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 Today in Weird History: March 6, 2008

WAR, TERRORISM, DISASTER, CITIES, LAST STAND, SUPREME COURT, FREE, COMMIES, SENSATIONAL CRIME, POLITICALLY CORRECT, LOTTO, BOOTED, JEWS, SPOOKY, NANNY STATE, LOSER, MUSIC, HEADACHES, LOUD, PREMATURE, BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH

HEADACHES

1899 "Aspirin" patented by Felix Hoffmann of Bayer. It soon replaces the company's best-selling drug, heroin. From 1898 through to 1910 heroin was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children. Bayer marketed heroin as a cure for morphine addiction before it was discovered that heroin is converted to morphine when metabolized in the liver, and as such, "heroin" was basically only a quicker acting form of morphine.

WAR!

1861 Provisionary Confederate Congress establishes Confederate Army

1944 U.S. heavy bombers staged the first full-scale American raid on Berlin during World War II.

2003 A somber President Bush readied the nation for war against Saddam Hussein, hurling some of his harshest invectives yet at the Iraqi leader during a prime-time news conference.

TERRORISM

1978 Hustler publisher Larry Flynt shot & crippled by a sniper in Georgia.

1988 3 IRA suspects were shot dead in Gibraltar by SAS officers.

2007 Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Hillah, Iraq, killing at least 120 people in a crowd of Shiite pilgrims.

DISASTER

1987 6.8 earthquake hits Ecuador, kills 100. Belgium ferry boat "Herald of Free Enterprise" capsizes/sinks; 192 die.

2007 More than 70 people died in an earthquake on Sumatra island, Indonesia.

NANNY STATE

1921 Police in Sunbury PA issue an edict requiring Women to wear skirts at least 4 inches below the knee.

LOSER

1974 An Italian loses a record $1,920,000 at roulette in Monte Carlo.

BOOTED

1831 Edgar Allen Poe removed from West Point military academy.

SPOOKY

1918 US naval collier "Cyclops" disappears in Bermuda Triangle.

LOUD

1982 Susan Birmingham makes loudest recorded human shout (120 dB).

MUSIC

1966 Barry Sadlers' "Ballad of the Green Berets" becomes #1 (13 weeks).

SUPREME COURT

1857 The United States Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Scott, a slave, was not a U.S. citizen and could not sue for his freedom in federal court.

PREMATURE

1991 Following Iraq's capitulation in the Persian Gulf conflict, President Bush told Congress that "aggression is defeated; The war is over".

CITIES

In 1834, the city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto.

LAST STAND

In 1836, the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell to Mexican forces after a 13-day siege.

LOTTO

1998 A Connecticut state lottery accountant shot to death three supervisors and the lottery chief before killing himself.

POLITICS

2003 Democrats blocked President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to a federal appeals court.

2007 Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of lying and obstructing an investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

FREE

1957 the former British African colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana.

COMMIES

1967 The daughter of Josef Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, appeared at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, and declared her intention to defect to the West.

SENSATIONAL CRIME

1983 In a case that drew much notoriety, a young woman was gang-raped atop a pool table in a tavern in New Bedford, Mass., called Big Dan's; four men were later convicted of the attack.

POLITICALLY CORRECT

1988 the board of trustees at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a liberal arts college for the deaf, selected Elisabeth Zinser, a hearing woman, to be school president. (Outraged students shut down the campus, forcing selection of a deaf president, I. King Jordan, instead.)

JEWS

1816 Jews are expelled from Free city of Lubeck Germany.

BORN

1475 Michelangelo Buonarroti painter/sculptor/architect (David, Pièta).

1619 Cyrano de Bergerac famous nose, dramatist (A Voyage to the Moon).

BIRTHDAYS

Orchestra conductor Julius Rudel is 87. TV personality Ed McMahon is 85. Former FBI and CIA director William Webster is 84. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is 82. Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is 81. Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova is 71. Country singer Doug Dillard is 71. Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., is 69. Actress-writer Joanna Miles is 68. Actor Ben Murphy is 66. Opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is 64. Singer Mary Wilson (The Supremes) is 64. Rock musician Hugh Grundy (The Zombies) is 63. Rock singer-musician David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) is 62. Actor-director Rob Reiner is 61. Singer Kiki Dee is 61. Rock singer-musician Phil Alvin (The Blasters) is 55. Actor Tom Arnold is 49. Actor D.L. Hughley is 44. Country songwriter Skip Ewing is 44. Actress Yvette Wilson is 44. Actor Shuler Hensley is 41. Actress Connie Britton is 40. Actress Moira Kelly is 40. Actress Amy Pietz is 39. Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal is 36. Country singer Trent Willmon is 35. Country musician Shan Farmer (Ricochet) is 34. Rapper Beanie Sigel is 34. Rapper Bubba Sparxxx is 31. Actor Eli Marienthal is 22. Actor Jimmy Galeota is 22. Actor Dillon Freasier (Film: "There Will Be Blood") is 12. Actress Savannah Stehlin is 12.

DEATH

1935 Retired Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. died in Washington.

1941 John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum sculptor (Mount Rushmore), dies at 73.

1982 Ayn Rand author-philosopher (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged), dies in New York at 77.

1998 Adem Jasari Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leader, killed.

2007 Ernest Gallo, who built one of the world's largest winemaking empires, died in Modesto, Calif., at age 97.

March 6, the 66th day of 2008. There are 300 days left in the year.

compiled by Mondoreb
image:
Sources:
* Today in History
* Heroin
* Today in History

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