiery words set off religious reformers all across Europe.Two years after British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen near Luxor, Egypt, they uncover the greatest treasure of the tomb--a stone sarcophagus containing a solid gold coffin that holds the mummy of Tutankhamen.On January 3, 1959, President Eisenhower signs a special proclamation admitting the territory of Alaska into the Union as the 49th and largest state.On January 3, 1967, Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, dies of cancer in a Dallas hospital. The Texas Court of Appeals had recently overturned his death sentence for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald and was scheduled to grant him a new trial.In 1986, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its first group of inductees: Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and the Everly Brothers. Since then, the Hall has added a new class of inductees each year, expanding by January 2008 to 209 honorees in four categories: Performers, Non-Performers, Sidemen and Lifetime Achievers. The category in which the Hall is most conspicuously lacking, however, is women. Of the 159 total inductions in the Performers category, 135 have been of solo male performers or male groups. Only 10 solo female performers and 13 groups containing at least one female performer have been added since the Hall admitted its first womanAretha Franklinon January 3, 1987.Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an adult victim of polio, founds the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which he later renamed the March of Dimes Foundation, on this day in 1938. A predominantly childhood disease in the early 20th century, polio wreaked havoc among American children every summer. The virus, which affects the central nervous system, flourished in contaminated food and water and was easily transmitted. Those who survived the disease usually suffered from debilitating paralysis into their adult lives. In 1921, at the relatively advanced age of 39, Roosevelt contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. With the help of the media, his Secret Service and careful event planning, Roosevelt managed to keep his disease out of the public eye, yet his personal experience inspired in him an empathy with the handicapped and prompted him to the found the March of Dimes.On this day in 1993, backup quarterback Frank Reich leads the Buffalo Bills to a 41-38 overtime victory over the Houston Oilers in an American Football Conference (AFC) wild card playoff game that will forever be known to football fans as The Comeback. By halftime of the game, Houston was out in front, 28-3, behind four touchdown passes by future Hall of Famer Warren Moon. At the beginning of the second half, things got even darker for Buffalo when the Houston strong safety Bubba McDowell intercepted a pass from Reich, who was filling in for the injured Jim Kelly. McDowell ran 58 yards for another Oiler touchdown, putting the score at 35-3. At this point, many Bills fans headed home out of the chilly western New York weather, convinced the game was lost.History.com

omeg · Jan 4, 2011

01/04.........On this day in 1999, for the first time since Charlemagne's reign in the ninth century, Europe is united with a common currency when the euro debuts as a financial unit in corporate and investment markets. Eleven European Union (EU) nations (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain), representing some 290 million people, launched the currency in the hopes of increasing European integration and economic growth. Closing at a robust 1.17 U.S. dollars on its first day, the euro promised to give the dollar a run for its money in the new global economy. Euro cash, decorated with architectural images, symbols of European unity and member-state motifs, went into circulation on January 1, 2002, replacing the Austrian schilling, Belgian franc, Finnish markka, French franc, German mark, Italian lira, Irish punt, Luxembourg franc, Netherlands guilder, Portugal escudo and Spanish peseta. A number of territories and non-EU nations including Monaco and Vatican City also adopted the eur

n this day in 1996, General Motors announces at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show it will build an electric car, dubbed the EV1, to be launched in the fall of that year.Two trains collide in Sangi, Pakistan, on this day in 1990, killing between 200 and 300 people and injuring an estimated 700 others. This was the worst rail accident to date in Pakistan.Six years after Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon church, issued his Manifesto reforming political, religious, and economic life in Utah, the territory is admitted into the Union as the 45th statePresident Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee. Marking the beginning of the end of his Presidency, Nixon would resign from office in disgrace eight months later.Sitting atop the Billboard charts in the first week of January, 1964, Bobby Vinton the Polish Prince was enjoying the ninth top-40 hit of his young career with There! I've Said Again. Not only was this the third #1 single for Vinton in a span of just 18 months, but it was the second (after Blue Velvet ) with a song that was older than many of his fans. Almost 10 years into what we now call the rock and roll era, Bobby Vinton was making records that owed far more to Perry Como than they did to Elvis Presley, and he was absolutely thriving commercially. He had little reason to suspect that a revolution was in the offing.[video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83RpoiPWZsU]Samuel Colt rescues the future of his faltering gun company by winning a contract to provide the U.S. government with 1,000 of his .44 caliber revolvers.On January 4, 2006, University of Texas quarterback Vince Young makes an eight-yard touchdown run on fourth down with 19 seconds left in the game, capping one of the best individual performances in college football history while leading his team to a Rose Bowl victory and a national championship title over the University of Southern California (USC).In his State of the Union message, President Lyndon B. Johnson reaffirms U.S. commitment to support South Vietnam in fighting communist aggression. In justifying the continued support to Saigon, Johnson pointed out that U.S. presidents had been giving the South Vietnamese help for 10 years, and, he said, Our own security is tied to the peace of Asia.[/video]

omeg · Jan 5, 2011

01/05............On January 5, 1933, construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structures huge anchorages.On this day in 1933, construction starts on what will become one of America's most famous landmarks: the Golden Gate Bridge. When completed in 1937, the Golden Gate has a 4,200-foot-long suspension span, making it the world's longest suspension bridge. Since opening to the public in May 1937, almost 2 billion vehicles have crossed the bridge, in both the north- and southbound directions.The bodies of dissident union leader Jock Yablonski, his wife, and daughter are discovered in their Clarksville, Pennsylvania, farmhouse by Yablonski's son Kenneth. The family had been dead for nearly a week, killed on New Year's Eve by killers hired by the United Mine Workers (UMW) union leadership. Yablonski's murder eventually brought down the whole union leadership and ended the widespread corruption of the union under UMW President Tony Boyle.On this day in 1982, a series of landslides near San Francisco, California, kills up to 33 people and closes the Golden Gate Bridge. In all, an amazing 18,000 different landslides took place in the San Francisco Bay Area following a very heavy rain storm.On this day in 1945, Japanese pilots received the first order to become kamikaze, meaning divine wind in Japanese. The suicidal blitz of the kamikazes revealed Japan's desperation in the final months of World War II. Most of Japan's top pilots were dead, but youngsters needed little training to take planes full of explosives and crash them into ships. At Okinawa, they sank 30 ships and killed almost 5,000 Americans.In his characteristically blunt and self-deprecating manner, Sonny Bono transformed himself relatively late in his life, morphing from the shorter, homelier, masculine half of a 1960s husband-and-wife singing and acting sensation (alongside his glamorous third wife, Cher) into a respected California lawmaker and U.S. congressman. On January 5, 1998, Bonos unusual journey was cut tragically short when he was killed in a skiing accident while on vacation with his family in South Lake Tahoe, California.Also on this day in presidential history, Richard Nixon signs a bill authorizing $5.5 million in funding to develop a space shuttle. The space shuttle represented a giant leap forward in the technology of space travel. Designed to function more like a cost-efficient reusable airplane than a one-use-only rocket-launched capsules, the shuttle afforded NASA pilots and scientists more time in space with which to conduct space-related research. NASA launched Columbia, the first space shuttle, in 1981.On this day in 1920, the New York Yankees major league baseball club announces its purchase of the heavy-hitting outfielder George Herman Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox for the sum of $125,000.history.com

omeg · Jan 6, 2011

01/06............On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse's telegraph system is demonstrated for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey. The telegraph, a device which used electric impulses to transmit encoded messages over a wire, would eventually revolutionize long-distance communication, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1920s and 1930s.On this day in 1925, John DeLorean, a maverick auto industry executive and founder of the DeLorean Motor Company, is born in Detroit, Michigan. The DeLorean Motor Company produced just one model, the DMC-12, a sports car with gull-wing doors that opened upward, in the early 1980s before going bankrupt. In 1982, John DeLorean was charged with drug trafficking; prosecutors argued that he was attempting to raise money for his struggling company. In total, approximately 9,000 DMC-12s were produced. The car became a collector's item and got a big publicity boost when it was featured as a time-travel machine in the Back to the Future movies starring Michael J. Fox.Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan is attacked at a Detroit ice rink following a practice session two days before the Olympic trials. A man hit Kerrigan with a club on the back of her knee, causing the figure skater to cry out in pain and bewilderment. When the full story emerged a week later, the nation became caught up in a real-life soap opera.On this day in 1996, snow begins falling in Washington, D.C., and up the Eastern seaboard, beginning a blizzard that kills 154 people and causes over $1 billion in damages before it ends.On January 6, 1912, New Mexico is admitted into the United States as the 47th state.On January 6, 1925, Finnish long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi steps up to the starting line in New York's Madison Square Garden in his first U.S. appearance. Anticipation for the moment had been building steadily since Nurmi's arrival in America four weeks before, and it was standing room only at the Garden when he emerged out of the cigar smoke to run his first race.At the close of business on January 6, 2008, the Walt Disney World Resort theme park known as Disney-MGM Studios officially shut its doors after almost a decade of operation. Fans didnt have to worry too much, however, as the park would reopen the next morning under its new name, Disneys Hollywood Studios.On January 6, 1975, a crowd of 2,000-plus lines up outside Boston Garden to buy tickets to the rock band Led Zeppelin. Some in the crowd then broke in to the near-empty arena, and caused thousands of dollars in damage.On this day in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses Congress in an effort to move the nation away from a foreign policy of neutrality. The president had watched with increasing anxiety as European nations struggled and fell to Hitler's fascist regime and was intent on rallying public support for the United States to take a stronger interventionist role. In his address to the 77th Congress, Roosevelt stated that the need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily--almost exclusively--to meeting the foreign peril. For all our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency. Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, dies at Sagamore Hill, his estate overlooking New York's Long Island Sound.history.com

omeg · Jan 7, 2011

01/07/..............On this day in 1789, America's first presidential election is held. Voters cast ballots to choose state electors; only white men who owned property were allowed to vote. As expected, George Washington won the election and was sworn into office on April 30, 1789.Walter Chrysler, the founder of the Chrysler Corporation, one of America's Big Three automakers, is featured on the cover of Timemagazine as its Man of the Year. In 1928, under Walter Chrysler's leadership, his company had acquired the Dodge Brothers Company, thereby becoming the world's third-largest automaker. Also that year, Chrysler launched the low-priced Plymouth line and the mid-priced DeSoto brand. Additionally, Walter Chrysler had bankrolled construction of the Chrysler Building in New York City. When it was completed two years later, in 1930, the 77-story art-deco skyscraper was the world's tallest building.In his final State of the Union address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.It was just three years earlier on January 31, 1950, that Truman publicly announced that had directed the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. Truman's directive came in responds to evidence of an atomic explosion occurring within USSR in 1949. A massive mine explosion leaves nearly 100 dead in Krebs, Oklahoma, on this day in 1892. The disaster, the worst mining catastrophe in Oklahoma's history, was mainly due to the mine owner's emphasis on profits over safety.Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air. The two men nearly crashed into the Channel along the way, however, as their balloon was weighed down by extraneous supplies such as anchors, a nonfunctional hand-operated propeller, and silk-covered oars with which they hoped they could row their way through the air. Just before reaching the French coast, the two balloonists were forced to throw nearly everything out of the balloon, and Blanchard even threw his trousers over the side in a desperate, but apparently successful, attempt to lighten the ship.On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, begins in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in as jurors. Congress had only attempted to remove a president on one other occasion: the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, who incurred the Republican Party's wrath after he proposed a conservative Reconstruction plan.On January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team travels 48 miles west from Chicago to play their first game in Hinckley, Illinois.history.com

omeg · Jan 8, 2011

01/08..................On this day in 1877, Crazy Horse and his warriors--outnumbered, low on ammunition and forced to use outdated weapons to defend themselves--fight their final losing battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana.On this day in 1790, President George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address to the assembled Congress in New York City.On this day in 1996, a cargo plane crashes in Kishasa, Zaire, (modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo) killing somewhere between 225 and 350 people and injuring another 500.Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei dies in Italy at age 77. Born February 15, 1564, Galileo has been referred to as the father of modern astronomy, the father of modern physics and the father of science due to his revolutionary discoveries. The first person to use a telescope to observe the skies, Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, sunspots and the solar rotation.At the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is exhibited for the first time in America. Over 2,000 dignitaries, including President John F. Kennedy, came out that evening to view the famous painting. The next day, the exhibit opened to the public, and during the next three weeks an estimated 500,000 people came to see it. The painting then traveled to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was seen by another million people.In competing versions of the story, what Elvis Presley really wanted for his birthday was a rifle or a bicycleboth fairly typical choices for a boy his age growing up on the outskirts of Tupelo, Mississippi. Instead, Elvis's highly protective mother, Gladys She never let me out of her sight, Elvis would later saytook him to the Tupelo Hardware Store and bought a gift that would change the course of history: a $6.95 guitar. It was January 8, 1946, and Elvis Aaron Presley was 11 years old.ELVIS PRESLEY WAS BORN JANUARY 8TH...1935. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELVIS On January 8, 2000, in an American Football Conference (AFC) wild card match-up at Adelphia Coliseum in Nashville, Tennessee, the Tennessee Titans stage a last-second come-from-behind victory to beat the Buffalo Bills 22-16 on a kickoff return play later dubbed the Music City Miracle. history.com-- Edited by PMM2008 on Saturday 8th of January 2011 11:45:10 AM

omeg · Jan 9, 2011

01/09......................On this day in 1493, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing near the Dominican Republic, sees three mermaids --in reality manatees--and describes them as not half as beautiful as they are painted. Six months earlier, Columbus (1451-1506) set off from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean with the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, hoping to find a western trade route to Asia. Instead, his voyage, the first of four he would make, led him to the Americas, or New World. On this day in 1972,, the ship Seawise University (formerly the RMS Queen Elizabeth) sinks in Hong Kong Harbor despite a massive firefighting effort over two days.On this day, Englishman Philip Astley stages the first modern circus in London.Trick riders, acrobats, clowns, trained animals, and other familiar components of the circus have existed throughout recorded history, but it was not until the late 18th century that the modern spectacle of the circus was born. Astley, a former cavalry sergeant major, found that if he galloped in a tight circle, centrifugal force allowed him to perform seemingly impossible feats on a horse's back. He drew up a ring and on January 9, 1768, invited the public to see him wave his sword in the air while he rode with one foot on the saddle and one on the horse's head.The classic rags-to-riches story got a macho spin in the Oscar-winning Rocky, which was written by its star, Sylvester Stallone, and began filming on this day in 1976. Stallone had his own rags-to-riches tale: Born in the gritty Hells Kitchen neighborhood of New York City, he was a juvenile delinquent who was kicked out of a number of schools before he turned 15. After attending high school in Philadelphia and studying drama at the University of Miami, Stallone moved back to New York and later to Los Angeles, with dreams of becoming an actor.In an effort to call attention to the poverty, malnutrition and lack of access to quality education affecting millions of children throughout the developing world, the United Nations proclaimed 1979 the International Year of the Child. To publicize the proclamation and raise money for UNICEFthe United Nation's Children's Fundplans were laid for a concert fundraiser featuring dozens of leading lights of late-70s pop. Staged in the U.N. General Assembly Hall in New York City on January 9, 1979, the show was subsequently broadcast around the world as The Music for UNICEF Concert: A Gift of Song. On one of the worst days of the worst winter in the West, nearly an inch of snow falls every hour for 16 hours, impeding the ability of already starving cattle to find food.Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the United States, is born on this day in CaliforniaOn January 9, 1972, the 24-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar leads the Milwaukee Bucks in a 120-104 victory over Wilt Chamberlain and the Los Angeles Lakers, breaking the Lakers record 33-game winning streak, the longest of any team in American professional sports.On January 9, 1972, the 24-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar leads the Milwaukee Bucks in a 120-104 victory over Wilt Chamberlain and the Los Angeles Lakers, breaking the Lakers record 33-game winning streak, the longest of any team in American professional sports.history.com

omeg · Jan 10, 2011

01/10...........On this day in 1901, a drilling derrick at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, produces an enormous gusher of crude oil, coating the landscape for hundreds of feet and signaling the advent of the American oil industry. The geyser was discovered at a depth of over 1,000 feet, flowed at an initial rate of approximately 100,000 barrels a day and took nine days to cap. Following the discovery, petroleum, which until that time had been used in the U.S. primarily as a lubricant and in kerosene for lamps, would become the main fuel source for new inventions such as cars and airplanes; coal-powered forms of transportation including ships and trains would also convert to the liquid fuel.On this day in 2008, at the New Delhi Auto Expo in India, Tata Motors debuts the Nano, billing it as the world's cheapest car: The anticipated price tag is around $2,500. Tata, India's largest automaker, called the four-door, bubble-shaped mini-vehicle (it was just 5 feet wide and 10 feet long) the People's Car and declared that it would be a vehicle for families who previously hadn't been able to afford a car. (At the time, it wasn't uncommon to see an entire family precariously packed onto a single motorbike.)On this day in 1962, an avalanche on the slopes of an extinct volcano kills more than 4,000 people in Peru. Nine towns and seven smaller villages were destroyed.On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations formally comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, takes effect.The first General Assembly of the United Nations, comprising 51 nations, convenes at Westminster Central Hall in London, England. One week later, the U.N. Security Council met for the first time and established its rules of procedure. Then, on January 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.On this day in 2000, in one of the biggest media mergers in history, America Online Inc. announces plans to acquire Time Warner Inc. for some $182 billion in stock and debt. The result was a $350 billion mega-corporation, AOL Time Warner, which held dominant positions in every type of media, including music, publishing, news, entertainment, cable and the Internet.It was a song that celebrated the exploits of a rebellious trucker with a reckless disregard for human life and highway safety codes. It gave the gravelly-voiced C.W. McCall his biggest pop hit on this day in 1976, except that technically, C.W. McCall was a figment of the imagination. The genius behind Convoy was, in reality, an Omaha advertising executive named Bill Friesnot a fearless runner of police roadblocks, perhaps, but certainly a man with an ear for esoteric dialogue and a finger on the pulse of one of the strangest fads ever to grip the nation, even by the standards of the 1970s.On this day in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt introduces the lend-lease program to Congress. The plan was intended to help Britain beat back Hitler's advance while keeping America only indirectly involved in World War II. On January 10, 1982, San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Dwight Clark makes a leaping catch in the end zone on a pass from quarterback Joe Montana with 51 seconds left in the National Football Conference (NFC) championship game against the Dallas Cowboys. The Catch set up a successful extra point kick by Ray Wersching that lifted the 49ers to a 28-27 victory and a trip to Super Bowl XVI.history.com

omeg · Jan 11, 2011

01/11..........On January 11, 1908, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona a national monument.On this day in 1937, nearly two weeks into a sit-down strike by General Motors (GM) auto workers at the Fisher Body Plant No. 2 in Flint, Michigan, a riot breaks out when police try to prevent the strikers from receiving food deliveries from supporters on the outside. Strikers and police officers alike were injured in the melee, which was later nicknamed the Battle of the Running Bulls. After the January 11 riot, Michigan governor Frank Murphy called in the National Guard to surround the plant. However, the governor, who wanted to preserve his reputation as a friend to the workingman, decided against ordering troops into the plant.Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union when a convention votes 61 to 39 in favor of the measure. Alabama had a much closer vote than other states, due to strong Unionist sentiment in the northern part of the state.In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, more than 10 inches of rain falls in 12 hours on this day in 1966, causing a flash flood. Four hundred people were killed and 50,000 needed to be evacuated due to the sudden influx of water.In the first flight of its kind, American aviator Amelia Earhart departs Wheeler Field in Honolulu, Hawaii, on a solo flight to North America. Hawaiian commercial interests offered a $10,000 award to whoever accomplished the flight first. The next day, after traveling 2,400 miles in 18 hours, she safely landed at Oakland Airport in Oakland, California.On Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., the cornerstone is laid at the first mosque of note in the United States. Intended to serve as a national mosque for all American Muslims, the Islamic Center was built in a traditional Arabic architectural style, complete with a 160-foot minaret from which prayers were to be announced. A colonnade cloister joined the mosque to two wings containing a library, classrooms, a museum, and administrative offices. In the basement of the mosque was an auditorium built to accommodate several hundred people. The Islamic Center's first director was Dr. Mahmoud Hoballah.On January 11, 1927, Charlie Chaplins $16 million estate is frozen by court receivers after his second wife, Lita Grey Chaplin, sues for divorce. Lita was a 16-year-old hopeful actress when the 35-year-old Chaplin married her in 1924. The bitter and prolonged divorce ended a three-year marriage with a $1 million settlement.In 1985, singer-songwriter Paul Simon made a controversial nine-day visit to South Africaa visit that some felt was in violation of a United Nations cultural boycott, but a visit that dramatically increased worldwide awareness of black South Africa's rich musical traditions. Seven years later, with the U.N. boycott lifted, Simon returned to South Africa to play a historic concert in Johannesburg on January 11, 1992.On January 11, 1973, the owners of America's 24 major league baseball teams vote to allow teams in the American League (AL) to use a designated pinch-hitter that could bat for the pitcher, while still allowing the pitcher to stay in the game.history.com

omeg · Jan 12, 2011

01/12...........On this day in 1926, the two-man comedy series Sam 'n' Henry debuts on Chicago's WGN radio station. Two years later, after changing its name to Amos 'n' Andy, the show became one of the most popular radio programs in American history. On this day in 1904, Henry Ford sets a land-speed record of 91.37 mph on the frozen surface of Michigan's Lake St. Clair. He was driving a four-wheel vehicle, dubbed the 999, with a wooden chassis but no body or hood. Ford's record was broken within a month at Ormond Beach, Florida, by a driver named William K. Vanderbilt; even so, the publicity surrounding Ford's achievement was valuable to the auto pioneer, who in June of the previous year had incorporated the Ford Motor Company, which would eventually go on to become one of America's Big Three automakers.On this day in 1888, the so-called Schoolchildren's Blizzard kills 235 people, many of whom were children on their way home from school, across the Northwest Plains region of the United States. The storm came with no warning, and some accounts say that the temperature fell nearly 100 degrees in just 24 hours.Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, becomes the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Caraway, born near Bakerville, Tennessee, had been appointed to the Senate two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. With the support of Huey Long, a powerful senator from Louisiana, Caraway was elected to the seat. In 1938, she was reelected. After failing to win renomination in 1944, she was appointed to the Federal Employees Compensation Commission by President Franklin Roosevelt.On this day, an international panel overseeing the restoration of the Great Pyramids in Egypt overcomes years of frustration when it abandons modern construction techniques in favor of the method employed by the ancient Egyptians.On this day, Jack London, the illegitimate son of an astrologer father and a spiritualist mother, is born in San Francisco. His father abandoned the family, and Jack, whose last name at birth was Chaney, later assumed his stepfather's surname, London. From an early age, London struggled to make a living, working in a cannery and as a sailor, oyster pirate, and fish patroller. He also spent time as a hobo, riding trains. During the national economic crisis of 1893, he joined a march of unemployed workers and later spent a month in jail for vagrancy.Even with the rise of jazz and pop music during the period, the 1920s and 30s was a time when performances of classical music, both live and on radio, drew enormous audiences in the United States. Of the many composers, conductors and performers who became household names during this era, none made a bigger splash than a young pianist from Kiev named Vladimir Horowitz. From his first U.S. performance on January 12, 1928, Horowitz established a special bond with American audiencesa bond that would make him the best known and most beloved pianist in his adopted country for the next 60 years.On this day in 1966, Lyndon Johnson, in his State of the Union address, commits the United States to staying in Vietnam as long as aggression commands us to battle. Johnson justified his position on the basis of national security and the principles of democracy and national sovereignty. Citing communist China's intention to dominate all of Asia, Johnson pledged renewed commitment to helping the South Vietnamese defeat North Vietnam in a war that had become increasingly controversial among Americans. history.com

omeg · Jan 13, 2011

01/13......On this day in 1128, Pope Honorius II grants a papal sanction to the military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God. On this day in 1962, Ernie Kovacs, a comedian who hosted his own television shows during the 1950s and is said to have influenced such TV hosts as Johnny Carson and David Letterman, dies at the age of 42 after crashing his Chevrolet Corvair into a telephone pole in Los Angeles, California, while driving in a rainstorm. Kovacs, who often appeared on camera with his trademark cigar, was found by police with an unlit cigar, leading to speculation that he had been reaching for the cigar and lost control of his vehicle. The Corvair was later made infamous by Ralph Nader's groundbreaking 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, about unsafe practices in the auto industry.Arthur Doc Barker is killed while trying to escape from Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay. Barker, of the notorious Bloody Barkers gang, was spotted on the rock-strewn shore of the island after climbing over the walls. Despite the fact that guards were ordering him to surrender, Barker continued tying pieces of wood together into a makeshift raft. As he waded into the water, the guards shot and killed him.On this day in 1982, an Air Florida Boeing 727 plunges into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., killing 78 people. The crash, caused by bad weather, took place only two miles from the White House.Fans of the red carpet extravaganza that is the annual Golden Globe Awards presentation were disappointed in 2008, when the lavish ceremony was canceled due to the Writers Guild of America strike that began the previous fall. Under pressure from striking writers and the actors who threatened to boycott the presentation as a gesture of support, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association decided in early January that the usual ceremony would be supplanted by a straightforward news conference announcing the winners.Nearly 50 years after the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp dies quietly in Los Angeles at the age of 80.On this day in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints the first African-American cabinet member, making Robert C. Weaver head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the agency that develops and implements national housing policy and enforces fair housing laws. In keeping with his vision for a Great Society, Johnson sought to improve race relations and eliminate urban blight. As many of the country's African Americans lived in run-down inner-city areas, appointing Weaver was an attempt to show his African-American constituency that he meant business on both counts. On January 13, 1999, the National Basketball Association (NBA) superstar Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls announces his retirement from professional basketball, for the second time, in front of a crowd at Chicagos United Center.President Nixon announces that 70,000 U.S. troops will leave South Vietnam over the next three months, reducing U.S. troop strength there by May 1 to 69,000 troops.Since taking office, Nixon had withdrawn more than 400,000 American troops from Vietnam. With the reduction in total troop strength, U.S. combat deaths were down to less than 10 per week. However, Nixon still came under heavy criticism from those who charged that he was pulling out troops but, by turning to the use of air power instead of ground troops, was continuing the U.S. involvement in Vietnam rather than disengaging from the war. The last American troops would be withdrawn in March 1973 under the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords.history.com

omeg · Jan 14, 2011

01/14..........The theologian, musician, philosopher and Nobel Prize-winning physician Albert Schweitzer is born on this day in 1875 in Upper-Alsace, Germany (now Haut-Rhin, France).John Dodge, who with his brother Horace co-founded the Dodge Brothers Company, which was once America's third-largest automaker and later became part of Chrysler, dies at the age of 55.Benedict Arnold, the American general during the Revolutionary War who betrayed his country and became synonymous with the word traitor, was born on this day in 1741.An explosion aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise kills 27 people in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on this day in 1969. A rocket accidentally detonated, destroying 15 planes and injuring more than 300 people.After being released from government control, gold reaches a new record price on January 14, 1980, exceeding $800 an ounce.It was the ultimate All-American romance: the tall, handsome hero of the countrys national pastime captures the heart of the beautiful, glamorous Hollywood star. But the brief, volatile marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio--the couple wed on this day in 1954--barely got past the honeymoon before cracks began to show in its brilliant veneer.They were the most successful American pop group of the 1960sa group whose 12 #1 hits in the first full decade of the rock and roll era places them behind only Elvis and the Beatles in terms of chart dominance. They helped define the very sound of the 60s, but like fellow icons the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, they came apart in the first year of the 70s. The curtain closed for good on Diana Ross and the Supremes on January 14, 1970, at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.On this day in 1943, Franklin Roosevelt becomes the first president to travel on official business by airplane. Crossing the Atlantic by air, Roosevelt flew in a Boeing 314 Flying Boat dubbed the Dixie Clipper to a World War II strategy meeting with Winston Churchill at Casablanca in North Africa. With German U-boats taking a heavy toll on American marine traffic in the Atlantic, Roosevelt's advisors reluctantly agreed to send him via airplane. Roosevelt, at a frail 60 years old, gamely made the arduous 17,000-mile round trip. On January 14, 1973, the Miami Dolphins defeat the Washington Redskins 14-7 at the Los Angeles Coliseum in Super Bowl VII, becoming the first team in National Football League (NFL) history to finish with an undefeated season.history.com

omeg · Jan 15, 2011

On this day in 1967, at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the first-ever world championship game of American football.On January 15, 1936, Edsel Ford, the son of auto industry pioneer Henry Ford, forms a philanthropic organization called the Ford Foundation with a donation of $25,000. The foundation, which was established in part as a legal way for the Ford family to avoid the hefty inheritance taxes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration imposed on large estates, grew into a multi-billion dollar institution that today supports programs in the U.S. and over 50 other countries around the globe for the purpose of the advancement of human welfare. Fiery hot molasses floods the streets of Boston on this day in 1919, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others. The molasses burst from a huge tank at the United States Industrial Alcohol Company building in the heart of the city.Two months after the death of her half-sister, Queen Mary I of England, Elizabeth Tudor, the 25-year-old daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, is crowned Queen Elizabeth I at Westminster Abbey in London.On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. King received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 helped organized the first major protest of the African-American civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance to segregation in the South. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.On this day in 1831, Victor Hugo finishes writing Notre Dame de Paris, also known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Distracted by other projects, Hugo had continually postponed his deadlines for delivering the book to his publishers, but once he sat down to write it, he completed the novel in only four months.On January 15, 1972, American Pie, , an epic poem in musical form that has long been etched in the American popular consciousness, hits #1 on the Billboard charts.[video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsV5-Hv-7U]President Richard M. Nixon suspends military action in North Vietnam on this day in 1973, giving peace talks between his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho a chance to succeed. Asked at a news conference if U.S. troops are fighting in Vietnam, President Kennedy answers No. He was technically correct, but U.S. soldiers were serving as combat advisers with the South Vietnamese army, and U.S. pilots were flying missions with the South Vietnamese Air Force. While acting in this advisory capacity, some soldiers invariably got wounded, and press correspondents based in Saigon were beginning to see casualties from the support missions and ask questions.history.com[/video]

omeg · Jan 16, 2011

01/16...........The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes, is ratified on this day in 1919 and becomes the law of the land.On this day in 1997, comedian and TV star Bill Cosby's 27-year-old son Ennis Cosby is murdered after he stops to fix a flat tire along California's Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. The 405, which runs some 70 miles from Irvine to San Fernando, is known as one of the planet's busiest and most congested roadways.Avalanches sweep two buses off the highway between Srinagar and Jammu in Kashmir, India, on this day in 1995. Two more days of avalanches in the area eventually killed more than 200 people; 5,000 others had to be rescued.At midnight in Iraq, the United Nations deadline for the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait expires, and the Pentagon prepares to commence offensive operations to forcibly eject Iraq from its five-month occupation of its oil-rich neighbor. At 4:30 p.m. EST, the first fighter aircraft were launched from Saudi Arabia and off U.S. and British aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf on bombing missions over Iraq. All evening, aircraft from the U.S.-led military coalition pounded targets in and around Baghdad as the world watched the events transpire in television footage transmitted live via satellite from Baghdad and elsewhere. At 7:00 p.m., Operation Desert Storm, the code-name for the massive U.S.-led offensive against Iraq, was formally announced at the White House.On this day in 1942, the actress Carole Lombard, famous for her roles in such screwball comedies as My Man Godfrey and To Be or Not to Be, and for her marriage to the actor Clark Gable, is killed when the TWA DC-3 plane she is traveling in crashes en route from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. She was 33.Jazz has been called America's classical music, a label that does more than just recognize its American origins. The label also makes the case that jazz is worthy of aesthetic consideration alongside music usually thought of as classical. In the current era, when programs of Duke Ellington and J.S. Bach often draw the same highbrow crowds, that argument hardly seems controversial. In the 1930s, however, the notion was almost laughable, which is what made Benny Goodman's January 16, 1938, concert at New York City's famed Carnegie Hall so revolutionary. Goodman and his supporting cast claimed a new place for jazz on the American cultural scene that night, in what has come to be seen as the most important jazz concert in history.On this day in 1991, President George Herbert Walker Bush waits to see if Iraq will withdraw from Kuwait by midnight, a deadline mandated by the United Nations, or if war will ensue. On January 16, 1970, the seven-time Golden Glove-winning center fielder Curt Flood of the St. Louis Cardinals files suit in a New York federal court against Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, the presidents of the American and National Leagues and all 24 teams in the Major League Baseball (MLB) organization.On this day, Adolf Hitler takes to his underground bunker, where he remains for 105 days until he commits suicide.history.com

omeg · Jan 17, 2011

<em class="date-loc">Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. Inspired by advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi, King sought equality for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986. On this day in 1950, 11 men steal more than $2 million from the Brinks Armored Car depot in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the perfect crime--almost--as the culprits weren't caught until January 1956, just days before the statute of limitations for the theft expired.On this day in 1953, a prototype Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut at General Motors' (GM) Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Corvette, named for a fast type of naval warship, would eventually become an iconic American muscle car and remains in production today.A team of 11 thieves, in a precisely timed and choreographed strike, steals more than $2 million from the Brinks Armored Car depot in Boston, Massachusetts. The Great Brinks Robbery, as it quickly became known, was the almost perfect crime. Only days before the statute of limitations was set to expire on the crime, the culprits were finally caught.On this day in 1994, an earthquake rocks Los Angeles, California, killing 54 people and causing billions of dollars in damages. The Northridge quake (named after the San Fernando Valley community near the epicenter) was one of the most damaging in U.S. history.On January 17, 1961, in a nationally televised speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower addresses the American people for the last time as president. Expressing ideas that seem prophetic in retrospect, Eisenhower offered his fears and hopes for the future, warning against the unfettered growth of the military-industrial complex, as he coined it, and calling for diplomacy, restraint, and compassion in dealing with future crises with the Soviet Union. Despite his sadness that peace was not in sight, the great Allied commander offered a closing prayer to the world from America. We pray, he said, that people of all faiths, all races, all nations...will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love. On this day, a B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain's Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and one in the sea. It was not the first or last accident involving American nuclear bombs.Eight years after it began, the court battle over the legality of the video cassette recorder (VCR) and its allegedly detrimental effect on the motion-picture industry comes to an end with the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling, issued on this day in 1984, in Universal vs. Sony.Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state clerk, files suit against President Bill Clinton in the federal court in Little Rock, Arkansas, on this day in 1994, asking for $700,000 in damages. On January 17, 1916, a group of golf professionals and several leading amateur golfers gather at the Taplow Club in New York City, in a meeting that will result in the founding of the Professional Golfers Association (PGA).history.com-- Edited by PMM2008 on Monday 17th of January 2011 01:39:56 PM

Mben · Jan 17, 2011

PMM2008 wrote: On this day in 1950, 11 men steal more than $2 million from the Brinks Armored Car depot in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the perfect crime--almost--as the culprits weren't caught until January 1956, just days before the statute of limitations for the theft expired.

And they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for these meddling kids !!

omeg · Jan 18, 2011

01/18....On this day in Paris, France, some of the most powerful people in the world meet to begin the long, complicated negotiations that would officially mark the end of the First World War.January 18, 2009, marks the final day of a weeklong auction in which auto giant General Motors (GM) sells off historic cars from its Heritage Collection. GM sold around 200 vehicles at the Scottsdale, Arizona, auction, including a 1996 Buick Blackhawk concept car for $522,500, a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL-1 COPO Coupe for $319,000 and a 1959 Chevrolet Corvette convertible for $220,000. Other items included a 1998 Cadillac Brougham, which was built for the pope. (That vehicle was blessed by the pope but never used because of safety issues; it sold for more than $57,000.) Most were preproduction, development, concept or prototype cars.On this day in 1969, a spate of heavy rain begins in Southern California that results in a tragic series of landslides and floods that kills nearly 100 people. This was the worst weather-related disaster in California in the 20th century.On January 18, 1778, the English explorer Captain James Cook becomes the first European to discover the Hawaiian Islands when he sails past the island of Oahu. Two days later, he landed at Waimea on the island of Kauai and named the island group the Sandwich Islands, in honor of John Montague, who was the earl of Sandwich and one his patrons.After a two-month ordeal, the expedition of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrives at the South Pole only to find that Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, had preceded them by just over a month. Disappointed, the exhausted explorers prepared for a long and difficult journey back to their base camp.Barry Manilow's scores his first #1 single with Mandy on January 18, 1975. He would go on to sell more than 75 millions records over the course of his career.Determined to begin the American exploration of the vast mysterious regions of the Far West, President Thomas Jefferson sends a special confidential message to Congress asking for money to fund the journey of Lewis and Clark.On January 18, 1958, hockey player Willie ORee of the Boston Bruins takes to the ice for a game against the Montreal Canadiens, becoming the first black to play in the National Hockey League (NHL).history.com

omeg · Jan 19, 2011

01/19...........On this day in 1809, poet, author and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston, Massachusetts.On this day in 2007, Beijing, China, the capital city of the planet's most populous nation, gets its first drive-through McDonald's restaurant. The opening ceremony for the new two-story fast-food eatery, located next to a gas station, included traditional Chinese lion dancers and a Chinese Ronald McDonald. According to a report from The Associated Press at the time of the Beijing drive-through's debut: China's double-digit economic growth has created a burgeoning market for cars, fast food and other consumer goods. The country overtook Japan last year to become the world's second-biggest vehicle market after the U.S., with 7.2 million cars sold, a 37 percent growth. Confederate General Robert Edward Lee is born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia during most of the Civil War and his brilliant battlefield leadership earned him a reputation as one of the greatest military leaders in history as he consistently defeated larger Union armies. Heavy fog in the North Sea causes the collision of two steamers and the death of 357 people on this day in 1883.On this day in 1993, the band Fleetwood Mac reunites to perform at the recently elected U.S. President Bill Clinton's first inaugural gala.On this day in 1977, President Gerald R. Ford pardons Tokyo Rose. Although the nickname originally referred to several Japanese women who broadcast Axis propaganda over the radio to Allied troops during World War II, it eventually became synonymous with a Japanese-American woman named Iva Toguri. On the orders of the Japanese government, Toguri and other women broadcast sentimental American music and phony announcements regarding U.S. troop losses in a vain attempt to destroy the morale of Allied soldiers. On January 19, 1974, the University of Notre Dame mens basketball team defeats the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) 71-70, in South Bend, Indiana, snapping UCLAs record-setting 88-game winning streak.history.com

Mben · Jan 19, 2011

PMM2008 wrote: 01/19........... On this day in 2007, Beijing, China, the capital city of the planet's most populous nation, gets its first drive-through McDonald's restaurant. The opening ceremony for the new two-story fast-food eatery, located next to a gas station, included traditional Chinese lion dancers and a Chinese Ronald McDonald.

So has McDonald's changed their sign to read ........... OVER A GOOGLEPLEX SOLD ........... yet?

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