This Day in History

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July 6

1947 – The AK-47



goes into production in the Soviet Union.

1957 – At a concert by the Quarrymen at the St. Peter's Church Woolton Garden fete, band member John Lennon met Paul McCartney,



triggering a series of events that led to the forming of the Beatles.

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July 8

There are 169 days until Christmas.

Events

1730 – An estimated magnitude 8.7 earthquake causes a tsunami that damages more than 1,000 km (620 mi) of Chile's coastline.

1889 – The first issue of The Wall Street Journal is published.

1898 – The death of crime boss Soapy Smith,



killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, releases Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.

1932 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22.

1947 – Reports are broadcast that a UFO crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident.

1970 – Richard Nixon delivers a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.

1994 – Kim Jong-il



begins to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung.

2011 – Space Shuttle Atlantis



is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

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July 17

1902 – Willis Carrier [may God bless and keep him] creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York.

1918 – The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; five [5] lives are lost.

1944 – World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France.

1955 – Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.

1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.

2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashes near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board are killed.

[xoxoxoBruce]

1902 – Willis Carrier [may God bless and keep him] creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York.

Wat chu chillin bout, Willis? He should be at least canonized, patron saint of fat people. Given a posthumous medal of freedom. Toasted at the beginning and end of every bottle of booze.

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Today is August 1.

There are 152 days remaining in 2017.

There are 145 days until Christmas.

Today is World Scout Scarf Day, so wear it if ya got it.



The year was 1983.

The number one movie this week in 1983 was National Lampoon's Vacation, starring Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Randy Quaid (before the Star Whackers got after him), and Christie Brinkley:



The number one single was "Every Breath You Take" by The Police:



1983

Ronald Reagan was POTUS.

January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning of the true Internet).

January 3 – Kīlauea begins slowly erupting on the Big Island of Hawaii and is still flowing as of 2016.

January 19 – High-ranking Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia.

January 30 – Washington Redskins beat the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII.

February 16 – The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claim the lives of 75 people, in one of Australia's worst bushfire disasters.

February 20 – Cale Yarborough Wins the 25th running of the Daytona 500.

February 23 - The automatic shut-down fails at Salem Nuclear Power Plant, New Jersey, USA.

February 28 – The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, setting a record for most watched television episode and reaching a total audience estimated at 125 million.

March 23 – Strategic Defense Initiative: U.S. President Ronald Reagan makes his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles. The media dub this plan "Star Wars".

March 25 – Motown celebrates its 25th anniversary with the television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, during which Michael Jackson performs "Billie Jean" and introduces the moonwalk.

April 4 – The Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on its maiden voyage: STS-6.

April 25 – Manchester, Maine, US, schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov, after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

May 25 – Return of the Jedi opens in theatres.

June 9 – Britain's Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, is re-elected by a landslide majority.

June 18 - Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space aboard Space Shuttle Challenger on the STS-7 mission.

July 21 – The lowest temperature on Earth is recorded in Vostok Station, Antarctica with −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F).

July 23 - Gimli Glider: Out of fuel, Air Canada Flight 143 glides in to land in Gimli, Manitoba.

August 18 - Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 22 and causing over US$3.8 billion (2005 dollars) in damage.

August 24 – The Old Philadelphia Arena is destroyed by arson.

September 1 – Cold War: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by Soviet Union Air Force Su-15 Flagon pilot Major Gennadi Osipovich near Moneron Island when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board are killed including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald.

September 4 – Six men walk underwater across Sydney Harbour – 82.9 km in 48 hours.

September 6 – The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.

September 16 – President Ronald Reagan announces that the Global Positioning System (GPS) will be made available for civilian use.

September 17 – Vanessa L. Williams becomes the first African American to be crowned Miss America, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

September 18 – U.S. heavy metal band Kiss officially appears in public without makeup for the first time on MTV.

September 25 – Maze Prison escape: 38 Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoners, armed with 6 handguns, hijack a prison lorry and smash their way out of HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland, in the largest prison escape since World War II and in British history.

September 26 - 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident: Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying a warning of attack by U.S. missiles as a false alarm.

September 27 – The GNU Project is announced publicly on the net.unix-wizards and net.usoft newsgroups.

October 4 – British entrepreneur Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 mph (1,019.468 km/h), driving Thrust2 at the Black Rock Desert, Nevada.

October 4 – The first Hooters opened in Clearwater, Florida.

October 23 – Beirut barracks bombing: Simultaneous suicide truck-bombings destroy both the French Army and United States Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen, 58 French paratroopers and 6 Lebanese civilians.

October 25 – Invasion of Grenada by United States troops at the behest of Eugenia Charles of Dominica, a member of the Organization of American States.

November 2 - Chrysler introduces the Dodge Caravan, the first "minivan".

November 5 – Byford Dolphin rig diving bell accident: Off the coast of Norway, 5 divers are killed and one severely wounded in an explosive decompression accident.

November 13 – The first United States cruise missiles arrive at RAF Greenham Common in England amid protests from peace campaigners.

November 18 – A Christmas Story is released.

November 26 – Brink's-Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly UK£26 million are taken from the Brink's-Mat vault at Heathrow Airport. Only a fraction of the gold is ever recovered, and only 2 men are convicted of the crime.

December 2 – Michael Jackson's Thriller video is aired on MTV for the first time.

December 4 - Solar eclipse of December 4, 1983.

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August 2

1776 – The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence took place.

1923 – Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes U.S. President upon the death of President Warren G. Harding.

1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg.

1943 – World War II: The Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. President, saves all but two of his crew.

1990 – Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.

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August 15

1281 – Mongol invasion of Japan: The Mongolian fleet of Kublai Khan is destroyed by a "divine wind" for the second time in the Battle of Kōan.

1914 – A servant of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright murders seven people and sets fire to the living quarters of Wright's Wisconsin home, Taliesin.

1935 – Will Rogers and Wiley Post are killed after their aircraft develops engine problems during takeoff in Barrow, Alaska.

1939 – Thirteen Stukas dive into the ground during a disastrous air-practice at Neuhammer. There are no survivors.

1939 – The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California.

1948 – The Republic of Korea is established south of the 38th parallel north.

1977 – The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the "Wow! signal" from the notation made by a volunteer on the project.

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August 20

Today is World Mosquito Day, so, get bit.


Events

1858 – Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.

1866 – President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.

1882 – Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow, Russia.

1938 – Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam, a record that stood for 75 years until it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.

1940 – In Mexico City, Mexico, exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramón Mercader. He dies the next day.

1940 – World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".

1986 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide. The phrase "going postal" is inspired by this event.

1988 – Fires in the United States' Yellowstone National Park



destroyed more than 150,000 acres (610 km2), the single-worst day of the conflagration.

[xoxoxoBruce]

1858 – Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.

Neither predicted the current devolution.

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We are a living, breathing Idiocracy.

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August 29

Today is marked as an International Day Against Nuclear Tests.


1898 – The Goodyear



tire company is founded.

1911 – Ishi,



considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.

1949 – Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1958 – United States Air Force Academy



opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1966 – The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

1996 – Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Tupolev Tu-154, crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing an estimated 1,836 people and causing over $108 billion in damage.

2007 – United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: Six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.

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September 11

Today is Patriot Day

This day is also marked as a Nat'l Day of Service and Remembrance.

1985 – Pete Rose breaks Ty Cobb's baseball record for most career hits with his 4,192nd hit.

2001 – Two hijacked aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, while a third smashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of al-Qaeda. A total of 2,996 people are killed.

2012 – The U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya is attacked, resulting in four deaths.

[Flint]

:ahem:

09/11/1973
CIA-supported military coup overthrows the democratically-elected Socialist President of Chile, ending rule of Democratic elections that had been in place since 1932. Thousands killed, tens of thousands tortured, economy driven into depression, and a major terrorist operation was established which suppressed all Left-leaning political voices and set about overthrowing governments and setting up more Right-wing dictatorships all over the world.



But we don't talk about that.

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You just talked about it.

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September 12

Today is observed as a National Day of Encouragement, it is also marked as National Chocolate Milkshake Day.

So, go have a shake, you can do it!

1940 – Cave paintings are discovered in Lascaux, France.

1952 – Strange occurrences, including a monster sighting, take place in Flatwoods, West Virginia.

1959 – Bonanza premieres, the first regularly scheduled TV program presented in color.

1994 – Frank Eugene Corder fatally crashes a single-engine Cessna 150 into the White House's south lawn, striking the West wing. There were no other casualties.