DBKP Today in Weird History: March 31, 2008

WAR, TERRORISM, DISASTER, LIT UP, WELCOME, SURPRISE, LEVIATHAN, PLAYING GOD, JEWS, CLINTONS, POPULATION, ZIP, DANCE, VRROOOM, OFFERS, FIRE, AWARDS, PRO WRESTLING, TRANSVESTITES, STALKING, LANDMARKS, BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH


LANDMARKS

1889 French engineer Gustave Eiffel unfurled the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion.

WAR!

1943 US errantly bombs Rotterdam, kills 326.

2003 American forces battled Iraqi defenders in fierce street fighting 50 miles south of Baghdad, pointing toward a drive on the capital. Seven Iraqi women and children were killed at an Army checkpoint when their van refused orders to stop.

TERRORISM

2007 President Bush called for the release of 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, calling their capture by Tehran "inexcusable behavior." (The crew members were released on April 4.)

DISASTER

1932 150 wild swans die in Niagara waterfall.

1983 Earthquake in Colombia kills some 5,000 people.

1986 167 die when Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashes.

VRROOOM!

1932 Ford publicly unveils its V-8 engine.

ZIP!

1896 Whitcomb Judson, Chicago IL, patents a hookless fastening (zipper).

TRANSVESTITES

1991 Danny Bonaduce attacks a transvestite prostitute in Phoenix AZ

FIRE!

1967 Jimi Hendrix begins his tradition of burning his guitar.

DANCE!

1923 1st dance marathon-NYC-Alma Cummings sets record of 27 hours.

AWARDS

1981 1st Golden Raspberry Awards: Can't Stop the Music wins.

POPULATION

1850 US population hits 23,191,876 (Black population: 3,638,808 (15.7%)).

PRO WRESTLING

1985 Wrestlemania I at Madison Square Garden New York, Hogan & Mr T beat Piper & Orndorf.

1996 Wrestlemania XII: Shawn Michaels beats Brett Hart for WWF title.

SURPRISE!

1968 At the conclusion of a nationally broadcast address on efforts to bring a peaceful end to the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson shocked listeners by announcing he would not seek another term of office.

JEWS

1492 Queen Isabella of Castilia & Ferdinand of Aragon expels Jews.

1808 French-created Kingdom of Westphalia orders Jews to adopt family names.

1944 Hungary orders all Jews to wear yellow stars.

LIT UP

1880 Wabash, Ind., became the first town in the world to be illuminated by electrical lighting.

LEVIATHAN

1933 Congress approved, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed, the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which created the Civilian Conservation Corps.

OFFERS

1954 USSR offers to join NATO.

WELCOME!

1949 Newfoundland (now called Newfoundland and Labrador) entered confederation as Canada's 10th province.

PLAYING GOD

1976 the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Karen Ann Quinlan, who was in a persistent vegetative state, could be disconnected from her respirator. (Quinlan, who remained unconscious, died in 1985.)

2005 Terri Schiavo, 41, died at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute.

STALKING

1994 James Farentino pleads no contest to stalking Tina Sinatra.

CLINTONS

1998 In an unprecedented move, the Clinton administration released a detailed financial statement for the federal government showing its assets and liabilities.

BORN

1811 Robert Wilhelm Eberhard von Bunsen Germany, chemist (Bunsen Burner).

1878 Jack Johnson 1st black heavyweight boxing champion (1908-1915).

1929 Liz Claiborne Brussels Belgium, fashion designer.

BIRTHDAYS

Actress Peggy Rea is 87. Actor William Daniels is 81. Hockey Hall-of-Famer Gordie Howe is 80. Actor Richard Chamberlain is 74. Actress Shirley Jones is 74. Country singer-songwriter John D. Loudermilk is 74. Musician Herb Alpert is 73. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is 68. Actor Christopher Walken is 65. Comedian Gabe Kaplan is 63. Former Vice President Al Gore is 60. David Eisenhower is 60. Actress Rhea Perlman is 60. Actor Ed Marinaro is 58. Rock musician Angus Young (AC/DC) is 53. Actor Marc McClure is 51. Actor William McNamara is 43. Actor Ewan McGregor is 37. Rapper Tony Yayo is 30. Jazz musician Christian Scott is 25.

DEATH

1931 Knute Rockne football player/coach, dies in a plane crash at 43.

1998 Former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug died at age 77.


March 31, the 91st day of 2008. There are 275 days left in the year.

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


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DBKP Today in Weird History: March 14 2008

WAR, TERRORISM, DISASTER, PATENTS, IMMIGRATION, LEVIATHAN, GUILTY, NOT GUILTY, SPIES, POLITICS, JEWS, TOP TEN, NICE GUYS, CLINTONS, BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH

TOP TEN

1950 FBI's "10 Most Wanted Fugitives" program begins.

WAR!

1951 During the Korean War, United Nations forces recaptured Seoul.

TERRORISM

1991 a British court overturned the convictions of the "Birmingham Six," who had spent 16 years in prison for an Irish Republican Army bombing, and ordered them released.

2007 The Pentagon released the transcript of a military hearing in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he "was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z."

DISASTER

1940 27 killed, 15 injured when truck full of migrant workers collides with a train outside McAllen TX.

1960 14 die in a train crash in Bakersfield CA.

1980 A Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw, killing all 87 people aboard, including 22 members of a U.S. amateur boxing team.

1997 Iranian military plane crashes, killing 80.

1998 An earthquake killed at least five people and left some 10,000 homeless in southeastern Iran.

NICE GUYS

1983 OPEC cut oil prices for 1st time in 23 years.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

1968 CBS TV suspends Radio Free Europe free advertising because RFE doesn't make it clear it is sponsored by the CIA.

PATENTS

1794 Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America's cotton industry.

NOT GUILTY

2003 Actor Robert Blake was released from jail on $1.5 million bail, 11 months after he was arrested on charges of murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. (Blake was later acquitted at trial.)

IMMIGRATION

1907 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order designed to prevent Japanese laborers from immigrating to the United States as part of a "gentlemen's agreement" with Japan.

CLINTONS

1997 President Clinton trips & tears up his knee requiring surgery.

LEVIATHAN

1923 President Harding became the first chief executive to file an income tax return.

1971 The Rolling Stones leave England for France to escape taxes.

JEWS

1965 Israeli cabinet approves diplomatic relations with West Germany.

GUILTY

1964 A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy.

POLITICS

1629 England granted a royal charter to Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1644 England grants patent for Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island).

SPIES

2003 Christopher Boyce, whose Cold War spying was immortalized on film in "The Falcon and the Snowman," was released from a halfway house in San Francisco after a quarter-century in prison.

BORN

1879 Albert Einstein Ulm Germany, (E=mc²/Theory of Relativity, Nobel 1921).

BIRTHDAYS

Former astronaut Frank Borman is 80. Singer Phil Phillips is 77. Actor Michael Caine is 75. Composer-conductor Quincy Jones is 75. Former astronaut Eugene Cernan is 74. Actor Raymond J. Barry is 69. Movie director Wolfgang Petersen is 67. Country singer Michael Martin Murphey is 63. Rock musician Walt Parazaider (Chicago) is 63. Actor Steve Kanaly is 62. Comedian Billy Crystal is 60. Country singer Jann Browne is 54. Actor Adrian Zmed is 54. Prince Albert II, the ruler of Monaco, is 50. Actress Tamara Tunie is 49. Actress Penny Johnson Jerald is 47. Producer-director-writer Kevin Williamson is 43. Actor Gary Anthony Williams is 42. Actress Megan Follows is 40. Rock musician Michael Bland is 39. Country singer Kristian Bush is 38. Rock musician Derrick (Jimmie's Chicken Shack) is 36. Actor Jake Fogelnest is 29. Actor Chris Klein is 29. Actress Kate Maberly is 26. Singer-musician Taylor Hanson (Hanson) is 25. Actor Jamie Bell is 22.

DEATH

1883 German political philosopher Karl Marx died in London.

1932 George Eastman US industrialist (Kodak-camera), suicide at 77.

1961 Akiba Rubinstein Polish chess player (opening theorist), dies at 78.

March 14, the 74th day of 2008. There are 292 days left in the year.


compiled by Mondoreb
image: morning-calm
Sources:
* Today in History
* Today in History
DBKP.com - Bigger, Better!.
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

DBKP Today in Weird History: February 25, 2008

WAR, TERRORISM, DISASTER, LEVIATHAN, BUSINESS, PATENTS, COMMIES, ACTIVIST COURT, SPORTS, RUN, SPEECH, EXECUTED, GUILLOTINED, LYNCHED, EXCOMMUNICATION, MONKEYS, E PLURIBUS PLURIBUS, RECORDS, GREENBACKS, CONDEMNED, DALI LAMA, TAXES, INFLATION, NAZIS, JEWS, MOONIES, SERIAL KILLERS, BICYCLES, AH ONE AND AH TWO, FAST, TV BREAKDOWNS, HOOKERS, WHEN HE'S DOWN, BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH

LEVIATHAN

1913 the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving Congress the power to levy and collect income taxes, was declared in effect by Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox.

WAR!

1779 American forces led by George Rogers Clark routed the British from Fort Sackville in the Revolutionary War Battle of Vincennes in present-day Indiana.

1991 During the Persian Gulf War, 28 Americans were killed when an Iraqi Scud missile hit a U.S. barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

2003 Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Iraq was showing new signs of real cooperation, but President Bush was dismissive, predicting Saddam Hussein would try to "fool the world one more time."

TERRORISM

1995 Bomb attack on train in Assam India (27 soldiers killed).

1995 Moslem fundamentalists shoot 20 Shiite mosque goers dead.

2007 A female suicide bomber triggered a ball bearing-packed charge, killing at least 41 people at a mostly Shiite college in Baghdad.

DISASTERS

1977 Oil tanker explosion west of Honolulu spills 31 million gallons.

1984 Oil fire in Cubatao Brazil kills 500.

1994 Peruvian Yak-40 crashes into mountain near Tingo Maria, kills 31.

MONKEYS

1751 1st performing monkey exhibited in America, NYC (admission 1¢).

RECORDS

1838 London pedestrian walks 20 miles backward then forward in 8 hours.

CONDEMNED

1885 US Congress condemns barbed wire around government grounds.

PATENTS

1836 inventor Samuel Colt patented his revolver.

TV BREAKDOWNS

1990 On a BBC taped interview, rock star Stevie Nicks breaks down, saying that she will never have children & no man can stand her for long.

DALI LAMA

1910 Dali Lama flees Tibet from Chinese troop to British-Indies.

WHEN HE'S DOWN

1995 British heavyweight Nigel Benn hits Gerard McClellan in hospital.

HOOKERS

1998 Switzerland's 1st legal brothel opens in Zurich.

INFLATION

1923 Bread in Berlin rises to 2,000 mark.

AH ONE AND AH TWO

1982 Final episode of "The Lawrence Welk Show" airs.

GUILLOTINED

1922 Henri-Désiré Landru French sex murderer, guillotined at 52.

TAXES

1919 Oregon is 1st state to tax gasoline (1¢ per gallon).

GREENBACKS

1862 Paper currency (greenbacks) introduced in US by President Abraham Lincoln.

EXCOMMUNICATION

1570 Pius V excommunicates Elizabeth, absolves her subjects from allegiance.

NAZIS

1932 Immigrant Adolf Hitler gets German citizenship.

CHOKED

1983 Tennessee Williams writer (Streetcar Named Desire), reportedly chokes to death on a bottle cap at 71.

SERIAL KILLERS

1973 Juan Corona sentenced to 25 life sentences for 25 murders.

E PLURIBUS PLURIBUS

1803 1,800 sovereign German states unite into 60 states.

LYNCHED

1994 Baruch Goldstein physician/murderer (53 in mosque), lynched at 42.

BICYCLES

1974 Veronica & Colin Scargill (England) begin tandem bicycle ride a record 18,020 miles around the world, completed on August 27, 1975.

FAST

1982 Record speed for a snowmobile (239 kph).

BUSINESS

1901 U.S. Steel Corp. was incorporated by J.P. Morgan.

JEWS

1941 February strike against persecution of Jews, in Amsterdam.

MOONIES

1968 430 Unification Church couples wed in Korea.

COMMIES

1948 Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia.

ACTIVIST COURT

1957 The Supreme Court, in Butler v. Michigan, overturned a Michigan statute making it a misdemeanor to sell books containing obscene language that would tend to corrupt "the morals of youth."

SPEECH

2007 In Detroit, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan stressed religious unity during what was billed as his final major speech, saying the world was at war because Christians and Muslims were divided.

EXECUTED

1601 Robert Devereux Earl of Essex, executed for treason against Elizabeth.

SPORTS

1964 Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), a 7-1 underdog, became world heavyweight boxing champion by defeating Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, Fla.

1989 Dallas Cowboys fire coach Tom Landry after a 29-year career.

RUN!

In 1986, President Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule in the wake of a tainted election; Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency.

BORN

1841 Pierre Auguste Renoir Limoges France, Impressionist painter/sculptor.

1901 [Herbert] Zeppo Marx New York NY, comedian/actor (Marx Brothers).

1906 Domingo Ortega Spanish bullfighter.

BIRTHDAYS

Country singer Ralph Stanley is 81. TV writer-producer Larry Gelbart is 80. Actor Tom Courtenay is 71. CBS newsman Bob Schieffer is 71. Actress Diane Baker is 70. Actress Karen Grassle is 64. Movie director Neil Jordan is 58. Rock musician Dennis Diken (The Smithereens) is 51. Rock singer-musician Mike Peters (The Alarm) is 49. Actress Veronica Webb is 43. Actor Alexis Denisof is 42. Actress Tea Leoni is 42. Comedian Carrot Top is 41. Actress Lesley Boone is 40. Actor Sean Astin is 37. Singer Daniel Powter is 37. Latin singer Julio Iglesias Jr. is 35. Rhythm-and-blues singer Justin Jeffre is 35. Rock musician Richard Liles is 35. Actor Anson Mount is 35. Actress Rashida Jones is 32. Actor Justin Berfield is 22. Actors Oliver and James Phelps ("Harry Potter" movies) are 22.

DEATH

1994 Jersey Joe Walcott boxer, dies at 80.

February 25, the 56th day of 2008. There are 310 days left in the year.

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



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

DBKP Today in Weird History: February 20, 2008

WAR, TERRORISM, DISASTER, PROGRESS, LEVIATHAN, DUELS, RESIGN, FALSE ALARMS, JEWS, MISTAKES, IMMIGRATION, KILLED, WINE, SCALPED, WIND, PATENTS, SURF, GOLF, ASSASSINATION, IRAN, NANNY STATE, VOLCANO, OOPS, RACES, PRO WRESTLING, SPORTS, SCIENCE, THAT SUCKING SOUND, BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH

SCIENCE

1962 Astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth as he flew aboard the Mercury spacecraft Friendship 7.

WAR!

1942 Lieutenant E H O'Hare single-handedly shoots down 5 Japanese heavy bombers.

1944 During World War II, U.S. bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as "Big Week."

1998 With the U.S. military poised to attack Iraq, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan began a final campaign to end the crisis over weapons inspections without bloodshed.

TERRORISM

1869 Tennessee Governor W C Brownlow declares martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis.

1987 Bomb blamed on Unabomber explodes by computer store in Salt Lake City.

1994 3 Afghans take 70 Pakistani children hostage.

2007 In a victory for President Bush, a divided federal appeals court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees could not use the U.S. court system to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.

DISASTER

1835 Concepción, Chile destroyed by earthquake.

1856 John Rutledge, Liverpool-New York steamer, hits iceberg; many die.

1917 Ammunitions ship explodes in Archangelsk harbor, about 1,500 die.

1988 500 die in heavy rains in Rio de Janeiro Brazil.

2003 A fire broke out during a rock concert at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., killing 100 people and injuring about 200 others.

IMMIGRATION

1907 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded "idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons" from being admitted to the United States.

FALSE ALARMS

1971 The National Emergency Warning Center in Colorado erroneously ordered U.S. radio and TV stations off the air; some stations heeded the alert, which was not lifted for about 40 minutes.

RACE

1949 1st International Pancake Race held (Liberal KS).

THAT SUCKING SOUND

1992 Ross Perot says he'll run for President on Larry King Show.

GOLFERS

1927 Golfers in South Carolina arrested for violating Sabbath.

PRO WRESTLING

1978 Bob Backland beats Billy Graham in New York, to become WWF wrestling champion.

OOPS!

1947 Chemical mixing error causes explosion that destroys 42 blocks in Los Angeles CA.

VOLCANO

1943 New volcano Paracutin erupts in farmer's corn patch (México).

DUELS

1839 Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.

WINE

1673 1st recorded wine auction held (London).

WIND

1861 Steeple of Chichester Cathedral blown down during a storm.

SURF

1902 Heavy surf breaks over Seal Rocks & damages Sutro Baths, San Francisco.

SCALPED!

1725 10 sleeping Indians scalped by whites in New Hampshire for £100/scalp bounty.

SPORTS

1989 Members of 1949 Oklahoma football team cancelled an April reunion because of the deplorable conduct of Oklahoma players.

NANNY STATE

1933 House of Representatives completes congressional action to repeal Prohibition.

PROGRESS

1792 President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.

SCIENCE

1989 Total eclipse of the Moon.

PATENTS

1872 Hydraulic electric elevator patented by Cyrus Baldwin.

1872 Luther Crowell patents a machine that manufactures paper bags.

1872 Silas Noble & JP Cooley patents toothpick manufacturing machine.

LEVIATHAN

1809 The Supreme Court, in United States v. Peters, ruled the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state.

MISTAKES

2003 A 17-year-old Mexican girl mistakenly given a heart and lungs with the wrong blood type received a second set of organs at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina; however, Jesica Santillan suffered brain damage and later died.

KILLED

1983 Ray Vitte actor (Doc, Cody-Quest), killed by police at 33.

ASSASSINATION

1919 French premier Clemenceau injured during assassination attempt.

IRAN

1921 Riza Khan Pahlevi seizes control of Iran.

RESIGN

1938 Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary following Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's decision to negotiate with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

SPIES

2003 Former Air Force Master Sgt. Brian Patrick Regan was convicted in Alexandria, Va., of offering to sell U.S. intelligence to Iraq and China but acquitted of attempted spying for Libya. (Regan was later sentenced to life without parole.)

JEWS

1941 Nazis order Polish Jews barred from using public transportation.

1941 1st transport of Jews to concentration camps leave Plotsk Poland.

1987 Soviet authorities released Jewish activist Josef Begun.

1995 Shlomo Averbach Rabbi, buried in Jerusalem, 250,000 attend.

BORN

1914 John Daly South Africa, newscaster/TV game show host (What's My Line).

1967 Kurt Cobain rock vocalist (Nirvana)/husband of Courtney Love.

BIRTHDAYS

Fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt is 84. Actor Sidney Poitier is 81. Actress Marj Dusay is 72. Jazz-soul singer Nancy Wilson is 71. Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is 67. Hockey Hall-of-Famer Phil Esposito is 66. Movie director Mike Leigh is 65. Actress Brenda Blethyn is 62. Actress Sandy Duncan is 62. Rock musician J. Geils is 62. Actor Peter Strauss is 61. Rock singer-musician-producer Walter Becker (Steely Dan) is 58. Country singer Kathie Baillie is 57. Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is 54. Actor Anthony Stewart Head is 54. Country singer Leland Martin is 51. Actor James Wilby is 50. Rock musician Sebastian Steinberg is 49. Comedian Joel Hodgson is 48. Basketball player Charles Barkley is 45. Rock musician Ian Brown (Stone Roses) is 45. Actor French Stewart is 44. Actor Ron Eldard is 43. Model Cindy Crawford is 42. Actor Andrew Shue is 41. Actress Lili Taylor is 41. Singer Brian Littrell is 33. Actress Lauren Ambrose is 30. Actor Jay Hernandez is 30. Actress Majandra Delfino is 27. Singer-musician Chris Thile is 27. Actor Jake Richardson is 23. Singer Rihanna is 20.

DEATH

1790 Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died.

1976 Kathryn Kuhlman religious leader/faith healer, dies.

1992 Dick York actor (Darren on Bewitched), dies of emphysema at 63.

February 20, the 51st day of 2008. There are 315 days left in the year.

compiled by Mondoreb
Image: wikipedia
Sources:
* Today in History
* Today in History



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