Birthdays:


Domenico Scarlatti 1685 - Composer

Joseph Aloysius Hansom 1803 - Architect, inventor (the hansom cab)

C.W. (Charles William) Post 1854 - Founder of Post cereals and products (Grape Nuts)

Abby (Greene Aldrich) Rockefeller 1874 - Philanthropist: cofounder of New York Museum of Modern Art

H.B. (Henry Byron) Warner 1876 - Actor (It’s a Wonderful Life, Lost Horizon, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Ten Commandments)

Napoleon Hill 1883 - Writer (Think and Grow Rich)

John S. (Shively) Knight 1894 - Reporter, editor, publisher (Knight-Ridder newspaper)

Jack Sharkey 1902 - Boxer

Primo Carnera 1906 - Boxer

Mahalia Jackson 1911 - Singer

Charlie Barnett 1913 - Musician (saxophone), bandleader

Jackie Coogan (John Leslie Coogan, Jr.) 1914 - Actor (The Kid)

Francois Mitterand 1916 - President of France (1981-1995)

Neal Matthews 1929 - Musician (Jordanaires)

John Arden 1930

Rodney "Hot Rod" Hundley 1934 - Basketball player, sportscaster

Bob Hoskins 1942 - Actor (Hook, Brazil, Who Framed Roger Rabbit)

Michael Piano 1944 - Singer (The Sandpipers)

Ivan Reitman 1946

Keith Hopwood 1946 - Singer, musician (Herman's Hermits)

Pat Sajak 1947 - TV host (Wheel of Fortune, The Pat Sajack Show)

Hillary Rodham Clinton 1947 - First Lady: wife of 42nd U.S. President William J. Clinton, U.S. Senator from New York (2000-), U.S. Presidential candidate in 2008

Jaclyn Smith 1947 - Actress (Charlie’s Angels, The Bourne Identity)

Toby (Colbert Dale) Harrah 1948 - Baseball player

Steve (Stephen Douglas) Rogers 1949 - Baseball player

Mike (Dudley Michael) Hargrove 1949 - Baseball player, manager

Chuck Foreman 1950 - Football player

Bootsy Collins 1951

Steve (Steven Robert) Ontiveros 1951 - Baseball player

Maggie Roche 1951 - Musician (The Roches)

Keith Strickland 1953 - Musician (B-52's), Official B-52s Store

Lauren Tewes 1954 - Actress (The Love Boat, Magic Kid, The China Lake Murders)

D.W. Moffett 1954

Rita Wilson 1958 - Actress (Sleepless in Seattle, Mixed Nuts, Runaway Bride)

Cary Elwes 1962 - Actor (Twister, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Robin Hood: Men in Tights)

Dylan McDermott 1962 - Actor (Twister, Steel Magnolias)

Marla Maples 1963

Natalie Merchant 1963 - Musician (10,000 Maniacs)

Thomas Cavanagh 1968 - Actor (TV: Ed)



Music History:

1685 - Composer Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was born.

1694 - Composer Johan Helmich Roman was born.

1935 - Judy Garland, at the age of 12, sang on Wallace Berry's radio show on NBC.

1959 - The Everly Brothers announced that they are considering leaving their record label.

1965 - The Beatles were awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) medals.

1971 - Al Green's "Tired of Being Alone," his first hit, went gold.

1975 - "A Chorus Line" premiered.

1978 - The Police played their first U.S. show in Boston at the Rat Club.

1980 - Paul Kantner of Jefferson Starship suffers a brain hemorrhage during a recording session. After 15 days in the hospital he recovers fully.

1981 - Queen and David Bowie record "Under Pressure" in Montreaux, Switzerland.

1992 - Pearl Jam sets a new record for first week sales when the LP "Vs." sold 950,000 copies.

1993 - Catholic churches in San Juan, Puerto Rico urge residents to tie black ribbons on trees to protest Madonna's first concert there.

1994 - Roseanne Barr appeared on her TV show "Roseanne" dressed as Prince.

1998 - Eros Ramazzotti released his "Eros Live" album.

1998 - A U.S. federal judge refused to issue an injunction against the sale of MP3. The device is used to play music downloaded from the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America had brought the case to court.

1998 - Marilyn Manson began its Mechanical Animals tour in Kansas City, MO



Misc. history:

1774 - The First Continental Congress of the U.S. adjourned in Philadelphia.

1825 - The Erie Canal opened in upstate New York. The 363-mile canal connected Lake Erie and the Hudson River at a cost of $7,602,000.

1854 - Charles William Post was born. He was the inventor of "Grape Nuts," "Postum" and "Post Toasties."

1858 - H.E. Smith patented the rotary-motion washing machine.

1881 - The "Gunfight at the OK Corral" took place in Tombstone, AZ. The fight was between Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holiday and the Ike Clanton Gang.

1905 - Norway gained independence from Sweden.

1914 - Jackie Coogan was born. He became the first child to appear in a full-length movie, "The Kid."

1942 - The U.S. ship Hornet was sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz during World War II.

1944 - During World War II, the Battle of Leyte Gulf ended. The battle was won by American forces and brought the end of the Pacific phase of World War II into sight.

1949 - U.S. President Harry Truman raised the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour.

1951 - Winston Churchill became the prime minister of Great Britain.

1955 - New York City's "The Village Voice" was first published.

1957 - The Soviet Union announced that defense minister Marchal Georgi Zhukov had been relieved of his duties.

1958 - Pan American Airways flew its first Boeing 707 jetliner from New York City to Paris.

1962 - The Soviet Union made an offer to end the Cuban Missile Crisis by taking their missile bases out of Cuba if the U.S. agreed to not invade Cuba and would remove Jupiter missiles in Turkey.

1967 - The Shah of Iran crowned himself and his Queen after 26 years on the Peacock Throne.

1970 - "Doonesbury," the comic strip by Gary Trudeau, premiered in 28 newspapers across the U.S.

1972 - U.S. National security adviser Henry Kissinger declared, "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam.

1975 - Anwar Sadat became the first Egyptian president to officially visit to the United States.

1977 - The experimental space shuttle Enterprise successfully landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1979 - South Korean President Park Chung-hee was shot to death by Kim Jae-kyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

1980 - Israeli President Yitzhak Navon became the first Israeli head of state to visit Egypt.

1984 - "Baby Fae" was given the heart of baboon after being born with a severe heart defect. She lived for 21 days with the animal heart.

1985 - Approximately 110,000 people marched past the U.S. and Soviet embassies in London to pressure the two countries to end their arms race.

1988 - Roussel Uclaf, a French pharmaceutical company, announced it was halting the worldwide distribution of RU-486. The pill is used to induce abortions. The French government made the company reverse itself two days later.

1988 - Two whales were freed by Soviet and American icebreakers. The whales had been trapped for nearly 3 weeks in an Arctic ice pack.

1990 - The U.S. State Department issued a warning that terrorists could be planning an attack on a passenger ship or aircraft.

1990 - William S. Paley died at the age of 89. He was the founder of CBS Inc.

1990 - Wayne Gretzky became the first NHL player to reach 2,000 points.

1991 - Former Washington Mayor Marion Barry arrived at a federal correctional institution in Petersburg, VA, to begin serving a six-month sentence for cocaine possession.

1992 - General Motors Corp. Chairman Robert Stempel resigned after the company recorded its highest losses in history.

1992 - In Canada, voters rejected the Charlottetown accord, which was designed to unify the country.

1993 - Deborah Gore Dean was convicted of 12 felony counts of defrauding the U.S. government and lying to the U.S. Congress. Dean was a central figure in the Reagan-era HUD scandal.

1994 - Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty.

1995 - Alec Baldwin got into a fight with a paparazzi in front of his home when he and his wife Kim Bassinger were bringing their first baby home from the hospital.

1995 - Mario Lemieux (Pittsburgh Penguins) scored his 500th National Hockey League (NHL) career goal against the New York Islanders in his 605th game. He became the second-fastest player to attain the plateau. Wayne Gretzky had reached 600 goals by his 575th NHL game.

1996 - Federal prosecutors cleared Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Olympic park bombing.

1998 - A French lab found a nerve agent on an Iraqi missile warhead.

2001 - It was announced that Fort Worth's Lockheed Martin won a defense contract for $200 billion over 40 years. The contract, for the "joint strike fighter," was the largest defense contract in history.

2002 - Russian authorities pumped a gas into a theater where separatist rebels held over 800 hostages. The gas killed 116 hostages and all 50 hostage-takers were killed by the gas or gunshot wounds.