DBKP Today in Weird History: March 13, 2008

WAR, DISASTER, SCIENCE, RESIGNING, MURDER, TRAGEDY, ABORTION, JEWS, DEALS, ICONS, PATENTS, ATTEMPTS, ASSASSINATION, NAZIS, CLIMATE, INVENTIONS, TRIALS, POLITICALLY CORRECT, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH
Then...

ICONS

1852 Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly.

...and later

WAR!

2003 U.S. officials said President Bush might delay a vote on his troubled United Nations resolution or even drop it - and fight Iraq without the international body's backing.

DISASTER

1895 Spanish cruiser Reina Regente sinks off Gibraltar, 402 die.

1928 Hundreds of people died when the San Francisquito Valley in California was inundated with water after the St. Francis Dam burst just before midnight the evening of March 12.

1961 Landslide in USSR, kills 145.

1992 570 die in a Turkish earthquake.

1994 Oil tank/airship crash at Bosporus (huge fire/15+ killed).

ATTEMPTS

1915 Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson tries to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane, but the pilot substituted a grapefruit.

PATENTS

1887 Chester Greenwood of Maine patents earmuffs.

DEALS

1677 Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000.

CLIMATE

1888 Great Blizzard of 1888 rages.

1993 Blizzard of '93 hits north-east US.

INVENTIONS

1894 J L Johnstone of England invents horse racing starting gate.

ASSASSINATION

1981 Attempt on Pope John Paul II by Mehemet Ali Agca.

NAZIS

1933 Josef Göbbels becomes German minister of Information & Propaganda.

1938 Anschluß-Austria annexed by Nazi Germany.

TRIALS

1998 Sgt. Maj. Gene McKinney, once the Army's top enlisted man, was acquitted at his court-martial of pressuring military women for sex, but was convicted of trying to persuade his chief accuser to lie.

SCIENCE

1781 The planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel. He thought it was a comet.

1925 A law went into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution.

JEWS

1656 Jews are denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam.

1951 Israel demands DM 6.2 billion compensation from Germany.

MURDER

1964 Bar manager Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, 28, was stabbed to death near her New York home; the case generated controversy over charges that Genovese's neighbors had failed to respond to her cries for help.

RESIGNING

1980 Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford II announced he was stepping down, the same day a jury in Winamac, Ind., found the company innocent of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of three young women in a Ford Pinto.

2007 Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted mistakes in how the Justice Department handled the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors but said he wouldn't resign.

POLITICALLY CORRECT

1988 yielding to student protests, the board of trustees of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired, chose I. King Jordan to become the school's first deaf president.

TRAGEDY

1996 a gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

2007 President Bush sought to soothe strained ties with Mexico by promising to prod Congress to overhaul tough U.S. immigration policies, but Mexican President Felipe Calderon criticized U.S. plans for a 700-mile border fence.

ABORTION

2003 The Senate voted 64-33 to ban partial birth abortion.

BORN

1733 Joseph Priestly England, clergyman/scientist (discovered oxygen).

1770 Daniel Lambert England, giant (weighed 739 lbs (334 kg) at death).

1908 American billionaire, publisher and diplomat Walter Annenberg (TV Guide) was born in Milwaukee.

BIRTHDAYS

Jazz musician Roy Haynes is 83. Country singer Jan Howard is 78. Songwriter Mike Stoller is 75. Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka is 69. Actor William H. Macy is 58. Actress Deborah Raffin is 55. Comedian Robin Duke is 54. Actress Glenne Headly is 53. Actress Dana Delany is 52. Rock musician Adam Clayton (U2) is 48. Jazz musician Terence Blanchard is 46. Actor Christopher Collet is 40. Actress Annabeth Gish is 37. Actress Tracy Wells is 37. Rapper Common is 36. Rapper Khujo (Goodie Mob, The Lumberjacks) is 36. Singer Glenn Lewis is 33. Actor Danny Masterson is 32. Actor Emile Hirsch is 23. Singers Nicole and Natalie Albino (Nina Sky) are 22.

DEATH

1901 Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, died in Indianapolis.

1938 Clarence S Darrow Scopes Monkey Trial attorney, dies in Chicago at 80.

Today is March 13, the 73rd day of the year. There are 293 days left in 2008.

images:
* sonofthesouth
* allposters
Sources:
* today in history
* Today in History
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DBKP's Today in History: January 20, 2008

TERRORISM, WAR!, DISASTERS, LONGSHOTS, MUSIC, SURVIVORS, CHURCH, GIFTS, SUPREME COURT, DEALS, POLITICS, OOPS!, BOYCOTTS, SCIENCE, MEDIA, JEWS, FINANCE, SPORTS, CLINTONS, ASSASSINATIONS, HOLIDAYS, MURDER, TARZAN, TUNNELS, LAWSUITS, BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH



TERRORISM

1981 Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.

1987 Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite taken hostage in Beirut, Lebanon.

WAR!

1783 Hostilities cease in Revolutionary War.

1944 RAF drops 2300 ton bombs on Berlin.

1991 US Patriot missiles begins shooting down Iraqi missiles.

2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell, faced with stiff resistance and calls to go slow, bluntly told the Security Council that the U.N. "must not shrink" from its responsibility to disarm Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

2007 Twenty-five U.S. troops were killed in Iraq, including 12 in a helicopter crash in Baghdad and five in a sophisticated sneak attack in Karbala.

DISASTERS

1982 7 miners killed in an explosion in Craynor KY.

1985 Cold front strikes US, at least 40 die (-27ºF (-33ºC) in Chicago).

LONGSHOTS

2007 Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback began a long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination (he withdrew last October).

MUSIC

1964 "Meet The Beatles" album released in US

1965 The Byrds record "Mr Tambourine Man"

SURVIVORS

1989 Reagan becomes 1st President elected in a "0" year, since 1840, to leave office alive.

CHURCH

1788 Pioneer African Baptist church organizes in Savannah GA.

GIFTS

1949 J Edgar Hoover gives Shirley Temple a tear gas fountain pen.

SUPREME COURT

1801 Secretary of State John Marshall was nominated by President Adams to be chief justice of the United States (he was sworn in on Feb. 4, 1801).

DEALS

1841 the island of Hong Kong was ceded by China to Great Britain. (It returned to Chinese control in July 1997.)

1887 the U.S. Senate approved an agreement to lease Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a naval base.

POLITICS

1937 President Franklin Roosevelt became the first chief executive to be inaugurated on Jan. 20 instead of March 4.

1945 President Roosevelt was sworn into office for an unprecedented fourth term.

1969 Richard M Nixon inaugurated as President.

1981 Ronald Reagan inaugurated as President.

1989 Bush inaugurated as 41st President & Quayle becomes 44th Vice President.

OOPS!

1862 General Felix Zollicoffer killed after mistakenly riding into union lines.

BOYCOTTS

1980 President Jimmy Carter announces US boycott of Olympics in Moscow.

SCIENCE

1997 Comet Hale-Bopp crosses Mars' orbit.

MEDIA

1929 1st feature talking motion picture taken outdoors, "In Old Arizona".

1930 1st radio broadcast of "Lone Ranger" (WXYZ-Detroit).

1965 The Beatles appear on Shindig (ABC-TV).

JEWS

1939 Hitler proclaims to German parliament to exterminate all European Jews.

1942 Nazi officials held the notorious Wannsee conference, during which they arrived at their "final solution" that called for exterminating Jews.

1965 Generalissimo Francisco Franco meets with Jewish representatives to discuss legitimizing Jewish communities in Spain.

FINANCE

1995 Russian ruble drops to 3,947 per dollar (record).

SPORTS

1892 1st basketball game played (Massachusetts).

1980 Super Bowl XIV Pittsburgh Steelers beat Los Angeles Rams, 31-19 in Pasadena; Super Bowl MVP Terry Bradshaw, Pittsburgh, Quarterback.

CLINTONS

1993 Bill Clinton inaugurated as 42nd President.

2007 Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., launched her campaign for the White House, saying in a videotaped messsage on her Web site: "I'm in, and I'm in to win."

ASSASSINATIONS

1948 Mahatma Gandhi India's pacifist, assassinated.

HOLIDAYS

1986, the United States observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

MURDER

1959 Carl Switzer actor (Alfalfa-Our Gang), shot to death at 31.

TUNNELS

1986 Britain and France announced plans to build the Channel Tunnel.

TARZAN

1984 Peter John [Johnny] Weissmuller actor (Tarzan, Jungle Jim), dies after a series of strokes in Acapulco at 79

LAWSUITS

1998 A jury was selected in Amarillo, Texas, to hear a multi-million-dollar lawsuit filed by Texas cattlemen against talk show host Oprah Winfrey over comments made on her program concerning beef safety. (Winfrey won the case.)

BORN

1889 Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter Mooringsport LA, blues 12 string guitarist (Rock Island Line).

1920 DeForest Kelley Atlanta GA, actor (Dr McCoy-Star Trek).

BIRTHDAYS

Country singer Slim Whitman is 84. Actress Patricia Neal is 82. Comedian Arte Johnson is 79. Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin is 78. Actress Dorothy Provine is 71. Singer Eric Stewart is 63. Movie director David Lynch is 62. Actor Daniel Benzali is 58. Rock musician Paul Stanley (KISS) is 56. Rock musician Ian Hill (Judas Priest) is 56. Comedian Bill Maher is 52. Actor Lorenzo Lamas is 50. Actor James Denton ("Desperate Housewives") is 45. Rock musician Greg K. (The Offspring) is 43. Country singer John Michael Montgomery is 43. Actor Rainn Wilson ("The Office) is 42. Actress Stacey Dash is 41. TV personality Melissa Rivers is 40. Singer Xavier is 40. Singer Edwin McCain is 38. Actor Skeet Ulrich is 38. Rap musician ?uestlove (The Roots) is 37. Rock musician Rob Bourdon (Linkin Park) is 29. Actor Evan Peters is 21.

DEATH

1936 Britain's King George V died; he was succeeded by Edward VIII.

2003 Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld died in New York at age 99.

2003 Pollster Burns W. "Bud" Roper died on Cape Cod, Mass., at age 77.

January 20, the 20th day of 2008. There are 346 days left in the year.

compiled by Mondoreb
[images: wikipedia]
Sources:
* Today in History
* Today in History




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