This Day in History

[glatt]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

Cool. Orson Scott Card. I hear he's a dick, but he's one of my favorite authors.

I never heard it put in those words, but yes. I think he is. So I googled the phrase. In quotes.

[Gravdigr]

Is Orson Scott Card a dick?

Result #2:



You can click away when he says goodbye, it's 3 more minutes of black screen and silence.

[Gravdigr]

August 25

1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.

1543 – The first Europeans, and the first firearms, arrive in Japan.

1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.

1894 – Kitasato Shibasaburō discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.

1916 – The United States National Park Service is created.

1944 – World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.

1981 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Saturn.

1989 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the second to last planet in the Solar System at the time.

1991 – Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what will become Linux.

1994 - Jimmy Buffett crashed his Grumman G-44 Widgeon seaplane on take-off in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Buffett swam away from the wreckage.

2012 – Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space, becoming the first man-made object to do so.

Births

1530 – Ivan the Terrible; 1819 – Allan Pinkerton (Pinkerton National Detective Agency); 1836 – Bret Harte; 1909 – Ruby Keeler, Michael Rennie ('Klaatu' in The Day The Earth Stood Still); 1916 – Van Johnson; 1917 – Mel Ferrer; 1918 – Leonard Bernstein♪ ♫; 1919 – George Wallace; 1921 – Monty Hall; 1927 – Althea Gibson; 1930 – Sean Connery (woman slapper); 1931 – Regis Philbin; 1933 – Patrick F. McManus; 1933 – Tom Skerritt; 1938 – David Canary (All My Children, Bonanza); 1937 – Virginia Wolff; 1939 – John Badham; 1943 – Harry Manfredini♪ ♫; 1944 – Anthony Heald (the old friend Hannibal Lecter was going to have for dinner at the end of The Silence of the Lambs); 1949 – John Savage (The Deer Hunter), Gene Simmons(KISS); 1950 – Willy DeVille♪ ♫(Mink DeVille); 1951 – Rob Halford♪ ♫(Judas Priest, Fight); 1954 – Elvis Costello♪ ♫; 1958 – Tim Burton; 1961 – Billy Ray Cyrus♪ ♫; 1962 – Vivian Campbell; 1964 – Blair Underwood; 1968 – Rachael Ray; 1970 – Jo Dee Messina♪ ♫; 1976 – Alexander Skarsgård ('Tarzan' in The Legend of Tarzan, son of actor Stellen Skarsgård); 1987 – Blake Lively (Gossip Girl)

Deaths

79 – Pliny the Elder; 1819 – James Watt; 1822 – William Herschel; 1867 – Michael Faraday; 1900 – Friedrich Nietzsche; 1908 – Henri Becquerel; 1945 – John Birch (John Birch Society); 1956 – Alfred Kinsey; 1967 – Paul Muni; 1984 – Truman Capote; 1988 – Art Rooney (founded the Pittsburgh Steelers); 2000 – Frederick C. Bock (namesake of Bockscar, the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan), Allen Woody(Allman Bros); 2001 – Aaliyah♪ ♫; 2009 – Ted Kennedy; 2012 – Neil Armstrong

[Gravdigr]

August 26

Today is Women's Equality Day in the United States.

1346 – Hundred Years' War: The military supremacy of the English longbow over the French combination of crossbow and armoured knights is established at the Battle of Crécy.

1498 – Michelangelo is commissioned to carve the Pietà.

1768 – Captain James Cook sets sail from England on board HMS Endeavour.

1791 – John Fitch is granted a United States patent for the steamboat.

1883 – The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa begins its final, paroxysmal, stage.

1920 – The 19th amendment to United States Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote.

1970 – The then-new feminist movement, led by Betty Friedan, leads a nationwide Women's Strike for Equality.

1980 – John Birges plants a bomb at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, United States. The FBI inadvertently detonated the bomb during disarming.

1987 - Sonny Bono, who once said that he never voted until he was 53, announced that he was running for mayor of Palm Springs, California. He won the election in 1988 and went on to win a seat in Congress in 1996.

1999 – Russia begins the Second Chechen War in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade.

2004 - Singer Laura Branigan died of a brain aneurysm. She had had a 1982 US No.2 & UK No.6 single with ‘Gloria’ and a 1984 US No.4 & UK No.5 with ‘Self Control’. She had also played Janis Joplin in the US musical Love, Janis.

2015 – Two U.S. journalists are shot and killed by a disgruntled former coworker while conducting a live report in Moneta, Virginia.

Births

1676 – Robert Walpole; 1740 – Joseph-Michel Montgolfier; 1743 – Antoine Lavoisier; 1845 – Mary Ann Nichols (victim of Jack The Ripper); 1898 – Peggy Guggenheim; 1909 – Jim Davis ('Jock Ewing' on Dallas); 1910 – Mother Teresa; 1935 – Geraldine Ferraro; 1940 – Don LaFontaine (voice-over artist); 1944 – Maureen Tucker(The Velvet Underground); 1945 – Tom Ridge (1st Secretary of Homeland Security); 1949 – Leon Redbone♪ ♫; 1952 – Michael Jeter; 1952 – Will Shortz (crossword puzzle creator); 1960 – Branford Marsalis♪ ♫; 1966 – Shirley Manson♪ ♫(Garbage); 1970 – Melissa McCarthy (Mike & Molly); 1980 – Macaulay Culkin, Chris Pine; 1985 – Brian Kelley♪ ♫(Florida-Georgia Line)

Deaths

1930 – Lon Chaney; 1974 – Charles Lindbergh; 1977 – H. A. Rey (created Curious George); 1978 – Charles Boyer; 1980 – Tex Avery (created the characters of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, and developed Porky Pig, & Chilly Willy); 1986 – Ted Knight; 2004 – Laura Branigan (Gloria); 2009 – Dominick Dunne

[Gravdigr]

Let's try this one more goddamn time, nothing like killing a fucking hour and a half twice.

September 1

Today is Random Acts of Kindness Day.

Today is Wattle Day in Australia, marking the first day of Spring.

717 – Siege of Constantinople: The Muslim armada with 1,800 ships, is defeated by the Byzantine navy through the use of Greek fire.

1532 – Lady Anne Boleyn is made Marquess of Pembroke by her fiancé, King Henry VIII of England.

1804 – Juno, one of the largest asteroids in the Main Belt, is discovered by the German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding.

1836 – Narcissa Whitman, one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington.

1878 – Emma Nutt becomes the world's first female telephone operator when she is recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company.

1894 – Over 400 people die in the Great Hinckley Fire, a forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota.

1914 – The last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.

1952 – The Old Man and the Sea, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway, is first published.

1969 – A coup in Libya brings Muammar Gaddafi to power.

1972 – In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.

1974 – The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of 1,435.587 miles per hour (2,310.353 km/h).

1983 – Cold War: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board die, including Congressman Lawrence McDonald.

1985 – A joint American–French expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

2004 – The Beslan school hostage crisis commences when armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in Beslan in North Ossetia, Russia.

Births

1653 – Johann Pachelbel; 1854 – Engelbert Humperdinck; 1866 – James J. Corbett; 1875 – Edgar Rice Burroughs; 1920 – Richard Farnsworth; 1922 – Yvonne De Carlol; 1923 – Rocky Marciano; 1928 – George Maharis; 1931 – Boxcar Willie; 1933 – Ann Richards; 1933 – Conway Twitty; 1937 – Al Geiberger; 1938 – Alan Dershowitz; 1939 – Lily Tomlin; 1946 – Barry Gibb; 1950 – Phil McGraw; 1970 – Padma Lakshmi

Deaths

1557 – Jacques Cartier; 1838 – William Clark; 1989 – A. Bartlett Giamatti; 2005 – R. L. Burnside; 2008 – Jerry Reed; 2012 – Hal David

[glatt]

[Thanks for always posting these.]

Wattle day?

They needed this.