Post by farmgal on Sept 14, 2012 8:25:06 GMT -5
September 15th is the 259th day of this leap year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 107 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days until Election Day, Tuesday November 6, 2012: 52
Countdown until Obama leaves Office www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1960 - Amos Alonzo Stagg retires as a football coach at 98. On September 16, 1960, the 70-year coaching career of Amos Alonzo Stagg came to an end when Stagg announced to Hall that he was officially resigning his position. At age 98, football's "Grand Old Man" was through coaching. He was the first college coach to win 100 football games and the first to win 200 games. He was the second coach in college history to win 300 games when he won number 300 on November 6, 1943 against St. Mary's of California at age 81. His overall record as head football coach was 314-199-35.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Alonzo_Stagg
1961 The Baptist World Mission was founded in Chicago, Illinois.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptist_World_Mission
www.baptistworldmission.org/
1961 - "Michael" by The Highwaymen topped the charts
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Row_the_Boat_Ashore
1961 - Hurricane Carla strikes Texas with winds of 175 miles per hour.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Carla
1962 - Public TV channel 13 begins in NYC
1962 - The Four Seasons earn their first #1 hit with "Sherry." They were the godfathers of Italian-American soul, and though their roots were in old-fashioned doo-wop, they left that style for dead on a Newark street corner when they combined Frankie Valli's macho falsetto and the Jersey-thick background vocals of Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi with a driving R&B beat in the style of Motown or Phil Spector. While their trademark harmonies may not have been as sophisticated as those of, say, the Byrds, the Four Seasons had a sound fresh enough to remain current even after the arrival of the mighty Beatles. Indeed, the Four Seasons, along with the Beach Boys, were one of only two American groups to enjoy significant chart success before, during and after the British Invasion. Their hugely successful career reached an early high point on this day in 1962, when the song "Sherry" became their first #1 hit.
Frankie Valli (born Francis Casteluccio) had been hard at work trying to become a star for the better part of a decade before the Four Seasons achieved their breakthrough. They had come together as a group in several stages over the previous four years, changing their name in 1961 from the Four Lovers after failing an audition at a New Jersey bowling alley called The Four Seasons. It was keyboard player Bob Gaudio who wrote the song that would launch the group’s career. He later told Billboard magazine that he banged out "Sherry" in 15 minutes before a scheduled rehearsal. Without a tape recorder, Gaudio explained, "I drove down to rehearsal humming it, trying to keep it in my mind. I had no intention of keeping the lyrics, [but] to my surprise, everybody liked them, so we didn’t change anything."
"Sherry" was released as a single in August 1962 and made it all the way to the top of the pop charts just four weeks later, on September 15. In the next six months, the Four Seasons would earn two more #1 hits with "Big Girls Don’t Cry" and "Walk Like A Man," making them the only American group ever to earn three consecutive #1 hits. "Rag Doll" gave the group its fourth #1 in the summer of 1964, and many other Top 40 hits followed in the subsequent 12 years before the Four Seasons made a triumphant return to the top of the pop charts with their fifth #1 hit "December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)" in March 1976.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_(song)"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_(song)[/a][/url]
1962 - The Soviet ship Poltava heads toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
1963 - "She Loves You" was recorded by The Beatles on the Swan label.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/30/Beatles_-_She_Loves_You.jpg/220px-Beatles_-_She_Loves_You.jpg
1963 - Four black schoolgirls killed in Birmingham. On this day in 1963, a bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls.
With its large African-American congregation, the 16th Street Baptist Church served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who once called Birmingham a "symbol of hardcore resistance to integration." Alabama's governor, George Wallace, made preserving racial segregation one of the central goals of his administration, and Birmingham had one of the most violent and lawless chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
The church bombing was the third in Birmingham in 11 days after a federal order came down to integrate Alabama’s school system. Fifteen sticks of dynamite were planted in the church basement, underneath what turned out to be the girls' restroom. The bomb detonated at 10:19 a.m., killing Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins--all 14 years old--and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Immediately after the blast, church members wandered dazed and bloodied, covered with white powder and broken stained glass, before starting to dig in the rubble to search for survivors. More than 20 other members of the congregation were injured in the blast.
When thousands of angry black protesters assembled at the crime scene, Wallace sent hundreds of police and state troopers to the area to break up the crowd. Two young black men were killed that night, one by police and another by racist thugs. Meanwhile, public outrage over the bombing continued to grow, drawing international attention to Birmingham. At a funeral for three of the girls (one's family preferred a separate, private service), King addressed more than 8,000 mourners.
A well-known Klan member, Robert Chambliss, was charged with murder and with buying 122 sticks of dynamite. In October 1963, Chambliss was cleared of the murder charge and received a six-month jail sentence and a $100 fine for the dynamite. Although a subsequent FBI investigation identified three other men--Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Cash and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr.--as having helped Chambliss commit the crime, it was later revealed that FBI chairman J. Edgar Hoover blocked their prosecution and shut down the investigation without filing charges in 1968. After Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the case, Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison.
Efforts to prosecute the other three men believed responsible for the bombing continued for decades. Though Cash died in 1994, Cherry and Blanton were arrested and charged with four counts of murder in 2000. Blanton was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry's trial was delayed after judges ruled he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. This decision was later reversed. On May 22, 2002, Cherry was convicted and sentenced to life, bringing a long-awaited victory to the friends and families of the four young victims.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Baptist_Church
1964 - NLF calls for general military offensive. The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, or as it was more popularly known, the National Liberation Front (NLF), calls for a general military offensive to take advantage of the 'disarray' among the South Vietnamese, particularly after the abortive coup attempt against General Khanh's government in Saigon on September 13 and 14.
The NLF was the formal political organization behind the Viet Cong and sought to unite all aspects of the South Vietnamese people who were disaffected with the Saigon government. From the beginning, the NLF was completely dominated by the communist Lao Dong Party Central Committee in Hanoi and served as North Vietnam's shadow government in the South.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_for_the_Liberation_of_South_Vietnam
1966 - Metropolitan Opera opens at NY's Lincoln Center
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Opera
1966 - The American Bible Society published the New Testament of its "Today's English Version" (TEV), otherwise known as "Good News for Modern Man." It marked the end of a two-year effort led by chief translator, Robert G. Bratcher. (The complete Good News Bible was published in 1976.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bible_Society
1966 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_at_Austin#1966_shooting_spree
1968 - Richard Nixon appears on "Laugh-in"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laugh-In
1972 - South Vietnamese forces retake Quang Tri City
ARVN forces recapture Quang Tri City after four days of heavy fighting, with the claim that over 8,135 NVA had been killed in the battle.
The North Vietnamese forces had launched a massive offensive, called the Nguyen Hue or "Easter Offensive," on March 31, with three main attacks aimed at Quang Tri south of the Demilitarized Zone, Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc just 60 miles north of Saigon. This invasion included 14 divisions and 26 separate regiments, a total force numbering over 120,000 troops, and was designed to knock South Vietnam out of the war and inflict a defeat on the remaining U.S. forces (which numbered less than 70,000 by this date due to President Nixon's Vietnamization policy and the American troop withdrawal schedule). The North Vietnamese attack was characterized by conventional combined arms attacks by tank and infantry forces supported by massive artillery barrages, resulting in some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
The South Vietnamese forces and their American advisors supported by U.S. tactical airpower and B-52 bombers were able to hold at An Loc and Kontum despite being vastly outnumbered, but the South Vietnamese forces at Quang Tri faltered under the communist assault and were quickly overwhelmed. It was only after President Thieu fired the I Corps commander and replaced him with Major General Ngo Quang Truong, arguably one of the best officers in the South Vietnamese army, that the ARVN were able to stop the North Vietnamese. Truong took measures to stabilize the situation and the South Vietnamese began to fight back. After a tremendously bloody four-and-a-half-month battle in which 977 South Vietnamese soldiers perished, Truong and his troops retook Quang Tri from the North Vietnamese, winning a major victory. President Nixon used this as proof positive that his Vietnamization policy had worked and that the South Vietnamese were prepared to take over responsibility for the war.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quang_Tri_City
1974 - President Gerald R. Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford#Presidential_Proclamation_4313
1981 - The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor
The original locomotive under steam in 1981
1981 - The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operates it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bull_(locomotive)#Operating_again_after_150_years
1982 - A snowstorm over Wyoming produced 16.9 inches at Lander to esablish a 24 hour record for September for that location. (13th-15th) (The Weather Channel)
1987 - United States Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze sign a treaty to establish centers to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
1987 - The first snow of the season was observed at the Winter Park ski resort in Colorado early in the day. Eight inches of snow was reported at the Summit of Mount Evans, along with wind gusts to 61 mph. Early morning thunderstorms in Texas produced up to six inches of rain in Real County. Two occupants of a car drowned, and the other six occupants were injured as it was swept into Camp Wood Creek, near the town of Leakey. Late afternoon and evening thunderstorms produced severe weather in central and northeastern Oklahoma. Wind gusts to 70 mph and golf ball size hail were reported around Oklahoma City OK. (National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1988 - Thunderstorms brought much needed rains to parts of the central U.S. Rainfall totals of 2.87 inches at Sioux City IA and 4.59 inches at Kansas City MO were records for the date. Up to eight inches of rain deluged the Kansas City area, nearly as much rain as was received the previous eight months. Hurricane Gilbert, meanwhile, slowly churned toward the U.S./Mexican border. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 - Showers and thunderstorms produced locally heavy rain in the Central Appalachians. Virgie VA received 2.60 inches of rain during the evening hours, and Bartlett TN was deluged with 2.75 inches in just ninety minutes. Heavy rain left five cars partially submerged in high water in a parking lot at Bulls Gap TN. Thunderstorms over central North Carolina drenched the Fayetteville area with four to eight inches of rain between 8 PM and midnight. Flash flooding, and a couple of dam breaks, claimed the lives of two persons, and caused ten million dollars damage. Hugo, churning over the waters of the Carribean, strengthened to the category of a very dangerous hurricane, packing winds of 150 mph. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
1997 - Two popular diet drugs, fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, were withdrawn from the market by their manufacturers after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a possible link between heart-valve damage and these drugs - often used in combination with another appetite suppressant, phentermine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenfluramine/phentermine
1998 - The rings around the planet Jupiter were declared to be made of dust from the impacts of cosmic bodies that crashed into Jupiter's moons. The idea came from studies of the rings made by scientists at several institutions.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Planetary_rings
1998 - With the landmark merger of WorldCom and MCI Communications completed the day prior, the new MCI WorldCom opens its doors for business.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_WorldCom
2002 - This was the 366th day to be added to the Today in Science History site, now providing a web page for every day of the year. The project began on 18 Jun 1999, and new entries are continuing to be added.
todayinsci.com/
2004 - National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Bettman
2008 - Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers#Bankruptcy
Births
1254 - Marco Polo, Italian explorer (d 1324)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo
1789 - James Fenimore Cooper, American novelist (d 1851)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fenimore_Cooper
1852 - Jan Ernst Matzeliger (d 1889) Dutch Guianian-American inventor, best known for his shoe-lasting machine that mechanically shaped the upper portions of shoes. He settled in Lynn, Massachussetts, at about age 25, where he became interested in lasting shoes by machines. Over a period of six months, he made a wooden model and received a patent for his invention on 20 Mar 1883. Within two years, the machine quickly replaced hand methods in Lynn. He continued to develop shoe-manufacturing machinery.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Ernst_Matzeliger
1852 - Edward Bouchet, American physicist, first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from an American University and was the first African-American to graduate from Yale University in 1874. (d. 1918)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bouchet
1885 Adam Geibel, (d 3 Aug 1933) An improperly treated eye infection left him nearly blind from age eight. However, he studied music and became a church organist, conductor and prolific composer. He formed his own publishing company which later merged with the Rodeheaver Hall-Mack Company. Geibel was especially gifted in writing music for men's voices. Of his many original tunes, one of the most popular is that to which we sing "Stand up, Stand up for Jesus."
www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/g/e/i/geibel_a.htm
1857 William Howard Taft, Cincinnati, Ohio Taft was born into a politically active family; his father had served as President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war. He attended college at Yale University, graduating second in his class. He then attended Cincinnati Law School earning his law degree in 1880. After serving in private practice and as solicitor general to President Benjamin Harrison (1890 – 1896), Taft joined the faculty at Yale University, where he taught law until 1900.
In 1900, Taft was appointed governor of the Philippines by President William McKinley. He then served as Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1904 to 1908. A Progressive Republican, Taft was a pacifist compared to many of his imperialist contemporaries; he advocated multilateral, international efforts to solve conflicts between nations. Taft did wage war against domestic economic monopolies, however. From the time he was elected the nation’s 27th president in 1909, Taft quietly continued Theodore Roosevelt’s policy of busting monopolies in the steel and railroad industries and created the first federal Department of Labor to promote the welfare of America’s workers.
After retiring from the presidency, Taft became the first and only former president to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a position he held for nine years after being appointed by President Warren Harding in 1921. As chief justice, Taft gave the oath of office to Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover at their inaugurations in 1923 and 1929, respectively.
Health complications led to Taft’s resignation as chief justice in February 1930; he died a month later, on March 3, from heart failure. Taft was the first former president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft[/a][/url]
1863 - Horatio Parker, American composer (d 1919)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Parker
1867 John Mühlhäuser, founder of the Wisconsin Synod, (b 9 Aug 1804, Notzingen, Württemberg).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Evangelical_Lutheran_Synod
1879 - Frank Eugene Lutz (d 1943) American entomologist, museum curator, educator, conservationist, and writer who was probably the leading U.S. entomologist of the first half of the twentieth century. He who taught that insects were an integral part of the environment. As a boy, his fascination as a boy watching a caterpillar shedding its skin developed into a lifelong interest in insects. In 1909, he joined the American Museum of Natural History and became (1921) the first curator of the newly created Department of Entomology, where he remained for the rest of life. He created popular museum exhibits, including the first insect dioramas and "insect zoos" featuring live specimens. In the 1920s, established the country's first guided nature trail in Harriman State Park, New York.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Eugene_Lutz
1889 - Robert Benchley, American author (d 1945)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Benchley
1890 - Agatha Christie Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller, later known as Agatha Christie, is born on this day in Torquay, Devon, England.
Raised and educated at Ashfield, her parents' comfortable home, Christie began making up stories as a child. Her mother and her older sister Madge also made up stories: Madge told especially thrilling tales about a fictional, mentally deranged older sister. Agatha married Colonel Archibald Christie in 1914, before World War I, and had one daughter. While her husband was off fighting in World War I, Christie worked as an assistant in a pharmacy, where she learned about poisons. She began to write on a dare from her sister and produced her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), featuring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who would appear in 25 more novels during the next quarter century. The novel found modest success, and she continued writing. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) became a bestseller, and she enjoyed phenomenal success for the rest of her life.
However, about this time Christie entered a period of emotional turmoil after the death of her mother and a divorce from her first husband. She disappeared for 11 days, eventually turning up at a health spa. Her disappearance was highly publicized, and an expensive government search ensued. She was later criticized for not coming forward with her whereabouts earlier.
In 1930, she married archeologist Sir Max Mallowan and accompanied him on expeditions to the Middle East, which became the setting for many of her novels. She created Miss Marple, one of her most beloved detectives, in 1930. All told, Christie wrote some 80 novels, 30 short story collections, and 15 plays, plus six romances under the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was knighted in 1971 and died in 1976, just a year after she killed off Poirot in the novel Curtain: Hercule Poirot's Last Case. Poirot received a front-page obituary in the New York Times on August 6, 1975. By the time Christie died, more than 400 million copies of her books had been sold in more than 100 languages.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie[/a][/url]
1903 - Roy Acuff, American country musician (d 1992)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Acuff
1905 Samuel G. Green (b 1822), English Baptist preacher, died. He began his career as a pastor in 1844 but switched to teaching in 1851. He later worked with both the London Religious Tract Society and the John Rylands Library. His most important book is the Handbook to the Grammar of the Greek Testament, written for beginning Greek students.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Tract_Society
1907 - Fay Wray, Canadian-born American actress (d 2004)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Wray
1913 - John N. Mitchell, United States Attorney General and Watergate figure (d 1988)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Mitchell
1914 - Creighton Abrams, American Army general who commanded military operations in the Vietnam War from 1968–72 which saw U.S. troop strength in Vietnam fall from a peak of 543,000 to 49,000. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1972 until shortly before his death in 1974. In honor of Abrams, the U.S. Army named the XM1 main battle tank the M1 Abrams.(d 1974)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creighton_Abrams
1916 - Frederick C. Weyand, Former U.S. Army General, the last commander of US military operations in the Vietnam War from 1972 to 1973, and served as the 28th US Army Chief of Staff from 1974 to 1976. (d 2010)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_C._Weyand
1918 - Nipsey Russell, American comedian, best known today for his appearances as a guest panelist on game shows from the 1960s through the 1990s, especially Match Game, Password, Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth and Pyramid. His appearances were distinguished in part by the short, humorous poems he would recite during the broadcast. These lyrics became so closely associated with Russell that Dick Clark, Bill Cullen, Betty White, and others regularly referred to him as "the poet laureate of television." He also had a leading role in the film version of The Wiz as the Tin Man. He was also a frequent guest on the long-running "Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" series. (d 2005)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipsey_Russell
1919 - Nelson Gidding, American screenwriter, I Want To Live! (1958), (d 2004)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Gidding
1922 - Jackie Cooper, (d 3nMay 2011) American actor, television director, producer and executive. He was a child actor who managed to make the transition to an adult career. Cooper was the first child actor to receive an Academy Award nomination. At age 9, he was also the youngest performer to have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role—an honor that he received for the film Skippy (1931).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Cooper
1928 - Cannonball Adderley, American saxophonist and bandleader (d 1975)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Adderley
1929 - Eva Burrows, the 13th General of The Salvation Army
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Burrows
1929 - Murray Gell-Mann American theoretical physicist who predicted the existance of quarks, for which he won the 1969 Nobel Prize. His first major contribution to high-energy physics was made in 1953, when he demonstrated how some puzzling features of hadrons (particles responsive to the strong force) could be explained by a new quantum number, which he called "strangeness". In 1964, he (and Yuval Ne'eman) proposed the eightfold way to define the structure of particles. This led to Gell-Mann's postulate of the quark, a name he coined.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann
1937 - Robert Lucas, Jr., American economist, Nobel laureate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lucas,_Jr.
1938 - Gaylord Perry, former Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher. He pitched from 1962-1983 for eight different teams in his career. During a 22-year baseball career, Perry compiled 314 wins, 3,534 strikeouts, and a 3.11 earned run average. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.
Perry, a five-time All-Star, was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in each league, winning it in the American League in 1972 with the Cleveland Indians and in the National League in 1978 with the San Diego Padres. He is also distinguished, along with his brother Jim, for being the second-winningest brother combination in baseball history—second only to the knuckleballing Niekro brothers, Phil and Joe. While pitching for the Seattle Mariners in 1982, Perry became the fifteenth member of the 300 win club.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaylord_Perry
1940 - Merlin Olsen, (d 2010) American football player in the National Football League, NFL commentator, and actor. He played his entire 15-year career with the Los Angeles Rams and was elected to the Pro Bowl in 14 of those seasons, a current record shared with Bruce Matthews. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame. As an actor he portrayed the farmer Jonathan Garvey on Little House on the Prairie. After leaving that series, he starred in his own NBC drama, Father Murphy, playing the title role of a foster dad posing as a traveling priest.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_Olsen
1941 - Signe Toly Anderson American singer, one of the founding members of the American rock band Jefferson Airplane.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signe_Toly_Anderson
1945 - Jessye Norman, American opera singer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessye_Norman
1946 - Tommy Lee Jones, American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive.
His other notable starring roles include former Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call in the award-winning TV mini-series Lonesome Dove, Agent K in Men in Black and its sequels, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men, the villain "Two-Face" in Batman Forever, terrorist William Strannix in Under Siege, a Texas Ranger in Man of the House, rancher Pete Perkins in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which also served as his directorial debut, and Colonel Chester Phillips in Captain America: The First Avenger. Jones has also portrayed real-life figures such as businessman Howard Hughes, executed murderer Gary Gilmore, Oliver Lynn, husband of Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter, and baseball great Ty Cobb.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Lee_Jones
1946 - Oliver Stone, American film director
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone
1961 - Dan Marino, former American football quarterback who played for the Miami Dolphins in the National Football League. The last quarterback of the Quarterback Class of 1983 to be taken in the first round, Marino became one of the most prolific quarterbacks in league history, holding or having held almost every major NFL passing record. Despite never being on a Super Bowl-winning team, he is recognized as one of the greatest quarterbacks in American football history. Best remembered for his quick release and powerful arm, Marino led the Dolphins to the playoffs ten times in his seventeen-season career. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Marino
1967 - Paul Abbott, former Major League Baseball pitcher who played from 1990-2004. Over 162 games, Abbott had a 43-37 record, with 496 strikeouts and a 4.92 ERA.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Abbott_(baseball)
Marriage
1794 - James Madison marries Dolley Payne Todd. On this day in 1794, future President James Madison marries Dolley Payne Todd, a vivacious widow who went on to embrace the role of first lady and White House hostess.
While Madison was serving as vice president from 1801 to 1809, Dolley assumed the role of White House hostess for the widower president, Thomas Jefferson. While Madison was president in 1814, during the War of 1812 with the British, Dolley was left behind in the White House while her husband went into the field. As British troops marched on Washington, Dolley famously took down an enormous portrait of George Washington and smuggled it out of the city to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy.
In terms of personality and style, the couple was a study in contrasts. The 5’ 4" intellectual Madison was shy and sickly-looking; he paled in comparison to his robust, voluptuous and lively wife. Dolley was described as having all the social graces and zest for life that her husband lacked. The couple was devoted to each other and, after his retirement from the presidency, she helped him organize and prepare his presidential papers for publication.
Following Madison’s death in 1836, Dolley was forced to pay debts incurred by their financially reckless son and was left penniless. Her financial distress was relieved when Congress purchased Madison’s papers from her. Congress also gave the enormously popular and influential former first lady an honorary seat in Congress, from which she frequently viewed sessions. She passed away in Washington, D.C. in 1849 at the age of 81.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolley_Payne_Todd
Deaths
1794 - Abraham Clark, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (b 1725)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Clark
1805 - Christopher Gadsden, American soldier and statesman from South Carolina (b 1724)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Gadsden
1835 - Sarah Knox Taylor, American wife of Jefferson Davis (b. 1814)
1885 - Jumbo, P. T. Barnum's circus elephant (hit by a train) (b. 1861)
1898 - William Seward Burroughs (b 1855) American inventor of the first recording adding machine and pioneer of its manufacture. It was because Burroughs began his career as a bank clerk that he was inspired to invent such a mechanical device. On 10 Jan 1885 he submitted his first patent (issued 399,116 on 21 Aug 1888) for his "calculating machine," In 1886, Burroughs and several St. Louis businessmen formed the American Arithmometer Co. to market the machine. Burroughs was dissatisfied with the durability of this first model. His 1892 patent not only improved the machine but added a printer. The company later became Burroughs Corporation (1905) and eventually Unisyswww.todayinsci.com/B/Burroughs_William/BurroughsAddingMachine.htm
1932 Charles H. Gabriel (b. 18 August 1856), American sacred music composer.
www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/g/a/b/gabriel_ch.htm
1962 - William W(eber) Coblentz (b 1873) American physicist and astronomer whose work lay primarily in infrared spectroscopy. In 1905 he founded the radiometry section of the National Bureau of Standards, which he headed for 40 years. Coblentz measured the infrared radiation from stars, planets, and nebulae and was the first to determine accurately the constants of blackbody radiation, thus confirming Planck's law.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Coblentz
1964 - Alfred Blalock (b 1899) American surgeon who (with pediatric cardiologist Helen B. Taussig) devised a surgical treatment for infants born with the "blue baby" syndrome (tetralogy of Fallot), which consists of a hole in the wall between the heart's two major chambers (ventricles)*. Earlier in his career he did pioneering work on the nature and treatment of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock. He demonstrated that surgical shock resulted primarily from the loss of blood, and he encouraged the use of plasma or whole-blood transfusions as treatment following the onset of shock. By 29 Nov 1944, he made the first operation on a cyanotic infant with blue-baby syndrome using his procedure, known as the subclavian-pulmonary artery anastomosis.
*Incomplete description of the tetralogy of Fallot. For a better description see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetralogy_of_Fallot
1965 - Steve Brown, American musician (b 1890)
Fisher presided at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
1972 - Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury (1945–1961)(b 1887)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Fisher
1980 - Bill Evans, American jazz pianist (b. 1929)
1985 - Cootie Williams, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1910)
1989 - Robert Penn Warren, American writer (b. 1905)
1989 - Olga Erteszek, American undergarment designer and lingerie company owner (b. 1916)
2000 - Vincent Canby, American movie critic (b. 1924)
2005 - Sidney Luft, American film director (b. 1915)
2007 - Brett Somers, Canadian-born American actress and Match Game panelist (b. 1924)
Holidays and observances
Christian Feast Day:
Catherine of Genoa
Joseph Abibos
Nicomedes
Our Lady of Sorrows
September 15 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Great-martyr Nicetas the Goth (372)
Saint Philoteus the Presbyter (10th century)
Martyr Porphyrius the Actor of Caesarea (362)
Martyrs Theodotus, Asclepiodotus, and Maximus of Adrianopolis (305-311)
Saints Bessarion I and Bessarion II, archbishops of Larissa (16th century)
Saint Gerasimos, abbot and founder of Monastery Sourvia in Macrynitsa, Mysia, ca (1740)
Saint Joseph, abbot, of Alaverdi Monastery in Georgia (570)
Martyr John of Crete at New Ephesus (1811)
Saint Joseph the New of Partoёs, metropolitan of Timiёsoara (Romania) (1656)
Other Commemorations
Uncovering of the relics of Saint Acacius, Bishop of Melitene
Uncovering of the relics of the Holy Protomartyr and Archdeacon Stephen (relics uncovered in 415)
Earliest day on which POW/MIA Recognition Day can fall, celebrated on the third Friday in September. (United States)
Earliest day on which German-American Steuben Parade can fall, celebrated on the third Saturday in September. (United States, especially New York City)[/size]
www.amug.org/~jpaul/sep15.html
www.todayinsci.com/9/9_15.htm
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_15
www.amug.org/~jpaul/sep16.html
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ali-defeats-spinks-to-win-world-heavyweight-championship
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.hymntime.com/tch/index.htm
www.christianity.com/churchhistory/
There are 107 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days until Election Day, Tuesday November 6, 2012: 52
Countdown until Obama leaves Office www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1960 - Amos Alonzo Stagg retires as a football coach at 98. On September 16, 1960, the 70-year coaching career of Amos Alonzo Stagg came to an end when Stagg announced to Hall that he was officially resigning his position. At age 98, football's "Grand Old Man" was through coaching. He was the first college coach to win 100 football games and the first to win 200 games. He was the second coach in college history to win 300 games when he won number 300 on November 6, 1943 against St. Mary's of California at age 81. His overall record as head football coach was 314-199-35.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Alonzo_Stagg
1961 The Baptist World Mission was founded in Chicago, Illinois.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptist_World_Mission
www.baptistworldmission.org/
1961 - "Michael" by The Highwaymen topped the charts
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Row_the_Boat_Ashore
1961 - Hurricane Carla strikes Texas with winds of 175 miles per hour.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Carla
1962 - Public TV channel 13 begins in NYC
1962 - The Four Seasons earn their first #1 hit with "Sherry." They were the godfathers of Italian-American soul, and though their roots were in old-fashioned doo-wop, they left that style for dead on a Newark street corner when they combined Frankie Valli's macho falsetto and the Jersey-thick background vocals of Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi with a driving R&B beat in the style of Motown or Phil Spector. While their trademark harmonies may not have been as sophisticated as those of, say, the Byrds, the Four Seasons had a sound fresh enough to remain current even after the arrival of the mighty Beatles. Indeed, the Four Seasons, along with the Beach Boys, were one of only two American groups to enjoy significant chart success before, during and after the British Invasion. Their hugely successful career reached an early high point on this day in 1962, when the song "Sherry" became their first #1 hit.
Frankie Valli (born Francis Casteluccio) had been hard at work trying to become a star for the better part of a decade before the Four Seasons achieved their breakthrough. They had come together as a group in several stages over the previous four years, changing their name in 1961 from the Four Lovers after failing an audition at a New Jersey bowling alley called The Four Seasons. It was keyboard player Bob Gaudio who wrote the song that would launch the group’s career. He later told Billboard magazine that he banged out "Sherry" in 15 minutes before a scheduled rehearsal. Without a tape recorder, Gaudio explained, "I drove down to rehearsal humming it, trying to keep it in my mind. I had no intention of keeping the lyrics, [but] to my surprise, everybody liked them, so we didn’t change anything."
"Sherry" was released as a single in August 1962 and made it all the way to the top of the pop charts just four weeks later, on September 15. In the next six months, the Four Seasons would earn two more #1 hits with "Big Girls Don’t Cry" and "Walk Like A Man," making them the only American group ever to earn three consecutive #1 hits. "Rag Doll" gave the group its fourth #1 in the summer of 1964, and many other Top 40 hits followed in the subsequent 12 years before the Four Seasons made a triumphant return to the top of the pop charts with their fifth #1 hit "December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)" in March 1976.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_(song)"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_(song)[/a][/url]
1962 - The Soviet ship Poltava heads toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
1963 - "She Loves You" was recorded by The Beatles on the Swan label.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/30/Beatles_-_She_Loves_You.jpg/220px-Beatles_-_She_Loves_You.jpg
1963 - Four black schoolgirls killed in Birmingham. On this day in 1963, a bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls.
With its large African-American congregation, the 16th Street Baptist Church served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who once called Birmingham a "symbol of hardcore resistance to integration." Alabama's governor, George Wallace, made preserving racial segregation one of the central goals of his administration, and Birmingham had one of the most violent and lawless chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
The church bombing was the third in Birmingham in 11 days after a federal order came down to integrate Alabama’s school system. Fifteen sticks of dynamite were planted in the church basement, underneath what turned out to be the girls' restroom. The bomb detonated at 10:19 a.m., killing Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins--all 14 years old--and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Immediately after the blast, church members wandered dazed and bloodied, covered with white powder and broken stained glass, before starting to dig in the rubble to search for survivors. More than 20 other members of the congregation were injured in the blast.
When thousands of angry black protesters assembled at the crime scene, Wallace sent hundreds of police and state troopers to the area to break up the crowd. Two young black men were killed that night, one by police and another by racist thugs. Meanwhile, public outrage over the bombing continued to grow, drawing international attention to Birmingham. At a funeral for three of the girls (one's family preferred a separate, private service), King addressed more than 8,000 mourners.
A well-known Klan member, Robert Chambliss, was charged with murder and with buying 122 sticks of dynamite. In October 1963, Chambliss was cleared of the murder charge and received a six-month jail sentence and a $100 fine for the dynamite. Although a subsequent FBI investigation identified three other men--Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Cash and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr.--as having helped Chambliss commit the crime, it was later revealed that FBI chairman J. Edgar Hoover blocked their prosecution and shut down the investigation without filing charges in 1968. After Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the case, Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison.
Efforts to prosecute the other three men believed responsible for the bombing continued for decades. Though Cash died in 1994, Cherry and Blanton were arrested and charged with four counts of murder in 2000. Blanton was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry's trial was delayed after judges ruled he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. This decision was later reversed. On May 22, 2002, Cherry was convicted and sentenced to life, bringing a long-awaited victory to the friends and families of the four young victims.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Baptist_Church
1964 - NLF calls for general military offensive. The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, or as it was more popularly known, the National Liberation Front (NLF), calls for a general military offensive to take advantage of the 'disarray' among the South Vietnamese, particularly after the abortive coup attempt against General Khanh's government in Saigon on September 13 and 14.
The NLF was the formal political organization behind the Viet Cong and sought to unite all aspects of the South Vietnamese people who were disaffected with the Saigon government. From the beginning, the NLF was completely dominated by the communist Lao Dong Party Central Committee in Hanoi and served as North Vietnam's shadow government in the South.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_for_the_Liberation_of_South_Vietnam
1966 - Metropolitan Opera opens at NY's Lincoln Center
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Opera
1966 - The American Bible Society published the New Testament of its "Today's English Version" (TEV), otherwise known as "Good News for Modern Man." It marked the end of a two-year effort led by chief translator, Robert G. Bratcher. (The complete Good News Bible was published in 1976.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bible_Society
1966 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_at_Austin#1966_shooting_spree
1968 - Richard Nixon appears on "Laugh-in"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laugh-In
1972 - South Vietnamese forces retake Quang Tri City
ARVN forces recapture Quang Tri City after four days of heavy fighting, with the claim that over 8,135 NVA had been killed in the battle.
The North Vietnamese forces had launched a massive offensive, called the Nguyen Hue or "Easter Offensive," on March 31, with three main attacks aimed at Quang Tri south of the Demilitarized Zone, Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc just 60 miles north of Saigon. This invasion included 14 divisions and 26 separate regiments, a total force numbering over 120,000 troops, and was designed to knock South Vietnam out of the war and inflict a defeat on the remaining U.S. forces (which numbered less than 70,000 by this date due to President Nixon's Vietnamization policy and the American troop withdrawal schedule). The North Vietnamese attack was characterized by conventional combined arms attacks by tank and infantry forces supported by massive artillery barrages, resulting in some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
The South Vietnamese forces and their American advisors supported by U.S. tactical airpower and B-52 bombers were able to hold at An Loc and Kontum despite being vastly outnumbered, but the South Vietnamese forces at Quang Tri faltered under the communist assault and were quickly overwhelmed. It was only after President Thieu fired the I Corps commander and replaced him with Major General Ngo Quang Truong, arguably one of the best officers in the South Vietnamese army, that the ARVN were able to stop the North Vietnamese. Truong took measures to stabilize the situation and the South Vietnamese began to fight back. After a tremendously bloody four-and-a-half-month battle in which 977 South Vietnamese soldiers perished, Truong and his troops retook Quang Tri from the North Vietnamese, winning a major victory. President Nixon used this as proof positive that his Vietnamization policy had worked and that the South Vietnamese were prepared to take over responsibility for the war.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quang_Tri_City
1974 - President Gerald R. Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford#Presidential_Proclamation_4313
1981 - The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor
The original locomotive under steam in 1981
1981 - The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operates it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bull_(locomotive)#Operating_again_after_150_years
1982 - A snowstorm over Wyoming produced 16.9 inches at Lander to esablish a 24 hour record for September for that location. (13th-15th) (The Weather Channel)
1987 - United States Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze sign a treaty to establish centers to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
1987 - The first snow of the season was observed at the Winter Park ski resort in Colorado early in the day. Eight inches of snow was reported at the Summit of Mount Evans, along with wind gusts to 61 mph. Early morning thunderstorms in Texas produced up to six inches of rain in Real County. Two occupants of a car drowned, and the other six occupants were injured as it was swept into Camp Wood Creek, near the town of Leakey. Late afternoon and evening thunderstorms produced severe weather in central and northeastern Oklahoma. Wind gusts to 70 mph and golf ball size hail were reported around Oklahoma City OK. (National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1988 - Thunderstorms brought much needed rains to parts of the central U.S. Rainfall totals of 2.87 inches at Sioux City IA and 4.59 inches at Kansas City MO were records for the date. Up to eight inches of rain deluged the Kansas City area, nearly as much rain as was received the previous eight months. Hurricane Gilbert, meanwhile, slowly churned toward the U.S./Mexican border. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 - Showers and thunderstorms produced locally heavy rain in the Central Appalachians. Virgie VA received 2.60 inches of rain during the evening hours, and Bartlett TN was deluged with 2.75 inches in just ninety minutes. Heavy rain left five cars partially submerged in high water in a parking lot at Bulls Gap TN. Thunderstorms over central North Carolina drenched the Fayetteville area with four to eight inches of rain between 8 PM and midnight. Flash flooding, and a couple of dam breaks, claimed the lives of two persons, and caused ten million dollars damage. Hugo, churning over the waters of the Carribean, strengthened to the category of a very dangerous hurricane, packing winds of 150 mph. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
1997 - Two popular diet drugs, fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, were withdrawn from the market by their manufacturers after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established a possible link between heart-valve damage and these drugs - often used in combination with another appetite suppressant, phentermine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenfluramine/phentermine
1998 - The rings around the planet Jupiter were declared to be made of dust from the impacts of cosmic bodies that crashed into Jupiter's moons. The idea came from studies of the rings made by scientists at several institutions.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Planetary_rings
1998 - With the landmark merger of WorldCom and MCI Communications completed the day prior, the new MCI WorldCom opens its doors for business.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_WorldCom
2002 - This was the 366th day to be added to the Today in Science History site, now providing a web page for every day of the year. The project began on 18 Jun 1999, and new entries are continuing to be added.
todayinsci.com/
2004 - National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Bettman
2008 - Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers#Bankruptcy
Births
1254 - Marco Polo, Italian explorer (d 1324)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo
1789 - James Fenimore Cooper, American novelist (d 1851)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fenimore_Cooper
1852 - Jan Ernst Matzeliger (d 1889) Dutch Guianian-American inventor, best known for his shoe-lasting machine that mechanically shaped the upper portions of shoes. He settled in Lynn, Massachussetts, at about age 25, where he became interested in lasting shoes by machines. Over a period of six months, he made a wooden model and received a patent for his invention on 20 Mar 1883. Within two years, the machine quickly replaced hand methods in Lynn. He continued to develop shoe-manufacturing machinery.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Ernst_Matzeliger
1852 - Edward Bouchet, American physicist, first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from an American University and was the first African-American to graduate from Yale University in 1874. (d. 1918)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bouchet
1885 Adam Geibel, (d 3 Aug 1933) An improperly treated eye infection left him nearly blind from age eight. However, he studied music and became a church organist, conductor and prolific composer. He formed his own publishing company which later merged with the Rodeheaver Hall-Mack Company. Geibel was especially gifted in writing music for men's voices. Of his many original tunes, one of the most popular is that to which we sing "Stand up, Stand up for Jesus."
www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/g/e/i/geibel_a.htm
1857 William Howard Taft, Cincinnati, Ohio Taft was born into a politically active family; his father had served as President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war. He attended college at Yale University, graduating second in his class. He then attended Cincinnati Law School earning his law degree in 1880. After serving in private practice and as solicitor general to President Benjamin Harrison (1890 – 1896), Taft joined the faculty at Yale University, where he taught law until 1900.
In 1900, Taft was appointed governor of the Philippines by President William McKinley. He then served as Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1904 to 1908. A Progressive Republican, Taft was a pacifist compared to many of his imperialist contemporaries; he advocated multilateral, international efforts to solve conflicts between nations. Taft did wage war against domestic economic monopolies, however. From the time he was elected the nation’s 27th president in 1909, Taft quietly continued Theodore Roosevelt’s policy of busting monopolies in the steel and railroad industries and created the first federal Department of Labor to promote the welfare of America’s workers.
After retiring from the presidency, Taft became the first and only former president to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a position he held for nine years after being appointed by President Warren Harding in 1921. As chief justice, Taft gave the oath of office to Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover at their inaugurations in 1923 and 1929, respectively.
Health complications led to Taft’s resignation as chief justice in February 1930; he died a month later, on March 3, from heart failure. Taft was the first former president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft[/a][/url]
1863 - Horatio Parker, American composer (d 1919)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Parker
1867 John Mühlhäuser, founder of the Wisconsin Synod, (b 9 Aug 1804, Notzingen, Württemberg).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Evangelical_Lutheran_Synod
1879 - Frank Eugene Lutz (d 1943) American entomologist, museum curator, educator, conservationist, and writer who was probably the leading U.S. entomologist of the first half of the twentieth century. He who taught that insects were an integral part of the environment. As a boy, his fascination as a boy watching a caterpillar shedding its skin developed into a lifelong interest in insects. In 1909, he joined the American Museum of Natural History and became (1921) the first curator of the newly created Department of Entomology, where he remained for the rest of life. He created popular museum exhibits, including the first insect dioramas and "insect zoos" featuring live specimens. In the 1920s, established the country's first guided nature trail in Harriman State Park, New York.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Eugene_Lutz
1889 - Robert Benchley, American author (d 1945)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Benchley
1890 - Agatha Christie Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller, later known as Agatha Christie, is born on this day in Torquay, Devon, England.
Raised and educated at Ashfield, her parents' comfortable home, Christie began making up stories as a child. Her mother and her older sister Madge also made up stories: Madge told especially thrilling tales about a fictional, mentally deranged older sister. Agatha married Colonel Archibald Christie in 1914, before World War I, and had one daughter. While her husband was off fighting in World War I, Christie worked as an assistant in a pharmacy, where she learned about poisons. She began to write on a dare from her sister and produced her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), featuring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who would appear in 25 more novels during the next quarter century. The novel found modest success, and she continued writing. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) became a bestseller, and she enjoyed phenomenal success for the rest of her life.
However, about this time Christie entered a period of emotional turmoil after the death of her mother and a divorce from her first husband. She disappeared for 11 days, eventually turning up at a health spa. Her disappearance was highly publicized, and an expensive government search ensued. She was later criticized for not coming forward with her whereabouts earlier.
In 1930, she married archeologist Sir Max Mallowan and accompanied him on expeditions to the Middle East, which became the setting for many of her novels. She created Miss Marple, one of her most beloved detectives, in 1930. All told, Christie wrote some 80 novels, 30 short story collections, and 15 plays, plus six romances under the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was knighted in 1971 and died in 1976, just a year after she killed off Poirot in the novel Curtain: Hercule Poirot's Last Case. Poirot received a front-page obituary in the New York Times on August 6, 1975. By the time Christie died, more than 400 million copies of her books had been sold in more than 100 languages.
[a href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie"]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie[/a][/url]
1903 - Roy Acuff, American country musician (d 1992)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Acuff
1905 Samuel G. Green (b 1822), English Baptist preacher, died. He began his career as a pastor in 1844 but switched to teaching in 1851. He later worked with both the London Religious Tract Society and the John Rylands Library. His most important book is the Handbook to the Grammar of the Greek Testament, written for beginning Greek students.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Tract_Society
1907 - Fay Wray, Canadian-born American actress (d 2004)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Wray
1913 - John N. Mitchell, United States Attorney General and Watergate figure (d 1988)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Mitchell
1914 - Creighton Abrams, American Army general who commanded military operations in the Vietnam War from 1968–72 which saw U.S. troop strength in Vietnam fall from a peak of 543,000 to 49,000. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1972 until shortly before his death in 1974. In honor of Abrams, the U.S. Army named the XM1 main battle tank the M1 Abrams.(d 1974)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creighton_Abrams
1916 - Frederick C. Weyand, Former U.S. Army General, the last commander of US military operations in the Vietnam War from 1972 to 1973, and served as the 28th US Army Chief of Staff from 1974 to 1976. (d 2010)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_C._Weyand
1918 - Nipsey Russell, American comedian, best known today for his appearances as a guest panelist on game shows from the 1960s through the 1990s, especially Match Game, Password, Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth and Pyramid. His appearances were distinguished in part by the short, humorous poems he would recite during the broadcast. These lyrics became so closely associated with Russell that Dick Clark, Bill Cullen, Betty White, and others regularly referred to him as "the poet laureate of television." He also had a leading role in the film version of The Wiz as the Tin Man. He was also a frequent guest on the long-running "Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" series. (d 2005)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipsey_Russell
1919 - Nelson Gidding, American screenwriter, I Want To Live! (1958), (d 2004)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Gidding
1922 - Jackie Cooper, (d 3nMay 2011) American actor, television director, producer and executive. He was a child actor who managed to make the transition to an adult career. Cooper was the first child actor to receive an Academy Award nomination. At age 9, he was also the youngest performer to have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role—an honor that he received for the film Skippy (1931).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Cooper
1928 - Cannonball Adderley, American saxophonist and bandleader (d 1975)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Adderley
1929 - Eva Burrows, the 13th General of The Salvation Army
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Burrows
1929 - Murray Gell-Mann American theoretical physicist who predicted the existance of quarks, for which he won the 1969 Nobel Prize. His first major contribution to high-energy physics was made in 1953, when he demonstrated how some puzzling features of hadrons (particles responsive to the strong force) could be explained by a new quantum number, which he called "strangeness". In 1964, he (and Yuval Ne'eman) proposed the eightfold way to define the structure of particles. This led to Gell-Mann's postulate of the quark, a name he coined.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann
1937 - Robert Lucas, Jr., American economist, Nobel laureate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lucas,_Jr.
1938 - Gaylord Perry, former Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher. He pitched from 1962-1983 for eight different teams in his career. During a 22-year baseball career, Perry compiled 314 wins, 3,534 strikeouts, and a 3.11 earned run average. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.
Perry, a five-time All-Star, was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in each league, winning it in the American League in 1972 with the Cleveland Indians and in the National League in 1978 with the San Diego Padres. He is also distinguished, along with his brother Jim, for being the second-winningest brother combination in baseball history—second only to the knuckleballing Niekro brothers, Phil and Joe. While pitching for the Seattle Mariners in 1982, Perry became the fifteenth member of the 300 win club.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaylord_Perry
1940 - Merlin Olsen, (d 2010) American football player in the National Football League, NFL commentator, and actor. He played his entire 15-year career with the Los Angeles Rams and was elected to the Pro Bowl in 14 of those seasons, a current record shared with Bruce Matthews. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame. As an actor he portrayed the farmer Jonathan Garvey on Little House on the Prairie. After leaving that series, he starred in his own NBC drama, Father Murphy, playing the title role of a foster dad posing as a traveling priest.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_Olsen
1941 - Signe Toly Anderson American singer, one of the founding members of the American rock band Jefferson Airplane.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signe_Toly_Anderson
1945 - Jessye Norman, American opera singer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessye_Norman
1946 - Tommy Lee Jones, American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive.
His other notable starring roles include former Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call in the award-winning TV mini-series Lonesome Dove, Agent K in Men in Black and its sequels, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men, the villain "Two-Face" in Batman Forever, terrorist William Strannix in Under Siege, a Texas Ranger in Man of the House, rancher Pete Perkins in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which also served as his directorial debut, and Colonel Chester Phillips in Captain America: The First Avenger. Jones has also portrayed real-life figures such as businessman Howard Hughes, executed murderer Gary Gilmore, Oliver Lynn, husband of Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter, and baseball great Ty Cobb.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Lee_Jones
1946 - Oliver Stone, American film director
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone
1961 - Dan Marino, former American football quarterback who played for the Miami Dolphins in the National Football League. The last quarterback of the Quarterback Class of 1983 to be taken in the first round, Marino became one of the most prolific quarterbacks in league history, holding or having held almost every major NFL passing record. Despite never being on a Super Bowl-winning team, he is recognized as one of the greatest quarterbacks in American football history. Best remembered for his quick release and powerful arm, Marino led the Dolphins to the playoffs ten times in his seventeen-season career. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Marino
1967 - Paul Abbott, former Major League Baseball pitcher who played from 1990-2004. Over 162 games, Abbott had a 43-37 record, with 496 strikeouts and a 4.92 ERA.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Abbott_(baseball)
Marriage
1794 - James Madison marries Dolley Payne Todd. On this day in 1794, future President James Madison marries Dolley Payne Todd, a vivacious widow who went on to embrace the role of first lady and White House hostess.
While Madison was serving as vice president from 1801 to 1809, Dolley assumed the role of White House hostess for the widower president, Thomas Jefferson. While Madison was president in 1814, during the War of 1812 with the British, Dolley was left behind in the White House while her husband went into the field. As British troops marched on Washington, Dolley famously took down an enormous portrait of George Washington and smuggled it out of the city to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy.
In terms of personality and style, the couple was a study in contrasts. The 5’ 4" intellectual Madison was shy and sickly-looking; he paled in comparison to his robust, voluptuous and lively wife. Dolley was described as having all the social graces and zest for life that her husband lacked. The couple was devoted to each other and, after his retirement from the presidency, she helped him organize and prepare his presidential papers for publication.
Following Madison’s death in 1836, Dolley was forced to pay debts incurred by their financially reckless son and was left penniless. Her financial distress was relieved when Congress purchased Madison’s papers from her. Congress also gave the enormously popular and influential former first lady an honorary seat in Congress, from which she frequently viewed sessions. She passed away in Washington, D.C. in 1849 at the age of 81.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolley_Payne_Todd
Deaths
1794 - Abraham Clark, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (b 1725)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Clark
1805 - Christopher Gadsden, American soldier and statesman from South Carolina (b 1724)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Gadsden
1835 - Sarah Knox Taylor, American wife of Jefferson Davis (b. 1814)
1885 - Jumbo, P. T. Barnum's circus elephant (hit by a train) (b. 1861)
1898 - William Seward Burroughs (b 1855) American inventor of the first recording adding machine and pioneer of its manufacture. It was because Burroughs began his career as a bank clerk that he was inspired to invent such a mechanical device. On 10 Jan 1885 he submitted his first patent (issued 399,116 on 21 Aug 1888) for his "calculating machine," In 1886, Burroughs and several St. Louis businessmen formed the American Arithmometer Co. to market the machine. Burroughs was dissatisfied with the durability of this first model. His 1892 patent not only improved the machine but added a printer. The company later became Burroughs Corporation (1905) and eventually Unisyswww.todayinsci.com/B/Burroughs_William/BurroughsAddingMachine.htm
1932 Charles H. Gabriel (b. 18 August 1856), American sacred music composer.
www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/g/a/b/gabriel_ch.htm
1962 - William W(eber) Coblentz (b 1873) American physicist and astronomer whose work lay primarily in infrared spectroscopy. In 1905 he founded the radiometry section of the National Bureau of Standards, which he headed for 40 years. Coblentz measured the infrared radiation from stars, planets, and nebulae and was the first to determine accurately the constants of blackbody radiation, thus confirming Planck's law.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Coblentz
1964 - Alfred Blalock (b 1899) American surgeon who (with pediatric cardiologist Helen B. Taussig) devised a surgical treatment for infants born with the "blue baby" syndrome (tetralogy of Fallot), which consists of a hole in the wall between the heart's two major chambers (ventricles)*. Earlier in his career he did pioneering work on the nature and treatment of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock. He demonstrated that surgical shock resulted primarily from the loss of blood, and he encouraged the use of plasma or whole-blood transfusions as treatment following the onset of shock. By 29 Nov 1944, he made the first operation on a cyanotic infant with blue-baby syndrome using his procedure, known as the subclavian-pulmonary artery anastomosis.
*Incomplete description of the tetralogy of Fallot. For a better description see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetralogy_of_Fallot
1965 - Steve Brown, American musician (b 1890)
Fisher presided at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
1972 - Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury (1945–1961)(b 1887)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Fisher
1980 - Bill Evans, American jazz pianist (b. 1929)
1985 - Cootie Williams, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1910)
1989 - Robert Penn Warren, American writer (b. 1905)
1989 - Olga Erteszek, American undergarment designer and lingerie company owner (b. 1916)
2000 - Vincent Canby, American movie critic (b. 1924)
2005 - Sidney Luft, American film director (b. 1915)
2007 - Brett Somers, Canadian-born American actress and Match Game panelist (b. 1924)
Holidays and observances
Christian Feast Day:
Catherine of Genoa
Joseph Abibos
Nicomedes
Our Lady of Sorrows
September 15 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Great-martyr Nicetas the Goth (372)
Saint Philoteus the Presbyter (10th century)
Martyr Porphyrius the Actor of Caesarea (362)
Martyrs Theodotus, Asclepiodotus, and Maximus of Adrianopolis (305-311)
Saints Bessarion I and Bessarion II, archbishops of Larissa (16th century)
Saint Gerasimos, abbot and founder of Monastery Sourvia in Macrynitsa, Mysia, ca (1740)
Saint Joseph, abbot, of Alaverdi Monastery in Georgia (570)
Martyr John of Crete at New Ephesus (1811)
Saint Joseph the New of Partoёs, metropolitan of Timiёsoara (Romania) (1656)
Other Commemorations
Uncovering of the relics of Saint Acacius, Bishop of Melitene
Uncovering of the relics of the Holy Protomartyr and Archdeacon Stephen (relics uncovered in 415)
Earliest day on which POW/MIA Recognition Day can fall, celebrated on the third Friday in September. (United States)
Earliest day on which German-American Steuben Parade can fall, celebrated on the third Saturday in September. (United States, especially New York City)[/size]
www.amug.org/~jpaul/sep15.html
www.todayinsci.com/9/9_15.htm
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_15
www.amug.org/~jpaul/sep16.html
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ali-defeats-spinks-to-win-world-heavyweight-championship
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.hymntime.com/tch/index.htm
www.christianity.com/churchhistory/