Post by farmgal on Oct 24, 2012 18:11:31 GMT -5
October 25 is the 299th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 67 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 13
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1147 Forces under King Afonso I of Portugal captured Lisbon from the Moors after a four-month siege during the Second Crusade.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon#Middle_Ages
1147 Seljuk Turks completely annihilate German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dorylaeum_(1147)
1512 Martin Luther began his lectures on Genesis at the University of Wittenberg.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
1648 “My Soul, Now Praise Your Maker” was sung at the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War by the residents of Osnabrueck, Westphalia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia
1701 William Penn (1644–1718) was granted the city charter to Philadelphia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn
1760 George III becomes King of Great Britain.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom
1764 John Adams marries Abigail Smith. This devoted couple's prolific correspondence during their married life has provided entertainment and a glimpse of early American life for generations of history buffs.
Future first lady Abigail Adams was the daughter of a parson. She was home-taught and read everything from the classics to contemporary law. When she met her future husband, Adams appreciated her intellect and outspokenness. Both were staunch Federalists and abolitionists, but when their views did diverge, Abigail never hesitated to debate her husband on political or social matters. Their letters to each other during long absences imposed by his ministerial duties in France and England have been archived, published and analyzed in great detail. They discuss an array of public issues of concern to early Americans and shed a special light on the debate over the role of women in the new nation.
While Adams was attending the first Continental Congress in 1774, Abigail wrote to him to "remember the ladies" when he and his revolutionary cohorts began drafting new laws for the fledgling nation. She asserted that "all men would be tyrants if they could" and pointed out that male Patriots who were fighting British tyranny would appear hypocritical if they should disregard the rights of half the population, the country's women, when drafting a constitution. Abigail warned "if particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."
With the rise of political factions, Adams and his wife found themselves attacked in the press by their Republican opponents during his presidency (1797 – 1801) and unsuccessful reelection campaign against Thomas Jefferson in 1800. The couple subsequently returned to their home in Quincy, Massachusetts, where Adams spent his last years writing his memoirs.
Abigail Adams died in 1818 at the age of 73. Her grandson was the first to publish some of her letters 30 years later. John Adams died on July 4, 1826.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Smith_Adams
1774 Congress petitions English king to address grievances. On this day in 1774, the First Continental Congress sends a respectful petition to King George III to inform his majesty that if it had not been for the acts of oppression forced upon the colonies by the British Parliament, the American people would be standing behind British rule.
Despite the anger that the American public felt towards the United Kingdom after the British Parliament established the Coercive Acts—called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists--Congress was still willing to assert its loyalty to the king. In return for this loyalty, Congress asked the king to address and resolve the specific grievances of the colonies. The petition, written by Continental Congressman John Dickinson, laid out what Congress felt was undo oppression of the colonies by the British Parliament. Their grievances mainly had to do with the Coercive Acts, a series of four acts that were established to punish colonists and to restore order in Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party.
The first of the Coercive Acts was the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston to all colonists until damages from the Boston Tea Party were paid. The second, the Massachusetts Government Act, gave the British government total control of town meetings, taking all decisions out of the hands of the colonists. The third, the Administration of Justice Act, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America and the fourth, the Quartering Act, required colonists to house and quarter British troops on demand, including in private homes as a last resort.
The king did not respond to the petition to Congress’ satisfaction and eight months later on July 6, 1775, the Second Continental Congress adopted a resolution entitled "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms." Written by John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, the resolution laid out the reasons for taking up arms and starting a violent revolution against British rule of the colonies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Continental_Congress
1813 War of 1812: Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans in the Battle of Chateauguay.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chateauguay
1853 On this day in 1853, Paiute Indians attack U.S. Army Captain John W. Gunnison and his party of 37 soldiers and railroad surveyors near Sevier Lake, Utah. Gunnison and seven other men were killed, but the survey party continued with its work and eventually reported its findings to the United States Congress.
Gunnison was a West Point graduate who had led several previous topographical surveys before being assigned to conduct this survey of potential railroad routes across central Colorado and Utah. Gunnison's mission was only one of four surveys dispatched by the U.S. Congress in an attempt to break a sectional deadlock over which route the proposed transcontinental railroad should follow. The whole idea of a transcontinental railroad was jeopardized by a bitter dispute between northern and southern politicians, with both factions stubbornly insisting that the line should have its terminus in their respective regions. Congress hoped that by turning the question over to the impartial and scientific surveyors of the topographical corps, a clearly superior route would emerge and break the deadlock.
Following Gunnison's death at the hands of the Paiute, his lieutenant, E.G. Beckwith, assumed command. Beckwith eventually found a potential railroad route through Weber Canyon in the Unita Mountains and discovered two feasible passes over the northern Sierra Nevada. The survey also provided valuable information on the geology, flora, and fauna of the West and set a high standard for subsequent explorers to follow. However, the results of neither the Gunnison/Beckwith survey nor any of the others succeeded in breaking the deadlock in Congress. Since no clearly superior route emerged from the volumes of maps and data gathered, the decision remained a political rather than scientific one. The issue would only be settled after the southern states seceded from the Union, leaving the matter in the hands of northern politicians.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Gunnison
1854 Charge of the Light Brigade occurred. During the Crimean War, the Charge of the Light Brigade occurred as Lord Cardigan led the British cavalry against the Russians at [b Balaclava. [/b]The Charge was later immortalized in the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade
1870 The first U.S. trademark was awarded. A pennant with a slogan from the "Averill Chemical Paint Company," which represented an eagle holding in its beak a pot of paint, was the first mark registered in the U.S. However, the Law of 1870 was later repealed as contradicting to the U.S. Constitution; therefore, this first registration was consequently annulled.
www.librarieshawaii.org/feddocs/fd_patent.html
1881 Leslie L. Curtis of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, patented an air brush painting device. His patent No. 248,579 describes an "Atomizer for Coloring Pictures," which was a "device for easy, accurate, and rapid distribution of coloring and shading upon drawings and paintings." Coloring matter could be projected upon the picture in the form of a fine spray. It was drawn up a tube from a bottle when air passed over an aperture in the upper end of the tube and was separated into a fine spray. The fineness of the spray could be regulated. Holes were provided in the rear of the air-tube to be covered with the thumb of the hand that held the container while in use. Removing the thumb caused the flow of coloring material from the fine nozzle to cease.
1890 Money, servants, dinners, parties, balls-- Emma had it all. Her wealth allowed her to admire herself in dresses that glittered with diamond dust. She and her businessman husband, Sidney Whittemore, moved among the elite of New York, unaware of anything missing in themselves.
One afternoon, Emma's friend, Miss Kelly, persuaded her to hear an evangelist. Completely on his own, Sidney went too. Neither had the slightest idea the other would be there. Both were stirred by the message and went down to the mourner's bench. Soon afterward, Miss Kelly urged Emma to visit Water Street where Jerry McAuley, an ex-convict and reformed drunkard, had opened a mission. Sidney agreed to allow Emma to go just once, but only if he escorted her through the rough area of New York City.
"Never can that night be erased from my memory," wrote Emma. "From the time we got off the car at Roosevelt Street, each step opened up some new horror." She heard curses, saw quarreling, fighting, police abuse, and women dragged off to the station. As the meeting progressed, God got such possession of the Whittemores that both sat in painful silence as they were convicted of their useless lives. "We arose with a holy determination, born of God himself, to henceforth live for his glory and praise."
One evening she spent some time "alone with God, earnestly inquiring of him" what she was to do. "Suddenly the girls on the street came to my mind..." But the thought of working with these wayward women horrified her. "Oh, anything but that!" she pleaded. A deep hush of shame came upon her heart and she yielded to what the Lord was asking.
But she often found the work unbearable. "Oh, Lord, I cannot, I cannot see these fearful sights again! It simply breaks my heart." The outcome was always that she received more love to go on.
If girls were to be rescued, homes were needed to house them. On this day, October 25th, 1890, Mother Whittemore's first Door of Hope opened. Within four years, the Door of Hope had helped 325 girls. Eventually Door of Hope went international. By Emma's death in 1931, there were 97 homes in seven countries.
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/emma-whittemore-opened-door-of-hope-11630626.html
1916 French troops celebrate recapture of Fort Douaumont, the preeminent fortress guarding the city of Verdun, under siege by the German army since the previous February.
In February 1916, the walls of Verdun were defended by some 500,000 men stationed in two principal fortresses, Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux. The Germans, commanded by Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn, sent 1 million men against the city, hoping for a decisive victory on the Western Front that would push the Allies towards an armistice. The first shot was fired on the morning of February 21, and the Germans proceeded quickly from there, overrunning two lines of French trenches and pushing the defenders back to the walls of the city itself. Fort Douaumont was a massive structure, protected by two layers of concrete over a meter thick, and surrounded by a seven-meter-deep moat and 30 meters of barbed wire. Its fall to the Germans on February 25 became an early turning point in the struggle at Verdun. From then on, Verdun became a symbolic cause the French command could not abandon: public sentiment demanded the recapture of the fortress.
If the German army sought to "bleed the French white," in Falkenhayn’s words, the French army, under Phillipe Petain, was equally determined that the enemy would not pass at Verdun. The battle soon settled into a bloody stalemate, and over the next 10 months, the city would see some of the fiercest and costliest fighting of World War I, with a total of over 700,000 casualties. By the summer of 1916, German resources had been stretched thinner by having to confront both a British-led offensive on the Somme River and Russia’s Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern Front. In July, the kaiser, frustrated by the state of things at Verdun, removed Falkenhayn and sent him to command the 9th Army in Transylvania; Paul von Hindenburg took his place. Petain had been replaced in April by Robert Nivelle, who implemented a counter-attacking strategy that enabled the French to recapture of much of their lost territory by the late fall.
Chief among these French gains was the recapture of Fort Douaumont on October 24, 1916. Under a cover of fog, French forces attacked the German-occupied fort from atop nearby Souville Hill, swarming down and taking some 6,000 German prisoners by the end of that day. "Douaumont is ours," wrote a French staff officer who participated in the action that day. "The formidable Douaumont, which dominates with its mass, its observation points, the two shores of the Meuse, is again French." Fort Vaux likewise fell back into French hands barely a week later. Though German commanders such as Erich Ludendorff played down the impact of such "local" French victories, the German momentum at Verdun was indeed winding down. On December 18, 1916, Hindenburg finally called a halt to his army’s attacks at Verdun, after the French captured 11,000 German soldiers over the last three days of battle.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Douaumont
1921 A hurricane with 100 mph winds hit Tampa, FL, causing several million dollars damage. (David Ludlum)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_Tampa_Bay_hurricane
1923 Senate begins investigating Teapot Dome scandals of Harding administration. The Wall Street Journal had reported an unprecedented secret arrangement in which the secretary of the Interior, without competitive bidding, had leased the U.S. naval petroleum reserve at Wyoming's Teapot Dome to a private oil company. Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert La Follette arranged for the Senate Committee on Public Lands to investigate the matter. His suspicions deepened after someone ransacked his quarters in the Senate Office Building.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal
1937 Radio’s "Stella Dallas" made her debut on the NBC Red network. Stella Dallas was based on Olive Higgins Prouty's novel by that title that was reincarnated in 1925 and 1937 celluloid versions and adapted to radio by Frank and Anne Hummert. This series, with actress Anne Elstner always featured as Stella, arrived in late 1937 as a trial run over a New York station. Its reception was strong enough for Sterling Drugs, Inc. to back it for national exposure beginning June 6, 1938 over NBC. Stella Dallas was to become one of only a trio of serials occupying a single quarter-hour timeslot (in its case, 4:15 p.m. Eastern Time) on one chain beyond a decade, lasting to the end of its run (the other two were Our Gal Sunday and Wendy Warren and the News).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Dallas_(radio_series)
1938 The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing music as "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beckman
1940 "Cabin in the Sky" opened for the first of 156 shows. Cabin in the Sky was perhaps Vernon Duke's single greatest Broadway achievement. It opened on October 25, 1940 and starred Ethel Waters. The librettist was Lynn Root, and the lyrics were by John La Touche with the collaboration of Ted Fetter. A musical fable about the tug of war between good and evil in the rural South, its song classics include "Taking a Chance on Love," "Honey in the Honeycomb," "Love Turned the Light Out," and "Cabin in the Sky."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_in_the_Sky
1941 The first Youth For Christ rally was held at Bryant's Alliance Tabernacle in New York City. An international evangelical youth organization, YFC has no single founder, but rather emerged out of weekly rallies held for the youth of New York City during the 1930s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_for_Christ
1943 Benny Carter and his orchestra recorded "Poinciana" Benny Carter was one of the greatest jazz alto saxists of the swing era alongside Johnny Hodges. More than merely a giant of jazz saxophone, Benny Carter was at one time or other a composer and arranger, a skilled clarinetist and gifted trumpet player and an exceptionally versatile, talented musician -- for more than three quarters of a century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poinciana_(song)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Carter
1944 Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelweiss_Pirates
1944 The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship's own malfunctioning torpedo.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306)
1944 The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers occupation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carei#History
1944 First kamikaze attack of the war begins when during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Japanese deploy kamikaze ("divine wind") suicide bombers against American warships for the first time. It will prove costly--to both sides.
This decision to employ suicide bombers against the American fleet at Leyte, an island of the Philippines, was based on the failure of conventional naval and aerial engagements to stop the American offensive. Declared Japanese naval Capt. Motoharu Okamura: "I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our planes.... There will be more than enough volunteers for this chance to save our country."
The first kamikaze force was in fact composed of 24 volunteer pilots from Japan's 201st Navy Air Group. The targets were U.S. escort carriers; one, the St. Lo, was struck by a A6M Zero fighter and sunk in less than an hour, killing 100 Americans. More than 5,000 kamikaze pilots died in the gulf battle-taking down 34 ships.
For their kamikaze raids, the Japanese employed both conventional aircraft and specially designed planes, called Ohka ("cherry blossom") by the Japanese, but Baka ("fool") by the Americans, who saw them as acts of desperation. The Baka was a rocket-powered plane that was carried toward its target attached to the belly of a bomber.
All told, more than 1,321 Japanese aircraft crash-dived their planes into Allied warships during the war, desperate efforts to reverse the growing Allied advantage in the Pacific. While approximately 3,000 Americans and Brits died because of these attacks, the damage done did not prevent the Allied capture of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze
1945 The Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan's surrender to the Allies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
1955 The first domestic microwave oven was sold by Tappan. In 1947, Raytheon demonstrated the "Radarange," the world's first microwave oven. Ratheon's commercial, refrigerator-sized microwave ovens cost between $2,000 and $3,000. In 1952, Raytheon entered into a licensing agreement with Tappan Stove Company which had a consumer distribution and marketing infrastructure. In 1955, Tappan introduced the first domestic microwave oven, a 220-volt more compact wall-unit the size of a conventional oven, but less powerful microwave generating system. It had two cooking speeds (500 or 800 watts), stainless steel exterior, glass shelf, top browning element and a recipe card drawer. However, at $1,300 sales were slow.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_heating
1958 "It's All In The Game" by Tommy Edwards topped the charts. The lyrics were added in 1951 by Carl Sigman, who also changed the song's name to "It's All in the Game." After "It's All in the Game" hit, Edwards' fortunes declined to the point of MGM Records getting ready to drop him in 1958. As a last-ditch effort to save his career, he agreed to re-record this as one of the first stereo singles ever released. He kept the vocal style of the 1951 hit, but gave the new version a rock'n'roll arrangement. The single quickly took the top position on the charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_All_in_the_Game_(song)
Accutron Movement. The tuning fork is between the two electromagnetic coils at the top of the watch, which drive it.
1960 The Accutron 214, the world's first electronic wristwatch by Bulova, was placed on sale in New York City. The original circuit used a germanium PNP transistor circuit with a 360-Hz tuning fork, used for timing accuracy. In 1977 it was replaced by quartz watches. The Accutron has the potential accuracy of better than 2 seconds per day, remarkable in its day of mechanical watches. In 1953, tuning fork watch development began in Switzerland and prototype watches were made in 1955. Its Swiss engineer was Max Hetzel, who moved in 1959 to continue his development of the Bulova Accutron in New York with William Bennett. The CEO of Bulova at the time was Omar Bradley, 5 Star General, US Army, Retired.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulova#Accutron
1960 The musical "Camelot" by Loewe and Lerner was copyright registered. In the 1960 stage version, the original stars were Richard Burton as Arthur, Julie Andrews as Guenevere, Robert Goulet as Lancelot, Roddy McDowall as Mordred, and John Cullum as Sir Lionel and understudy for Burton. (Cullum later took over the role of Mordred.) Directed by Moss Hart, the original Broadway production opened at the Majestic Theater on December 3, 1960, and played 874 performances.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelot_(musical)
1962 American author John Steinbeck awarded Nobel Prize in literature
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck
1962 U.S. Ambassador Stevenson confronts Zorin at UN. U.S. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson forcefully asked the Soviet representative, Valerian Zorin, if his country was installing missiles in Cuba, punctuated with the famous demand "Don't wait for the translation!" in demanding an immediate answer. Following Zorin's refusal to answer the abrupt question, Stevenson retorted, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over." In a diplomatic coup, Stevenson then showed photographs that proved the existence of missiles in Cuba, just after the Soviet ambassador had said they did not exist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II
1964 Viking Jim Marshall runs 66 yards in the wrong direction for a safety. Despite his positive achievements, Marshall is probably best remembered around the NFL as Wrong Way Marshall. In 1964 he scooped up a fumble against the 49ers, carried it 66 yards into the end zone and then jubilantly tossed the ball toward the stands. Trouble was, it was the wrong end zone. "I was so intent on picking the ball up and doing something with it that I wasn't even aware of what I had done until the ball had been whistled dead," Marshall recalls."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Marshall_(American_football)
1965 The Rolling Stones released "Get Off of My Cloud" to radio. "Get Off of My Cloud" followed "Satisfaction" as The Stones second #1 hit in the US. Some radio stations would not play this because they thought it was about drugs.The Get Off of My Cloud was in response to impatient record executives wanting a quick follow up to Satisfaction.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Off_of_My_Cloud
1969 "I Can't Get Next to You" by the Temptations topped the charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Can%27t_Get_Next_to_You
1971 Roy Disney dedicates Walt Disney World.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_O._Disney
1971 The United Nations seated the People's Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan and China and the United Nations)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
1972 The Washington Post reports that White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman is the fifth person to control a secret cash fund designed to finance illegal political sabotage and espionage during the 1972 presidential election campaign (see also Watergate scandal).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Haldeman
1977 Dutch Harbor in Alaska reported a barometric pressure reading of 27.31 inches (925 millibars) to establish an all-time record for the state. (The Weather Channel)
1977 Digital Equipment Corporation releases OpenVMS V1.0.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS
1981 A northbound tornado caused two million dollars damage to Bountstown, FL, in less than five minutes. Fortunately no deaths occurred along its six mile path, which was 30 to 100 yards in width. Radar at Apalachicola had no indication of a tornado or severe weather. (The Weather Channel)
www.city-data.com/city/Blountstown-Florida.html
1983 Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Urgent_Fury
1984 "Give My Regards to Broad Street" premiers (Gotham Theater-NYC)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_My_Regards_to_Broad_Street
1986 "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper topped the charts
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Colors_(song)
1987 A storm system moving across the Saint Lawrence Valley produced 40 to 50 mph winds east of Lake Ontario. High winds downed some trees around Watertown NY, and produced waves seven feet high between Henderson Harbor and Alexandria Bay. Mason City IA and Waterloo IA tied for honors as cold spot in the nation with record lows for the date of 19 degrees. Severe thunderstorms in Oklahoma and northern Texas produced golf ball size hail and wind gusts to 65 mph. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1988 ABC News reports on potbellied pygmy porkers' popularity as pets.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potbellied_pig
1988 Severe thunderstorms erupted over northeastern Texas during the late evening producing softball size hail at Newcastle and Jonesboro. Low pressure over James Bay in Canada continued to produced showers and gale force winds in the Great Lakes Region. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Low pressure over Nevada produced high winds in the southwestern U.S., and spread heavy snow into Utah. Winds gusted to 63 mph at the Mojave Airport in southern California. Snowfall totals in Utah ranged up to 12 inches at Snowbird, with 11 inches at Alta. "Indian Summer" type weather continued in the central and eastern U.S. Twenty cities in the north central U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date. Highs of 77 degrees at Alpena MI and 81 degrees at Saint Cloud MN were the warmest of record for so late in the season. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1990 The first transplant operation of a lung from a live donor to a recipient is performed by Dr. Vaughn A. Starnes, Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, California. A mother was the living donor to her 12-year-old daughter. Dr Starnes is a world-renowned pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons who has performed several transplantation "firsts," including transplanting a heart and lung into a four-month old baby - the youngest ever. Lung transplantation was first attempted in 1963, and heart-lung transplantation in 1968. The first successful heart-lung transplant, by Dr. Bruce Reitz, was at Stanford in 1981. The world's first successful lung transplants were at Toronto General Hospital, Ont. (Single lung, 1983; double,1986).
1995 A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
2004 Fidel Castro, Cuba's President, announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned by November 8.
2009 The 25 October 2009 Baghdad bombings kills 155 and wounds at least 721.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_October_2009_Baghdad_bombings
Births
1782 Levi Lincoln, Jr.,American lawyer and politician from Worcester, Massachusetts, 13th Governor of Massachusetts (1825-1834) and represented the state in the U.S. Congress (1834-1841). Lincoln was the longest consecutive-serving governor in Massachusetts' history at 9 years from 1825-1834, although he was not the longest serving governor (Michael Dukakis was the longest serving at 12 years, from 1975-1979, and then 1983-1991) (d. 1868)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Lincoln,_Jr.
1811 Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther born at Langenshursdorf, Saxony, Germany. After completing his theological studies at the University of Leipzig, he encountered opposition to his strongly conservative Lutheran position and emigrated to the United States in 1839 with 750 other Lutherans, establishing a Lutheran colony in Missouri. Walther became pastor of Trinity Congregation in St. Louis (1841) and became a professor and eventually president of Concordia Seminary which he helped found. He was also president of a new church body which was organized in 1847, largely under his direction, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, with a membership comprising one third of all Lutherans in North and South America. A prolific writer, Walther was called the "most commanding figure in the Lutheran church of America during the 19th century." (d 1887)
lutheranhistory.org/presidents/pres_walther.htm
1849 Benjamin Abbot, at Exeter, Massachusetts, educator (b. 17 Sep 1762).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Abbot
1864 John Francis Dodge (d 1920) American automobile manufacturing pioneer and co-founder of Dodge Brothers Company.
1873 John North Willys (d 1935) American industrialist who developed early automotive production. In 1912-18, Willys' output ranked second only to Ford. Willys first saw an early automobile in 1899, realized its potential, and came a car salesman. By 1907, his sales out-stripped his supplier's ability to produce, so he stepped in and reorganized the faltering Overland Company in Indianapolis. He successfully increased production, and expanded the Willys-Overland plant into a larger factory in Toledo, Ohio. During WW I, Willys-Overland became a major producer of trucks, airplanes and airplane engines. After his death, the Willys-Overland company pioneered the WW II Jeep, a rugged off-road vehicle. In 1970, the company was bought by American Motors Corporation.
1877 Henry Norris Russell (d 1957) American astronomer and astrophysicist who showed the relationship between a star's brightness and its spectral type, in what is usually called the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, and who also devised a means of computing the distances of binary stars. As student, professor, observatory director, and active professor emeritus, Russell spent six decades at Princeton University. From 1921, he visited Mt. Wilson Observatory annually. He analyzed light from eclipsing binary stars to determine stellar masses. Russell measured parallaxes and popularized the distinction between giant stars and "dwarfs" while developing an early theory of stellar evolution. Russell was a dominant force in American astronomy as a teacher, writer, and advisor.
1881 Pablo Picasso one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, Malaga, Spain.
Picasso's father was a professor of drawing, and he bred his son for a career in academic art. Picasso had his first exhibit at age 13 and later quit art school so he could experiment full-time with modern art styles. He went to Paris for the first time in 1900, and in 1901 was given an exhibition at a gallery on Paris' rue Lafitte, a street known for its prestigious art galleries. The precocious 19-year-old Spaniard was at the time a relative unknown outside Barcelona, but he had already produced hundreds of paintings. Winning favorable reviews, he stayed in Paris for the rest of the year and later returned to the city to settle permanently.
The work of Picasso, which comprises more than 50,000 paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, and ceramics produced over 80 years, is described in a series of overlapping periods. His first notable period--the "blue period"—began shortly after his first Paris exhibit. In works such as The Old Guitarist (1903), Picasso painted in blue tones to evoke the melancholy world of the poor. The blue period was followed by the "rose period," in which he often depicted circus scenes, and then by Picasso's early work in sculpture. In 1907, Picasso painted the groundbreaking work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which, with its fragmented and distorted representation of the human form, broke from previous European art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon demonstrated the influence on Picasso of both African mask art and Paul Cezanne and is seen as a forerunner of the Cubist movement, founded by Picasso and the French painter Georges Braque in 1909.
In Cubism, which is divided into two phases, analytical and synthetic, Picasso and Braque established the modern principle that artwork need not represent reality to have artistic value. Major Cubist works by Picasso included his costumes and sets for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1917) and The Three Musicians (1921). Picasso and Braque's Cubist experiments also resulted in the invention of several new artistic techniques, including collage.
After Cubism, Picasso explored classical and Mediterranean themes, and images of violence and anguish increasingly appeared in his work. In 1937, this trend culminated in the masterpiece Guernica, a monumental work that evoked the horror and suffering endured by the Basque town of Guernica when it was destroyed by German war planes during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso remained in Paris during the Nazi occupation but was fervently opposed to fascism and after the war joined the French Communist Party.
Picasso's work after World War II is less studied than his earlier creations, but he continued to work feverishly and enjoyed commercial and critical success. He produced fantastical works, experimented with ceramics, and painted variations on the works of other masters in the history of art. Known for his intense gaze and domineering personality, he had a series of intense and overlapping love affairs in his lifetime. He continued to produce art with undiminished force until his death in 1973 at the age of 91.
1888 Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr., USN (d 1957) naval officer who specialized in feats of exploration. He was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights, in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a segment of the Arctic Ocean, and a segment of the Antarctic Plateau. Byrd claimed that his expeditions had been the first to reach the North Pole and the South Pole by air. His South Pole claim is generally supported by a consensus of those who have examined the evidence. Byrd was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for heroism given by the United States.
1889 Howard Ellsworth "Smoky Joe" Wood (d 1985) Major League Baseball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and an outfielder for the Cleveland Indians during the early part of the 20th century. He is one of only 13 pitchers who won 30 or more games in one season (34-5 in 1912) since 1900.
1890 Floyd Bennett (d 1928) American pioneer aviator who piloted the explorer Richard E. Byrd on the first successful flight over the North Pole on 9 May 1926, in a three-engine Fokker monoplane, Josephine Ford. They flew 1,360 miles from King's Bay, Spitzbergen, to the Pole and back in 15-1/2 hours. During his aviation duty in the Navy Bennett had met Byrd (1925) as his commander on the Donald B. MacMillan expedition to northwestern Greenland. Byrd realized that Bennett was more than a good pilot, he was fearless, and one of the finest practical men in the Navy for handling an airplane's temperamental mechanisms. Together, they planned the North Pole flight. For his share in the achievement Bennett received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
1891 Father Charles Edward Coughlin (d 1979) was a controversial Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower Church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than forty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s. Early in his career Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his early New Deal proposals, before later becoming a harsh critic of Roosevelt as too friendly to bankers. In 1934 he announced a new political organization called the "National Union for Social Justice." He wrote a platform calling for monetary reforms, the nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of the rights of labor. The membership ran into the millions, resembling the Populist movement of the 1890s
1902 Henry Steele Commager (d 1998) American historian who wrote (or edited) over forty books and over 700 journalistic essays and reviews. He won fame as one of the most active and prolific public intellectuals of his time, and he based his activism in support of the causes he advocated, opposition to the war in Vietnam, and criticism of the constitutional agendas of the administrations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, on his authority as a historian and educator.
1910 William Higinbotham (d 1994) American physicist who invented the first video game, Tennis for Two, as entertainment for the 1958 visitor day at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he worked (1947-84) then as head of the Instrumentation Division. It used a small analogue computer with ten direct-connected operational amplifiers and output a side view of the curved flight of the tennis ball on an oscilloscope only five inches in diameter. Each player had a control knob and a button. Late in WW II he became electronics group leader at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the nuclear bomb was developed. After the war, he became active with other nuclear scientists in establishing the Federation of American Scientists to promote nuclear non-proliferation.
1912 Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon (d 1996), known professionally as Minnie Pearl, American country comedienne who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years (from 1940 to 1991) and on the television show Hee Haw from 1969 to 1991.
1914 John Allyn Berryman (born John Allyn Smith, Jr.) (d 1972) American poet, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry. He was the author of The Dream Songs, which are playful, witty, and morbid. Berryman committed suicide in 1972.
1917 Lee MacPhail, American baseball manager and league executive
1921 Marian Koshland (d 1997) American immunologist who discovered that the differences in amino acid composition of antibodies explains the efficiency and effectiveness with which they combat a huge range of foreign invaders. During WWII, her post-graduate studies included assisting with projects developing an Asiatic cholera vaccine, and combatting transmission of airborne pathogens in army barracks. In 1970 she became a professor of Microbiology and Immunology, after which she discovered the J chain (a B cell antibody subunit). In 1991, with colleagues, she identified a specialized intracellular pathway that transports antibodies into blood circulation, allowing for the multiplication of B cells essential in fighting infection.
1923 Robert Brown "Bobby" Thomson (d 2010), nicknamed "The Staten Island Scot," Scottish American Major League Baseball outfielder and right-handed batter who played for the New York Giants (1946–53, 1957), Milwaukee Braves (1954–57), Chicago Cubs (1958–59), Boston Red Sox (1960) and Baltimore Orioles (1960). His season-ending three-run home run for the Giants in 1951, known as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World," is one of the most famous moments in baseball history.
1933 Eugene Gordon Lee (d 2005) former American child actor, most notable for appearing in the Our Gang (Little Rascals) comedies as Porky from 1935 to 1939. During his tenure in Our Gang, Porky originated the catchphrase "O-tay!", though it is commonly attributed to Buckwheat. Lee was born in Fort Worth, Texas as Eugene Lee, and was adopted.
1935 Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart American astronaut. Schweickart was born in Neptune, New Jersey. He earned an B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics/Astronautics from MIT in 1956 and 1963 respectively.
1940 Robert Montgomery "Bob" or "Bobby" Knight retired American basketball coach. Nicknamed "The General", Knight has won 902 NCAA Division I men's college basketball games, more than any other head coach. On January 1, 2007, he achieved his 880th victory, breaking the record held by Dean Smith. His 900th victory came on January 16, 2008. He was most recently the head men's basketball coach at Texas Tech before announcing his retirement on February 4, 2008. He was previously the head coach at Indiana University and at the United States Military Academy.
1944 James Carville American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Carville was a co-host of CNN's Crossfire until its final broadcast in June 2005. Since its cancellation, he has appeared on CNN's news program, The Situation Room. As of 2009, he hosts a weekly program on XM Radio titled 60/20 Sports with Luke Russert, son of the late Tim Russert who hosted NBC's Meet The Press. He is married to Republican political consultant Mary Matalin. In 2009, he began teaching political science at Tulane University.
1945 David N. Schramm (d 1997) American theoretical astrophysicist who was an authority on the particle-physics aspects of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. He considered the nuclear physics involved in the synthesis of the light elements created during the Big Bang comprising mainly hydrogen, with lesser quantities of deuterium, helium, lithium, beryllium and boron. He predicted, from cosmological considerations, that a third family of neutrinos existed - which was later proven in particle accelerator experiments (1989). Schramm worked to evaluate undetected dark matter that contributed to the mass of the universe, and which would determine whether the universe would ultimately continue to expand. He died in the crash of the small airplane he was piloting.
Deaths
625 Pope Boniface V (pope from 619 to 625. He did much for the Christianising of England and enacted the decree by which churches became places of refuge for criminals.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Boniface_V
1757 Antoine Augustin Calmet, French Benedictine theologian whose work inaugurated a new method of Biblical exegesis that departed from the custom of giving an allegorical (mystical) and tropological (moral) interpretation to Biblical texts besides the literal, (b. 26 Feb 1672)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Augustin_Calmet
1806 Henry Knox (b 1750) military officer of the Continental Army and later the United States Army, and also served as the first United States Secretary of War.
1852 John Chamberlain Clark (b 1793) United States Representative from New York.
1892 Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison (b 1832), wife of Benjamin Harrison, was First Lady of the United States from 1889 until her death. She was the first First Lady to be born in October.
1900 Edward Robinson Squibb (b 1819) U.S. chemist and pharmaceutical manufacturer who improved the purity and reliability of drugs. While a U.S. Navy medical officer, he convinced the Navy to manufacture their own drugs to ensure better quality. In 1851, he set up a laboratory to do this at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital. He distilled ether (for use as an anesthetic) using a still heated by a steam coil, thus eliminating the dangers of an open flame. He published the results of his discoveries instead of patenting them. Between 1852-57 he also made chloroform, bismuth salts, fluid extracts and other preparations. By 1858, he had his own business with 38 products, the start of a drug manufacturing enterprise that by1883 offered 324 products.
1910 William Law Anderson (b 1879) Scottish immigrant to the United States who became the first golfer to win four U.S. Opens, with victories in 1901, 1903, 1904, and 1905. He is still the only man to win three consecutive titles, and only Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus have equalled his total of four championships. He is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
1921 William Barclay "Bat" Masterson (b 1853) figure of the American Old West known as a buffalo hunter, U.S. Army scout, avid fisherman, gambler, frontier lawman, U.S. Marshal, and sports editor and columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph. He was the brother of lawmen James Masterson and Ed Masterson.
1957 Albert Anastasia , born Umberto Anastasio, (b 1902) boss of what is now called the Gambino Crime Family, one of New York City's Five Families, from 1951-1957. He also ran a gang of contract killers called Murder Inc. which enforced the decisions of the Commission, the ruling council of the American Mafia. He was nicknamed the "Mad Hatter" and the "Lord High Executioner".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Anastasia
1960 Henry George "Harry" Ferguson (b 1884) Irish engineer and inventor who is noted for his role in the development of the modern agricultural tractor, for becoming the first Irishman to build and fly his own aeroplane, and for developing the first four-wheel drive Formula One car, the Ferguson P99. Today his name lives on in the name of the Massey Ferguson company.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Ferguson
1980 Virgil Keel Fox (b Princeton, Illinois 1912– d Palm Beach, Florida) American organist, known especially for his flamboyant "Heavy Organ" concerts of the music of Bach. These events appealed to audiences in the 1970s who were more familiar with rock 'n' roll music and were staged complete with light shows. His many recordings made on the RCA Victor and Capitol labels, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, have been remastered and re-released on compact disc in recent years. They continue to be widely available in mainstream music stores.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Fox
1989 Richard Howell Fleming (b 1909) Canadian-born U.S. oceanographer who researched ocean currents, chemistry and biochemistry. He applied oceanography for military uses (1941-51) and studied the disposal of atomic wastes in the ocean. Fleming worked with the first comprehensive synoptic two-year survey (1955-56) of the Northern Pacific Ocean, charting currents, tides, winds, depths, and temperatures and observing plant and animal life. In 1959, for the Atomic Energy Commission, he began investigating the feasibility of creating a harbor in Alaska by nuclear explosions. He co-authored the comprehensive The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry, and General Biology, (1942).
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/209974/Richard-H-Fleming
1992 Roger Dean Miller (b 1936) American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs. His most recognized tunes included the chart-topping country/pop hits "King of the Road", "Dang Me" and "England Swings", all from the mid-1960s Nashville sound era.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Dean_Miller
1993 Vincent Leonard Price II (b 1911) American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Price
1994 Kara Spears Hultgreen (b 1965), Lieutenant in the United States Navy, was the first female naval carrier-based fighter pilot. She was killed just months after she was certified for combat, when her F-14 Tomcat crashed into the sea on final approach to USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72). A formal investigation found that the cause of the crash was primarily pilot error following an engine failure.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Spears_Hultgreen
1999 William Payne Stewart (b 1957) American professional golfer who won three majors in his career, the last of which occurred only months before he died in an airplane accident at the age of 42.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payne_Stewart
2002 Paul David Wellstone (b 1944) two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. Before being elected to the Senate in 1990, he was a professor of political science at Carleton College. Wellstone was a progressive and a leading spokesman for the progressive wing of the national Democratic Party. He served in the Senate from 1991 until his death in a plane crash on 25 October 2002, 11 days before the US senate election in which he was running for a third term.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_David_Wellstone
2002 Richard Harris, Irish-born actor, "Camelot," "Harry Potter" star, with a career that spanned six decades, of cancer at age 72 in London. Harris was known for his acting talent as well as his carousing off-camera. As BBC.com reported after his death, "He was everything a bad-boy Hollywood star should be: a handsome, boozing, brawling, womanizing, jet-setter whose moody magnificence brought glamour to even his weakest movies."
Richard St. John Harris was born on October 1, 1930, in Limerick, Ireland, where his family had a flour-milling business. As a young man, Harris was a talented rugby player, but his athletic career was cut short by a battle with tuberculosis. He went on to study acting in the mid-1950s at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and afterward found work in various London theater productions. By the late 1950s, he was earning small roles on the big screen. Among his early film credits were supporting parts in "The Guns of Navarone" (1961), featuring Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn, and "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962), with Marlon Brando.
Harris shot to international stardom with his performance as a coal miner tuned rugby player in 1963's "This Sporting Life." The role earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor. A long list of acting credits would follow—Harris made more than 70 films over the course of his career—including a 1967 cinematic adaptation of the Broadway musical "Camelot," in which he played King Arthur. In addition to his movie roles, Harris became equally famous for his reputation as a raconteur and hell-raiser. He reportedly suffered nine broken noses during his life and received last rites twice from a priest.
Harris portrayed a hardened Irish farmer in 1990's "The Field," for which he garnered a second Oscar nomination for best actor. He went on to appear in such movies as "The Unforgiven" (1992) directed by Clint Eastwood, "Patriot Games" (1992), "Cry, the Beloved Country" (1995) and "Gladiator" (2000), in which he played Marcus Aurelius to Russell Crowe's Maximus.
In 2001, Harris gained legions of new fans when he played Albus Dumbledore, the wise, white-bearded headmaster of Hogwarts School, in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Harris reprised this role for the second film in the series, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," which was released in the U.S. in November 2002, just weeks after his death.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harris
Christian Feast Day
Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy
Crysanthus and Daria (Western Christianity)
Crispin and Crispian
Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
Gaudentius of Brescia
Minias of Florence
October 25 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Martyrs Marcian and Martyrius the notaries of Constantinople
Righteous Saint Tabitha, the widow raised from the dead by the Apostle Peter.
Anastasius the Fuller at Salona in Dalmationa (304)
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www.todayinsci.com/10/10_25.htm
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct25.html
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pablo-picasso-born
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_25
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih1025.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_25_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
www.britannica.com/
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/birthdays/10-25.html
There are 67 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012 13
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1147 Forces under King Afonso I of Portugal captured Lisbon from the Moors after a four-month siege during the Second Crusade.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon#Middle_Ages
1147 Seljuk Turks completely annihilate German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dorylaeum_(1147)
1512 Martin Luther began his lectures on Genesis at the University of Wittenberg.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
1648 “My Soul, Now Praise Your Maker” was sung at the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War by the residents of Osnabrueck, Westphalia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia
1701 William Penn (1644–1718) was granted the city charter to Philadelphia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn
1760 George III becomes King of Great Britain.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom
1764 John Adams marries Abigail Smith. This devoted couple's prolific correspondence during their married life has provided entertainment and a glimpse of early American life for generations of history buffs.
Future first lady Abigail Adams was the daughter of a parson. She was home-taught and read everything from the classics to contemporary law. When she met her future husband, Adams appreciated her intellect and outspokenness. Both were staunch Federalists and abolitionists, but when their views did diverge, Abigail never hesitated to debate her husband on political or social matters. Their letters to each other during long absences imposed by his ministerial duties in France and England have been archived, published and analyzed in great detail. They discuss an array of public issues of concern to early Americans and shed a special light on the debate over the role of women in the new nation.
While Adams was attending the first Continental Congress in 1774, Abigail wrote to him to "remember the ladies" when he and his revolutionary cohorts began drafting new laws for the fledgling nation. She asserted that "all men would be tyrants if they could" and pointed out that male Patriots who were fighting British tyranny would appear hypocritical if they should disregard the rights of half the population, the country's women, when drafting a constitution. Abigail warned "if particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."
With the rise of political factions, Adams and his wife found themselves attacked in the press by their Republican opponents during his presidency (1797 – 1801) and unsuccessful reelection campaign against Thomas Jefferson in 1800. The couple subsequently returned to their home in Quincy, Massachusetts, where Adams spent his last years writing his memoirs.
Abigail Adams died in 1818 at the age of 73. Her grandson was the first to publish some of her letters 30 years later. John Adams died on July 4, 1826.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Smith_Adams
1774 Congress petitions English king to address grievances. On this day in 1774, the First Continental Congress sends a respectful petition to King George III to inform his majesty that if it had not been for the acts of oppression forced upon the colonies by the British Parliament, the American people would be standing behind British rule.
Despite the anger that the American public felt towards the United Kingdom after the British Parliament established the Coercive Acts—called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists--Congress was still willing to assert its loyalty to the king. In return for this loyalty, Congress asked the king to address and resolve the specific grievances of the colonies. The petition, written by Continental Congressman John Dickinson, laid out what Congress felt was undo oppression of the colonies by the British Parliament. Their grievances mainly had to do with the Coercive Acts, a series of four acts that were established to punish colonists and to restore order in Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party.
The first of the Coercive Acts was the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston to all colonists until damages from the Boston Tea Party were paid. The second, the Massachusetts Government Act, gave the British government total control of town meetings, taking all decisions out of the hands of the colonists. The third, the Administration of Justice Act, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America and the fourth, the Quartering Act, required colonists to house and quarter British troops on demand, including in private homes as a last resort.
The king did not respond to the petition to Congress’ satisfaction and eight months later on July 6, 1775, the Second Continental Congress adopted a resolution entitled "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms." Written by John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, the resolution laid out the reasons for taking up arms and starting a violent revolution against British rule of the colonies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Continental_Congress
1813 War of 1812: Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans in the Battle of Chateauguay.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chateauguay
1853 On this day in 1853, Paiute Indians attack U.S. Army Captain John W. Gunnison and his party of 37 soldiers and railroad surveyors near Sevier Lake, Utah. Gunnison and seven other men were killed, but the survey party continued with its work and eventually reported its findings to the United States Congress.
Gunnison was a West Point graduate who had led several previous topographical surveys before being assigned to conduct this survey of potential railroad routes across central Colorado and Utah. Gunnison's mission was only one of four surveys dispatched by the U.S. Congress in an attempt to break a sectional deadlock over which route the proposed transcontinental railroad should follow. The whole idea of a transcontinental railroad was jeopardized by a bitter dispute between northern and southern politicians, with both factions stubbornly insisting that the line should have its terminus in their respective regions. Congress hoped that by turning the question over to the impartial and scientific surveyors of the topographical corps, a clearly superior route would emerge and break the deadlock.
Following Gunnison's death at the hands of the Paiute, his lieutenant, E.G. Beckwith, assumed command. Beckwith eventually found a potential railroad route through Weber Canyon in the Unita Mountains and discovered two feasible passes over the northern Sierra Nevada. The survey also provided valuable information on the geology, flora, and fauna of the West and set a high standard for subsequent explorers to follow. However, the results of neither the Gunnison/Beckwith survey nor any of the others succeeded in breaking the deadlock in Congress. Since no clearly superior route emerged from the volumes of maps and data gathered, the decision remained a political rather than scientific one. The issue would only be settled after the southern states seceded from the Union, leaving the matter in the hands of northern politicians.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Gunnison
1854 Charge of the Light Brigade occurred. During the Crimean War, the Charge of the Light Brigade occurred as Lord Cardigan led the British cavalry against the Russians at [b Balaclava. [/b]The Charge was later immortalized in the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade
1870 The first U.S. trademark was awarded. A pennant with a slogan from the "Averill Chemical Paint Company," which represented an eagle holding in its beak a pot of paint, was the first mark registered in the U.S. However, the Law of 1870 was later repealed as contradicting to the U.S. Constitution; therefore, this first registration was consequently annulled.
www.librarieshawaii.org/feddocs/fd_patent.html
1881 Leslie L. Curtis of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, patented an air brush painting device. His patent No. 248,579 describes an "Atomizer for Coloring Pictures," which was a "device for easy, accurate, and rapid distribution of coloring and shading upon drawings and paintings." Coloring matter could be projected upon the picture in the form of a fine spray. It was drawn up a tube from a bottle when air passed over an aperture in the upper end of the tube and was separated into a fine spray. The fineness of the spray could be regulated. Holes were provided in the rear of the air-tube to be covered with the thumb of the hand that held the container while in use. Removing the thumb caused the flow of coloring material from the fine nozzle to cease.
1890 Money, servants, dinners, parties, balls-- Emma had it all. Her wealth allowed her to admire herself in dresses that glittered with diamond dust. She and her businessman husband, Sidney Whittemore, moved among the elite of New York, unaware of anything missing in themselves.
One afternoon, Emma's friend, Miss Kelly, persuaded her to hear an evangelist. Completely on his own, Sidney went too. Neither had the slightest idea the other would be there. Both were stirred by the message and went down to the mourner's bench. Soon afterward, Miss Kelly urged Emma to visit Water Street where Jerry McAuley, an ex-convict and reformed drunkard, had opened a mission. Sidney agreed to allow Emma to go just once, but only if he escorted her through the rough area of New York City.
"Never can that night be erased from my memory," wrote Emma. "From the time we got off the car at Roosevelt Street, each step opened up some new horror." She heard curses, saw quarreling, fighting, police abuse, and women dragged off to the station. As the meeting progressed, God got such possession of the Whittemores that both sat in painful silence as they were convicted of their useless lives. "We arose with a holy determination, born of God himself, to henceforth live for his glory and praise."
One evening she spent some time "alone with God, earnestly inquiring of him" what she was to do. "Suddenly the girls on the street came to my mind..." But the thought of working with these wayward women horrified her. "Oh, anything but that!" she pleaded. A deep hush of shame came upon her heart and she yielded to what the Lord was asking.
But she often found the work unbearable. "Oh, Lord, I cannot, I cannot see these fearful sights again! It simply breaks my heart." The outcome was always that she received more love to go on.
If girls were to be rescued, homes were needed to house them. On this day, October 25th, 1890, Mother Whittemore's first Door of Hope opened. Within four years, the Door of Hope had helped 325 girls. Eventually Door of Hope went international. By Emma's death in 1931, there were 97 homes in seven countries.
www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/emma-whittemore-opened-door-of-hope-11630626.html
1916 French troops celebrate recapture of Fort Douaumont, the preeminent fortress guarding the city of Verdun, under siege by the German army since the previous February.
In February 1916, the walls of Verdun were defended by some 500,000 men stationed in two principal fortresses, Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux. The Germans, commanded by Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn, sent 1 million men against the city, hoping for a decisive victory on the Western Front that would push the Allies towards an armistice. The first shot was fired on the morning of February 21, and the Germans proceeded quickly from there, overrunning two lines of French trenches and pushing the defenders back to the walls of the city itself. Fort Douaumont was a massive structure, protected by two layers of concrete over a meter thick, and surrounded by a seven-meter-deep moat and 30 meters of barbed wire. Its fall to the Germans on February 25 became an early turning point in the struggle at Verdun. From then on, Verdun became a symbolic cause the French command could not abandon: public sentiment demanded the recapture of the fortress.
If the German army sought to "bleed the French white," in Falkenhayn’s words, the French army, under Phillipe Petain, was equally determined that the enemy would not pass at Verdun. The battle soon settled into a bloody stalemate, and over the next 10 months, the city would see some of the fiercest and costliest fighting of World War I, with a total of over 700,000 casualties. By the summer of 1916, German resources had been stretched thinner by having to confront both a British-led offensive on the Somme River and Russia’s Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern Front. In July, the kaiser, frustrated by the state of things at Verdun, removed Falkenhayn and sent him to command the 9th Army in Transylvania; Paul von Hindenburg took his place. Petain had been replaced in April by Robert Nivelle, who implemented a counter-attacking strategy that enabled the French to recapture of much of their lost territory by the late fall.
Chief among these French gains was the recapture of Fort Douaumont on October 24, 1916. Under a cover of fog, French forces attacked the German-occupied fort from atop nearby Souville Hill, swarming down and taking some 6,000 German prisoners by the end of that day. "Douaumont is ours," wrote a French staff officer who participated in the action that day. "The formidable Douaumont, which dominates with its mass, its observation points, the two shores of the Meuse, is again French." Fort Vaux likewise fell back into French hands barely a week later. Though German commanders such as Erich Ludendorff played down the impact of such "local" French victories, the German momentum at Verdun was indeed winding down. On December 18, 1916, Hindenburg finally called a halt to his army’s attacks at Verdun, after the French captured 11,000 German soldiers over the last three days of battle.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Douaumont
1921 A hurricane with 100 mph winds hit Tampa, FL, causing several million dollars damage. (David Ludlum)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_Tampa_Bay_hurricane
1923 Senate begins investigating Teapot Dome scandals of Harding administration. The Wall Street Journal had reported an unprecedented secret arrangement in which the secretary of the Interior, without competitive bidding, had leased the U.S. naval petroleum reserve at Wyoming's Teapot Dome to a private oil company. Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert La Follette arranged for the Senate Committee on Public Lands to investigate the matter. His suspicions deepened after someone ransacked his quarters in the Senate Office Building.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal
1937 Radio’s "Stella Dallas" made her debut on the NBC Red network. Stella Dallas was based on Olive Higgins Prouty's novel by that title that was reincarnated in 1925 and 1937 celluloid versions and adapted to radio by Frank and Anne Hummert. This series, with actress Anne Elstner always featured as Stella, arrived in late 1937 as a trial run over a New York station. Its reception was strong enough for Sterling Drugs, Inc. to back it for national exposure beginning June 6, 1938 over NBC. Stella Dallas was to become one of only a trio of serials occupying a single quarter-hour timeslot (in its case, 4:15 p.m. Eastern Time) on one chain beyond a decade, lasting to the end of its run (the other two were Our Gal Sunday and Wendy Warren and the News).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Dallas_(radio_series)
1938 The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing music as "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beckman
1940 "Cabin in the Sky" opened for the first of 156 shows. Cabin in the Sky was perhaps Vernon Duke's single greatest Broadway achievement. It opened on October 25, 1940 and starred Ethel Waters. The librettist was Lynn Root, and the lyrics were by John La Touche with the collaboration of Ted Fetter. A musical fable about the tug of war between good and evil in the rural South, its song classics include "Taking a Chance on Love," "Honey in the Honeycomb," "Love Turned the Light Out," and "Cabin in the Sky."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_in_the_Sky
1941 The first Youth For Christ rally was held at Bryant's Alliance Tabernacle in New York City. An international evangelical youth organization, YFC has no single founder, but rather emerged out of weekly rallies held for the youth of New York City during the 1930s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_for_Christ
1943 Benny Carter and his orchestra recorded "Poinciana" Benny Carter was one of the greatest jazz alto saxists of the swing era alongside Johnny Hodges. More than merely a giant of jazz saxophone, Benny Carter was at one time or other a composer and arranger, a skilled clarinetist and gifted trumpet player and an exceptionally versatile, talented musician -- for more than three quarters of a century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poinciana_(song)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Carter
1944 Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelweiss_Pirates
1944 The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship's own malfunctioning torpedo.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306)
1944 The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers occupation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carei#History
1944 First kamikaze attack of the war begins when during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Japanese deploy kamikaze ("divine wind") suicide bombers against American warships for the first time. It will prove costly--to both sides.
This decision to employ suicide bombers against the American fleet at Leyte, an island of the Philippines, was based on the failure of conventional naval and aerial engagements to stop the American offensive. Declared Japanese naval Capt. Motoharu Okamura: "I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our planes.... There will be more than enough volunteers for this chance to save our country."
The first kamikaze force was in fact composed of 24 volunteer pilots from Japan's 201st Navy Air Group. The targets were U.S. escort carriers; one, the St. Lo, was struck by a A6M Zero fighter and sunk in less than an hour, killing 100 Americans. More than 5,000 kamikaze pilots died in the gulf battle-taking down 34 ships.
For their kamikaze raids, the Japanese employed both conventional aircraft and specially designed planes, called Ohka ("cherry blossom") by the Japanese, but Baka ("fool") by the Americans, who saw them as acts of desperation. The Baka was a rocket-powered plane that was carried toward its target attached to the belly of a bomber.
All told, more than 1,321 Japanese aircraft crash-dived their planes into Allied warships during the war, desperate efforts to reverse the growing Allied advantage in the Pacific. While approximately 3,000 Americans and Brits died because of these attacks, the damage done did not prevent the Allied capture of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze
1945 The Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan's surrender to the Allies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
1955 The first domestic microwave oven was sold by Tappan. In 1947, Raytheon demonstrated the "Radarange," the world's first microwave oven. Ratheon's commercial, refrigerator-sized microwave ovens cost between $2,000 and $3,000. In 1952, Raytheon entered into a licensing agreement with Tappan Stove Company which had a consumer distribution and marketing infrastructure. In 1955, Tappan introduced the first domestic microwave oven, a 220-volt more compact wall-unit the size of a conventional oven, but less powerful microwave generating system. It had two cooking speeds (500 or 800 watts), stainless steel exterior, glass shelf, top browning element and a recipe card drawer. However, at $1,300 sales were slow.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_heating
1958 "It's All In The Game" by Tommy Edwards topped the charts. The lyrics were added in 1951 by Carl Sigman, who also changed the song's name to "It's All in the Game." After "It's All in the Game" hit, Edwards' fortunes declined to the point of MGM Records getting ready to drop him in 1958. As a last-ditch effort to save his career, he agreed to re-record this as one of the first stereo singles ever released. He kept the vocal style of the 1951 hit, but gave the new version a rock'n'roll arrangement. The single quickly took the top position on the charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_All_in_the_Game_(song)
Accutron Movement. The tuning fork is between the two electromagnetic coils at the top of the watch, which drive it.
1960 The Accutron 214, the world's first electronic wristwatch by Bulova, was placed on sale in New York City. The original circuit used a germanium PNP transistor circuit with a 360-Hz tuning fork, used for timing accuracy. In 1977 it was replaced by quartz watches. The Accutron has the potential accuracy of better than 2 seconds per day, remarkable in its day of mechanical watches. In 1953, tuning fork watch development began in Switzerland and prototype watches were made in 1955. Its Swiss engineer was Max Hetzel, who moved in 1959 to continue his development of the Bulova Accutron in New York with William Bennett. The CEO of Bulova at the time was Omar Bradley, 5 Star General, US Army, Retired.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulova#Accutron
1960 The musical "Camelot" by Loewe and Lerner was copyright registered. In the 1960 stage version, the original stars were Richard Burton as Arthur, Julie Andrews as Guenevere, Robert Goulet as Lancelot, Roddy McDowall as Mordred, and John Cullum as Sir Lionel and understudy for Burton. (Cullum later took over the role of Mordred.) Directed by Moss Hart, the original Broadway production opened at the Majestic Theater on December 3, 1960, and played 874 performances.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelot_(musical)
1962 American author John Steinbeck awarded Nobel Prize in literature
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck
1962 U.S. Ambassador Stevenson confronts Zorin at UN. U.S. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson forcefully asked the Soviet representative, Valerian Zorin, if his country was installing missiles in Cuba, punctuated with the famous demand "Don't wait for the translation!" in demanding an immediate answer. Following Zorin's refusal to answer the abrupt question, Stevenson retorted, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over." In a diplomatic coup, Stevenson then showed photographs that proved the existence of missiles in Cuba, just after the Soviet ambassador had said they did not exist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II
1964 Viking Jim Marshall runs 66 yards in the wrong direction for a safety. Despite his positive achievements, Marshall is probably best remembered around the NFL as Wrong Way Marshall. In 1964 he scooped up a fumble against the 49ers, carried it 66 yards into the end zone and then jubilantly tossed the ball toward the stands. Trouble was, it was the wrong end zone. "I was so intent on picking the ball up and doing something with it that I wasn't even aware of what I had done until the ball had been whistled dead," Marshall recalls."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Marshall_(American_football)
1965 The Rolling Stones released "Get Off of My Cloud" to radio. "Get Off of My Cloud" followed "Satisfaction" as The Stones second #1 hit in the US. Some radio stations would not play this because they thought it was about drugs.The Get Off of My Cloud was in response to impatient record executives wanting a quick follow up to Satisfaction.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Off_of_My_Cloud
1969 "I Can't Get Next to You" by the Temptations topped the charts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Can%27t_Get_Next_to_You
1971 Roy Disney dedicates Walt Disney World.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_O._Disney
1971 The United Nations seated the People's Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan and China and the United Nations)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
1972 The Washington Post reports that White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman is the fifth person to control a secret cash fund designed to finance illegal political sabotage and espionage during the 1972 presidential election campaign (see also Watergate scandal).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Haldeman
1977 Dutch Harbor in Alaska reported a barometric pressure reading of 27.31 inches (925 millibars) to establish an all-time record for the state. (The Weather Channel)
1977 Digital Equipment Corporation releases OpenVMS V1.0.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS
1981 A northbound tornado caused two million dollars damage to Bountstown, FL, in less than five minutes. Fortunately no deaths occurred along its six mile path, which was 30 to 100 yards in width. Radar at Apalachicola had no indication of a tornado or severe weather. (The Weather Channel)
www.city-data.com/city/Blountstown-Florida.html
1983 Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Urgent_Fury
1984 "Give My Regards to Broad Street" premiers (Gotham Theater-NYC)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_My_Regards_to_Broad_Street
1986 "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper topped the charts
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Colors_(song)
1987 A storm system moving across the Saint Lawrence Valley produced 40 to 50 mph winds east of Lake Ontario. High winds downed some trees around Watertown NY, and produced waves seven feet high between Henderson Harbor and Alexandria Bay. Mason City IA and Waterloo IA tied for honors as cold spot in the nation with record lows for the date of 19 degrees. Severe thunderstorms in Oklahoma and northern Texas produced golf ball size hail and wind gusts to 65 mph. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1988 ABC News reports on potbellied pygmy porkers' popularity as pets.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potbellied_pig
1988 Severe thunderstorms erupted over northeastern Texas during the late evening producing softball size hail at Newcastle and Jonesboro. Low pressure over James Bay in Canada continued to produced showers and gale force winds in the Great Lakes Region. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1989 Low pressure over Nevada produced high winds in the southwestern U.S., and spread heavy snow into Utah. Winds gusted to 63 mph at the Mojave Airport in southern California. Snowfall totals in Utah ranged up to 12 inches at Snowbird, with 11 inches at Alta. "Indian Summer" type weather continued in the central and eastern U.S. Twenty cities in the north central U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date. Highs of 77 degrees at Alpena MI and 81 degrees at Saint Cloud MN were the warmest of record for so late in the season. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1990 The first transplant operation of a lung from a live donor to a recipient is performed by Dr. Vaughn A. Starnes, Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, California. A mother was the living donor to her 12-year-old daughter. Dr Starnes is a world-renowned pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons who has performed several transplantation "firsts," including transplanting a heart and lung into a four-month old baby - the youngest ever. Lung transplantation was first attempted in 1963, and heart-lung transplantation in 1968. The first successful heart-lung transplant, by Dr. Bruce Reitz, was at Stanford in 1981. The world's first successful lung transplants were at Toronto General Hospital, Ont. (Single lung, 1983; double,1986).
1995 A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
2004 Fidel Castro, Cuba's President, announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned by November 8.
2009 The 25 October 2009 Baghdad bombings kills 155 and wounds at least 721.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_October_2009_Baghdad_bombings
Births
1782 Levi Lincoln, Jr.,American lawyer and politician from Worcester, Massachusetts, 13th Governor of Massachusetts (1825-1834) and represented the state in the U.S. Congress (1834-1841). Lincoln was the longest consecutive-serving governor in Massachusetts' history at 9 years from 1825-1834, although he was not the longest serving governor (Michael Dukakis was the longest serving at 12 years, from 1975-1979, and then 1983-1991) (d. 1868)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Lincoln,_Jr.
1811 Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther born at Langenshursdorf, Saxony, Germany. After completing his theological studies at the University of Leipzig, he encountered opposition to his strongly conservative Lutheran position and emigrated to the United States in 1839 with 750 other Lutherans, establishing a Lutheran colony in Missouri. Walther became pastor of Trinity Congregation in St. Louis (1841) and became a professor and eventually president of Concordia Seminary which he helped found. He was also president of a new church body which was organized in 1847, largely under his direction, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, with a membership comprising one third of all Lutherans in North and South America. A prolific writer, Walther was called the "most commanding figure in the Lutheran church of America during the 19th century." (d 1887)
lutheranhistory.org/presidents/pres_walther.htm
1849 Benjamin Abbot, at Exeter, Massachusetts, educator (b. 17 Sep 1762).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Abbot
1864 John Francis Dodge (d 1920) American automobile manufacturing pioneer and co-founder of Dodge Brothers Company.
1873 John North Willys (d 1935) American industrialist who developed early automotive production. In 1912-18, Willys' output ranked second only to Ford. Willys first saw an early automobile in 1899, realized its potential, and came a car salesman. By 1907, his sales out-stripped his supplier's ability to produce, so he stepped in and reorganized the faltering Overland Company in Indianapolis. He successfully increased production, and expanded the Willys-Overland plant into a larger factory in Toledo, Ohio. During WW I, Willys-Overland became a major producer of trucks, airplanes and airplane engines. After his death, the Willys-Overland company pioneered the WW II Jeep, a rugged off-road vehicle. In 1970, the company was bought by American Motors Corporation.
1877 Henry Norris Russell (d 1957) American astronomer and astrophysicist who showed the relationship between a star's brightness and its spectral type, in what is usually called the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, and who also devised a means of computing the distances of binary stars. As student, professor, observatory director, and active professor emeritus, Russell spent six decades at Princeton University. From 1921, he visited Mt. Wilson Observatory annually. He analyzed light from eclipsing binary stars to determine stellar masses. Russell measured parallaxes and popularized the distinction between giant stars and "dwarfs" while developing an early theory of stellar evolution. Russell was a dominant force in American astronomy as a teacher, writer, and advisor.
1881 Pablo Picasso one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, Malaga, Spain.
Picasso's father was a professor of drawing, and he bred his son for a career in academic art. Picasso had his first exhibit at age 13 and later quit art school so he could experiment full-time with modern art styles. He went to Paris for the first time in 1900, and in 1901 was given an exhibition at a gallery on Paris' rue Lafitte, a street known for its prestigious art galleries. The precocious 19-year-old Spaniard was at the time a relative unknown outside Barcelona, but he had already produced hundreds of paintings. Winning favorable reviews, he stayed in Paris for the rest of the year and later returned to the city to settle permanently.
The work of Picasso, which comprises more than 50,000 paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, and ceramics produced over 80 years, is described in a series of overlapping periods. His first notable period--the "blue period"—began shortly after his first Paris exhibit. In works such as The Old Guitarist (1903), Picasso painted in blue tones to evoke the melancholy world of the poor. The blue period was followed by the "rose period," in which he often depicted circus scenes, and then by Picasso's early work in sculpture. In 1907, Picasso painted the groundbreaking work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which, with its fragmented and distorted representation of the human form, broke from previous European art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon demonstrated the influence on Picasso of both African mask art and Paul Cezanne and is seen as a forerunner of the Cubist movement, founded by Picasso and the French painter Georges Braque in 1909.
In Cubism, which is divided into two phases, analytical and synthetic, Picasso and Braque established the modern principle that artwork need not represent reality to have artistic value. Major Cubist works by Picasso included his costumes and sets for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1917) and The Three Musicians (1921). Picasso and Braque's Cubist experiments also resulted in the invention of several new artistic techniques, including collage.
After Cubism, Picasso explored classical and Mediterranean themes, and images of violence and anguish increasingly appeared in his work. In 1937, this trend culminated in the masterpiece Guernica, a monumental work that evoked the horror and suffering endured by the Basque town of Guernica when it was destroyed by German war planes during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso remained in Paris during the Nazi occupation but was fervently opposed to fascism and after the war joined the French Communist Party.
Picasso's work after World War II is less studied than his earlier creations, but he continued to work feverishly and enjoyed commercial and critical success. He produced fantastical works, experimented with ceramics, and painted variations on the works of other masters in the history of art. Known for his intense gaze and domineering personality, he had a series of intense and overlapping love affairs in his lifetime. He continued to produce art with undiminished force until his death in 1973 at the age of 91.
1888 Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr., USN (d 1957) naval officer who specialized in feats of exploration. He was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights, in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a segment of the Arctic Ocean, and a segment of the Antarctic Plateau. Byrd claimed that his expeditions had been the first to reach the North Pole and the South Pole by air. His South Pole claim is generally supported by a consensus of those who have examined the evidence. Byrd was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for heroism given by the United States.
1889 Howard Ellsworth "Smoky Joe" Wood (d 1985) Major League Baseball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and an outfielder for the Cleveland Indians during the early part of the 20th century. He is one of only 13 pitchers who won 30 or more games in one season (34-5 in 1912) since 1900.
1890 Floyd Bennett (d 1928) American pioneer aviator who piloted the explorer Richard E. Byrd on the first successful flight over the North Pole on 9 May 1926, in a three-engine Fokker monoplane, Josephine Ford. They flew 1,360 miles from King's Bay, Spitzbergen, to the Pole and back in 15-1/2 hours. During his aviation duty in the Navy Bennett had met Byrd (1925) as his commander on the Donald B. MacMillan expedition to northwestern Greenland. Byrd realized that Bennett was more than a good pilot, he was fearless, and one of the finest practical men in the Navy for handling an airplane's temperamental mechanisms. Together, they planned the North Pole flight. For his share in the achievement Bennett received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
1891 Father Charles Edward Coughlin (d 1979) was a controversial Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower Church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than forty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s. Early in his career Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his early New Deal proposals, before later becoming a harsh critic of Roosevelt as too friendly to bankers. In 1934 he announced a new political organization called the "National Union for Social Justice." He wrote a platform calling for monetary reforms, the nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of the rights of labor. The membership ran into the millions, resembling the Populist movement of the 1890s
1902 Henry Steele Commager (d 1998) American historian who wrote (or edited) over forty books and over 700 journalistic essays and reviews. He won fame as one of the most active and prolific public intellectuals of his time, and he based his activism in support of the causes he advocated, opposition to the war in Vietnam, and criticism of the constitutional agendas of the administrations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, on his authority as a historian and educator.
1910 William Higinbotham (d 1994) American physicist who invented the first video game, Tennis for Two, as entertainment for the 1958 visitor day at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he worked (1947-84) then as head of the Instrumentation Division. It used a small analogue computer with ten direct-connected operational amplifiers and output a side view of the curved flight of the tennis ball on an oscilloscope only five inches in diameter. Each player had a control knob and a button. Late in WW II he became electronics group leader at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the nuclear bomb was developed. After the war, he became active with other nuclear scientists in establishing the Federation of American Scientists to promote nuclear non-proliferation.
1912 Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon (d 1996), known professionally as Minnie Pearl, American country comedienne who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years (from 1940 to 1991) and on the television show Hee Haw from 1969 to 1991.
1914 John Allyn Berryman (born John Allyn Smith, Jr.) (d 1972) American poet, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry. He was the author of The Dream Songs, which are playful, witty, and morbid. Berryman committed suicide in 1972.
1917 Lee MacPhail, American baseball manager and league executive
1921 Marian Koshland (d 1997) American immunologist who discovered that the differences in amino acid composition of antibodies explains the efficiency and effectiveness with which they combat a huge range of foreign invaders. During WWII, her post-graduate studies included assisting with projects developing an Asiatic cholera vaccine, and combatting transmission of airborne pathogens in army barracks. In 1970 she became a professor of Microbiology and Immunology, after which she discovered the J chain (a B cell antibody subunit). In 1991, with colleagues, she identified a specialized intracellular pathway that transports antibodies into blood circulation, allowing for the multiplication of B cells essential in fighting infection.
1923 Robert Brown "Bobby" Thomson (d 2010), nicknamed "The Staten Island Scot," Scottish American Major League Baseball outfielder and right-handed batter who played for the New York Giants (1946–53, 1957), Milwaukee Braves (1954–57), Chicago Cubs (1958–59), Boston Red Sox (1960) and Baltimore Orioles (1960). His season-ending three-run home run for the Giants in 1951, known as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World," is one of the most famous moments in baseball history.
1933 Eugene Gordon Lee (d 2005) former American child actor, most notable for appearing in the Our Gang (Little Rascals) comedies as Porky from 1935 to 1939. During his tenure in Our Gang, Porky originated the catchphrase "O-tay!", though it is commonly attributed to Buckwheat. Lee was born in Fort Worth, Texas as Eugene Lee, and was adopted.
1935 Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart American astronaut. Schweickart was born in Neptune, New Jersey. He earned an B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics/Astronautics from MIT in 1956 and 1963 respectively.
1940 Robert Montgomery "Bob" or "Bobby" Knight retired American basketball coach. Nicknamed "The General", Knight has won 902 NCAA Division I men's college basketball games, more than any other head coach. On January 1, 2007, he achieved his 880th victory, breaking the record held by Dean Smith. His 900th victory came on January 16, 2008. He was most recently the head men's basketball coach at Texas Tech before announcing his retirement on February 4, 2008. He was previously the head coach at Indiana University and at the United States Military Academy.
1944 James Carville American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Carville was a co-host of CNN's Crossfire until its final broadcast in June 2005. Since its cancellation, he has appeared on CNN's news program, The Situation Room. As of 2009, he hosts a weekly program on XM Radio titled 60/20 Sports with Luke Russert, son of the late Tim Russert who hosted NBC's Meet The Press. He is married to Republican political consultant Mary Matalin. In 2009, he began teaching political science at Tulane University.
1945 David N. Schramm (d 1997) American theoretical astrophysicist who was an authority on the particle-physics aspects of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. He considered the nuclear physics involved in the synthesis of the light elements created during the Big Bang comprising mainly hydrogen, with lesser quantities of deuterium, helium, lithium, beryllium and boron. He predicted, from cosmological considerations, that a third family of neutrinos existed - which was later proven in particle accelerator experiments (1989). Schramm worked to evaluate undetected dark matter that contributed to the mass of the universe, and which would determine whether the universe would ultimately continue to expand. He died in the crash of the small airplane he was piloting.
Deaths
625 Pope Boniface V (pope from 619 to 625. He did much for the Christianising of England and enacted the decree by which churches became places of refuge for criminals.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Boniface_V
1757 Antoine Augustin Calmet, French Benedictine theologian whose work inaugurated a new method of Biblical exegesis that departed from the custom of giving an allegorical (mystical) and tropological (moral) interpretation to Biblical texts besides the literal, (b. 26 Feb 1672)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Augustin_Calmet
1806 Henry Knox (b 1750) military officer of the Continental Army and later the United States Army, and also served as the first United States Secretary of War.
1852 John Chamberlain Clark (b 1793) United States Representative from New York.
1892 Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison (b 1832), wife of Benjamin Harrison, was First Lady of the United States from 1889 until her death. She was the first First Lady to be born in October.
1900 Edward Robinson Squibb (b 1819) U.S. chemist and pharmaceutical manufacturer who improved the purity and reliability of drugs. While a U.S. Navy medical officer, he convinced the Navy to manufacture their own drugs to ensure better quality. In 1851, he set up a laboratory to do this at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital. He distilled ether (for use as an anesthetic) using a still heated by a steam coil, thus eliminating the dangers of an open flame. He published the results of his discoveries instead of patenting them. Between 1852-57 he also made chloroform, bismuth salts, fluid extracts and other preparations. By 1858, he had his own business with 38 products, the start of a drug manufacturing enterprise that by1883 offered 324 products.
1910 William Law Anderson (b 1879) Scottish immigrant to the United States who became the first golfer to win four U.S. Opens, with victories in 1901, 1903, 1904, and 1905. He is still the only man to win three consecutive titles, and only Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus have equalled his total of four championships. He is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
1921 William Barclay "Bat" Masterson (b 1853) figure of the American Old West known as a buffalo hunter, U.S. Army scout, avid fisherman, gambler, frontier lawman, U.S. Marshal, and sports editor and columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph. He was the brother of lawmen James Masterson and Ed Masterson.
1957 Albert Anastasia , born Umberto Anastasio, (b 1902) boss of what is now called the Gambino Crime Family, one of New York City's Five Families, from 1951-1957. He also ran a gang of contract killers called Murder Inc. which enforced the decisions of the Commission, the ruling council of the American Mafia. He was nicknamed the "Mad Hatter" and the "Lord High Executioner".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Anastasia
1960 Henry George "Harry" Ferguson (b 1884) Irish engineer and inventor who is noted for his role in the development of the modern agricultural tractor, for becoming the first Irishman to build and fly his own aeroplane, and for developing the first four-wheel drive Formula One car, the Ferguson P99. Today his name lives on in the name of the Massey Ferguson company.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Ferguson
1980 Virgil Keel Fox (b Princeton, Illinois 1912– d Palm Beach, Florida) American organist, known especially for his flamboyant "Heavy Organ" concerts of the music of Bach. These events appealed to audiences in the 1970s who were more familiar with rock 'n' roll music and were staged complete with light shows. His many recordings made on the RCA Victor and Capitol labels, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, have been remastered and re-released on compact disc in recent years. They continue to be widely available in mainstream music stores.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Fox
1989 Richard Howell Fleming (b 1909) Canadian-born U.S. oceanographer who researched ocean currents, chemistry and biochemistry. He applied oceanography for military uses (1941-51) and studied the disposal of atomic wastes in the ocean. Fleming worked with the first comprehensive synoptic two-year survey (1955-56) of the Northern Pacific Ocean, charting currents, tides, winds, depths, and temperatures and observing plant and animal life. In 1959, for the Atomic Energy Commission, he began investigating the feasibility of creating a harbor in Alaska by nuclear explosions. He co-authored the comprehensive The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry, and General Biology, (1942).
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/209974/Richard-H-Fleming
1992 Roger Dean Miller (b 1936) American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs. His most recognized tunes included the chart-topping country/pop hits "King of the Road", "Dang Me" and "England Swings", all from the mid-1960s Nashville sound era.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Dean_Miller
1993 Vincent Leonard Price II (b 1911) American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Price
1994 Kara Spears Hultgreen (b 1965), Lieutenant in the United States Navy, was the first female naval carrier-based fighter pilot. She was killed just months after she was certified for combat, when her F-14 Tomcat crashed into the sea on final approach to USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72). A formal investigation found that the cause of the crash was primarily pilot error following an engine failure.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Spears_Hultgreen
1999 William Payne Stewart (b 1957) American professional golfer who won three majors in his career, the last of which occurred only months before he died in an airplane accident at the age of 42.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payne_Stewart
2002 Paul David Wellstone (b 1944) two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. Before being elected to the Senate in 1990, he was a professor of political science at Carleton College. Wellstone was a progressive and a leading spokesman for the progressive wing of the national Democratic Party. He served in the Senate from 1991 until his death in a plane crash on 25 October 2002, 11 days before the US senate election in which he was running for a third term.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_David_Wellstone
2002 Richard Harris, Irish-born actor, "Camelot," "Harry Potter" star, with a career that spanned six decades, of cancer at age 72 in London. Harris was known for his acting talent as well as his carousing off-camera. As BBC.com reported after his death, "He was everything a bad-boy Hollywood star should be: a handsome, boozing, brawling, womanizing, jet-setter whose moody magnificence brought glamour to even his weakest movies."
Richard St. John Harris was born on October 1, 1930, in Limerick, Ireland, where his family had a flour-milling business. As a young man, Harris was a talented rugby player, but his athletic career was cut short by a battle with tuberculosis. He went on to study acting in the mid-1950s at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and afterward found work in various London theater productions. By the late 1950s, he was earning small roles on the big screen. Among his early film credits were supporting parts in "The Guns of Navarone" (1961), featuring Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn, and "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962), with Marlon Brando.
Harris shot to international stardom with his performance as a coal miner tuned rugby player in 1963's "This Sporting Life." The role earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor. A long list of acting credits would follow—Harris made more than 70 films over the course of his career—including a 1967 cinematic adaptation of the Broadway musical "Camelot," in which he played King Arthur. In addition to his movie roles, Harris became equally famous for his reputation as a raconteur and hell-raiser. He reportedly suffered nine broken noses during his life and received last rites twice from a priest.
Harris portrayed a hardened Irish farmer in 1990's "The Field," for which he garnered a second Oscar nomination for best actor. He went on to appear in such movies as "The Unforgiven" (1992) directed by Clint Eastwood, "Patriot Games" (1992), "Cry, the Beloved Country" (1995) and "Gladiator" (2000), in which he played Marcus Aurelius to Russell Crowe's Maximus.
In 2001, Harris gained legions of new fans when he played Albus Dumbledore, the wise, white-bearded headmaster of Hogwarts School, in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Harris reprised this role for the second film in the series, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," which was released in the U.S. in November 2002, just weeks after his death.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harris
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