On This Day | Ain't Complicated

August 19

14 — Augustus died.

1692 — For five people, the witch hunt ends in Salem, MA.

1812 — The Constitution defeats her adversary.

1848 — Rush tops the news on the East Coast.

1902 — The author of Fleas was born. I think.

1919 — Afghanistan gains full independence from the Mother Country.

1934 — The creation of the position Führer is allegedly approved by the German electorate with allegedly 89.9% of the allegedly-popular vote.

1943 — President Thompson was born. (Sorry, folks, the crystal ball malfunctioned.)

1945 — Ho Chi Minh takes power in Hanoi.

1946 — President Clinton was born, but he wasn’t called that yet (unless it was by God).

1948 — Al Gore’s other half was born. She wasn’t called Mrs. Gore then. Nor Tipper.

1953 — The Iranian military (or was it the CIA? Or both? Or neither?) overthrows the government of Premier Mohammed Mosaddeq and reinstates the Shah of Iran.

1989 -– Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominates Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be the first non-communist Prime Minister in 42 years.

1991 — Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Crimea. There goes the Soviet Union.

2005 — The first-ever Russian-Chinese joint military exercise begins. They called it Peace Mission 2005. They forgot to include People’s in there somewhere.

2009 — A series of blasts in Baghadad kills at least 75 and wounds at least 300.

So there you are. Enjoy National Aviation Day while you’re at it. Stimulate the economy; buy an airplane.

Most of this I first posted at WorldMagBlog a few minutes ago.

August 8

1709 — Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the King of Portugal.

1844 — The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

1876 — Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

1908 — Wilbur Wright makes his first public flight (and it was at a racecourse at Le Mans, France — what’s with that!).

1911 — Francis Holton files a patent for a tubeless vehicle tire. Nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine patents had been filed before his, albeit not for tubeless tires.

1911 — Public Law 62-5 sets the number of representatives in the United States House of Representatives at 435 (but it doesn’t go into effect until 1913).

1945 — The United States becomes the third signatory nation of the United Nations Charter.

1973 — US Vice President Spiro Agnew appears on television to denounce accusations he had taken kickbacks while governor of Maryland.

1974 — US President Richard Nixon announces his resignation, effective the next day.

1990 — Iraq occupies Kuwait.

2009 — Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in as the first Latina justice of the US Supreme Court — and she’s also the first Hispanic justice and the first Puerto Rican justice and the first woman justice (after Sandra and Ruth, of course).

August 4

70 — The Romans destroy the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

1789 — In France members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.

1792 — The revolutionaries order all houses of worship to close in France.

1824 — Battle of Kos is fought between Turks and Greeks.

1914 — Germany invades Belgium. The United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States declares itself neutral.

1944 — The Gestapo finds Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse.

1961 — Barack Obama is born and, despite the where being dubious in the minds of millions, eventually becomes the 44th President of the United States. Wish him well on his birthday. You may contact him here or via email.

1964 — American civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21. Also US destroyers USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, resulting in an engagement known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

1977 — US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.

1984 — The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.

1987 — The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues “fairly”.

2009 — National Night Out is today!

August 1

1980 — Ruby and I say “I do” and were declared Mr. & Mrs. Mark Roth, which we still are.

Meanwhile, in other August 1 “news” you may have forgotten….

1492 — Spain drives out its Jews.

1619 — Jamestown, Virginia “welcomes” their first African slaves.

1774 — The element oxygen is discovered for the third (and last) time. Huh?!

1834 — Slavery is abolished in the British Empire.

1876 — Colorado becomes the 38th US state.

1902 — France sells the United States the rights to the Panama Canal.

1914 — Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I.

1941 — The first Jeep rolls off the assembly line.

1944 — Anne Frank makes the last entry in her diary.

1966 — Charles Whitman kills 15 people at The University of Texas at Austin.

1967 — Israel annexes East Jerusalem.

1988 — Rush Limbaugh hits the national airwaves with his radio show.

2008 — George W. Bush is still President of the United States, so he signs a sweeping global AIDS relief bill that includes language repealing the US ban on HIV-positive foreign visitors and immigrants.

2009 — At 10:46 pm I spotted some friends who also attend our home congregation! If it weren’t so late, I’d make it a separate post here. The lady in the foreground is ITF‘s sister Hope! I’ve eaten in that café — I even posted about it last month.

July 1969

That was forty years ago this month!

I recall only July 20 event, but more on that later.

July 1, 1969 — Charles Philip Arthur George (21), the son of Queen Elizabeth II, becomes Prince of Wales. “A Popular Young Lad,” somebody or other called him back then.

July 5, 1969 — The UN Security Council unanimously — that means the US was included, eh? — censures Israel for all measures taken to change the status of Arab East Jerusalem.

July 7, 1969 — Canada’s House of Commons approves equality of French and English (at least as the two official languages of Canada).

July 15, 1969 — The Wallkill Zoning Board of Appeals bans the Woodstock Festival on the basis that the planned portable toilets would not meet town code.

July 16, 1969 — Men blast off for the moon.

July 17, 1969 — The New York Times publishes a correction of an editorial in one of their 1920 editions in which they had scathingly taken the rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard to task for asserting that rockets could function in a vacuum and might even make it to the moon. “He only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools,” the editorial said of Goddard.

July 18, 1969 — Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne go on a midnight drive on Chappaquiddick Island. He returns alive; she doesn’t.

July 20, 1969 — With the Apollo 11 mission, the United States succeeds in putting man on the moon for the first time (as far as we know).

July 24, 1969 — The three Apollo 11 astronauts land in the ocean, safely back from their historic moon mission.

Yeah, July 1969 was quite the month. In my research of it, I came across this New York Times piece: A Year to Remember 40 Years Ago. Interestingly, the sad event of July 18 didn’t get included. It seems they chose to ignore Mary Jo Kopechne.

Mary Jo Kopechne, 'friend' to Senator Ted Kennedy

I also came across an article by Billy Graham in the July 11, 1969, issue of Time magazine: The Sickness of Sodom. It was already bad back then! Question now is, would they publish another article like it today?

OK, I said I only remember the July 20 event. I was two months shy of my tenth birthday. My folks were missionaries in Cd. Obregón, Sonora, Mexico. So were Maynard and Helen Headings and their family. My recollection is of Dad and me going over to the Headings’ and then going with Maynard and the boys over to one of their neighbors’ to watch the grand event unfold on a small black-and-white TV set. I remember seeing this happen “live” (or was it in some Hollywood studio? ):

Apollo 11 -- astronaut stepping on the moon

June 9

68 — Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide, imploring his secretary Epaphroditos to slit his throat to evade a Senate-imposed death by
flogging.

1833 — President Andrew Jackson goes on a train ride for the first time…and becomes the first President to ride a train.

1909 — Alice Huyler Ramsey, a 22-year-old housewife/mother, drives across the
United States with three non-driving female companions (in fifty-nine days in a Maxwell automobile).

1925 — Walter Percy Chrysler starts a company and names it after himself: The Chrysler Corporation.

1932 — It starts small enough — 1 cent per gallon — the first gas tax in the US, thanks to the Revenue Act of 1932.

1944 — Operation Overlord (aka D Day) begins with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France.

1946 — US-born King Phra Bat Somdet Phra Poramintharamaha Bhumibol Adulyadej Mahitalathibet Ramathibodi Chakkrinaruebodin Sayamminthrathirat Borommanatbophit (Bhumibol Adulyadej for short) ascends to the throne of Thailand (where he still rules, the world’s current longest reigning monarch!).

1966 — James Meredith is shot while trying to march across Mississippi.

1967 — Israel captures the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War.

1968 — President Lyndon Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy.

1978 — Voters in California approve Proposition 13, a state constitutional amendment slashing property taxes.

1984 -– Tetris is released.

2004 — The body of President Reagan arrives in Washington to lie in state in the Rotunda before his funeral.

2005 -– The US Supreme Court upholds a federal law banning marijuana, including medical marijuana.

2008 — Retail gasoline prices rise above $4 per gallon in the USA.

2009 — The sun didn’t rise. And nobody panicked or thought anything of it. What’s with that? (I just checked for Significant Breaking News and found none, so the sunrise thing will have to do. Well, wait, I just see this from North Korea.) Like I said, the sun didn’t rise this morning. Neither did a man-made sun.

Good day?

February 14

On this day in 1977, I think I gave her a Valentine card.

1803 — Chief Justice John Marshall declares that any act of US Congress that conflicts with the Constitution is void. What would he have to say today?!

1835 — The original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus is formed in Kirtland, Ohio.

1849 — James Knox Polk becomes the first serving President of the United States to have his photograph taken. Subsequent Presidents have shown an inability to kick the habit.

1859 — Oregon is admitted as the 33rd US state.

1876 — Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray apply (though not jointly) for a patent for the telephone.

1899 — Voting machines are approved by the US Congress for use in federal elections. “It will eliminate fraud, confusion, and disenfranchisement.”

1912 — Arizona is admitted as the 48th US state.

1945 — On the second day of the bombing, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces begin fire-bombing Dresden, Germany. So that’s how The Greatest Generation fought?! Imagine the uproar if that had been done in Iraq and Afghanistan!

1949 — Israel’s Parliament (the Knesset) convenes for the first time. Praise God!

1977 — Mark Roth gives Ruby Yoder a Valentine card for the first time. I think that’s right!

1989 — The first of 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System is placed into orbit. GPS is twenty years old today. Wow!

2009 — What’s noteworthy that happened today?