1374 ~ Death of Petrarch, Italian Poet & early Humanist.

1692 ~ Five women were hanged following the Salem Witch Trials for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

1834 ~ Birthday of Edgar Degas, Impressionist Painter.

1848 ~ America’s first women's rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, N.Y. and "Bloomers" were introduced.

1870 ~ The Franco-Prussian war began.

1941 ~ Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign in Europe.

1947 ~ Death of Aung San, Burmese nationalist. Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, is now the leader of the Burmese opposition to the current military regime.

1996 ~ Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic was forced out of office.

2003 ~ Death of Bill Bright, evangelist, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.

2008 ~ Death of Anastasia Blue, Porn Actress.

__________________
Eudaimonia

1933 ~ In London, 500,000 marched against anti-Semitism.

1938 ~ Birthday of Dame Diana Rigg, Actress (The Avengers, In This House of Brede).

1938 ~ Birthday of Natalie Wood, Actress (Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story).

1944 ~ Adolf Hitler was slightly wounded when a bomb exploded at his Rastenburg headquarters.

1946 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives voted 265-79 to put control of atomic energy in the hands of a civilian body, the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than leave the military in control.

1960 ~ Ceylon elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first female head of government.

1969 ~ Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon.

1974 ~ Turkey invaded Cyprus.

1999 ~ After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was lifted to the surface.

2004 ~ The UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel tear down the barrier it was building to seal off the West Bank.

__________________
Eudaimonia

42 years since the Eagle landed in Tranquility. Seems like yesterday.

__________________
Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

1899 ~ Birthday of Ernest Hemingway , American Author.

1861 ~ First Battle of Bull Run - the first major battle of the American Civil War began.

1911 ~ Birthday of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian Communications Theorist.

1925 ~ In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

1948 ~ Birthday of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), English Singer.

1954 ~ France surrendered North Vietnam to the Viet Minh.

1970 ~ The Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed at the end of eleven years of construction

1994 ~ Tony Blair was declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party.

1998 ~ Death of Alan Shepard , Astronaut.

2006 ~ Death Ta Mok, Khmer Rouge war criminal.

__________________
Eudaimonia

1822 ~ Birthday of Br. Gregor Mendel, Austrian Geneticist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Gustav Hertz, German Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1925.

1898 ~ Birthday of Alexander Calder, American Artist.

1933 ~ Wiley Post became the first man to fly solo around the world.

1934 ~ John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI agents in Chicago.

1967 ~ Death of Carl Sandburg, Poet.

1977 ~ Deng Xiaoping returned to Chinese Government.

1992 ~ Pablo Escobar, fearing extradition to the U.S., escaped from his luxury prison.

2003 ~ Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were killed when U.S. forces stormed a villa in Mosul, Iraq.

2005 ~ Death of Jean Charles de Menezes, Brazilian electrician.

__________________
Eudaimonia

1892 ~ Birthday of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia.

1914 ~ Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

1942 ~ The Treblinka extermination camp opened.

1952 ~ Creation of the European Coal and Steel community. This gave birth to European Economic Community (EEC), which itself later became the European Union.

1962 ~ Telstar relayed the first live trans-Atlantic television signal.

1973 ~ Birthday of Monica Lewinsky, White House intern.

1982 ~ The International Whaling Commission voted a moratorium on commercial whaling by 1985-86.

1984 ~ Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign her title, because of nude photographs published in Penthouse magazine.

1986 ~ Prince Andrew, Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

2002 ~ Death of Leo McKern , Australian actor, and one of my favorites.

__________________
Eudaimonia

2002 ~ Death of Leo McKern , Australian actor, and one of my favorites.

. . . and the judge said to the prisoner, "Before I pass sentence upon you, is there anything you wish to say?"

The prisoner replied, "Bugger all Your Worship."

The Judge looked at his soliciter and said, "What did he say?"

"He said 'Bugger all Your Worship'."

"Funny, I could have sworn I saw his lips move."


Rumpole was great.

__________________
Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

1783 ~ Birthday of Simón Bolívar, South American liberator.

1898 ~ Birthday of Amelia Earhart, American Aviatrix.

1924 ~ The World Chess Federation, FIDE, was founded in Paris.

1943 ~ The RAF Bomber Command bombed Hamburg by night, USAAF 8th Air Force Bomber Command by day. By the end of the operation, 9,000 tons of explosive & incendiary bombs created a firestorm which killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

1948 ~ Marvin the Martian made his first appearance.

1959 ~ Khrushchev and Nixon had a war of words in the “Kitchen Debate”.

1967 ~ During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declared in Montreal "Vive le Québec libre!" (Long live free Quebec!). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

1974 ~ Death of James Chadwick, English physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1935.

1980 ~ Birthday of Gauge, Porn Star.

1980 ~ Death of Peter Sellers, Actor.

__________________
Eudaimonia

1834 ~ Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet. (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner & Kubla Khan )

1907 ~ Korea became a protectorate of Japan.

1917 ~ Sir Thomas Whyte introduced the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

1848 ~ Birthday of Arthur Balfour, UK PM, remembered for issuing the British declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1946 ~ Crossroads Baker, a 21-kiloton nuclear weapon was detonated underwater in the lagoon of Bikini atoll.

1956 ~ 51 people died when the Italian liner Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish ship Stockholm.

1976 ~ Birthday of Tera Patrick, Porn Actress.

1978 ~ Louise Brown, the first baby conceived by in-vitro fertilization, was born in Oldham, England.

1984 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.

2000 ~ An Air France Concorde crashed just after takeoff from Paris, killing 113.

__________________
Eudaimonia

1956 ~ 51 people died when the Italian liner Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish ship Stockholm.


Not an early expression of the Stockholm Syndrome.

__________________
Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

1856 ~ Birthday of George Bernard Shaw, Author, Playwright, awarded t he Nobel Prize in Literature 1925.

1882 ~ Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" premiered at Bayreuth.

1898 ~ Birthday of Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft engineer and designer.

1928 ~ Birthday of Stanley Kubrick, Movie Director.

1943 ~ Birthday of Mick Jagger, English Musician. (Rolling Stones)

1947 ~ U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

1953 ~ Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution began.

1956 ~ Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.

1973 ~ Birthday of Vaniity, Tanssexual Porn Actress.

1991 ~ Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, was arrested for allegedly masturbating at a Sarasota, Florida adult theatre.

__________________
Eudaimonia

1973 ~ Birthday of Vaniity, Tanssexual Porn Actress.

It's nice to see an actress with a nice tan.

__________________
Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

1904 ~ Birthday of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1946 ~ Death of Gertrude Stein, American Writer & Cult Figure.

1949 ~ Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner.

1953 ~ The Korean War stopped. The U.S., People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea signed an armistice agreement.

1974 ~ The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to recommend the first article of impeachment against President Nixon: Obstruction of Justice.

1980 ~ Death of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.

1984 ~ Death of James Mason, English actor.

1990 ~ Belarus declared independence from the Soviet Union.

2002 ~ Ukraine airshow disaster.

2003 ~ Death of Bob Hope, English-born Entertainer.

__________________
Eudaimonia

1741 ~ Death of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Composer.

1750 ~ Death of Johann Sebastian Bach, German Composer.

1794 ~ Maximilien Robespierre, a leading figure of the French Revolution, was sent to the guillotine.

1866 ~ Birthday of Beatrix Potter, English Author. (The Tale of Peter Rabbit)

1868 ~ The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed Congress, which integrated Due Process & Equal Protection into the constitution.

1904 ~ Birthday of Pavel Cherenkov, Soviet Physicist, awarded one third the Nobel Prize in Physics 1958.

1914 ~ World War I began as Austria declared war on Serbia.

1996 ~ The remains of a prehistoric man, Kennewick Man, was discovered near Kennewick, Washington.

1998 ~ Monica Lewinsky was given blanket immunity from prosecution in exchange for grand jury testimony in the investigation of her relationship with President Bill Clinton.

2004 ~ Death of Professor Francis Harry Compton Crick, awarded one third the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 for his contributions towards understanding the role of DNA in genetics.

__________________
Eudaimonia

1905 ~ Birthday of Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary-General. Awarded the The Nobel Peace Prize 1961.

1907 ~ Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts movement with the first scout camp at Brownsea Island.

1958 ~ The U.S. Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1969 ~ Birthday of Adele Stevens, English porn star.

1974 ~ Death of Mama Cass Elliot, Musician.

1975 ~ Death of James Blish, Science Fiction Writer.

1981 ~ Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, Prince of Wales.

1993 ~ The Israeli Supreme Court acquitted Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges.

1996 ~ The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act was struck down as too broad in U.S. federal court.

2005 ~ Astronomers Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz announced their discovery of Eris.

__________________
Eudaimonia