Saturday, 15 June, 2002
Happy birthday to me. Forty-four, and still going. Things could be worse.
Today in History… courtesy of Yahoo, The History Channel and Google, Today In Science, …
1215: The signing of the Magna Carta may have been the start of modern government in the West. Rudyard Kipling wrote this.
1330: Edward, the Black Prince born.
1752: Benjamin Franklin flys a kite with a key attached to show that lightening is a form of electricity. Don’t try this at home, kids.
1775: Congress appoints George Washington as the first Commander-in-Chief
1836: Arkansas became the 25th state. Halfway there…
1844: Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanizing rubber.
1846: Signing the Oregon Treaty, Britain and the US establish the northern border from the Rockies to the Pacific.
1864: Grant attacks Petersberg, VA, the start of a 10 month siege that ends with the rapid fall of Petersberg, Richmond, and the surrender of Lee at Appomattox Station.
1867: John Stough Bobbs performs the first gallstone operation.
1869: John Wesley and Isaiah Hyatt invent the first plastic: celluloid.
1877: The first black graduate of West Point.
1944: V-1 rockets descend on London for the first time.
1993, John B. Connally dies. He was critically injured in the assasination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 in Dallas.
In 1996, Ella Fitzgerald died on this date. A wonderful talent silenced, but not forgotten.
J.D. Hildebrand wrote these notes last year.
Other folks sharing this birthday:
Edvard Grieg
David Rose (composer of Bonanza theme and bandleader of Red Skelton show)
Morris Udall
Mario Cuomo (1932)
Harry (Edward) Nilson III: score to the Courtship of Eddie’s Father
Jim Belushi (1954)
Wade Boggs (1958)
Helen Hunt (1963)