Jul 8, 1960: Pilot Francis Gary Powers charged with espionage Shot down just two months before while flying a secret mission over Moscow, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage by the Soviet Union on July 8, 1960. Although he would not be found guilty until August 17 of the same year, Powers' indictment signaled a massive setback in the peace process between the United States and the Soviet Union. By 1960, the 31-year-old Powers was already a veteran of several covert aerial reconnaissance missions. The CIA recruited him in 1956 to fly the Lockheed U-2, a spy plane that could reach altitudes of 80,000 feet, essentially making it invulnerable to Soviet anti-aircraft weapons. The U-2 was equipped with a state-of-the-art camera designed to snap high-resolution photos from the edge of the atmosphere. The Soviets had been well aware of U-2 missions since 1956, but did not have the technology to launch counter-measures until 1960. On what turned out to be Powers' last flight for the CIA on May 1, the Soviets shadowed his U-2 at a lower altitude, then took him down as he crossed over Sverdlosk, deep in enemy territory. To make matters worse, Powers was unable to activate the plane's self-destruct mechanism, as instructed, before he parachuted safely to the ground, right into the hands of the KGB. When the U.S. government learned of Powers' disappearance over the Soviet Union, it issued a cover statement claiming that a "weather plane" had crashed down after its pilot had "difficulties with his oxygen equipment." What U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower did not realize was that the plane landed almost fully intact, and the Soviets recovered its photography equipment, as well as Powers, whom they interrogated extensively for months before he made a "voluntary confession" and public apology for his part in U.S. espionage. The timing couldn't have been worse for the United States. A major summit--with the theme of detente and progress toward peace--between the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France was to begin that month. Instead, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev launched into a tirade against the United States, openly accusing the Americans of being "militarist" and "unable to call a halt to their war effort." Khrushchev then stormed out, effectively ending the conference and setting back the peace process a considerable number of years. On August 17, 1960, Powers was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released after two, in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Though Powers claimed he had not divulged details of the U-2 program, he received a cold reception upon his return to the United States. Not until May 1, 2000, the 40th anniversary of the U-2 incident and 23 years after Powers' death in a helicopter crash, did the United States award him the medals of distinction he was denied during his lifetime. Jul 8, 1965: Taylor resigns Saigon post Ambassador Maxwell Taylor resigns from his post in Vietnam. Former Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge replaced Taylor. As ambassador, Taylor had pressed for the return of civilian rule after a military coup had overthrown President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. Although Taylor had initially opposed the employment of U.S. combat troops, he had come to accept this strategy. However, Taylor had an argument with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General William Westmoreland, U.S. commander in South Vietnam, at a conference in Honolulu in April. He took exception with the shift in strategy from counterinsurgency to large-scale ground operations by U.S. units. According to journalist David Halberstam, this argument marked "the last time that Max Taylor was a major player, his farewell in fact." Upon his return to the United States, Taylor served as a special consultant to President Lyndon B. Johnson and was a member of the Senior Advisory Group--who became known as the "Wise! Men"--that convened in March 1968 to advise the president on the course of the war. Also on this day: President Johnson decrees that a Vietnam Service Medal be awarded to Americans serving in the conflict, even though there had been no official declaration of war. There were 16,300 U.S. troops in South Vietnam at the end of 1964. With Johnson's decision to send U.S. combat units, total U.S. strength in South Vietnam would reach 184,300 by the end of 1965. Jul 8, 1972: "Lean On Me" begins its first stay at #1 Bill Withers stepped into a recording studio for the very first time at the age of 32, and two years later, he'd written and recorded one of the most beloved pop songs of the modern era: "Lean On Me," which began its first stay at #1 on the pop charts on this day in 1972. Bill Withers was born in 1938 in the coal-mining company town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, where he left school at age 13 to help support his family following the death of his father. The Navy took Withers out into the wider world at the age of 17, and he settled in California following his discharge nine years later. At age 29, he set his mind to pursuing a career in music, but he hedged his bets with full-time factory jobs in various Southern California defense plants. It took three years for anyone to show an interest in him, but in 1970, Sussex Records signed Bill Withers and paired him with producer Booker T. Jones of Booker T. and the MG's fame. While Withers continued to work in an aircraft factory assembling toilet seats, his 1971 debut album, Just As I Am, became a major critical success, yielding the Grammy Award-winning hit single "Ain't No Sunshine" and the minor R&B classic "Grandma's Hands." Withers was still a full-time factory worker when he wrote the song whose success would finally convince him to give up his day job. "For a long time I didn't really accept my new career," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1975. "It was like I was on vacation from the factory and at some point I would have to take my tool box and go back to work." Withers' "Lean On Me" became a simultaneous #1 hit on the Billboard pop and R&B charts on this day in 1972, and it returned to the #1 spot on the pop charts in March 1987 in a hip-hop inflected remake by Club Nouveau. It has also been covered by artists as diverse as Michael Bolton (1994), Anne Murray (1999) and Limp Bizkit (2005). Jul 8, 1994: North Korea's "Great Leader" dies Kim Il Sung, the communist dictator of North Korea since 1948, dies of a heart attack at the age of 82. In the 1930s, Kim fought against the Japanese occupation of Korea and was singled out by Soviet authorities, who sent him to the USSR for military and political training. He became a communist and fought in the Soviet Red Army in World War II. In 1945, Korea was divided into Soviet and American spheres, and in 1948 Kim became the first leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). Hoping to reunify Korea by force, Kim launched an invasion of South Korea in June 1950, thereby igniting the Korean War, which ended in a stalemate in 1953. During the next four decades, Kim led his country into a deep isolation from even its former communist allies, and relations with South Korea remained tense. Repressive rule and a personality cult that celebrated him as the "Great Leader" kept him in power until his death in 1994. He was succeeded as president by his son, Kim Jong Il, whose reign has been equally repressive and isolating. In recent years, Kim Jong Il has earned censure from much of the world for his continuing attempts to manufacture nuclear weapons, even as millions of his country's people live in poverty. Jul 8, 1997: Torrential rains cause flooding in Europe Torrential rains in the Carpathian Mountains cause serious flooding in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany on this day in 1997. In all, 104 people died as a result of the deluge. In the aftermath, authorities from each country blamed the others for the extent of the disaster. The Rhine and Oder rivers run through central Europe, crossing many national borders. On July 5, heavy rains began falling throughout the region, particularly in the Carpathians. After the storm system had persisted in the area for nearly six days, the rivers could no longer contain the immense volume of water. Poland and the Czech Republic experienced the worst of the flooding. Nearly 40 percent of their populations were affected by the flood conditions, forcing many to evacuate their homes. In some towns, the levees held, but in others they failed, with tragic consequences. More than 200 villages in Poland experienced severe flooding. Fifty-six people died in Poland and 46 were killed in the Czech Republic. Approximately $6 billion dollars in damages were caused by the widespread flooding. Private flood insurance is a rarity in Europe, making the events an even greater hardship for many people. In Germany, thousands of people fought the floods by reinforcing dikes and levees. While they were largely successful in early July, continued rain later in the month caused many of the reinforced structures to eventually give way. In the aftermath of the disaster, the countries involved took turns blaming each other for the flood, hurling accusations of poor maintenance of dams, levees and dikes as well as irresponsible implementation of flood-control procedures back and forth. In reality, however, the widespread nature of the disaster made it impossible to single out any one particular cause. Jul 8, 2004: Suzuki settles Consumer Reports lawsuit after eight-year legal battle On July 8, 2004, Suzuki Motor Corporation and Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, agree to a settlement in an eight-year-long lawsuit in which the automaker accused Consumer Reports of damaging its reputation with claims that its Samurai sport utility vehicle (SUV) was prone to rolling over. In July 1988, a Consumer Reports product review judged the Samurai as unacceptable because of its propensity to tip during sharp turns. (The magazine based this conclusion on the car's performance in avoidance-maneuver tests.) Suzuki stopped making the Samurai in 1995. The following year, the company filed the lawsuit, accusing Consumer Union of rigging the test and perpetrating consumer fraud. The automaker sought $60 million in compensation and unspecified punitive damages. Suzuki's case included testimony from a former Consumers Union employee who served for 10 years as a technician in the company's auto testing group, as well as videotapes and records of automobile testing that date back to 1988. The videos showed, among other things, that the testing personnel had driven the Samurai through the course no fewer than 46 times before getting it to tip up on two wheels on the 47th, a result that was met by laughing and cheering from the group. A federal judge dismissed Suzuki's lawsuit without a trial, but in September 2002 an appeals court ruled that a jury should hear the case. In April 2000, Consumers Union had won a jury trial over a lawsuit filed by Isuzu Motor, which claimed that Consumer Reports magazine had rigged a test involving its Trooper SUV in order to make the vehicle tip over. In November 2003, U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Consumers Union appeal in the Suzuki case, and the case was headed for a jury trial in California before the settlement was reached the next July. No money changed hands in the agreement. Though Consumers Union did not issue an apology--"We stand fully behind our testing and rating of the Samurai," David Pittle, vice president for technical policy at Consumers Union, said--it made a "clarification," stating that the magazine's statement that the Samurai "easily" rolls over during turns may have been "misconstrued or misunderstood." The agreement also stated that Consumers Reports "never intended to imply that the Samurai easily rolls over in routine driving conditions" and had spoken positively of other Suzuki models such as the Sidekick and the Vitara/XL-7. For its part, Suzuki claimed the settlement as a win for its side: Company officials said it would allow them to concentrate on growing Suzuki's business in the United States, including building national sales to 200,000 vehicles by 2007, compared with 58,438 in 2003.
09 July Events ##455 – The Roman military commander Avitus is proclaimed Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. ##491 – Odoacer makes a night assault with his Heruli guardsmen, engaging Theoderic the Great in Ad Pinetam. Both sides suffer heavy losses, but in the end Theodoric forces Odoacer back into Ravenna. ##660 – Battle of Hwangsanbeol: Korean forces under general Kim Yu-shin defeat the army of Baekje at Nonsan (South Korea). ##869 – A magnitude 8.6Ms earthquake and subsequent tsunami strikes the area around Sendai in the northern part of Honshu, Japan. ##1357 – Emperor Charles IV assists in laying the foundation stone of Charles Bridge in Prague. ##1386 – The Old Swiss Confederacy makes great strides in establishing control over its territory by soundly defeating the Archduchy of Austria in the Battle of Sempach. ##1540 – King Henry VIII of England annuls his marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. ##1572 – Nineteen Catholics suffer martyrdom for their beliefs in the Dutch town of Gorkum. ##1701 – War of the Spanish Succession: Austrians defeat France in the Battle of Carpi. ##1745 – War of the Austrian Succession: French victory in the Battle of Melle allows them to capture Ghent in the days after. ##1755 – French and Indian War: Braddock Expedition – British troops and colonial militiamen are ambushed and suffer a devastating defeat by French and Native American forces. ##1776 – George Washington orders the Declaration of Independence to be read out loud to members of the Continental Army in New York, New York, for the first time. ##1789 – In Versailles, the National Assembly reconstitutes itself as the National Constituent Assembly and begins preparations for a French constitution. ##1790 – Russo-Swedish War: Second Battle of Svensksund – in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish Navy captures one third of the Russian fleet. ##1793 – The Act Against Slavery is passed in Upper Canada and the importation of slaves into Lower Canada is prohibited. ##1807 – The Treaties of Tilsit are signed by Napoleon I of France and Alexander I of Russia. ##1810 – Napoleon annexes the Kingdom of Holland as part of the First French Empire. ##1811 – Explorer David Thompson posts a sign at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers (in modern Washington state, US), claiming the land for the United Kingdom. ##1815 – Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord becomes the first Prime Minister of France. ##1816 – Argentina declares independence from Spain. ##1821 – Four hundred seventy prominent Cypriots including Archbishop Kyprianos are executed in response to Cypriot aid to the Greek War of Independence ##1850 – U.S. President Zachary Taylor dies and Millard Fillmore succeeds him as 13th President of the United States. ##1850 – Persian prophet Báb is executed in Tabriz, Persia. ##1863 – American Civil War: The Siege of Port Hudson ends. ##1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and all persons in the United States due process of law. ##1875 – Outbreak of the Herzegovina Uprising against Ottoman rule, which would last until 1878 and have far-reaching implications throughout the Balkans. ##1877 – The inaugural Wimbledon Championships begins. ##1896 – William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech advocating bimetallism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. ##1900 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom gives Royal Assent to an Act creating Australia thus uniting separate colonies on the continent under one federal government. ##1900 – Boxer Rebellion: The Governor of Shanxi province in North China orders the execution of 45 foreign Christian missionaries and local church members, including children. ##1903 – Future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is exiled to Siberia for three years. ##1918 – Great Train Wreck of 1918: In Nashville, Tennessee, an inbound local train collides with an outbound express killing 101 and injuring 171 people, making it the deadliest rail accident in United States history. ##1922 – Johnny Weissmuller swims the 100 meters freestyle in 58.6 seconds breaking the world swimming record and the 'minute barrier'. ##1932 – The state of São Paulo revolts against the Brazilian Federal Government, starting the Constitutionalist Revolution. ##1943 – World War II: Operation Husky – Allied forces perform an amphibious invasion of Sicily. ##1944 – World War II: Battle of Normandy – British and Canadian forces capture Caen, France. ##1944 – World War II: Battle of Saipan – American forces take Saipan in the Mariana Islands. ##1944 – World War II: Battle of Tali-Ihantala – Finland wins the Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the largest battle ever fought in northern Europe. The Red Army withdraws its troops from Ihantala and digs into a defensive position, thus ending the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive. ##1955 – The Russell–Einstein Manifesto is released by Bertrand Russell in London, England, United Kingdom. ##1958 – Lituya Bay is hit by a megatsunami. The wave is recorded at 30 to 91 meters high, the largest in recorded history. ##1961 – Turkish voters approve the Turkish Constitution of 1961 in a referendum. ##1962 – The Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test is conducted by the United States. ##1962 – Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans exhibition opens at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. ##1972 – The Troubles: In Belfast, British Army snipers shoot five civilians dead in the Springhill Massacre. ##1979 – A car bomb destroys a Renault motor car owned by the famed "Nazi hunters" Serge and Beate Klarsfeld at their home in France. A note purportedly from ODESSA claims responsibility. ##1981 – Donkey Kong, a video game created by Nintendo, is released. The game marks the debut of Nintendo's future mascot, Mario. ##1986 – The Parliament of New Zealand passes the Homosexual Law Reform Act legalising homosexuality in New Zealand. ##1993 – The Parliament of Canada passes the Nunavut Act leading to the 1999 creation of Nunavut, dividing the Northwest Territories into arctic (Inuit) and sub-arctic (Dene) lands based on a plebiscite. ##1999 – Days of student protests begin after Iranian police and hardliners attack a student dormitory at the University of Tehran. ##2011 – South Sudan gains independence and secedes from Sudan. B
Jul 9, 1777: New York elects its first governor On this day in 1777, New York elects Brigadier General George Clinton as the first governor of the independent state of New York. Clinton would go on to become New York's longest-serving governor, as well as the longest-serving governor in the United States, holding the post until 1795, and again from 1801 to 1804. In 1805, he was elected vice president of the United States, a position he held under Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, until his death in 1812. George Clinton belonged to a politically minded family. His father, Charles, immigrated to New York from Ireland and served in the New York colonial assembly. His brother, James, served as a major general during the War for Independence, and James' son, DeWitt Clinton, would follow in his uncle's footsteps and serve as the governor of New York from 1817 to 1823. Clinton's career was marked by his friendship with George Washington and his hatred of New York Tories. In fact, as governor, he attempted to keep the public's tax burden low by confiscating and selling land belonging to Tories to maintain state coffers. Clinton went on to represent New York in the Continental Congress and voted in favor of the Declaration of Independence, but was not present to sign the document because he had already left to serve General Washington in the field. Although Clinton refused to endorse the U.S. Constitution until the Bill of Rights was added to the document, he remained a dedicated supporter of the new federal government and threw a celebratory feast for President Washington after riding with him to his first inauguration. Jul 9, 1846: U.S. takes San Francisco An American naval captain occupies the small settlement of Yerba Buena, a site that will later be renamed San Francisco. Surprisingly, Europeans did not discover the spectacular San Francisco Bay until 1769, although several explorers had sailed by it in earlier centuries. When Spanish explorers finally found the bay in that year, they immediately recognized its strategic value. In 1776, the Spanish built a military post on the tip of the San Francisco peninsula and founded the mission of San Francisco de Asis (the Spanish name for Saint Francis of Assisi) nearby. The most northern outpost of the Spanish, and later Mexican, empire in America, the tiny settlement remained relatively insignificant for several decades. However, the potential of the magnificent harbor did not escape the attention of other nations. In 1835, the British Captain William Richardson established a private settlement on the shore of Yerba Buena Cove, several miles to the east of the Mexican mission. That same year the U.S. government offered to purchase the bay, but the Mexicans declined to sell. In retrospect, the Mexicans should have sold while they still had the chance. A little more than a decade later, a dispute between the U.S. and Mexico over western Texas led to war. Shortly after the Mexican War began, U.S. Captain John Montgomery sailed his warship into San Francisco Bay, anchoring just off the settlement of Yerba Buena. On this day in 1846, Montgomery led a party of marines and sailors ashore. They met no resistance and claimed the settlement for the United States, raising the American flag in the central plaza. The following year, the Americans renamed the village San Francisco. When the Mexicans formally ceded California to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe, San Francisco was still a small town with perhaps 900 occupants. That same year, however, gold was discovered at the nearby Sutter's Fort. San Francisco became the gateway for a massive gold rush, and by 1852, the town was home to more than 36,000. Jul 9, 1850: President Zachary Taylor dies unexpectedly On this day in 1850, after only 16 months in office, President Zachary Taylor dies after a brief illness. The exact cause of his death is still disputed by some historians. On a scorching Fourth of July in Washington, D.C., Taylor attended festivities at the newly dedicated grounds upon which the Washington Monument would be erected. According to several sources, Taylor gulped down a large quantity of cherries and iced milk and then returned to the White House, where he quenched his thirst with several glasses of water. Outbreaks of cholera, a deadly disease caused by bacteria, occurred frequently during the summer months in hot, humid Washington during the 1800s, when sewage systems were primitive at best. The bacteria were mostly likely present in the water or iced milk Taylor drank, though other sources have claimed that Taylor died of gastroenteritis caused by the highly acidic cherries combined with fresh milk. Others suspected food poisoning or typhoid fever. It appears no one suggested foul play even though Taylor, a Mexican War hero, adamantly opposed slavery and vowed to personally lead a military attack against any state that threatened to secede from the Union. Taylor died on the evening of July 9, after four days of suffering from symptoms that included severe cramping, diarrhea, nausea and dehydration. His personal physicians concluded that he had succumbed to cholera morbus, a bacterial infection of the small intestine. His vice president, Millard Fillmore, was sworn in as the new president the next day. Jul 9, 1864: Rebels strike Yankees at the Battle of Monocacy On this day, Confederate General Jubal Early brushes a Union force out of his way as he heads for Washington, D.C. Early's expedition towards the Union capital was designed to take pressure off Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia around Petersburg, Virginia. Beginning in early May, Ulysses S. Grant's Union army had continually attacked Lee and drove the Confederates into trenches around the Richmond-Petersburg area. In 1862, the Confederates faced a similar situation around Richmond, and they responded by sending General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson to the Shenandoah Valley to occupy Federal forces. The ploy worked well, and Jackson kept three separate Union forces away from the Confederate capital. Now, Lee sent Early on a similar mission. Early and his force of 14,000 marched down the Shenandoah Valley, crossed the Potomac into Maryland, and then veered southeast toward Washington. Union General Lew Wallace, commander of the Middle Department and stationed in Baltimore, patched together a force of 6,000 local militiamen and soldiers from various regiments to stall the Confederates while a division from Grant's army around Petersburg arrived to protect Washington. Wallace placed his makeshift force along the Monocacy River near Frederick, Maryland. Early in the morning of July 9, Early's troops easily pushed a small Federal guard from Frederick before encountering the bulk of Wallace's force along the river. Wallace protected three bridges over the river. One led to Baltimore, the other to Washington, and the third carried the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Early's first attack was unsuccessful. A second assault, however, scattered the Yankees. The Union force retreated toward Baltimore, and the road to Washington was now open to Early and his army. Union losses for the day stood at 1,800, and Early lost 700 of his men. However, the battle delayed Early's advance to Washington and allowed time for the Union to bring reinforcements from Grant's army. Jul 9, 1877: Wimbledon tournament begins On July 9, 1877, the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club begins its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer-suburb of London. Twenty-one amateurs showed up to compete in the Gentlemen's Singles tournament, the only event at the first Wimbledon. The winner was to take home a 25-guinea trophy. Tennis has its origins in a 13th-century French handball game called jeu de paume, or "game of the palm," from which developed an indoor racket-and-ball game called real, or "royal," tennis. Real tennis grew into lawn tennis, which was played outside on grass and enjoyed a surge of popularity in the late 19th century. In 1868, the All England Club was established on four acres of meadowland outside London. The club was originally founded to promote croquet, another lawn sport, but the growing popularity of tennis led it to incorporate tennis lawns into its facilities. In 1877, the All England Club published an announcement in the weekly sporting magazine The Field that read: "The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, Wimbledon, propose [sic] to hold a lawn tennis meeting open to all amateurs, on Monday, July 9, and following days. Entrance fee, one pound, one shilling." The All English Club purchased a 25-guinea trophy and drew up formal rules for tennis. It decided on a rectangular court 78 feet long by 27 feet wide; adapted the real tennis method of scoring based on a clock face—i.e., 15, 30, 40, game; established that the first to win six games wins a set; and allowed the server one fault. These decisions, largely the work of club member Dr. Henry Jones, remain part of the modern rules. Twenty-two men registered for the tournament, but only 21 showed up on July 9 for its first day. The 11 survivors were reduced to six the next day, and then to three. Semifinals were held on July 12, but then the tournament was suspended to leave the London sporting scene free for the Eton vs. Harrow cricket match played on Friday and Saturday. The final was scheduled for Monday, July 16, but, in what would become a common occurrence in future Wimbledon tournaments, the match was rained out. It was rescheduled for July 19, and on that day some 200 spectators paid a shilling each to see William Marshall, a Cambridge tennis "Blue," battle W. Spencer Gore, an Old Harrovian racket player. In a final that lasted only 48 minutes, the 27-year-old Gore dominated with his strong volleying game, crushing Marshall, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4. At the second Wimbledon in 1878, however, Gore lost his title when his net-heavy game fell prey to a innovative stroke developed by challenger Frank Hadow: the lob. In 1884, the Lady's Singles was introduced at Wimbledon, and Maud Watson won the first championship. That year, the national men's doubles championship was also played at Wimbledon for the first time after several years at Oxford. Mixed doubles and women's doubles were inaugurated in 1913. By the early 1900s, Wimbledon had graduated from all-England to all-world status, and in 1922 the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, as it was then known, moved to a large stadium on Church Road. In the 1950s, many tennis stars turned professional while Wimbledon struggled to remain an amateur tournament. However, in 1968 Wimbledon welcomed the pros and quickly regained its status as the world's top tennis tournament. The Wimbledon Championships, the only major tennis event still played on grass, is held annually in late June and early July. Jul 9, 1915: Germans surrender Southwest Africa to Union of South Africa On this day in 1915, with the Central Powers pressing their advantage on the Western Front during World War I, the Allies score a distant victory, when military forces of the Union of South Africa accept a German surrender in the territory of Southwest Africa. The Union of South Africa, a united self-governing dominion of the British empire, was officially established by an act of the British Parliament in 1910. When World War I broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914, South African Prime Minister Louis Botha immediately pledged full support for Britain. Botha and Minister of Defense Jan Smuts, both generals and former Boer commanders, were looking to extend the Union s borders further on the continent. Invading German Southwest Africa would not only aid the British–it would also help to accomplish that goal. The plan angered a portion of South Africa s ruling Afrikaner (or Boer) population, who were still resentful of their defeat, at the hands of the British, in the Boer War of 1899-1902 and were angered by their government s support of Britain against Germany, which had been pro-Boer in the Boer War. Several major military leaders resigned over their opposition to the invasion of the German territory and open rebellion broke out in October 1914; it was quashed in December. The conquest of Southwest Africa, carried out by a South African Defense Force of nearly 50,000 men, was completed in only six months, culminating in the German surrender on July 9, 1915. Sixteen days later, South Africa annexed the territory. At the Versailles peace conference in 1919, Smuts and Botha argued successfully for a formal Union mandate over Southwest Africa, one of the many commissions granted at the conference to member states of the new League of Nations allowing them to establish their own governments in former German territories. In the years to come, South Africa did not easily relinquish its hold on the territory, not even in the wake of the Second World War, when the United Nations took over the mandates in Africa and gave all other territories their independence. Only in 1990 did South Africa finally welcome a new, independent Namibia as its neighbor. Jul 9, 1918: Trains collide outside Nashville Two trains collide outside Nashville, Tennessee, killing 101 people, on this day in 1918. Despite the high death toll, the story was mainly ignored by the national press. It was just after 7 a.m. when the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis line's Train No. 1 arrived at the Shops station. It was carrying a large contingent of workers heading for their jobs at the munitions plant in Harding, Tennessee, the next stop on the line. The train's engineer was supposed to wait for an express train to pass through the Shops station in the opposite direction before heading to Harding. Instead, the engineer headed out after a freight train passed by, a terrible mistake. Train No. 1 had reached about 50 miles per hour when the express train appeared before it suddenly, traveling even faster. There was no time to brake. Both trains engines exploded on impact. The first two cars on each train were thrown forward and collapsed on each other. Everything and everyone in these cars were destroyed. In addition to the 101 people killed, another 100 people were seriously injured. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, many newspapers across the country did not even cover the story, most likely because the vast majority of the casualties were African Americans.
09 July Births ##1511 – Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg (d. 1571) ##1577 – Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, English politician, Colonial Governor of Virginia (d. 1618) ##1578 – Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1637) ##1654 – Emperor Reigen of Japan (d. 1732) ##1686 – Philip Livingston, American politician (d. 1749) ##1689 – Alexis Piron, French playwright (d. 1773) ##1721 – Johann Nikolaus Götz, German poet (d. 1781) ##1753 – William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock, English admiral and politician, 34th Lieutenant Governor Governor of Newfoundland (d. 1825) ##1764 – Ann Radcliffe, English author (d. 1823) ##1775 – Matthew Lewis, English author and playwright (d. 1818) ##1786 – Princess Sophie Hélène Béatrice of France (d. 1787) ##1800 – Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, German physician, pathologist, and anatomist (d. 1885) ##1808 – Alexander William Doniphan, American lawyer and colonel (d. 1887) ##1819 – Elias Howe, American inventor, invented the sewing machine (d. 1867) ##1828 – Luigi Oreglia di Santo Stefano, Italian cardinal (d. 1913) ##1834 – Jan Neruda, Czech journalist and poet (d. 1891) ##1836 – Camille of Renesse-Breidbach (d. 1904) ##1848 – Robert I, Duke of Parma (d. 1907) ##1858 – Franz Boas, German-American anthropologist and linguist (d. 1942) ##1867 – Georges Lecomte, French author and playwright (d. 1958) ##1878 – Eduard Sõrmus, Estonian violinist (d. 1940) ##1879 – Carlos Chagas, Brazilian physician and parasitologist (d. 1934) ##1879 – Ottorino Respighi, Italian composer and conductor (d. 1936) ##1887 – James Ormsbee Chapin, American-Canadian painter and illustrator (d. 1975) ##1887 – Samuel Eliot Morison, American admiral and historian (d. 1976) ##1889 – Léo Dandurand, American-Canadian ice hockey player, coach, and referee (d. 1964) ##1893 – George Geary, English cricketer and coach (d. 1981) ##1896 – Maria Gomes Valentim, Brazilian super-centenarian (d. 2011) ##1901 – Barbara Cartland, English author (d. 2000) ##1901 – Konstantinos Kallias, Greek politician (d. 2004) ##1903 – Arthur Walworth, American author (d. 2005) ##1905 – Clarence Campbell, Canadian ice hockey player and referee (d. 1984) ##1907 – Eddie Dean, American singer-songwriter and actor (d. 1999) ##1908 – Allamah Rasheed Turabi, Pakistani philosopher and scholar (d. 1973) ##1909 – Basil Wolverton, American author and illustrator (d. 1978) ##1911 – Mervyn Peake, English author and illustrator (d. 1968) ##1911 – John Archibald Wheeler, American physicist and author (d. 2008) ##1914 – Willi Stoph, German engineer and politician, 4th Prime Minister of East Germany (d. 1999) ##1915 – David Diamond, American composer (d. 2005) ##1916 – Dean Goffin, New Zealand composer (d. 1984) ##1916 – Edward Heath, English colonel and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 2005) ##1918 – Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn, Dutch mathematician and academic (d. 2012) ##1918 – Jarl Wahlström, Finnish 12th General of The Salvation Army (d. 1999) ##1921 – David C. Jones, American general (d. 2013) ##1924 – Pierre Cochereau, French organist and composer (d. 1984) ##1924 – Jill Knight, English politician ##1925 – Guru Dutt, Indian actor, director, and producer (d. 1964) ##1925 – Charles E. Wicks, American engineer, author, and academic (d. 2010) ##1926 – Murphy Anderson, American illustrator ##1926 – Ben Roy Mottelson, American-Danish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate ##1927 – Ed Ames, American singer and actor (Ames Brothers) ##1927 – Susan Cabot, American actress (d. 1986) ##1927 – Red Kelly, Canadian ice hockey player, coach, and politician ##1928 – Federico Bahamontes, Spanish cyclist ##1928 – Vince Edwards, American actor, singer, and director (d. 1996) ##1929 – Lee Hazlewood, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2007) ##1929 – Jesse McReynolds, American singer and mandolin player (Jim & Jesse) ##1929 – Hassan II of Morocco (d. 1999) ##1930 – Buddy Bregman, American composer and conductor ##1930 – Roy McLean, South African cricketer and rugby player (d. 2007) ##1931 – Haynes Johnson, American journalist and author (d. 2013) ##1932 – Donald Rumsfeld, American captain and politician, 13th United States Secretary of Defense ##1932 – Amitzur Shapira, Israeli runner (d. 1972) ##1933 – Oliver Sacks, English-American neurologist, chemist, and author ##1934 – Michael Graves, American architect, designed the Portland Building and the Humana Building ##1935 – Wim Duisenberg, Dutch economist and politician, Minister of Finance for The Netherlands (d. 2005) ##1935 – Mercedes Sosa, Argentinian singer and activist (d. 2009) ##1935 – Michael Williams, English actor (d. 2001) ##1936 – Floyd Abrams, American lawyer and academic ##1936 – June Jordan, American poet and educator (d. 2002) ##1936 – André Pronovost, Canadian ice hockey player ##1936 – Richard Wilson, Scottish actor and director ##1937 – David Hockney, English painter and photographer ##1938 – Paul Chihara, American composer ##1938 – Brian Dennehy, American actor, director, and producer ##1938 – Sanjeev Kumar, Indian actor (d. 1985) ##1940 – Eugene Victor Wolfenstein, American psychoanalyst and theorist (d. 2010) ##1942 – David Chidgey, Baron Chidgey, English engineer and politician ##1942 – Richard Roundtree, American actor ##1942 – Edy Williams, American actress ##1943 – John Casper, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut ##1943 – Soledad Miranda, Spanish actress (d. 1970) ##1944 – Judith M. Brown, Indian-English historian and academic ##1944 – John Cunniff, American ice hockey player and coach (d. 2002) ##1945 – Dean Koontz, American author and screenwriter ##1945 – John Lilleyman, English haematologist ##1945 – Root Boy Slim, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1993) ##1946 – Natasha Pyne, English actress ##1946 – Bon Scott, Scottish-Australian singer-songwriter (AC/DC, Fraternity, The Valentines, and The Spektors) (d. 1980) ##1947 – Haruomi Hosono, Japanese singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer (Yellow Magic Orchestra and Happy End) ##1947 – Mitch Mitchell, English drummer (The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Dirty Mac, and The Riot Squad) (d. 2008) ##1947 – O. J. Simpson, American football player and actor ##1948 – David Halvorson, American politician (d. 2013) ##1948 – Hassan Wirajuda, Indonesian politician, 15th Foreign Minister of Indonesia ##1949 – Jesse Duplantis, American minister and author ##1949 – Sue Timney, Libyan-English interior designer and academic ##1950 – Amal ibn Idris al-Alami, Moroccan physician and neurosurgeon ##1950 – Gwen Guthrie, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 1999) ##1950 – Adriano Panatta, Italian tennis player and sailor ##1950 – Viktor Yanukovych, Ukrainian engineer and politician, 4th President of Ukraine ##1951 – Chris Cooper, American actor ##1952 – John Tesh, American pianist, composer, and radio host ##1953 – Margie Gillis, Canadian dancer and choreographer ##1953 – Thomas Ligotti, American author ##1954 – Théophile Abega, Cameroonian footballer and politician (d. 2012) ##1954 – Kate Garner, English singer and photographer ##1955 – Steve Coppell, English footballer and manager ##1955 – Lindsey Graham, American colonel, lawyer, and politician ##1955 – Fred Norris, American radio host ##1955 – Jimmy Smits, American actor and producer ##1955 – Willie Wilson, American baseball player and manager ##1956 – Tom Hanks, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter ##1956 – Jeannie Pepper, American porn actress ##1957 – Marc Almond, English singer-songwriter (Marc and the Mambas, Soft Cell, and The Immaculate Consumptive) ##1957 – Tim Kring, American screenwriter and producer ##1957 – Kelly McGillis, American actress ##1957 – Paul Merton, English comedian, actor, and screenwriter ##1957 – Jim Paxson, American basketball player and manager ##1959 – Jim Kerr, Scottish singer-songwriter and keyboard player (Simple Minds) ##1959 – Kevin Nash, American wrestler and actor ##1959 – Clive Stafford Smith, English lawyer and author ##1960 – Marc Mero, American wrestler and boxer ##1960 – Eduardo Montes-Bradley, Argentinian journalist, photographer, and author ##1961 – Raymond Cruz, American actor ##1963 – Klaus Theiss, German footballer ##1964 – Courtney Love, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actress (Hole, Pagan Babies, Sugar Babydoll, and Babes in Toyland) ##1964 – Gianluca Vialli, Italian footballer and coach ##1965 – Frank Bello, American bass player (Anthrax and Helmet) ##1965 – Thomas Jahn, German director and screenwriter ##1965 – David O'Hara, Scottish actor ##1965 – Jason Rhoades, American sculptor (d. 2006) ##1965 – Michael Spies, German footballer ##1966 – Pamela Adlon, American actress, producer, and screenwriter ##1966 – Gayle Blakeney, Australian actress and singer ##1966 – Gillian Blakeney, Australian actress and singer ##1966 – Manuel Mota, Spanish fashion designer (d. 2013) ##1966 – Marco Pennette, American screenwriter and producer ##1967 – Gunnar Axén, Swedish politician ##1967 – Mark Stoops, American football player and coach ##1968 – Paolo Di Canio, Italian footballer and manager ##1968 – Lars Gyllenhaal, Swedish historian and author ##1969 – Nicklas Barker, Swedish singer-songwriter and guitarist (Anekdoten) ##1969 – Jason Kearton, Australian footballer and coach ##1969 – Mark Lui, Hong Kong singer-songwriter and producer (Dry) ##1970 – Trent Green, American football player and sportscaster ##1970 – Masami Tsuda, Japanese author and illustrator ##1971 – Marc Andreessen, American software developer, co-founded Netscape ##1971 – Scott Grimes, American singer-songwriter and actor ##1972 – Ara Babajian, American drummer and songwriter (The Slackers, Leftöver Crack, and Star Fucking Hipsters) ##1973 – Kelly Holcomb, American football player and sportscaster ##1973 – Enrique Murciano, American actor and producer ##1974 – Dani Behr, English singer and actress (Faith Hope & Charity) ##1974 – Siân Berry, English politician ##1974 – Gary Kelly, Irish footballer ##1974 – Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Japanese actor and singer (SMAP) ##1974 – Nikola Šarčević, Swedish singer-songwriter and bass player (Millencolin) ##1975 – Shelton Benjamin, American wrestler ##1975 – Isaac Brock, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Modest Mouse and Ugly Casanova) ##1975 – Nathaniel Marston, American actor ##1975 – Craig Quinnell, Welsh rugby player ##1975 – Jack White, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, and The Go) ##1976 – Thomas Cichon, Polish-German footballer ##1976 – Christos Harissis, Greek basketball player ##1976 – Revo Jõgisalu, Estonian rapper (Toe Tag) (d. 2011) ##1976 – Fred Savage, American actor, director, and producer ##1976 – Radike Samo, Fijian-Australian rugby player ##1976 – Jochem Uytdehaage, Dutch speed skater ##1978 – Kara Goucher, American runner ##1978 – Mark Medlock, German singer ##1978 – Linda Park, South Korean-American actress ##1978 – Nuno Santos, Portuguese footballer ##1979 – Ella Koon, Hong Kong singer and actress ##1981 – Kimveer Gill, Canadian murderer, committed the Dawson College shooting (d. 2006) ##1981 – Michael Norgrove, Zambian-English boxer (d. 2013) ##1982 – Ashly DelGrosso, American dancer ##1982 – Alecko Eskandarian, American soccer player and manager ##1982 – Toby Kebbell, English actor ##1982 – Maggie Ma, Canadian actress, singer, and dancer ##1982 – Sakon Yamamoto, Japanese race car driver ##1983 – Lucia Micarelli, American violinist and actress ##1984 – Chris Campoli, Canadian ice hockey player ##1984 – Gianni Fabiano, Italian footballer ##1984 – Jacob Hoggard, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist (Hedley) ##1984 – Ave Pajo, Estonian footballer ##1984 – Piia Suomalainen, Finnish tennis player ##1985 – Paweł Korzeniowski, Polish swimmer ##1985 – Ashley Young, English footballer ##1986 – Sébastien Bassong, Cameroonian footballer ##1986 – Dominic Cervi, American soccer player ##1986 – Simon Dumont, American skier ##1986 – Severo Meza, Mexican footballer ##1986 – Kiely Williams, American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress (3LW and The Cheetah Girls) ##1986 – Genevieve Morton, South African model ##1987 – Gert Jõeäär, Estonian cyclist ##1987 – Amanda Knox, American murder ##1987 – Rebecca Sugar, American animator, composer, and screenwriter ##1988 – Raul Rusescu, Romanian footballer ##1990 – Rafael, Brazilian footballer ##1990 – Fábio Pereira da Silva, Brazilian footballer ##1991 – Mitchel Musso, American actor and singer ##1991 – Riley Reid, American porn actress ##1992 – Douglas Booth, English actor ##1993 – Jake Vargas, Filipino actor and singer ##1995 – Georgie Henley, English actress D
Jul 9, 1918: Faulkner joins the Royal Air Force William Faulkner joins the Royal Air Force on this day, but will never see combat because World War I will end before he completes his training. Faulkner joined the RAF after his high school sweetheart, Estelle, married another man. He quit his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi, visited friends in the North, and headed to Canada, where he joined the Royal Air Force. After the war, he returned to Mississippi, where he wrote poetry. A neighbor funded the publication of his first book of poems, The Marble Faun (1924). His first novel, Soldiers' Pay, was published two years later. Faulkner got a second chance at his high school sweetheart when Estelle, now the mother of two, divorced her first husband. She married Faulkner in 1929, and the couple bought and restored a ruined mansion near Oxford while Faulkner finished The Sound and the Fury, published in October 1929. The following year, he published As I Lay Dying, with Light in August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom (1936) following. Faulkner's novels challenged conventional forms and were slow to catch on with the reading public. His work did not earn him enough money to support his family, so he supplemented his income selling short stories to magazines and working as a Hollywood screenwriter. He wrote two critically acclaimed films, both starring Humphrey Bogart. To Have and Have Not was based on an Ernest Hemingway novel, and The Big Sleep was based on a mystery by Raymond Chandler. He published a classic collection of short stories, Go Down, Moses, in 1942. The collection included "The Bear," one of his most famous stories, which had previously appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. Faulkner's reputation received a significant boost with the publication of The Portable Faulkner (1946), which included his many stories set in Yoknapatawpha county. Three years later, in 1949, he won the Nobel Prize for literature. His Collected Stories (1950) won the National Book Award. During the rest of his life, he lectured frequently on university campuses. He died of a heart attack at age 65. Jul 9, 1941: Enigma key broken On this day in 1941, crackerjack British cryptologists break the secret code used by the German army to direct ground-to-air operations on the Eastern front. British experts had already broken many of the Enigma codes for the Western front. Enigma was the Germans' most sophisticated coding machine, necessary to secretly transmitting information. The Enigma machine, invented in 1919 by Hugo Koch, a Dutchman, looked like a typewriter and was originally employed for business purposes. The Germany army adapted the machine for wartime use and considered its encoding system unbreakable. They were wrong. The Brits had broken their first Enigma code as early as the German invasion of Poland and had intercepted virtually every message sent through the occupation of Holland and France. Britain nicknamed the intercepted messages Ultra. Now, with the German invasion of Russia, the Allies needed to be able to intercept coded messages transmitted on this second, Eastern, front. The first breakthrough occurred on July 9, regarding German ground-air operations, but various keys would continue to be broken by the Brits over the next year, each conveying information of higher secrecy and priority than the next. (For example, a series of decoded messages nicknamed "Weasel" proved extremely important in anticipating German anti-aircraft and antitank strategies against the Allies.) These decoded messages were regularly passed to the Soviet High Command regarding German troop movements and planned offensives, and back to London regarding the mass murder of Russian prisoners and Jewish concentration camp victims. Jul 9, 1947: First female army officer In a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, General Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank. A member of the Army Nurse Corps since 1917, Blanchfield secured her commission following the passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act of 1947 by Congress. Blanchfield had served as superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during World War II and was instrumental in securing passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act, which was advocated by Representative Frances Payne Bolton. In 1951, Blanchfield received the Florence Nightingale Award from the International Red Cross. In 1978, a U.S. Army hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was named in her honor. Jul 9, 1948: Satchel Paige makes debut with Cleveland Indians On this day in 1948, 42-year-old Leroy "Satchel" Paige pitches two innings for the Cleveland Indians in his debut with the newly--and barely--integrated American League. The game came 21 years after the great pitcher’s first Negro League appearance. Leroy Page was born on July 7, 1906, in Mobile, Alabama. Page’s family changed the spelling of their name to Paige to differentiate themselves from John Page, Leroy’s absent and abusive father. "Satchel" got his nickname as a boy while working as a luggage carrier at the Mobile train station. When he was 12, his constant truancy coupled with a shoplifting incident got him sent to the Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama. It turned out to be a lucky break, as it was there that Paige learned to pitch. After leaving the school, he turned pro. From 1927 to 1948 Satchel Paige was the baseball equivalent of a hired gun: He pitched for any team in the United States or abroad that could afford him. He was the highest paid pitcher of his time, and he wowed crowds with the speed of his fastball, his trick pitches and his considerable bravado. Just for fun, Paige would sometimes call in his outfield and then strike out the side. From 1939 to 1942, the Kansas City Monarchs paid up for his services and were justly rewarded: Paige led the team to four consecutive Negro American League pennants from 1939 to 1942. In the 1942 Negro League World Series, Satchel won three games in a four-game sweep of the Homestead Grays, led by famed slugger Josh Gibson. Paige’s contract was bought by Bill Veeck’s Cleveland Indians on July 7, 1948, his 42nd birthday. He made his major league debut two days later, entering in the fifth inning against the St. Louis Browns with the Indians trailing 4-1. He gave up two singles in two innings, striking one man out and inducing one batter to hit into a double play. The Indians lost the game 5-3 in spite of Paige’s contribution. That year Satchel Paige went 6-1 with a solid 2.48 ERA for the World Champion Cleveland Indians. Paige was named to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Team for the American League in 1952 and 1953, when he was 46 and 47 years old respectively. In 1965, Paige pitched for the Kansas City Athletics, which made him, at 59 years, 2 months and 18 days, the oldest pitcher ever to play a game in the major leagues. Arguably the greatest pitcher of his era, Paige was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971. Jul 9, 1960: Khrushchev and Eisenhower trade threats over Cuba President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev trade verbal threats over the future of Cuba. In the following years, Cuba became a dangerous focus in the Cold War competition between the United States and Russia. In January 1959, Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro overthrew the long-time dictator Fulgencio Batista. Although the United States recognized the new Castro regime, many members of the Eisenhower administration harbored deep suspicions concerning the political orientation of the charismatic new Cuban leader. For his part, Castro was careful to avoid concretely defining his political beliefs during his first months in power. Castro's actions, however, soon convinced U.S. officials that he was moving to establish a communist regime in Cuba. Castro pushed through land reform that hit hard at U.S. investors, expelled the U.S. military missions to Cuba, and, in early 1960, announced that Cuba would trade its sugar to Russia in exchange for oil. In March 1960, Eisenhower gave the CIA the go-ahead to arm and train a group of Cuban refugees to overthrow the Castro regime. It was in this atmosphere that Eisenhower and Khrushchev engaged in some verbal sparring in July 1960. Khrushchev fired the first shots during a speech in Moscow. He warned that the Soviet Union was prepared to use its missiles to protect Cuba from U.S. intervention. "One should not forget," the Soviet leader declared, "that now the United States is no longer at an unreachable distance from the Soviet Union as it was before." He charged that the United States was "plotting insidious and criminal steps" against Cuba. In a statement issued to the press, Eisenhower responded to Khrushchev's speech, warning that the United States would not countenance the "establishment of a regime dominated by international communism in the Western Hemisphere." The Soviet Premier's threat of retaliation demonstrated "the clear intention to establish Cuba in a role serving Soviet purposes in this hemisphere." The relationship between the United States and Cuba deteriorated rapidly after the Eisenhower-Khrushchev exchange. The Castro regime accelerated its program of expropriating American-owned property. In response, the Eisenhower administration severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1960. A little more than a year later, in April 1961, the CIA-trained force of Cuban refugees launched an assault on Cuba in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. The invaders were killed or captured, the Castro government cemented its control in Cuba, and the Soviet Union became Cuba's main source of economic and military assistance. Jul 9, 1962: Bob Dylan records "Blowin' In The Wind" "This here ain't no protest song or anything like that, 'cause I don't write no protest songs." That was how Bob Dylan introduced one of the most eloquent protest songs ever written when he first performed it publicly. It was the spring of his first full year in New York City, and he was onstage at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village, talking about a song he claims to have written in just 10 minutes: "Blowin' In The Wind." A few weeks later, on this day in 1962, Dylan walked into a studio and recorded the song that would make him a star. Dylan's recording of "Blowin' In The Wind" would first be released nearly a full year later, on his breakthrough album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. This was not the version of the song that most people would first hear, however. That honor went to the cover version by Peter, Paul and Mary—a version that not only became a smash hit on the pop charts, but also transformed what Dylan would later call "just another song" into the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement. "Blowin' In The Wind" bore little or no resemblance to the highly topical, highly literal protest songs of the day, but that may have been precisely what made it so effective as a protest song. A lyric like "How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?" lends itself perfectly to those seeking racial justice, just as "How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand?" does to those seeking peace. The moving, vaguely spiritual, clearly dissatisfied, yet ultimately ambiguous nature of "Blowin' In the Wind" made it the quintessential protest song of the 1960s—"A song that the times seemed to call forth," in the words of critic Greil Marcus. It also represented a significant breakthrough for Bob Dylan as a songwriter. From "Blowin' In The Wind" onward, Dylan's songs would reflect a far more personal and poetic approach to self-expression—an approach that would lead him away from songs like "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and toward songs like "Like A Rolling Stone." And Dylan's development as a songwriter would, in turn, have a similar effect on The Beatles, whose own move from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to "A Day In The Life" can be traced directly to their exposure to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in the spring of 1964. Jul 9, 1966: Soviets protest U.S. bombing of Haiphong The Soviet Union sends a note to the U.S. embassy in Moscow charging that the air strikes on the port of Haiphong endangered four Soviet ships that were in the harbor. The United States rejected the Soviet protest on July 23, claiming, "Great care had been taken to assure the safety of shipping in Haiphong." The Soviets sent a second note in August charging that bullets had hit a Russian ship during a raid on August 2, but the claim was rejected by the U.S. embassy on August 5. The Soviets complained on a number of occasions during the war, particularly when the bombing raids threatened to inhibit their ability to resupply the North Vietnamese.
09 July Deaths ##518 – Anastasius I Dicorus, Byzantine emperor (b. 430) ##1228 – Stephen Langton, English cardinal (b. 1150) ##1386 – Leopold III, Duke of Austria (b. 1351) ##1553 – Maurice, Elector of Saxony (b. 1521) ##1654 – Ferdinand IV, King of the Romans (b. 1633) ##1706 – Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, Canadian captain and explorer (b. 1661) ##1737 – Gian Gastone de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (b. 1671) ##1742 – John Oldmixon, English historian, poet, and playwright (b. 1673) ##1746 – Philip V of Spain (b. 1683) ##1747 – Giovanni Bononcini, Italian cellist and composer (b. 1670) ##1766 – Jonathan Mayhew, American minister (b. 1720) ##1771 – Michael Paknanas, Greek gardener and martyr (b. 1753) ##1795 – Henry Seymour Conway, English general and politician, Secretary of State for the Northern Department (b. 1721) ##1797 – Edmund Burke, Irish-English philosopher, academic, and politician (b. 1729) ##1850 – Báb, Persian religious leader, founded Bábism (b. 1819) ##1850 – Zachary Taylor, American general and politician, 12th President of the United States (b. 1784) ##1852 – Thomas McKean Thompson McKennan, American lawyer and politician, 2nd United States Secretary of the Interior (b. 1794) ##1856 – Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist and academic (b. 1776) ##1856 – James Strang, American religious leader and politician (b. 1813) ##1880 – Paul Broca, French physician and anatomist (b. 1824) ##1882 – Ignacio Carrera Pinto, Chilean soldier (b. 1848) ##1903 – Alphonse Francois Renard, Belgian geologist and photographer (b. 1842) ##1927 – John Drew, Jr., American actor (b. 1853) ##1932 – King C. Gillette, American businessman, founded The Gillette Company (b. 1855) ##1937 – Oliver Law, American commander (b. 1899) ##1938 – Benjamin N. Cardozo, American jurist (b. 1870) ##1947 – Lucjan Żeligowski, Polish-Lithuanian general and politician (b. 1865) ##1949 – Fritz Hart, English-Australian composer and conductor (b. 1874) ##1951 – Harry Heilmann, American baseball player and sportscaster (b. 1894) ##1955 – Don Beauman, English race car driver (b. 1928) ##1959 – Ferenc Talányi, Slovene journalist and painter (b. 1883) ##1967 – Fatima Jinnah, Pakistani dentist and politician (b. 1893) ##1967 – Eugen Fischer, German physician and academic (b. 1874) ##1971 – Karl Ast, Estonian author and politician (b. 1886) ##1972 – Robert Weede, American opera singer (b. 1903) ##1974 – Earl Warren, American jurist and politician, 14th Chief Justice of the United States (b. 1891) ##1977 – Alice Paul, American activist (b. 1885) ##1979 – Cornelia Otis Skinner, American actress and author (b. 1899) ##1980 – Vinicius de Moraes, Brazilian poet, playwright, and composer (b. 1913) ##1983 – Keith Wickenden, English politician (b. 1932) ##1985 – Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (b. 1896) ##1985 – Jimmy Kinnon, Scottish-American founder of Narcotics Anonymous (b. 1911) ##1986 – Patriarch Nicholas VI of Alexandria (b. 1915) ##1992 – Kelvin Coe, Australian ballet dancer (b. 1946) ##1992 – Eric Sevareid, American journalist (b. 1912) ##1994 – Bill Mosienko, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1921) ##1996 – Melvin Belli, American lawyer and actor (b. 1907) ##1999 – Robert de Cotret, Canadian politician, 56th Secretary of State for Canada (b. 1944) ##2000 – Doug Fisher, English actor (b. 1941) ##2002 – Mayo Kaan, American bodybuilder (b. 1914) ##2002 – Rod Steiger, American actor (b. 1925) ##2004 – Paul Klebnikov, American journalist and historian (b. 1963) ##2004 – Jean Lefebvre, French actor (b. 1919) ##2004 – Riley Dobi Noel, American murderer (b. 1972) ##2004 – Isabel Sanford, American actress (b. 1917) ##2005 – Chuck Cadman, Canadian engineer and politician (b. 1948) ##2005 – Yevgeny Grishin, Russian speed skater (b. 1931) ##2005 – Kevin Hagen, American actor (b. 1928) ##2005 – Alex Shibicky, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1914) ##2006 – Milan Williams, American keyboard player and producer (Commodores) (b. 1948) ##2007 – Charles Lane, American actor and singer (b. 1905) ##2008 – Séamus Brennan, Irish politician (b. 1948) ##2010 – Jessica Anderson, Australian author (b. 1916) ##2011 – Würzel, English guitarist (Motörhead) (b. 1949) ##2011 – Don Ackerman, American basketball player (b. 1930) ##2011 – Facundo Cabral, Argentinian singer-songwriter (b. 1937) ##2012 – Shin Jae-chul, South Korean-American martial artist (b. 1936) ##2012 – Chick King, American baseball player (b. 1930) ##2012 – Terepai Maoate, Cook Islander politician, 6th Prime Minister of the Cook Islands (b. 1934) ##2012 – Eugênio Sales, Brazilian cardinal (b. 1920) ##2012 – Brian Thomas, Welsh rugby player and manager (b. 1940) ##2012 – Isuzu Yamada, Japanese actress (b. 1917) ##2013 – Markus Büchel, Liechtensteiner politician, 9th Prime Minister of Liechtenstein (b. 1959) ##2013 – Jim Foglesong, American record producer (b. 1922) ##2013 – Andrew Nori, Solomon lawyer and politician (b. 1952) ##2013 – Kiril of Varna, Bulgarian metropolitan (b. 1954) ##2013 – Barbara Robinson, American author (b. 1927) ##2013 – Toshi Seeger, American activist, co-founded the Clearwater Festival (b. 1922) ##2014 – Lorenzo Álvarez Florentín, Paraguayan violinist and composer (b. 1926) ##2014 – David Azrieli, Polish-Canadian businessman and philanthropist (b. 1922) H
Jul 9, 1971: United States turns over responsibility for the DMZ Four miles south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), about 500 U.S. troops of the 1st Brigade, 5th Mechanized Division turn over Fire Base Charlie 2 to Saigon troops, completing the transfer of defense responsibilities for the border area. On the previous day, nearby Fire Base Alpha 4 had been turned over to the South Vietnamese. This was part of President Richard Nixon's Vietnamization policy, which had been announced at a June 1969 conference at Midway Island. Under this program, the United States initiated a comprehensive effort to increase the combat capabilities of the South Vietnamese armed forces. As the South Vietnamese became more capable, responsibility for the fighting was gradually transferred from U.S. forces. Concurrent with this effort, there was a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces. Jul 9, 1993: Romanov remains identified British forensic scientists announce that they have positively identified the remains of Russia's last czar, Nicholas II; his wife, Czarina Alexandra; and three of their daughters. The scientists used mitochondria DNA fingerprinting to identify the bones, which had been excavated from a mass grave near Yekaterinburg in 1991. On the night of July 16, 1918, three centuries of the Romanov dynasty came to an end when Bolshevik troops executed Nicholas and his family. The details of the execution and the location of their final resting place remained a Soviet secret for more than six decades. Lacking physical evidence, rumors spread through Europe in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, telling of a Romanov child, usually the youngest daughter, Anastasia, who had survived the carnage. In the 1920s, there were several claimants to the title of Grand Duchess Anastasia. The most convincing was Anna Anderson, who turned up in Berlin in 1922 claiming to be Anastasia. In 1968, Anderson emigrated to Charlottesville, Virginia, where she died in 1984. In 1991, Russian amateur investigators, using a recently released government report on the Romanov execution, found what they thought to be the Romanov burial site. Russian authorities exhumed human remains. Scientists studied the skulls, claiming that Anastasia's was among those found, but the Russian findings were not conclusive. To prove that the remains were indisputably those of the Romanovs, the Russians enlisted the aid of British DNA experts. First, the scientists tested for gender and identified five females and four males among the remains. Next they tested to see how, if at all, these people were related. A father and mother were identified, along with three daughters. The four other remains were likely those of servants. The son Alexei and one daughter were missing. To prove the identity of Alexandra and her children, the scientists took blood from Prince Philip, the consort of Queen Elizabeth II and the grand nephew of Alexandra. Because they all share a common maternal ancestor, they would all share mitochondria DNA, which is passed almost unchanged from mother to children. The comparison between the mtDNA in Philip's blood and in the remains was positive, proving them to be the Romanovs. To prove the czar's identity, who did not share this mtDNA, the remains of Grand Duke George, the brother of Nicholas, were exhumed. A comparison of their mtDNA proved their relationship. The Crown Prince Alexei and one Romanov daughter were not accounted for, adding fuel to the persistent legend that Anastasia had survived execution. Was it possible that Anastasia had escaped and resurfaced as Anna Anderson? In 1994, American and English scientists attempted to answer this question once and for all. Using a tissue sample of Anderson's recovered from a Virginia hospital, the English team compared her mtDNA with that of the Romanovs. Simultaneously, an American team compared the mtDNA found in a strand of her hair. Both teams came to the same decisive conclusion: Anna Anderson was not a Romanov. In 1995, a Russian government commission studying the remains presented what it claimed was proof that one of the skeletons was in fact Anastasia's, and that the missing Romanov daughter was, in fact, Maria. Jul 9, 1996: A family is brutally attacked on a walk in England Dr. Lin Russell, her two daughters, Josie and Megan, and their dog, Lucy, are all brutally attacked by a man wielding a hammer on their way home to Nonington Village, Kent, England, after a swimming gala. Forcing them to sit down in the woods, the attacker blindfolded and tied up his victims with their torn towels, and then bludgeoned them one by one. Nine-year-old Josie, the sole survivor of the vicious assault, had to relearn to speak after surgeons inserted a metal plate into her head to cover the area where her skull had been smashed. Some of her brain tissue was so damaged that it had to be removed. Finally, on July 17 of the following year, Michael Stone, who had a record of burglary and robbery, as well as a history of drug abuse and mental illness, was arrested. He had been recognized after the broadcast of a BBC television special that included his picture and description. Asked by detectives where he was on the day of the murders, Stone replied, "I can't remember for two reasons. One, I was badly on drugs, and two, it was so long ago." During the trial, several witnesses testified against Stone. One maintained that the defendant's stepfather often beat young Michael with a hammer; several prison inmates (Barry Thompson, Damien Daley, and Mark Jennings) claimed that Stone had confessed to the murders on separate occasions; and a couple, Sheree Batt and Lawrence Calder, alleged that Stone had come to their house the morning after the murders wearing blood-splattered clothing. On October 23, 1998, the 38-year-old Stone was convicted and given a triple life sentence, despite his repeated claims of innocence. Immediately thereafter, Barry Thompson contacted a daily newspaper to retract his testimony. Based on Thompson's admission that he lied, a Court of Appeals threw out Stone's conviction. At a second trial, which ended in early October 2001, he was again convicted and sentenced to three life terms, which he began serving on October 5. Stone's attorney, who said he was "disappointed and saddened by the outcome" pledged to appeal the convictions "in the event of fresh evidence." Despite the second conviction, there are some who still believe Stone is innocent. Jul 9, 2006: World's largest parade of Fiat cars The Fiat 500 Club Italia, an organization formed in appreciation of the iconic 500--"Cinquecento" in Italian--car produced by the automaker Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino), holds what the Guinness Book of World Records will call the world's largest parade of Fiat cars on July 9, 2006, between Villanova d'Albenga and Garlenda, Italy. Fiat, founded in 1899 by Giovanni Agnelli, released a 500-cc car known as "Il Topolino" (the Italian name for Mickey Mouse) before World War II; at the time, it was the smallest mass-produced car on the market. In the postwar years, the company sought to capitalize on the need for affordable family-size cars by revamping their 500 model. To that end, the Nuova Cinquecento, a two-cylinder rear-engined four-seater, made its debut on July 4, 1957. Some 3.5 million new 500s were sold between 1957 and 1975, when Fiat halted production. Like the Volkswagen Beetle in Germany, the diminutive but efficient 500 became an iconic symbol of postwar Italy and its people. In 1984, a group of enthusiasts calling themselves the "Amici della 500" (Friends of the 500) unofficially organized as the Fiat 500 Club Italia in Garlenda, in the province of Savona. Some 30 participants attended the club's first rally on that July 15: the crowd included Dante Giacosa, the designer of the 500. The club was officially established in 1990 and today boasts more than 200,000 members and holds as many as 100 rallies per year. In July 2006, during the club's international meeting in Garlenda, a record-high number of participants (754 teams) gathered to make up a parade of 500 Fiats, later recorded by Guinness as a world record. After struggling financially in the face of stiff competition from Volkswagen and other automakers, Fiat turned its fortunes around beginning in 2004, with the arrival of Sergio Marchionne as the company's head. A key part of Fiat's resurgence was was the launch of a redesigned Cinquecento in 2007. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi was among the more than 100,000 spectators who gathered in Turin on July 4, 2007--50 years to the day after the original Nuova 500 made its debut--to celebrate the new version's arrival. In 2009, Fiat completed an alliance with Chrysler after the struggling American automaker was forced to file for federal bankruptcy protection. Under the terms of the partnership, Fiat owns a 20 percent share of Chrysler (which could eventually grow to at least 35 percent). Jul 9, 2008: MTV’s The Real World leaves Hollywood On this day in 2008, the final episode of The Real World: Hollywood, a reality television show about seven young adults selected to live together, airs on MTV. Real World: Hollywood marked the 20th season of the pioneering reality program, which debuted in 1992 and went on to become MTV’s longest-running show. MTV (Music Television) was launched on August 1, 1981, as a channel dedicated to music videos, but by the late 1980s the network had started airing some non-video programming. The Real World, created by Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, premiered in May 1992 with the first season set in New York City. Since that time, subsequent seasons have been filmed in cities around the world, including Boston, Miami, Paris and Sydney. Each season has followed the same basic format: A cast of seven men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 are selected from auditions to have their lives captured on camera while they live together for several months. The housemates are from diverse backgrounds and frequently clash over issues of race, sexuality, politics, love and dirty dishes. Each show opens with cast members reciting the words: “This is the true story... of seven strangers...picked to live in a house...work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens when people stop being polite...and start getting real.” Throughout the series, Real World housemates have battled a variety of personal issues, including alcoholism and eating disorders. One of the show’s most notable seasons was the third, Real World: San Francisco, which featured an obnoxious bike messenger named Puck, who frequently clashed with housemate Pedro Zamora, an HIV-positive AIDS educator. At the time, Zamora was one of the first openly gay young people with AIDS to be featured on a mainstream TV program. Zamora died in November 1994, shortly after the show’s season finale aired. He was commended for his activism by then-President Bill Clinton. After appearing on The Real World, which spawned the spin-off programs Road Rules and Real World/Road Rules Challenge, some cast members have used the show as a springboard to careers in acting, modeling and public speaking.
10 July Events 48 BC – Battle of Dyrrhachium: Julius Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat to Pompey in Macedonia. 138 – Emperor Hadrian dies after a heart failure at Baiae; he is buried at Rome in the Tomb of Hadrian beside his late wife, Vibia Sabina. 645 – Isshi Incident: Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari assassinate Soga no Iruka during a coup d'état at the imperial palace. 988 – The Norse King Glun Iarainn recognises Máel Sechnaill II, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin. 1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground. 1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, defeats the king's Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton. 1499 – The Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon, after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama. 1519 – Zhu Chenhao declares the Ming Dynasty emperor Zhengde a usurper, beginning the Prince of Ning rebellion, and leads his army north in an attempt to capture Nanjing. 1553 – Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England. 1584 – William I of Orange is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland, by Balthasar Gérard. 1645 – English Civil War: The Battle of Langport takes place. 1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1789 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River delta. 1806 – The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company. 1821 – The United States takes possession of its newly bought territory of Florida from Spain. 1832 – The U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States. 1850 – Millard Fillmore is inaugurated as the 13th President of the United States upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, 16 months into his term. 1877 – The then-villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain. 1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears. 1890 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state. 1913 – Death Valley, California, hits 134 °F (57 °C), the highest temperature recorded in the United States. 1921 – Belfast's Bloody Sunday: Sixteen people are killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1925 – Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years. His followers observe Silence Day on this date in commemoration. 1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. 1938 – Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91-hour airplane flight around the world. 1940 – World War II: The Vichy government is established in France. 1940 – World War II: Battle of Britain – The German Luftwaffe begins attacking British convoys in the English Channel thus starting the battle (this start date is contested, though). 1941 – Jedwabne Pogrom: The massacre of Jewish people living in and near the village of Jedwabne in Poland. 1942 – Diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the Soviet Union are established. 1942 – World War II: An American pilot spots a downed, intact Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island (the "Akutan Zero") that the US Navy uses to learn the aircraft's flight characteristics. 1946 – Hungarian hyperinflation sets a record with inflation of 348.46 percent per day, or prices doubling every eleven hours. 1947 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor-General of Pakistan by the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. 1951 – Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong. 1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit. 1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois. As many as 60,000 people come to hear Dr. King as well as Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Peter Paul and Mary. 1967 – Uruguay becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. 1967 – New Zealand adopts decimal currency 1971 – Hassan II of Morocco survives an attempted coup d'état, which lasts until June 11. 1973 – The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. 1973 – National Assembly of Pakistan passes a resolution on the recognition of Bangladesh. 1973 – John Paul Getty III, a grandson of the oil magnate J. Paul Getty, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy. 1976 – The Seveso disaster occurs in Italy. 1976 – One American and three British mercenaries are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial. 1978 – World News Tonight premieres on ABC. 1978 – President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania is ousted in a bloodless coup d'état. 1980 – Alexandra Palace burns down for a second time. 1985 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira. 1991 – The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid. 1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia. 1992 – In Miami, Florida, the former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations. 1997 – In London scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. 1997 – Miguel Ángel Blanco, a member of Partido Popular (Spain), is kidnapped in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests. 1998 – Roman Catholic sex abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by Rudolph Kos, a former priest. 2000 – EADS, the world's second-largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA. 2002 – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. 2005 – Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle, causing billions of dollars in damage. 2007 – Erden Eruç begins the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world. 2008 – Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškoski is acquitted of all charges by a United Nations Tribunal accusing him of war crimes. 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Jul 10, 1777: British General Richard Prescott captured in Rhode Island Colonel William Barton of the Rhode Island Patriot militia captures British General Richard Prescott, from his bed, during the early morning hours of this day in 1777. Prescott was the only British general to suffer the ignominy of being captured twice by Patriot forces during the War for Independence. American forces first captured Prescott after Montreal fell to the Patriots in 1775. He was returned to the British in exchange for a Patriot officer, only to face the same plight two years later, when he awoke to find Barton's men in his garrison in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Colonel Barton and his 40 men departed Warwick Neck under cover of darkness on the night of July 9 and proceeded silently across 10 miles of water in Narraganset Bay toward Portsmouth. Evading British warships by staying close to shore, the Patriots were able to completely surprise Prescott's sentinel shortly after midnight on July 10. They took the general, who was the British commander for Rhode Island, and his aide-de-camp directly onboard a Patriot vessel, without even giving him the opportunity to dress. The humiliated Prescott was held in Providence until the British commander in chief, General Sir William Howe, exchanged him for captured American Major General Charles Lee. The exchange was particularly appropriate, as General Lee had also been taken into custody in his dressing gown after being surprised in the morning hours at Basking Ridge, New Jersey, having spent the night at White's Tavern enjoying some dubious recreation. Jul 10, 1850: Millard Fillmore sworn in as president On this day in 1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore is sworn in as the 13th president of the United States. President Zachary Taylor had died the day before, five days after falling ill with a severe intestinal ailment on the Fourth of July. Fillmore's manner of ascending to the presidency earned him the nickname His Accidency. He was only the second man to inherit the presidency after a president's death. The first was John Tyler, who had assumed the presidency in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia 30 days into office. Fillmore was born in 1800 and came from humble beginnings in New York. As a young man, he worked as a wool-carder, cloth-dresser and school teacher. In 1823, he became a lawyer and rose to political prominence in the Whig Party as New York's representative to Congress between 1832 and 1842. In 1847, he was elected New York state comptroller and a year later was chosen as Taylor's vice-presidential running mate. As vice president, Fillmore quietly expressed his support of a compromise in slavery legislation and thus appeared sympathetic to slave-owning interests. However, President Taylor opposed slavery and vowed to use force against southern states who threatened to secede if denied the right to use slave labor. During Fillmore's single term as president, he passed the Fugitive Slave Act (1850), which made it a crime to support slaves trying to escape to free territories. He also presided over an era of increased settlement across the western part of the continent. As white settlers clashed with indigenous peoples, Fillmore approved one-sided treaties that forcibly placed Native Americans onto government reservations. During this time, millions of Native Americans died from disease and starvation and in wars with government-funded militias. After losing the support of his northern anti-slavery constituency, the incumbent Fillmore was defeated by the Democrat Franklin Pierce in the 1852 presidential race. After making two more unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 1856 and 1860, he retired to Buffalo, New York, where he served on various legal and historical committees until his death in 1874. Jul 10, 1863: Siege on Battery Wagner begins On this day, Union troops land on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, and prepare for a siege on Battery Wagner, a massive sand fortress on the island. In the summer of 1863, Union General Quincy Gillmore waged an unsuccessful campaign to capture Charleston. Although the city was an important port for the Confederates early in the war, the attempt to capture Charleston was largely symbolic since a Union blockade of Confederate ports earlier on had bottled up Charleston Harbor anyway. Gillmore planned to approach it from the south by capturing Morris Island. On July 10, Gillmore's troops quickly secured most of the island. The only barrier left was Battery Wagner, an imposing fortress that guarded Charleston Harbor's southern rim. The fort was 30 feet high, nearly 300 feet from north to south, and over 600 feet from east to west. Inside were 1,600 Confederates, 10 heavy cannons, and a mortar for hitting ships off the coast. Gillmore attacked on July 11, but the attack was easily repulsed. A much larger assault was made on July 18 with heavy Union losses. After the July 18 battle, Gillmore settled in for a long siege. The Confederates finally evacuated the fort on September 7, 1863. Jul 10, 1887: Dam collapses in Switzerland, kills 70 On this day in 1887, a dam breaks in Zug, Switzerland, killing 70 people in their homes and destroying a large section of the town. The dam at Zug was 80 feet high and made of concrete. When the dam was built, concrete-making and setting techniques were not as advanced as they are today. The water pressure on the dam slowly eroded the concrete, finally causing it to collapse on July 10. The resulting wall of water was so powerful that it picked up and washed away large farm animals. It uprooted trees and carried them downstream toward the town. Unsuspecting patrons at a cafe lost their lives when the roaring water and debris suddenly descended upon them. Rescue boats launched to assist people caught up in the sudden flood were ineffective, as some of those on the boats drowned when they capsized in the roiling waters. One report claimed that a baby was found alive floating in a cradle, but this story cannot be confirmed. Jul 10, 1889: "Buckskin" Frank Leslie murders a prostitute In a drunken rage, "Buckskin" Frank Leslie murders his lover, the Tombstone prostitute Blonde Mollie Williams. Leslie was an ill-tempered and violent man, especially when he drank. He told conflicting stories about his early life. At times, he said he was from Texas, at other times from Kentucky. He sometimes claimed he had been trained in medicine and pharmacy, and he even boasted that he had studied in Europe. Supposedly, he earned the nickname "Buckskin" while working as an Army Scout in the Plains Indian Wars. None of his assertions can be confirmed in the historical record. The record does tell us that in 1880, Leslie opened the Cosmopolitan Hotel in the mining town of Tombstone, Arizona. Shortly thereafter, he committed his first known murder, shooting Mike Killeen in a dispute over the man's wife. The killing was officially ruled to have been in self-defense, but suspicion of foul play arose when Leslie married Killeen's widow two months later. Two years later, after Leslie badly pistol-whipped a man outside the Oriental Saloon, many Tombstone citizens began to suspect Leslie was a dangerous man. When the famous Tombstone gunslinger John Ringo was found murdered, suspicions again focused on Leslie, though law officers were unable to prove his guilt. Billy Claiborne, a friend of Ringo's, was so certain Leslie was the murderer that he called him out. Leslie shot the inexperienced young man dead. Even among the notorious rabble of gunslingers and killers in Tombstone, Leslie was unusually violent. The people of Tombstone finally had their chance to get rid of him in 1889. Two years earlier, Leslie had divorced his wife and taken up with a Tombstone prostitute named Blonde Mollie Williams. The relationship eventually soured, and in a drunken fit of rage, Leslie shot the defenseless woman dead. With testimony from a ranch hand that had witnessed the killing, a Tombstone jury convicted Leslie of murder and sentenced him to 25 years. Seven years later, Leslie won parole with the aid of a young divorcee named Belle Stowell. He soon married Stowell and seems to have made an effort to live a more peaceful life. He even reportedly made a small fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush. He moved to San Francisco in 1904. His fortunes thereafter quickly declined, and he disappeared from the historical record. He may have eventually committed suicide, but the true manner and date of his death remain unconfirmed. Jul 10, 1917: German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg resigns On July 10, 1917, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, chancellor of Germany, resigns his position after failing to control the divided German Reichstag (government) as World War I threatened to stretch into its fourth agonizing year. A former Prussian minister of the interior and state secretary in the Imperial German Office, Bethmann Hollweg was appointed German chancellor by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1909. Though of a relatively liberal bent, Bethmann Hollweg from the beginning strove to satisfy both the right and left extremes within the Reichstag, with varying results. His efforts to pursue diplomacy within Europe were often undermined by the strength of the German military establishment, supported by the kaiser. One outstanding example of this dynamic was Bethmann Hollweg's unsuccessful efforts to scale back Germany's aggressive naval build-up in the first decade of the 20th century, in accordance with negotiations he entered into with Britain. In the end, the kaiser weighed in on the side of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, and the naval arms race continued. Though Bethmann Hollweg personally expressed hopes of avoiding Germany's going to war in the summer of 1914, he nonetheless played a central role in the machinations between Austria-Hungary and Germany that occurred in the wake of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo in late June. Once the war was underway, Bethmann Hollweg struggled to make his influence felt with the kaiser and the military leaders of Germany, who effectively dictated policy from the first year of war and whose power was formally consolidated with the creation of the Third Supreme Command—effectively a military dictatorship—in August 1916. The chancellor, echoing more liberal elements within the Reichstag, including the socialists, spoke out for peace more than once and argued for limitation of Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, actions that earned him the contempt of the military and naval command, including Von Tirpitz and Generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. The chancellor owed his final downfall, however, to his failure to manage the civil unrest within Germany, reflected in the feuding Reichstag. During the summer of 1917, as parliamentary debate raged over a proposed peace resolution, Bethmann Hollweg found himself unable to continue to balance the feuding elements of the German government, especially the majority Socialist Party—which was itself alienating its most radical leftist elements by aligning with a center-left coalition—and the conservative right, which predictably enjoyed the support of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Having previously committed—reluctantly—to an unrestricted naval policy that had led the United States to declare war on Germany the previous April, Bethmann Hollweg was seen by the center-left, the authors of the Reichstag peace resolution, as a warmonger and by the right as a weakling for supporting the efforts to broker a peace. Exhausted, Bethmann Hollweg rose in the Reichstag on July 9 to respond to his critics: "My position does not matter...I myself am convinced of my own limitations...I am considered weak because I seek to end the war. A leading statesman can receive support neither from the Left nor the Right in Germany." The following day, he resigned as chancellor. He was replaced by Georg Michaelis, a relatively obscure undersecretary of state in the Finance Ministry who served for less than four months, only to be replaced by the equally unobtrusive Count Georg von Hertling, who served until the last month of the war and was, like Michaelis, basically a puppet premier subject to the authority of the kaiser and the military. Jul 10, 1925: Monkey Trial begins In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." With local businessman George Rappalyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing of this coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous trials in U.S. history. On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the city's main street to keep the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse, the defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against their attempt to prove the law unconstitutional and then refused to end his practice of opening each day's proceeding with prayer. Outside, Dayton took on a carnival-like atmosphere as an exhibit featuring two chimpanzees and a supposed "missing link" opened in town, and vendors sold Bibles, toy monkeys, hot dogs, and lemonade. The missing link was in fact Jo Viens of Burlington, Vermont, a 51-year-old man who was of short stature and possessed a receding forehead and a protruding jaw. One of the chimpanzees--named Joe Mendi--wore a plaid suit, a brown fedora, and white spats, and entertained Dayton's citizens by monkeying around on the courthouse lawn. In the courtroom, Judge Raulston destroyed the defense's strategy by ruling that expert scientific testimony on evolution was inadmissible--on the grounds that it was Scopes who was on trial, not the law he had violated. The next day, Raulston ordered the trial moved to the courthouse lawn, fearing that the weight of the crowd inside was in danger of collapsing the floor. In front of several thousand spectators in the open air, Darrow changed his tactics and as his sole witness called Bryan in an attempt to discredit his literal interpretation of the Bible. In a searching examination, Bryan was subjected to severe ridicule and forced to make ignorant and contradictory statements to the amusement of the crowd. On July 21, in his closing speech, Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver the closing speech he had been preparing for weeks. After eight minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed. Although Bryan had won the case, he had been publicly humiliated and his fundamentalist beliefs had been disgraced. Five days later, on July 26, he lay down for a Sunday afternoon nap and never woke up. In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.
10 July Births 1419 – Emperor Go-Hanazono of Japan (d. 1471) 1452 – James III of Scotland (d. 1488) 1509 – John Calvin, French pastor and theologian (d. 1564) 1517 – Odet de Coligny, French cardinal (d. 1571) 1592 – Pierre d'Hozier, French genealogist (d. 1660) 1614 – Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Anglesey, Irish politician (d. 1686) 1625 – Jean Herauld Gourville, French adventurer (d. 1703) 1638 – David Teniers III, Flemish painter (d. 1685) 1666 – John Ernest Grabe, German theologian (d. 1711) 1682 – Roger Cotes, English mathematician (d. 1716) 1682 – Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, German missionary (d. 1719) 1723 – William Blackstone, English jurist and politician (d. 1780) 1736 – Maria, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh (d. 1807) 1792 – George M. Dallas, American politician, 11th Vice President of the United States (d. 1864) 1802 – Robert Chambers, Scottish geologist and publisher, co-founded Chambers Harrap (d. 1871) 1804 – Emma Smith, American religious leader (d. 1879) 1809 – Friedrich August von Quenstedt, German geologist and palaeontologist (d. 1889) 1823 – Louis-Napoléon Casault, Canadian lawyer, judge, and politician (d. 1908) 1830 – Camille Pissarro, French painter (d. 1903) 1832 – Alvan Graham Clark, American astronomer (d. 1897) 1835 – Henryk Wieniawski, Polish violinist and composer (d. 1880) 1839 – Adolphus Busch, German brewer, co-founded Anheuser-Busch (d. 1913) 1856 – Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American physicist and engineer (d. 1943) 1864 – Austin Chapman, Australian politician (d. 1926) 1867 – Prince Maximilian of Baden (d. 1929) 1871 – Marcel Proust, French author and critic (d. 1922) 1874 – Sergey Konenkov, Russian sculptor (d. 1971) 1875 – Mary McLeod Bethune, American educator and activist (d. 1955) 1883 – Johannes Blaskowitz, German general (d. 1948) 1883 – Hugo Raudsepp, Estonian playwright (d. 1952) 1888 – Giorgio de Chirico, Italian painter (d. 1978) 1888 – Toyohiko Kagawa, Japanese evangelist, author, and activist (d. 1960) 1894 – Jimmy McHugh, American composer (d. 1969) 1895 – Carl Orff, German composer (d. 1982) 1896 – Thérèse Casgrain, Canadian politician (d. 1981) 1897 – Jack Diamond, American gangster (d. 1931) 1897 – Karl Plagge, German army officer and engineer (d. 1957) 1898 – Renée Björling, Swedish actress (d. 1975) 1899 – John Gilbert, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1936) 1899 – Heiri Suter, Swiss cyclist (d. 1978) 1900 – Mitchell Parish, Lithuanian-American songwriter (d. 1993) 1900 – Sampson Sievers, Russian monk and mystic (d. 1979) 1902 – Kurt Alder, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958) 1902 – Nicolás Guillén, Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer (d. 1989) 1903 – Werner Best, German SS officer and jurist (d. 1989) 1903 – John Wyndham, English author (d. 1969) 1904 – Lili Damita, French-American actress (d. 1994) 1905 – Mildred Benson, American journalist and author (d. 2002) 1905 – Thomas Gomez, American actor (d. 1971) 1905 – Wolfram Sievers, German physician (d. 1948) 1907 – Blind Boy Fuller, American singer and guitarist (d. 1941) 1909 – Donald Sinclair, English businessman (d. 1981) 1913 – Salvador Espriu, Spanish author, poet, and playwright (d. 1985) 1913 – Elizabeth Inglis, British actress (d. 2007) 1914 – Joe Shuster, Canadian-American illustrator (d. 1992) 1916 – Judith Jasmin, Canadian journalist (d. 1972) 1917 – Hugh Alexander, American baseball player and scout (d. 2000) 1917 – Don Herbert, American television host and producer (d. 2007) 1917 – Reg Smythe, English cartoonist (d. 1998) 1918 – James Aldridge, Australian-British writer 1919 – Pierre Gamarra, French author, poet, and critic (d. 2009) 1920 – David Brinkley, American journalist (d. 2003) 1920 – Owen Chamberlain, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2006) 1921 – Harvey Ball, American illustrator, created the Smiley (d. 2001) 1921 – Jeff Donnell, American actress (d. 1988) 1921 – Jake LaMotta, American boxer 1921 – Eunice Kennedy Shriver, American activist, co-founded the Special Olympics (d. 2009) 1922 – Jean Kerr, American author (d. 2003) 1922 – Herb McKenley, Jamaican sprinter (d. 2007) 1923 – John Bradley, American soldier (d. 1994) 1923 – Suzanne Cloutier, Canadian actress (d. 2003) 1923 – Earl Hamner, Jr., American screenwriter and producer 1923 – G. A. Kulkarni, Indian author (d. 1987) 1924 – Johnny Bach, American basketball player and coach 1924 – Bobo Brazil, American wrestler (d. 1998) 1926 – Fred Gwynne, American actor (d. 1993) 1927 – Grigory Barenblatt, Russian mathematician 1927 – David Dinkins, American politician, 106th Mayor of New York City 1928 – Bernard Buffet, French painter (d. 1999) 1928 – Alejandro de Tomaso, Argentinian-Italian race car driver and businessman, founded De Tomaso (d. 2003) 1928 – Moshe Greenberg, American-Israeli scholar (d. 2010) 1929 – Winnie Ewing, Scottish lawyer and politician 1929 – Moe Norman, Canadian golfer (d. 2004) 1930 – Bruce Boa, Canadian-English actor (d. 2004) 1930 – Susan Cummings, German-American actress. 1931 – Nick Adams, American actor and screenwriter (d. 1968) 1931 – Jerry Herman, American composer 1931 – Julian May, American author 1931 – Alice Munro, Canadian author, Nobel Prize laureate 1932 – Carlo Maria Abate, Italian race car driver 1933 – Jan DeGaetani, American soprano (d. 1989) 1933 – C.K. Yang, Taiwanese decathlete and pole vaulter (d. 2007) 1934 – Jerry Nelson, American "Muppeteer" for Jim Henson's Muppets and voice actor (d. 2012) 1935 – Tura Satana, American actress and dancer (d. 2011) 1936 – Selwyn Baptiste, Trinidadian educator (d. 2012) 1936 – Tunne Kelam, Estonian politician 1938 – Paul Andreu, French architect, designed the Osaka Maritime Museum and the National Grand Theater of China 1938 – Lee Morgan, American trumpet player and composer (d. 1972) 1939 – Phil Kelly, Irish footballer (d. 2012) 1939 – Ahmet Taner Kışlalı, Turkish political scientist, journalist, and educator (d. 1999) 1940 – Meghnad Desai, Baron Desai, Indian-English economist and politician 1940 – Helen Donath, American soprano 1940 – Tom Farmer, Scottish businessman 1940 – Brian Priestley, English pianist and composer 1941 – Jake Eberts, Canadian film producer (d. 2012) 1941 – David G. Hartwell, American anthologist and author 1941 – Ian Whitcomb, English singer-songwriter, producer, and actor 1941 – Robert Pine, American actor 1942 – Ronnie James Dio, American singer-songwriter and producer (Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, Heaven & Hell, and Elf) (d. 2010) 1942 – Pyotr Klimuk, Belarusian general, pilot, and astronaut 1942 – Sixto Rodriguez, Mexican American folk musician, singer-songwriter 1943 – Arthur Ashe, American tennis player (d. 1993) 1943 – Rashid Sharafetdinov, Russian long-distance runner (d. 2012) 1944 – K. S. Balachandran, Sri Lankan-Canadian actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1944 – Norman Hammond, British archaeologist 1945 – Ron Glass, American actor 1945 – Hal McRae American baseball player and manager 1945 – Peter Michalica, Slovak violinist 1945 – John Motson, English sportscaster 1945 – Jean-Marie Poiré, French director, producer, and screenwriter 1945 – Virginia Wade, English tennis player 1946 – Sue Lyon, American actress 1947 – Arlo Guthrie, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1948 – Ronnie Cutrone, American painter (d. 2013) 1948 – Chico Resch, Canadian ice hockey player and sportscaster 1949 – Anna Czerwińska, Polish mountaineer and author 1949 – Sunil Gavaskar, Indian cricketer 1949 – Greg Kihn, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Greg Kihn Band) 1949 – Winston Rekert, Canadian actor (d. 2012) 1949 – John Whitehead, American singer-songwriter and producer (McFadden & Whitehead) (d. 2004) 1950 – Tony Baldry, English politician 1950 – Prokopis Pavlopoulos, Greek lawyer and politician 1951 – Judy Mallaber, English politician 1951 – Phyllis Smith, American actress 1951 – Cheryl Wheeler, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1952 – Kim Mitchell, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist (Max Webster) 1952 – Ludmilla Tourischeva, Russian gymnast 1952 – Peter van Heemst, Dutch politician 1953 – Rik Emmett, Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Triumph and Strung-Out Troubadours) 1953 – Zoogz Rift, American guitarist (d. 2011) 1954 – Tommy Bowden, American football player and coach 1954 – Andre Dawson, American baseball player 1954 – Neil Tennant, English singer-songwriter and keyboard player (Pet Shop Boys and Electronic) 1955 – Nick Dakin, British politician 1956 – Tom McClintock, American politician 1957 – Cindy Sheehan, American activist 1958 – Béla Fleck, American banjo player and songwriter (Sparrow Quartet, New Grass Revival, Strength in Numbers, and Trio!) 1958 – Fiona Shaw, Irish actress and director 1959 – Ellen Kuras, American cinematographer 1959 – Sandy West, American musician and drummer (The Runaways) (d. 2006) 1960 – Jeff Bergman, American voice actor 1960 – Seth Godin, American author 1961 – Jacky Cheung, Hong Kong singer-songwriter and actor 1963 – Richard Waites, English actor 1964 – Martin Laurendeau, Canadian tennis player 1964 – Urban Meyer, American football player and coach 1964 – Wilfried Peeters, Belgian cyclist 1965 – Princess Alexia of Greece and Denmark 1965 – Alec Mapa, American actor 1965 – Scott McCarron, American golfer 1965 – Ken Mellons, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1966 – Gina Bellman, New Zealand-English actress 1966 – Clive Efford, English politician 1966 – Johnny Grunge, American wrestler (d. 2006) 1966 – Christian Stangl, Austrian mountaineer 1967 – Rebekah Del Rio, American singer-songwriter 1967 – Tom Meents, American monster truck driver 1967 – Silvetty Montilla, Brazilian drag queen performer 1967 – Gillian Tett, British journalist and writer 1967 – John Yoo, South Korean-American lawyer, author, and educator 1968 – Hassiba Boulmerka, Algerian runner 1968 – Jonathan Gilbert, American actor 1969 – Jamie Glover, English actor 1969 – Gale Harold, American actor 1969 – Alexandra Hedison, American actress 1969 – Jonas Kaufmann, German tenor 1969 – Vicky Morales, Filipino journalist 1970 – Lisa Coleman, English actress 1970 – Adam Hills, Australian comedian and actor 1970 – Gary LeVox, American singer-songwriter (Rascal Flatts) 1970 – Jason Orange, English singer-songwriter and dancer (Take That) 1970 – John Simm, English actor 1970 – Helen Sjöholm, Swedish singer and actress 1971 – Adam Foote, Canadian ice hockey player 1971 – Gregory Goodridge, Barbadian footballer 1972 – Urve Palo, Estonian politician 1972 – Peter Serafinowicz, English actor, producer, and screenwriter 1972 – Sofía Vergara, Colombian-American actress 1972 – Tilo Wolff, German-Swiss singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer (Lacrimosa) 1973 – Annie Mumolo, American actress, screenwriter, and producer 1974 – Imelda May, Irish singer-songwriter 1975 – Andrew Firestone, American businessman 1975 – Brendan Gaughan, American race car driver 1975 – Alain Nasreddine, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1975 – Stefán Karl Stefánsson, Icelandic actor 1975 – Richard Westbrook, English race car driver 1976 – Edmílson, Brazilian footballer 1976 – Elijah Blue Allman, American singer and guitarist (Deadsy) 1976 – Ludovic Giuly, French footballer 1976 – Adrian Grenier, American actor, screenwriter, and producer 1976 – Brendon Lade, Australian footballer and coach 1976 – Lars Ricken, German footballer 1977 – Schapelle Corby, Australian-Indonesian drug smuggler 1977 – Chiwetel Ejiofor, English actor 1977 – Jesse Lacey, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Brand New and Taking Back Sunday) 1977 – Gwendoline Yeo, Singaporean-American actress 1979 – Mvondo Atangana, Cameroon footballer 1980 – Thomas Ian Nicholas, American actor and singer 1980 – Alejandro Millán, Mexican singer-songwriter and keyboard player (Elfonía and Stream of Passion) 1980 – Adam Petty, American race car driver (d. 2000) 1980 – James Rolfe, American actor, director, and producer 1980 – Jessica Simpson, American singer-songwriter, actress, and fashion designer 1981 – Aleksandar Tunchev, Bulgarian footballer 1982 – Alex Arrowsmith, American guitarist and producer (The Shaky Hands) 1982 – Sebastian Mila, Polish footballer 1983 – Giuseppe De Feudis, Italian footballer 1983 – Matthew Egan, Australian footballer 1983 – Joelson José Inácio, Brazilian footballer 1983 – Kim Heechul, South Korean singer and actor (Super Junior and Super Junior-T) 1984 – María Julia Mantilla, Peruvian model, Miss World 2004 1984 – Nikolaos Mitrou, Greek footballer 1984 – Manjari Phadnis, Indian Actress 1985 – B. J. Crombeen, American ice hockey player 1985 – Mario Gómez, German footballer 1985 – Park Chu-Young, South Korean footballer 1986 – Simenona Martinez, American actress 1987 – Brian Belo, English-Nigerian actor 1988 – Antonio Brown, American football player 1988 – Heather Hemmens, American actress 1990 – Sung Joon, a South Korean model-turned-actor 1991 – María Chacón, Mexican actress and singer (Play) 1991 – Atsuko Maeda, Japanese singer and actress (AKB48) 1992 – Larissa Marolt, Austrian model 1993 – Carlon Jeffery, American actor 1993 – Perrie Edwards, English singer (Little Mix) 1998 – Haley Pullos, American actress D
Jul 10, 1931: Alice Munro is born Canadian short story writer Alice Munro is born in Wingham, Ontario, on this day in 1931. Munro was raised on a fox and turkey farm. Her parents encouraged her to read, and she decided to become a writer during her childhood. She attended the University of Western Ontario but dropped out after two years to marry James Munro. The couple moved to British Columbia, had three daughters, and opened a successful bookstore in Victoria. She later divorced her first husband, married a geographer, and settled in a town outside Ontario. Munro began publishing short stories in the late 1960s. Her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, appeared in 1968. Since then, she has published more than 15 books, nearly all of them short story collections, including The Progress of Love (1986), Friend of My Youth (1990), and Too Much Happiness (2009). Many of Munro's stories feature female characters living in rural settings. She has won several prestigious awards for her writing, including the PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction. The Love of a Good Woman (1998) and Runaway (2004) both won Canada's esteemed Giller Prize. Jul 10, 1940: The Battle of Britain begins On this day in 1940, the Germans begin the first in a long series of bombing raids against Great Britain, as the Battle of Britain, which will last three and a half months, begins. After the occupation of France by Germany, Britain knew it was only a matter of time before the Axis power turned its sights across the Channel. And on July 10, 120 German bombers and fighters struck a British shipping convoy in that very Channel, while 70 more bombers attacked dockyard installations in South Wales. Although Britain had far fewer fighters than the Germans–600 to 1,300–it had a few advantages, such as an effective radar system, which made the prospects of a German sneak attack unlikely. Britain also produced superior quality aircraft. Its Spitfires could turn tighter than Germany's ME109s, enabling it to better elude pursuers; and its Hurricanes could carry 40mm cannon, and would shoot down, with its American Browning machine guns, over 1,500 Luftwaffe aircraft. The German single-engine fighters had a limited flight radius, and its bombers lacked the bomb-load capacity necessary to unleash permanent devastation on their targets. Britain also had the advantage of unified focus, while German infighting caused missteps in timing; they also suffered from poor intelligence. But in the opening days of battle, Britain was in immediate need of two things: a collective stiff upper lip–and aluminum. A plea was made by the government to turn in all available aluminum to the Ministry of Aircraft Production. "We will turn your pots and pans into Spitfires and Hurricanes," the ministry declared. And they did. Jul 10, 1941: Jazz great Jelly Roll Morton dies On this day in 1941, Jelly Roll Morton—a native of New Orleans who became the first great jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader—dies in Los Angeles, California. Born Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe in New Orleans (his year of birth is recorded variously as 1885 and 1890), he was the son of racially mixed Creole parents; he later took his stepfather's last name, Morton, as his own. Young Ferdinand learned to play the piano as a boy, and by the age of 12 he was performing in the bordellos of Storyville, New Orleans' famous red-light district. Talented and precocious, Morton blended the popular music styles of ragtime, minstrelsy and the blues and flavored the mixture with Caribbean dance rhythms; the result was a hybrid that resembled a then-emerging style later known as "jazz." Morton left home and went on the road at 17, traveling to cities around the country to perform his music; he also earned money as a vaudeville comic, gambler, pimp, pool shark and door-to-door salesman. He was keenly aware of his own talent and never hesitated to promote himself, insisting on being called by his nickname, Jelly Roll (which had sexual connotations), and claiming to have "invented" jazz. Such claims were false, but he was in fact the first great jazz musician to write his music down. Morton lived for a time in Los Angeles and Chicago, and around 1923 began making his first recordings. He performed with a sextet (on such numbers as "Big Foot Ham" and "Muddy Water Blues") and won acclaim for a series of piano solos of his own compositions. Around 1926, Morton began recording and performing with his seven- or eight-piece band, the Red Hot Peppers. Morton's arranging and performing style was more formal than early Dixieland jazz; the performances were a mixture of composition and improvisation, and were carefully rehearsed. As a composer, some of his best-known works were "Black Bottom Stomp," "King Porter Stomp," "Shoe Shiner's Drag" and "Dead Man Blues," which became jazz standards. Morton's career declined in the early 1930s, and emerging artists such as Louis Armstrong exceeded him in popularity and influence. He moved from New York to Washington, D.C., where he managed a jazz club and occasionally performed. In 1938, Morton gave a series of oral interviews in which he recalled the early days of jazz in New Orleans and revealed himself to be an astute historian of the genre. The interviews sparked renewed interest in Morton; he recorded again briefly in 1939-40 but was by then in failing health (which he blamed on a voodoo curse). Morton died before the great Dixieland revival; his eventful life later became the subject of the acclaimed musical "Jelly's Last Jam," performed on Broadway in 1992 with Gregory Hines in the title role. Jul 10, 1943: Allies land on Sicily On July 10, 1943, the Allies begin their invasion of Axis-controlled Europe with landings on the island of Sicily, off mainland Italy. Encountering little resistance from the demoralized Sicilian troops, the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery came ashore on the southeast of the island, while the U.S. 7th Army under General George S. Patton landed on Sicily's south coast. Within three days, 150,000 Allied troops were ashore. Italian leader Benito Mussolini envisioned building Fascist Italy into a new Roman Empire, but a string of military defeats in World War II effectively made his regime a puppet of its stronger Axis partner, Germany. By the spring of 1943, opposition groups in Italy were uniting to overthrow Mussolini and make peace with the Allies, but a strong German military presence in Italy threatened to resist any such action. Meanwhile, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler knew that an Allied invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe was imminent, but because Germany's vast conquests stretched from Greece to France, Hitler was unable to concentrate his forces in any one place. In an elaborate plot to divert German forces away from Italy, a British submarine off Spain released the corpse of an Englishman wearing the uniform of a British major and carrying what appeared to be official Allied letters describing plans for an invasion of Greece. The body washed ashore, and the letters were sent by the Spanish to the German high command, who reinforced their units in Greece. The Axis had only 10 Italian divisions and two German panzer units on Sicily when Allied forces attacked in the early-morning hours of July 10. First to land were American and British paratroopers and glider-borne troops, and at dawn thousands of amphibious troops came ashore. Coastal defenses manned by disaffected Sicilian troops collapsed after limited resistance, and the Anglo-Americans moved quickly to capture Sicily's southern cities. Within three days, the Allies had cleared the southeastern part of the island. In a pincer movement aimed at Messina in the northwest, the British 8th Army began moving up the southeast coast of the island, with the U.S. 7th Army moving east across the north coast. The Allies hoped to trap the Axis forces in the northwestern corner of Sicily before they could retreat to the Italian mainland. In the so-called "Race to Messina," Montgomery's advance up the southeast coast was slowed by German reinforcements, but Patton and the U.S. 7th Army moved quickly along the north coast, capturing Palermo, the Sicilian capital, on July 22. In Rome, the Allied invasion of Sicily, a region of the kingdom of Italy since 1860, led to the collapse of Mussolini's government. Early in the morning of July 25, he was forced to resign by the Fascist Grand Council and was arrested later that day. On July 26, Marshal Pietro Badoglio assumed control of the Italian government. The new government promptly entered into secret negotiations with the Allies, despite the presence of numerous German troops in Italy. Back in Sicily, Montgomery and Patton advanced steadily toward Messina, prompting the Germans to begin a withdrawal of Axis forces to the mainland. Some 100,000 German and Italian troops were evacuated before Patton won the race to Messina on August 17. Montgomery arrived a few hours later. The Allies suffered 23,000 casualties in their conquest of Sicily. German forces sustained 30,000 casualties, and the Italians 135,000. In addition, some 100,000 Axis troops were captured. On September 3, Montgomery's 8th Army began an invasion of the Italian mainland at Calabria, and the Italian government agreed to surrender to the Allies. By the terms of the agreement, the Italians would be treated with leniency if they aided the Allies in expelling the Germans from Italy. Later that month, Mussolini was rescued from a prison in the Abruzzo Mountains by German commandos and was installed as leader of a Nazi puppet state in northern Italy. In October, the Badoglio government declared war on Germany, but the Allied advance up Italy proved a slow and costly affair. Rome fell in June 1944, at which point a stalemate ensued as British and American forces threw most of their resources into the Normandy invasion. In April 1945, a new major offensive began, and on April 28 Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and summarily executed. German forces in Italy surrendered on May 1, and six days later all of Germany surrendered. Jul 10, 1962: U.S. Patent issued for three-point seatbelt The United States Patent Office issues the Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin a patent for his three-point automobile safety belt "for use in vehicles, especially road vehicles" on this day in 1962. Four years earlier, Sweden's Volvo Car Corporation had hired Bohlin, who had previously worked in the Swedish aviation industry, as the company's first chief safety engineer. At the time, safety-belt use in automobiles was limited mostly to race car drivers; the traditional two-point belt, which fastened in a buckle over the abdomen, had been known to cause severe internal injuries in the event of a high-speed crash. Bohlin designed his three-point system in less than a year, and Volvo introduced it on its cars in 1959. Consisting of two straps that joined at the hip level and fastened into a single anchor point, the three-point belt significantly reduced injuries by effectively holding both the upper and lower body and reducing the impact of the swift deceleration that occurred in a crash. On August 17, 1959, Bohlin filed for a patent in the United States for his safety belt design. The U.S. Patent Office issued Patent No. 3,043,625 to "Nils Ivar Bohlin, Goteborg, Sweden, assignor to Aktiebolaget Volvo" on July 10, 1962. In the patent, Bohlin explained his invention: "The object... is to provide a safety belt which independently of the strength of the seat and its connection with the vehicle in an effective and physiologically favorable manner retains the upper as well as the lower part of the body of the strapped person against the action of substantially forwardly directed forces and which is easy to fasten and unfasten and even in other respects satisfies rigid requirements." Volvo released the new seat belt design to other car manufacturers, and it quickly became standard worldwide. The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 made seat belts a required feature on all new American vehicles from the 1968 model year onward. Though engineers have improved on seat belt design over the years, the basic structure is still Bohlin's. The use of seat belts has been estimated to reduce the risk of fatalities and serious injuries from collisions by about 50 percent. In 2008, an all-time high 83 percent of front-seat occupants in the United States buckled their seat belts. Jul 10, 1965: MiGs shot down as bombing of North Vietnam continues U.S. planes continue heavy raids in South Vietnam and claim to have killed 580 guerrillas. U.S. Phantom jets, escorting fighter-bombers in a raid on the Yen Sen ammunition depot northwest of Hanoi, engaged North Vietnamese MiG-17s. Capt. Thomas S. Roberts with his backseater Capt. Ronald C. Anderson, and Capt. Kenneth E. Holcombe and his backseater Capt. Arthur C. Clark shot down two MiG-17s with Sidewinder missiles. The action marked the first U.S. Air Force air-to-air victories of the Vietnam War.
10 July Deaths 138 – Hadrian, Roman emperor (b. 76) 645 – Soga no Iruka, Japanese politician 649 – Emperor Taizong of Tang (b. 598) 1103 – Eric I of Denmark (b. 1060) 1290 – Ladislaus IV of Hungary (b. 1262) 1460 – Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, English commander (b. 1402) 1461 – Stephen Thomas of Bosnia (b.1412) 1480 – René of Anjou (b. 1410) 1559 – Henry II of France (b. 1519) 1584 – William the Silent, French prince (b. 1533) 1590 – Charles II, Archduke of Austria (b. 1540) 1594 – Paolo Bellasio, Italian organist and composer (b. 1554) 1603 – Joan Terès i Borrull, Spanish archbishop (b. 1538) 1621 – Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy, French commander (b. 1571) 1653 – Gabriel Naudé, French librarian and scholar (b. 1600) 1680 – Louis Moréri, French priest (b. 1643) 1683 – François Eudes de Mézeray, French historian (b. 1610) 1686 – John Fell, English bishop and academic (b. 1625) 1776 – Richard Peters, English clergyman (b. 1704) 1794 – Gaspard de Bernard de Marigny, French general (d. 1754) 1806 – George Stubbs, English painter (b. 1724) 1848 – Karoline Jagemann, German actress and singer (b. 1777) 1851 – Louis Daguerre, French photographer and physicist, invented the daguerreotype (b. 1787) 1863 – Clement Clarke Moore, American author and educator (b. 1779) 1881 – Georg Hermann Nicolai, German architect and educator (b. 1812) 1884 – Paul Morphy, American chess player (b. 1837) 1908 – Phoebe Knapp, American organist and composer (b. 1839) 1920 – John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, Sri Lankan-English admiral (b. 1841) 1941 – Jelly Roll Morton, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (Red Hot Peppers) (b. 1890) 1950 – Richard Maury, American-Argentinian engineer (b. 1882) 1952 – Rued Langgaard, Danish composer and organist (b. 1893) 1954 – Calogero Vizzini, Italian mob boss (b. 1877) 1956 – Joe Giard, American baseball player (b. 1898) 1962 – Yehuda Leib Maimon, Israeli rabbi and politician (b. 1875) 1963 – Teddy Wakelam, English rugby player and sportscaster (b. 1893) 1970 – Bjarni Benediktsson, Icelandic politician, 13th Prime Minister of Iceland (b. 1908) 1971 – Laurent Dauthuille, French boxer (b. 1924) 1971 – George Kenner, German-American painter and illustrator (b. 1888) 1972 – Lovie Austin, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (b. 1887) 1972 – Francis Gailey, Australian-American swimmer (b. 1882) 1978 – Joe Davis, English snooker player (b. 1901) 1978 – John D. Rockefeller III, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Asia Society (b. 1906) 1979 – Arthur Fiedler, American conductor (b. 1894) 1980 – Joseph Krumgold, American author and screenwriter (b. 1908) 1981 – Ken McElroy, American murder victim (b. 1936) 1985 – Fernando Pereira, Dutch photographer (b. 1950) 1986 – Tadeusz Piotrowski, Polish mountaineer and author (b. 1940) 1987 – John Hammond, American record producer, critic, and activist (b. 1910) 1989 – Mel Blanc, American voice actor and singer (b. 1908) 1993 – Ruth Krauss, American author (b. 1901) 1993 – Sam Rolfe, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1924) 1996 – Eno Raud, Estonian children's writer (b. 1928) 2000 – Vakkom Majeed, Indian politician (b. 1909) 2000 – Justin Pierce, English-American actor and skateboarder (b. 1975) 2002 – Jean-Pierre Côté, Canadian politician, 23rd Lieutenant Governor of Quebec (b. 1926) 2002 – Evangelos Florakis, Greek general (b. 1943) 2002 – Laurence Janifer, American author (b. 1933) 2003 – Winston Graham, English author (b. 1908) 2003 – Bishnu Maden, Nepalese politician (b. 1942) 2003 – Hartley Shawcross, Baron Shawcross, German-English lawyer and politician, Attorney General for England and Wales (b. 1902) 2004 – Pati Behrs, Russian-American ballerina (b. 1922) 2005 – A. J. Quinnell, English author (b. 1940) 2005 – Freddy Soto, American comedian and actor (b. 1970) 2005 – Freda Wright-Sorce, American radio host (b. 1955) 2006 – Shamil Basayev, Chechen rebel leader (b. 1965) 2007 – Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Pakistani cleric (b. 1951) 2007 – Doug Marlette, American cartoonist and author (b. 1949) 2007 – Zheng Xiaoyu, Chinese diplomat (b. 1944) 2008 – Hiroaki Aoki, Japanese-American wrestler and businessman, founded Benihana (b. 1938) 2008 – Mike Souchak, American golfer (b. 1927) 2011 – Pierrette Alarie, Canadian soprano (b. 1921) 2011 – Roland Petit, French dancer and choreographer (b. 1924) 2012 – Dolphy, Filipino actor (b. 1928) 2012 – Lol Coxhill, English saxophonist (b. 1932) 2012 – Maria Cole, American singer (b. 1922) 2012 – Cheryll Heinze, American politician (b. 1946) 2012 – Peter Kyros, American politician (b. 1925) 2012 – Fritz Langanke, German lieutenant (b. 1919) 2012 – Berthe Meijer, German-Dutch holocaust survivor and author (b. 1938) 2012 – Viktor Suslin, Russian composer (b. 1942) 2013 – Colin Bennetts, English bishop (b. 1940) 2013 – Philip Caldwell, American businessman (b. 1920) 2013 – Józef Gara, Polish linguist (b. 1929) 2013 – Concha García Campoy, Spanish journalist (b. 1958) 2013 – Caroline Duby Glassman, American lawyer and jurist (b. 1922) 2013 – Ok-Hee Ku, South Korean golfer (b. 1956) 2013 – Gokulananda Mahapatra, Indian author (b. 1922) 2013 – Ibrahim Youssef, Egyptian footballer (b. 1959) H
Jul 10, 1967: Heavy fighting continues near An Loc and the Central Highlands Outnumbered South Vietnamese troops repel an attack by two battalions of the 141st North Vietnamese Regiment on a military camp five miles east of An Loc, 60 miles north of Saigon. Communist forces captured a third of the base camp before they were thrown back with the assistance of U.S. and South Vietnamese air and artillery strikes. Farther to the north, U.S. forces suffered heavy casualties in two separate battles in the Central Highlands. In the first action, about 400 men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade came under heavy fire from North Vietnamese machine guns and mortars during a sweep of the Dak To area near Kontum. Twenty-six Americans were killed and 49 were wounded. In the second area clash, 35 soldiers of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division were killed and 31 were wounded in fighting. Jul 10, 1985: The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior In Auckland harbor in New Zealand, Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior sinks after French agents in diving gear plant a bomb on the hull of the vessel. One person, Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira, was killed. The Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of international conservation group Greenpeace, had been preparing for a protest voyage to a French nuclear test site in the South Pacific. Two days after the incident, French authorities denied responsibility in the bombing and continued to do so even after New Zealand police arrested two French secret service agents in Auckland. Under pressure from New Zealand authorities, the French government formed an inquiry to investigate the incident and after several weeks concluded that the French agents were merely spying on Greenpeace. Later in the year, however, a British newspaper uncovered evidence of French President Francois Mitterrand's authorization of the bombing plan, leading to several top-level resignations in Mitterrand's cabinet and an admission by French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius that the agents had sunk the vessel under orders. In Auckland, the two agents pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of manslaughter and willful damage and were each sentenced to 10 years in prison. Following negotiations with the French government, New Zealand released them a year later. In 1992, President Mitterrand ordered a halt to French nuclear testing, but in 1995 it was resumed, and Greenpeace sent The Rainbow Warrior II to French Polynesia to protest and disrupt the tests. Jul 10, 1990: Gorbachev re-elected as head of Communist Party In a vindication of his sweeping economic and political reforms, Mikhail Gorbachev withstands severe criticisms from his opponents and is re-elected head of the Soviet Communist Party by an overwhelming margin. Gorbachev's victory was short-lived, however, as the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 and immediately began to push forward with reforms in both Russia's domestic and foreign policies. On the domestic front, he argued for greater economic freedom and a gradual movement toward free market economics in certain fields. He also demanded more political freedom, and released a number of political prisoners. In his foreign policy, Gorbachev sought to thaw Cold War relations with the United States. He indicated his desire to work for substantive arms control measures, and began to curtail Soviet military and political involvement in nations such as Afghanistan and Angola. By 1990, many people celebrated Gorbachev as a savior for bringing true reform to the Soviet Union. At home, however, Gorbachev was reviled by many Russian hard-liners that castigated him for weakening the hold of the Communist Party and for weakening its military power. During a Communist Party congress in July 1990, Gorbachev fired back at his critics. "There is no way to bring back the past, and no dictatorship--if someone still entertains this crazy idea--will solve anything," he declared. As for his domestic reforms, Gorbachev noted, "This is already a different society" that needed different policies. In response to the charge that he had been "soft" in dealing with anticommunist movements in Russia's eastern European allies, he shouted, "Well, do you want tanks again? Shall we teach them again how to live?" With Gorbachev's words ringing in their ears, the delegates to the congress re-elected him as head of the Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev's success, however, was extremely short-lived. While many applauded his reforms, by 1990 the Soviet Union was suffering from terrible economic problems, increasingly angry internal political squabbling, and a general feeling of uneasiness among the Russian people. In December 1991, with most of its eastern European allies already having overthrown their communist governments and with the Soviet republics seceding from the USSR, Gorbachev resigned as head of the Party and as president. With his action, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Jul 10, 1992: The Exxon Valdez captain's conviction is overturned The Alaska court of appeals overturns the conviction of Joseph Hazelwood, the former captain of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez. Hazelwood, who was found guilty of negligence for his role in the massive oil spill in Prince William Sound in 1989, successfully argued that he was entitled to immunity from prosecution because he had reported the oil spill to authorities 20 minutes after the ship ran aground. The Exxon Valdez accident on the Alaskan coast was one of the largest environmental disasters in American history and resulted in the deaths of 250,000 sea birds, thousands of sea otters and seals, hundreds of bald eagles and countless salmon and herring eggs. The ship, 1,000 feet long and carrying 1.3 million barrels of oil, ran aground on Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989, after failing to return to the shipping lanes, which it had maneuvered out of to avoid icebergs. It later came to light that several officers, including Captain Hazelwood, had been drinking at a bar the night the Exxon Valdez left port. However, there wasn't enough evidence to support the notion that alcohol impairment had been responsible for the oil spill. Rather, poor weather conditions and preparation, combined with several incompetent maneuvers by the men steering the tanker, were deemed responsible for the disaster. Captain Hazelwood, who had prior drunk driving arrests, had a spotless record as a tanker captain before the Valdez accident. Exxon compounded the environmental problems caused by the spill by not beginning the cleanup effort right away. In 1991, a civil suit resulted in a billion-dollar judgment against them. However, years later, while their appeal remained backlogged in the court system, Exxon still hadn't paid the damages. The Exxon Valdez was repaired and had a series of different owners before being bought by a Hong Kong-based company, which renamed it the Dong Fang Ocean. It once again made headlines in November 2010 when it collided with another cargo ship off of China. Jul 10, 1995: Hugh Grant appears on Tonight Show after Hollywood arrest On this day in 1995, Hugh Grant appears on late-night television’s The Tonight Show less than two weeks after being arrested with a Hollywood prostitute. The show’s host, Jay Leno, famously asked the English actor, “What the hell were you thinking?” Grant, who shot to stardom with the 1994 hit British film Four Weddings and a Funeral, was arrested on June 27, 1995, in a parked car near Sunset Boulevard with a prostitute named Divine Brown and charged with lewd conduct in a public place. At the time of his arrest, Grant, then age 34, was already scheduled to appear on The Tonight Show to promote Nine Months, his first major Hollywood movie. The actor kept his agreement and went on the program, speaking publicly about the incident for the first time. “What the hell were you thinking?” Leno asked him, to which Grant simply responded “I did a bad thing.” The show garnered huge ratings (enabling Leno to beat his late-night talk show rival David Letterman) and Grant was praised for apologizing for his behavior, in contrast to other scandal-plagued celebrities who went into seclusion or blamed their mistakes on others. Grant pled no contest to the charges against him, paid a fine and received probation. Although the arrest surprised many fans of the actor, who was known for his charm and wit, his career did not seem to suffer in the end and he went on to star in a number of films, most often romantic comedies, including Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), About a Boy (2002), Love Actually (2003) and Music and Lyrics (2007). Though Grant’s long-term girlfriend, the English model and actress Elizabeth Hurley, stuck by him during the scandal, the couple announced their separation in 2000 after 13 years together. Jul 10, 1999: U.S. women win World Cup On July 10, 1999, the U.S. women’s soccer team defeats China to win their second Women’s World Cup. The game ended in a 5-4 shootout after 120 scoreless minutes: 90 tightly played minutes of regulation dictated by the United States and 30 tense minutes of overtime largely controlled by the Chinese. The title game was played at the Rose Bowl in southern California in front of 90,185 fans, the largest crowd ever to attend a women’s sporting event. The first-ever Women’s World Cup was held in China in 1991. In the final, American midfielder and tournament MVP Michelle Akers scored two goals--her ninth and tenth of the tournament--to lead the United States to a 2-1 win over Norway. The team returned home victorious but to little fanfare. In 1995, the U.S. again had a strong showing, placing third behind Germany and champion Norway, but still few at home took notice. The 1999 World Cup, though, was a much different story. The event was to be held in the United States, where soccer’s popularity was at an all-time high and growing, especially among young girls. The team was finally well-covered in the media and tickets were snapped up early by fans eager to see their new heroes perform. The team’s stars, newly recognizable to the public, included veteran midfielder Michelle Akers, international scoring champion Mia Hamm, midfielder Julie Foudy, midfielder/forward Kristine Lilly and defender Brandi Chastain. Heading into the Cup, the U.S. and China, both deep and talented squads with lots of international experience, were widely recognized as the favorites. The Chinese were led by striker Sun Wen, considered one of the most dangerous scorers in the tournament, and keeper Gao Hong, who was known for her athleticism. When the two teams made the final, the stage was set for a historic match. Thirty-three-year-old Michelle Akers, playing in her final World Cup for the United States, was the star of the game, controlling the midfield and funneling balls to her forwards to set up the attack. In 90 minutes of regulation, the Chinese managed only two shots on the U.S. goal. Akers who suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, collapsed after colliding with goalie Brianna Scurry and had to leave the game after the second half. The Chinese team was now rid of their foil, and the momentum swung their way during overtime. On a corner kick in the U.S. end, Chinese defender Fan Yunjie headed the ball toward the U.S. goal. Scurry couldn’t make the save, but just as the game seemed lost, defender Kristine Lilly, standing at the goal-line, headed the ball away from the cage. After a full 120 scoreless minutes, the teams entered a shootout, in which each would be given five penalty shots on goal. With the score tied 2-2 in the shootout, U.S. goalie Brianna Scurry dove left to make a save on China’s Liu Ying, giving the U.S. a chance to win. With the score tied at 4-4, all eyes were on Brandi Chastain, the last American to shoot. Chastain avoided eye contact with Gao Hong so as not to let the intimidating Chinese goalkeeper psych her out. She boomed a kick into the upper-right corner of the net, then ran and ripped off her jersey in celebration. The picture of Chastain celebrating on her knees clad in her sports bra became the enduring image of the match.
11 July Events 472 – After being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius is captured in the St. Peter's Basilica and put to death. 911 – Signing of the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between Charles the Simple and Rollo of Normandy. 1174 – Baldwin IV, 13, becomes King of Jerusalem, with Raymond III, Count of Tripoli as regent and William of Tyre as chancellor. 1302 – Battle of the Golden Spurs (Guldensporenslag in Dutch) – a coalition around the Flemish cities defeats the king of France's royal army. 1346 – Charles IV, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, is elected King of the Romans. 1405 – Ming admiral Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time. 1476 – Giuliano della Rovere is appointed bishop of Coutances. 1576 – Martin Frobisher sights Greenland. 1616 – Samuel de Champlain returns to Quebec. 1735 – Mathematical calculations suggest that it is on this day that dwarf planet Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time before 1979. 1740 – Pogrom: Jews are expelled from Little Russia. 1750 – Halifax, Nova Scotia is almost completely destroyed by fire. 1789 – Jacques Necker is dismissed as France's Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille. 1796 – The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty. 1798 – The United States Marine Corps is re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War. 1801 – French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons makes his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovers another 36 comets, more than any other person in history. 1804 – A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. 1833 – Noongar Australian aboriginal warrior Yagan, wanted for the murder of white colonists in Western Australia, is killed. 1848 – Waterloo railway station in London opens. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Fort Stevens; Confederate forces attempt to invade Washington, D.C. 1882 – The British Mediterranean Fleet begins the Bombardment of Alexandria in Egypt as part of the Anglo-Egyptian War. 1889 – Tijuana, Mexico, is founded. 1893 – The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kokichi Mikimoto. 1893 – A revolution led by the liberal general and politician, José Santos Zelaya, takes over state power in Nicaragua. 1895 – Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrate movie film technology to scientists. 1897 – Salomon August Andrée leaves Spitsbergen to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon. He later crashes and dies. 1906 – Murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the United States, inspiration for Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. 1914 – Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major League Baseball. 1914 – USS Nevada (BB-36) is launched. 1919 – The eight-hour day and free Sunday become law for workers in the Netherlands. 1920 – In the East Prussian plebiscite the local populace decides to remain with Weimar Germany. 1921 – A truce in the Irish War of Independence comes into effect. 1921 – The Red Army captures Mongolia from the White Army and establishes the Mongolian People's Republic. 1921 – Former President of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices. 1922 – The Hollywood Bowl opens. 1930 – Australian cricketer Donald Bradman scores a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England. 1934 – Engelbert Zaschka of Germany flies his large human-powered aircraft, the Zaschka Human-Power Aircraft, about 20 meters at Berlin Tempelhof Airport without assisted take off. 1936 – The Triborough Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic. 1940 – World War II: Vichy France regime is formally established. Philippe Pétain becomes Prime Minister of France. 1943 – Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army within the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (Volhynia) peak. 1943 – World War II: Allied invasion of Sicily – German and Italian troops launch a counter-attack on Allied forces in Sicily. 1947 – The Exodus 1947 heads to Palestine from France. 1950 – Pakistan joins the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank. 1957 – Prince Karim Husseini Aga Khan IV inherits the office of Imamat as the 49th Imam of Shia Imami Ismaili worldwide, after the death of Sir Sultan Mahommed Shah Aga Khan III. 1960 – France legislates for the independence of Dahomey (later Benin), Upper Volta (later Burkina) and Niger. 1960 – Congo Crisis: The State of Katanga breaks away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published, in the United States. 1962 – First transatlantic satellite television transmission. 1962 – Project Apollo: At a press conference, NASA announces lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, and return them to Earth. 1971 – Copper mines in Chile are nationalized. 1972 – The first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky starts. 1973 – Varig Flight 820 crashes near Paris, France on approach to Orly Airport, killing 123 of the 134 on board. In response, the FAA bans smoking on flights. 1977 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 1978 – Los Alfaques Disaster: A truck carrying liquid gas crashes and explodes at a coastal campsite in Tarragona, Spain killing 216 tourists. 1979 – America's first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. 1990 – Oka Crisis: First Nations land dispute in Quebec, Canada begins. 1995 – The Srebrenica massacre is carried out. 2006 – Mumbai train bombings: Two hundred nine people are killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India. 2012 – Astronomers announce the discovery of Styx, the fifth moon of Pluto. B
Jul 11, 1656: First Quaker colonists land at Boston Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, two Englishwomen, become the first Quakers to immigrate to the American colonies when the ship carrying them lands at Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The pair came from Barbados, where Quakers had established a center for missionary work. The Religious Society of Friends, whose members are commonly known as Quakers, was a Christian movement founded by George Fox in England during the early 1650s. Quakers opposed central church authority, preferring to seek spiritual insight and consensus through egalitarian Quaker meetings. They advocated sexual equality and became some of the most outspoken opponents of slavery in early America. Shortly after arriving to Massachusetts, Austin and Fisher, whose liberal teachings enraged the Puritan colonial government, were arrested and jailed. After five years in prison, they were deported back to Barbados. In October 1656, the Massachusetts colonial government enacted their first ban on Quakers, and in 1658 it ordered Quakers banished from the colony "under penalty of death." Quakers found solace in Rhode Island and other colonies, and Massachusetts' anti-Quaker laws were later repealed. In the mid-18th century, John Woolman, an abolitionist Quaker, traveled the American colonies, preaching and advancing the anti-slavery cause. He organized boycotts of products made by slave labor and was responsible for convincing many Quaker communities to publicly denounce slavery. Another of many important abolitionist Quakers was Lucretia Mott, who worked on the Underground Railroad in the 19th century, helping lead fugitive slaves to freedom in the Northern states and Canada. In later years, Mott was a leader in the movement for women's rights. Jul 11, 1767: John Quincy Adams is born On this day in 1767, John Quincy Adams, son of the second U.S. president, John Adams, is born in Braintree, Massachusetts. John Quincy Adams inherited his father's passion for politics. He accompanied his father on diplomatic missions from the time he was 14 and entered the legal profession after completing his schooling. As a young man, he served as minister to a variety of countries, including Prussia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia and England. In 1803, he began his first term as a Republican in the Senate and afterward helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. In 1817, President James Monroe appointed Quincy Adams secretary of state, a position he held until 1824, when he ran for president. In the subsequent presidential election, a tie between Quincy Adams and Democrat Andrew Jackson put the deciding vote in the House of Representatives. The House chose Adams, who went on to serve one term from 1825 to 1829. Rather than retire after presiding at the pinnacle of American politics, Adams returned to Congress. He preferred legislative duties to the presidency, which he described as the four most miserable years of my life. Beginning in 1831, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives, chairing congressional committees on the economy, Indian affairs and foreign relations. He even found time to argue the controversial Amistad slave ship case in the Supreme Court. His eloquent argument for returning the ship's illegally transported cargo of Africans to Africa cemented his reputation as an abolitionist. Quincy Adams suffered and survived a stroke in 1846. Two years later, on February 21, 1848, just after participating in a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, Quincy Adams succumbed to a more massive and ultimately fatal stroke. He died two days later in a room in the Capitol building in which he had performed many years of public service. Jul 11, 1782: British evacuate Savannah, Georgia On this day in 1782, British Royal Governor Sir James Wright, along with several civil officials and military officers, flee the city of Savannah, Georgia, and head to Charleston, South Carolina. As part of the British evacuation, a group consisting of British regulars led by General Alured Clarke traveled to New York, while Colonel Thomas Brown led a mixed group of rangers and Indians to St. Augustine, Florida. The remaining British soldiers were transported to the West Indies aboard the frigate HMS Zebra and the sloop of war HMS Vulture. Wright had been the only colonial governor and Georgia the only colony to successfully implement the Stamp Act in 1765. As revolutionary fervor grew elsewhere in the colonies, Georgia remained the most loyal colony, declining to send delegates to the Continental Congress in 1774. Governor Wright, though, had been taken into custody and placed under house arrest nearly a month earlier on January 18, 1776, by Patriots under the command of Major Joseph Habersham of the Provincial Congress. On February 11, Wright escaped from his residence in Savannah to the safety of a waiting British warship, the HMS Scarborough, anchored at the mouth of the Savannah River, and returned to London. Wright organized a military action and retook Savannah on December 29, 1778. He resumed his role as royal governor on July 22, 1779, and held the city until the British left of their own accord on this day in 1782, following General Charles Cornwallis' surrender to General George Washington at Yorktown in 1781. Wright then moved to London, where he died three years later. Jul 11, 1804: Burr slays Hamilton in duel In a duel held in Weehawken, New Jersey, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shoots his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America's political economy, died the following day. Alexander Hamilton, born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, came to the American colonies in 1773 as a poor immigrant. (There is some controversy as to the year of his birth, but it was either 1755 or 1757.) In 1776, he joined the Continental Army in the American Revolution, and his relentless energy and remarkable intelligence brought him to the attention of General George Washington, who took him on as an aid. Ten years later, Hamilton served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and he led the fight to win ratification of the final document, which created the kind of strong, centralized government that he favored. In 1789, he was appointed the first secretary of the treasury by President Washington, and during the next six years he crafted a sophisticated monetary policy that saved the young U.S. government from collapse. With the emergence of political parties, Hamilton was regarded as a leader of the Federalists. Aaron Burr, born into a prestigious New Jersey family in 1756, was also intellectually gifted, and he graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) at the age of 17. He joined the Continental Army in 1775 and distinguished himself during the Patriot attack on Quebec. A masterful politician, he was elected to the New State Assembly in 1783 and later served as state attorney. In 1790, he defeated Alexander Hamilton's father-in-law in a race for the U.S. Senate. Hamilton came to detest Burr, whom he regarded as a dangerous opportunist, and he often spoke ill of him. When Burr ran for the vice presidency in 1796 on Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican ticket (the forerunner of the Democratic Party), Hamilton launched a series of public attacks against Burr, stating, "I feel it is a religious duty to oppose his career." John Adams won the presidency, and in 1797 Burr left the Senate and returned to the New York Assembly. In 1800, Jefferson chose Burr again as his running mate. Burr aided the Democratic-Republican ticket by publishing a confidential document that Hamilton had written criticizing his fellow Federalist President John Adams. This caused a rift in the Federalists and helped Jefferson and Burr win the election with 73 electoral votes each. Under the electoral procedure then prevailing, president and vice president were not voted for separately; the candidate who received the most votes was elected president, and the second in line, vice president. The vote then went to the House of Representatives. What at first seemed but an electoral technicality--handing Jefferson victory over his running mate--developed into a major constitutional crisis when Federalists in the lame-duck Congress threw their support behind Burr. After a remarkable 35 tie votes, a small group of Federalists changed sides and voted in Jefferson's favor. Alexander Hamilton, who had supported Jefferson as the lesser of two evils, was instrumental in breaking the deadlock. Burr became vice president, but Jefferson grew apart from him, and he did not support Burr's renomination to a second term in 1804. That year, a faction of New York Federalists, who had found their fortunes drastically diminished after the ascendance of Jefferson, sought to enlist the disgruntled Burr into their party and elect him governor. Hamilton campaigned against Burr with great fervor, and Burr lost the Federalist nomination and then, running as an independent for governor, the election. In the campaign, Burr's character was savagely attacked by Hamilton and others, and after the election he resolved to restore his reputation by challenging Hamilton to a duel, or an "affair of honor," as they were known. Affairs of honor were commonplace in America at the time, and the complex rules governing them usually led to an honorable resolution before any actual firing of weapons. In fact, the outspoken Hamilton had been involved in several affairs of honor in his life, and he had resolved most of them peaceably. No such recourse was found with Burr, however, and on July 11, 1804, the enemies met at 7 a.m. at the dueling grounds near Weehawken, New Jersey. It was the same spot where Hamilton's son had died defending his father's honor two years before. There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. According to Hamilton's "second"--his assistant and witness in the duel--Hamilton decided the duel was morally wrong and deliberately fired into the air. Burr's second claimed that Hamilton fired at Burr and missed. What happened next is agreed upon: Burr shot Hamilton in the stomach, and the bullet lodged next to his spine. Hamilton was taken back to New York, and he died the next afternoon. Few affairs of honor actually resulted in deaths, and the nation was outraged by the killing of a man as eminent as Alexander Hamilton. Charged with murder in New York and New Jersey, Burr, still vice president, returned to Washington, D.C., where he finished his term immune from prosecution. In 1805, Burr, thoroughly discredited, concocted a plot with James Wilkinson, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army, to seize the Louisiana Territory and establish an independent empire, which Burr, presumably, would lead. He contacted the British government and unsuccessfully pleaded for assistance in the scheme. Later, when border trouble with Spanish Mexico heated up, Burr and Wilkinson conspired to seize territory in Spanish America for the same purpose. In the fall of 1806, Burr led a group of well-armed colonists toward New Orleans, prompting an immediate U.S. investigation. General Wilkinson, in an effort to save himself, turned against Burr and sent dispatches to Washington accusing Burr of treason. In February 1807, Burr was arrested in Louisiana for treason and sent to Virginia to be tried in a U.S. court. In September, he was acquitted on a technicality. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled to Europe. He later returned to private life in New York, the murder charges against him forgotten. He died in 1836. Jul 11, 1861: Union notches a victory at the Battle of Rich Mountain On this day, Union troops under General George B. McClellan score another major victory in the struggle for western Virginia at the Battle of Rich Mountain. The Yankee success secured the region and ensured the eventual creation of West Virginia. Western Virginia was a crucial battleground in the early months of the war. The population of the region was deeply divided over the issue of secession, and western Virginia was also a vital east-west link for the Union because the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran through its mountains. After McClellan scored a series of small victories in western Virginia in June and early July, Confederate General Robert Garnett and Colonel John Pegram positioned their forces at Rich Mountain and Laurel Hill to block two key roads and keep McClellan from penetrating any further east. McClellan crafted a plan to feign an attack against Garnett at Laurel Hill while he sent the bulk of his force against Pegram at Rich Mountain. Part of McClellan's force, led by General William Rosecrans, followed a rugged mountain path to swing around behind the Rebels' left flank. McClellan had promised to attack the Confederate front when he heard gunfire from Rosecrans's direction. After a difficult march through a drenching rain, Rosecrans struck the Confederate wing. It took several attempts, but he was finally able to drive the Confederates from their position. McClellan shelled the Rebel position, but did not make the expected assault. Each side suffered around 70 casualties. Pegram was forced to abandon his position, but Rosecrans was blocking his escape route. Two days later, Pegram surrendered his force of 555. Although McClellan became a Union hero as a result of this victory, most historians agree that Rosecrans deserved the credit. Nonetheless, McClellan was on his way to becoming the commander of the Army of the Potomac. Jul 11, 1869: Tall Bull dies Tall Bull, a prominent leader of the Cheyenne Dog Soldier warrior society, is killed during the Battle of Summit Springs in Colorado. Tall Bull was the most distinguished of several Cheyenne warriors who bore this hereditary name. He was a leader of the Dog Soldiers, a fierce Cheyenne society of warriors that had initially fought against other Indian tribes. In the 1860s, though, the Dog Soldiers increasingly became one of the most implacable foes of the U.S. government in the bloody Plains Indian Wars. In October 1868, Tall Bull and his Dog Soldiers badly mauled an American cavalry force in Colorado. He confronted General Philip Sheridan's forces the following winter in Oklahoma. Near the Washita River, Sheridan's Lieutenant Colonel George Custer attacked a peaceful Cheyenne village under Chief Black Kettle. The Cheyenne suffered more than 100 casualties, and Custer's soldiers brutally butchered more than 800 of their horses. However, Custer was forced to flee when Tall Bull and other chiefs camped in nearby villages began to mass for attack. Custer's attack had badly damaged the Cheyenne, but Tall Bull refused to surrender to the Americans. In the spring of 1869, Tall Bull and his Dog Soldiers took their revenge, staging a series of successful attacks against soldiers who were searching for him. Determined to destroy the chief, the U.S. Army formed a special expeditionary force under the command of General Eugene Carr. On this day in 1869, Carr surprised Tall Bull and his warriors in their camp at Summit Springs, Colorado. In the ensuing battle, Tall Bull was killed and the Dog Soldiers were overwhelmed. Without the dynamic leadership of their chief, the surviving Dog Soldiers' resistance was broken. Although other Cheyenne continued to fight the American military for another decade, they did so without the aid of their greatest warrior society and its leader. Jul 11, 1899: "Charlotte's Web" author E.B. White born On this day in 1899, E.B. White, the author of the popular children’s novels “Charlotte’s Web,” “Stuart Little” and “The Trumpet of the Swan,” is born in Mount Vernon, New York. White, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine who was known for his graceful, witty prose, also updated and expanded “The Elements of Style,” an English usage guide that remains a standard text for many high school and college students. Elwyn Brooks White was the son of a piano manufacturer and the youngest of six children. He attended Cornell University, where he edited the school newspaper and was dubbed Andy, a nickname given to students with the last name White, after Andrew D. White, the university’s first president. After graduating from Cornell in 1921, White worked as a newspaper reporter and a production assistant and copywriter for an advertising agency. In 1927, he joined the staff of The New Yorker, which had been founded two years earlier. White, along with his friend and fellow writer James Thurber, is credited with playing a central role in shaping the magazine’s tone and direction. For over 50 years, White contributed essays, poems and other pieces to the publication. In the 1930s, White and his wife, Katherine Sergeant Angell, a writer and editor whom he met at The New Yorker, moved to a farm in Maine. In 1945, he published his first children’s novel, “Stuart Little,” about a mouse born into a human family. The book was followed in 1952 by “Charlotte’s Web,” about a pig on a farm who is saved from being slaughtered with the help of a spider named Charlotte. The story was inspired by life on White’s own farm. His third children’s book, “The Trumpet of the Swan,” about a swan born without a voice, was published in 1970. All three works were critical and commercial successes, selling millions of copies. The books have also been made into films. In 1959, White reworked “The Elements of Style,” a handbook that was first published privately in 1918 by his former Cornell professor William Strunk. The book, which White went on to update several times for new editions, contains such practical advice as: ''Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary part.'' White received numerous awards during his career, including an honorary Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for the body of his work. He died at age 86 on October 1, 1985, at his home in North Brooklin, Maine, after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. At a memorial service, New Yorker writer Roger Angell said of his famously shy stepfather: “If E.B. White could be here today, he wouldn’t be here.” Jul 11, 1914: Babe Ruth makes MLB debut On July 11, 1914, in his major league debut, George Herman "Babe" Ruth pitches seven strong innings to lead the Boston Red Sox over the Cleveland Indians, 4-3. George Herman Ruth was born February 6, 1895, in Baltimore, Maryland, where his father worked as a saloon keeper on the waterfront. He was the first of eight children, but only he and a sister survived infancy. The young George, known as "Gig" (pronounced jij) to his family, was a magnet for trouble from an early age. At seven, his truancy from school led his parents to declare him incorrigible, and he was sent to an orphanage, St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. Ruth lived there until he was 19 in 1914, when he was signed as a pitcher by the Baltimore Orioles. That same summer, Ruth was sold to the Boston Red Sox. His teammates called him "Babe" for his naiveté, but his talent was already maturing. In his debut game against the Indians, the 19-year-old Ruth gave up just five hits over the first six innings. In the seventh, the Indians managed two runs on three singles and a sacrifice and Ruth was relieved. His hitting prowess, however, was not on display that first night--he went 0 for 2 at the plate. Ruth developed quickly as a pitcher and as a hitter. When the Red Sox made the World Series in 1916 and 1918, Ruth starred, setting a record with 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play. His career record as a pitcher for the Red Sox was 89-46. To the great dismay of Boston fans, Ruth’s contract was sold to the New York Yankees before the 1920 season by Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, so that Frazee could finance the musical No, No, Nanette. Ruth switched to the outfield with the Yankees, and hit more home runs than the entire Red Sox team in 10 of the next 12 seasons. "The Sultan of Swat" or "The Bambino," as he was alternately known, was the greatest gate attraction in baseball until his retirement as a player in 1935. During his career with the New York Yankees, the team won four World Series and seven American League pennants. After getting rid of Ruth, the Red Sox did not win a World Series until 2004, an 85-year drought known to Red Sox fans as "the Curse of the Bambino."
11 July Births 154 – Bardaisan, Syrian astrologer, scholar, and philosopher (d. 222) 1274 – Robert the Bruce, Scottish king (d. 1329) 1558 – Robert Greene, English author and playwright (d. 1592) 1561 – Luis de Góngora, Spanish poet (d. 1627) 1603 – Kenelm Digby, English courtier and diplomat (d. 1665) 1628 – Tokugawa Mitsukuni, Japanese daimyo (d. 1701) 1653 – Sarah Good, American woman accused of witchcraft (d. 1692) 1657 – Frederick I of Prussia (d. 1713) 1662 – Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria (d. 1726) 1709 – Johan Gottschalk Wallerius, Swedish chemist and mineralogist (d. 1785) 1723 – Jean-François Marmontel, French historian and author (d. 1799) 1751 – Caroline Matilda of Great Britain (d. 1775) 1754 – Thomas Bowdler, English physician and philanthropist (d. 1825) 1767 – John Quincy Adams, American politician, 6th President of the United States (d. 1848) 1826 – Alexander Afanasyev, Russian author (d. 1871) 1832 – Charilaos Trikoupis, Greek politician, 55th Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1896) 1834 – James Abbott McNeill Whistler, American-English painter (d. 1903) 1836 – Antônio Carlos Gomes, Brazilian composer (d. 1896) 1846 – Léon Bloy, French author and poet (d. 1917) 1850 – Annie Armstrong, American missionary (d. 1938) 1851 – Millie and Christine McKoy, American conjoined twins (d. 1912) 1866 – Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine (d. 1953) 1880 – Friedrich Lahrs, German architect (d. 1964) 1882 – James Larkin White, American miner, explorer, and park ranger (d. 1946) 1886 – Boris Grigoriev, Russian painter (d. 1939) 1888 – Carl Schmitt, German jurist and philosopher (d. 1985) 1892 – Thomas Mitchell, American actor, singer, and screenwriter (d. 1962) 1895 – Dorothy Wilde, English-Irish author (d. 1941) 1897 – Bull Connor, American police officer (d. 1973) 1899 – E. B. White, American author (d. 1985) 1903 – Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher, Russian colonel (d. 1971) 1903 – Sidney Franklin, American bullfighter (d. 1976) 1904 – Niño Ricardo, Spanish guitarist and composer (d. 1972) 1906 – Herbert Wehner, German politician (d. 1990) 1908 – Karl Nabersberg, German youth leader (d. 1946) 1910 – Irene Hervey, American actress (d. 1998) 1911 – Erna Flegel, German nurse (d. 2006) 1912 – Sergiu Celibidache, Romanian conductor and composer (d. 1996) 1912 – William F. Walsh, American politician (d. 2011) 1913 – Cordwainer Smith, American author (d. 1966) 1916 – Alexander Prokhorov, Australian-Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2002) 1916 – Reg Varney, English actor (d. 2008) 1916 – Gough Whitlam, Australian lieutenant and politician, 21st Prime Minister of Australia 1918 – Venetia Burney, English girl, who named Pluto (d. 2009) 1920 – Yul Brynner, Russian-American actor and director (d. 1985) 1920 – James von Brunn, American murderer, committed the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting (d. 2010) 1921 – Ilse Werner, Dutch-German actress and singer (d. 2005) 1922 – Gene Evans, American actor (d. 1998) 1923 – Richard Pipes, Polish-American historian and academic 1923 – Tun Tun, Indian playback singer and actress-comedian (d. 2003) 1924 – César Lattes, Brazilian physicist (d. 2005) 1924 – Brett Somers, Canadian-American actress and singer (d. 2007) 1924 – Charlie Tully, Irish footballer (d. 1971) 1925 – Nicolai Gedda, Swedish tenor 1925 – Peter Kyros, American politician (d. 2012) 1925 – Sid Smith, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2004) 1926 – Peter Bennett, Australian footballer (d. 2012) 1926 – Frederick Buechner, American minister and author 1927 – Theodore Maiman, American physicist (d. 2007) 1928 – Greville Janner, Welsh barrister and politician 1928 – Bobo Olson, American boxer (d. 2002) 1929 – Danny Flores, singer-songwriter and saxophonist (The Champs) (d. 2006) 1929 – David Kelly, Irish actor (d. 2012) 1929 – Hermann Prey, German opera singer (d. 1998) 1930 – Harold Bloom, American author and critic 1930 – Trevor Storer, English businessman, founded Pukka Pies (d. 2013) 1931 – Dick Gray, American baseball player (d. 2013) 1931 – Thurston Harris, American singer (d. 1990) 1931 – Tab Hunter, American actor and singer 1931 – Tullio Regge, Italian physicist 1932 – Jean-Guy Talbot, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1933 – Jim Carlen, American football player and coach (d. 2012) 1933 – Frank Kelso, American admiral (d. 2013) 1934 – Giorgio Armani, Italian fashion designer, founded the Armani Company 1935 – Frederick Hemke, American saxophonist and educator 1935 – Oliver Napier, Irish politician (d. 2011) 1937 – Pai Hsien-yung, Taiwanese author 1938 – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, American historian and scholar 1940 – Yvon Charbonneau, Canadian politician 1941 – Michael Giannatos, Turkish-Greek actor (d. 2013) 1941 – Henry Lowther, English jazz trumpeter 1941 – Clive Puzey, Zimbabwean race car driver 1943 – Oscar D'León, Venezuelan bass player (Dimensión Latina) 1943 – Howard Gardner, American psychologist 1943 – Tom Holland, American actor, director, and screenwriter 1943 – Peter Jensen, Australian archbishop 1943 – Robert Malval, Haitian politician, 5th Prime Minister of Haiti 1943 – Rolf Stommelen, German race car driver (d. 1983) 1944 – Lou Hudson, American basketball player (d. 2014) 1944 – Michael Levy, English politician 1944 – Patricia Polacco, American author and illustrator 1946 – Cuthbert Johnson, English liturgist 1946 – Beverly Todd American actress 1947 – Richard Chartres, English Bishop of London 1947 – Norman Lebrecht, British music critic and novelist 1947 – Bo Lundgren, Swedish politician 1949 – Liona Boyd, English-Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1949 – Jay Johnson, American ventriloquist 1950 – Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistani physicist 1950 – Bruce McGill, American actor 1950 – J. R. Morgan, Welsh academic and author 1950 – Bonnie Pointer, American singer (The Pointer Sisters) 1951 – Ed Ott, American baseball player and coach 1952 – Bill Barber, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1952 – John Kettley, English journalist 1953 – Piyasvasti Amranand, Thai politician 1953 – Angélica Aragón, Mexican actress 1953 – Peter Brown, American singer-songwriter and producer 1953 – Lon Burnam, American politician 1953 – Larry Evans, American football player 1953 – Cats Falck, Swedish journalist (d. 1984) 1953 – Jay Glaser, American sailor 1953 – Samuel Hinds, American baseball player 1953 – William Patey, Scottish diplomat 1953 – Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Indian politician 1953 – Paul Priddy, English footballer 1953 – Nigel Richard Rees, Welsh footballer 1953 – Wu Shu-chen, Chinese wife of Chen Shui-bian 1953 – Patricia Reyes Spíndola, Mexican actress, director, and producer 1953 – Leon Spinks, American boxer 1953 – Mindy Sterling, American actress 1953 – Ivan Toms, South African physician (d. 2008) 1953 – Bramwell Tovey, English-Canadian conductor and composer 1953 – Paul Weiland, English director, producer, and screenwriter 1954 – Julia King, British science academic 1954 – Butch Reed, American wrestler 1955 – Balaji Sadasivan, Singaporean neurosurgeon and politician (d. 2010) 1956 – Robin Renucci, French actor and director 1956 – Sela Ward, American actress 1957 – Peter Murphy, English singer-songwriter (Bauhaus and Dalis Car) 1957 – Johann Lamont, Scottish politician 1957 – Peter Oborne, English journalist 1957 – Michael Rose, Jamaican singer-songwriter (Black Uhuru) 1958 – Andrew Gilbert-Scott, English race car car driver 1958 – Hugo Sánchez, Mexican footballer, coach, and manager 1959 – Dave Bennett, English footballer 1959 – Richie Sambora, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Bon Jovi) 1959 – Suzanne Vega, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1960 – David Baerwald American singer-songwriter (David & David) 1960 – Caroline Quentin, English actress 1961 – Antony Jenkins, English businessman 1962 – Gaétan Duchesne, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2007) 1962 – Pauline McLynn, Irish actress 1963 – Al MacInnis, Canadian ice hockey player 1963 – Dean Richards, British rugby football player 1963 – Lisa Rinna, American actress 1964 – Craig Charles, English actor 1964 – Kyril, Prince of Preslav 1965 – Tony Cottee, English footballer, manager, and sportscaster 1965 – Ernesto Hoost, Dutch kick-boxer 1965 – Scott Shriner, American bass player (Weezer) 1966 – Nadeem Aslam, British-Pakistani novelist 1966 – Greg Grunberg, American actor 1966 – Kentaro Miura, Japanese author and illustrator 1966 – Mick Molloy, Australian actor, screenwriter, and producer 1966 – Rod Strickland, American basketball player 1966 – Bo Sanchez, Filipino Catholic Charismatic lay preacher and author 1967 – Andy Ashby, American baseball player 1967 – Jeff Corwin, American television host and producer 1967 – Jhumpa Lahiri, English-American author 1967 – Donne Wall, American baseball player 1968 – Michael Geist, Canadian academic 1968 – Daniel MacMaster, Canadian singer-songwriter (Bonham) (d. 2008) 1968 – Esera Tuaolo, American football player 1969 – David Tao, Taiwanese singer-songwriter 1970 – Justin Chambers, American actor 1970 – Mark Fox, English journalist 1970 – Sajjad Karim, English politician 1971 – Leisha Hailey, Japanese-American singer-songwriter and actress (Uh Huh Her and The Murmurs) 1972 – Jussi 69, Finnish drummer (The 69 Eyes) 1972 – Cormac Battle, Irish musician (vocalist and lead guitarist with Kerbdog and Wilt) and radio presenter/producer. 1972 – Steven Richards, Australian race car driver 1972 – Michael Rosenbaum, American actor, director, and producer 1973 – Andrew Bird, American singer-songwriter and violinist (Squirrel Nut Zippers and Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire) 1973 – Konstantinos Kenteris, Greek runner 1974 – Alanas Chošnau, Lithuanian singer-songwriter 1974 – Hermann Hreiðarsson, Icelandic footballer and manager 1974 – André Ooijer, Dutch footballer 1975 – Bridgette Andersen, American actress (d. 1997) 1975 – Willie Anderson, American football player 1975 – Rubén Baraja, Spanish footballer 1975 – Samer el Nahhal, Finnish bass player (Lordi) 1975 – Riona Hazuki, Japanese actress 1975 – Lil' Kim, American rapper, producer, and actress 1975 – Nadya Suleman, American mother of the Suleman octuplets 1976 – Eduardo Nájera, Mexican-American basketball player and coach 1977 – Brandon Short, American football player and sportscaster 1978 – Kathleen Edwards, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1978 – Massimiliano Rosolino, Italian swimmer 1979 – Raio Piiroja, Estonian footballer 1979 – Lauris Reiniks, Latvian singer-songwriter and actor 1980 – Tyson Kidd, Canadian wrestler 1980 – Kevin Powers, American soldier and author 1980 – Im Soo-jung, South Korean actress 1981 – Andre Johnson, American football player 1982 – Chris Cooley, American football player 1982 – Lil Zane, American rapper and actor 1983 – Peter Cincotti, American singer-songwriter and pianist 1983 – Kelly Poon, Singaporean singer 1983 – Evan Roberts, American radio host 1983 – Marie Serneholt, Swedish singer and dancer (A*Teens) 1983 – Kellie Shirley, English actress 1984 – Yorman Bazardo, Venezuelan baseball player 1984 – Tanith Belbin, Canadian-American ice dancer 1984 – Hitomi Hyuga, Japanese actress 1984 – Jacoby Jones, American footballer player 1984 – Hokuto "Hok" Konishi, Japanese-American dancer 1984 – Joe Pavelski, American ice hockey player 1984 – Rachael Taylor, Australian actress 1984 – Morné Steyn, South African rugby player 1985 – Orestis Karnezis, Greek footballer 1985 – Robert Adamson, American actor 1985 – Aki Maeda, Japanese actress and singer 1986 – Raúl García, Spanish footballer 1986 – Yoann Gourcuff, French footballer 1986 – Ryan Jarvis, English footballer 1987 – Shigeaki Kato, Japanese singer and actor (NEWS and K.K.Kity) 1988 – Yuka Iguchi, Japanese voice actress 1988 – Étienne Capoue, French footballer 1988 – Annette Melton, Australian actress and model 1988 – Natalya Zhedik, Russian basketball player 1989 – Shareeka Epps, American actress 1989 – David Henrie, American actor 1989 – Liel Kolet, Israeli singer 1989 – Tobias Sana, Swedish footballer 1990 – Mona Barthel, German tennis player 1990 – George Craig, English singer-songwriter and model (One Night Only) 1990 – Adam Jezierski, Polish-Spanish actor 1990 – Connor Paolo, American actor 1990 – Patrick Peterson, American football player 1990 – Kelsey Sanders, American actress and singer 1990 – Mona Barthel, German tennis player 1990 – Caroline Wozniacki, Danish tennis player 1991 – Alice Svensson, Vietnamese-Swedish singer 1993 – Rebecca Bross, American gymnast 1993 – Georgia Henshaw, Welsh actress 1993 – Heini Salonen, Finnish tennis player 1994 – Lucas Ocampos, Argentinian footballer 1994 – Nina Nesbitt, Scottish singer 1995 – Vanessa Axente, Hungarian fashion model 1995 – Tyler Medeiros, Canadian singer-songwriter and dancer D
Jul 11, 1916: President Woodrow Wilson signs Federal Aid Road Act On this day in 1916, in a ceremony at the White House, President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Aid Road Act. The law established a national policy of federal aid for highways. From the mid-19th century, the building and maintenance of roads had been seen as a state and local responsibility. As a result, America's roads were generally in poor condition, especially in rural areas. As the so-called Progressive Era dawned near the turn of the 20th century, attitudes began to change, and people began to look towards government to provide better roads, among other infrastructure improvements. The first federal aid bill was submitted to Congress in 1902, proposing the creation of a Bureau of Public Roads. With the rise of the automobile--especially after Henry Ford introduced the affordable Model T in 1908, putting more Americans on the road than ever before--Congress was pushed to go even further. In the 1907 case Wilson v. Shaw, the U.S. Supreme Court officially gave Congress the power "to construct interstate highways" under its constitutional right to regulate interstate commerce. In 1912, Congress enacted the Post Office Department Appropriations Bill, which set aside $500,000 for an experimental program to improve the nation's post roads (roads over which mail is carried). The program proved too small to make significant improvements, but it taught Congress that federal aid for roads needed to go to the states instead of local counties in order to be effective. Serious consideration of a federal road program began in early 1916. There were two competing interest groups at stake: Farmers wanted sturdy, all-weather post roads to transport their goods, and urban motorists wanted paved long-distance highways. The bill that both houses of Congress eventually approved on June 27, 1916, and that Wilson signed into law that July 11, leaned in the favor of the rural populations by appropriating $75 million for the improvement of post roads. It included the stipulation that all states have a highway agency staffed by professional engineers who would administer the federal funds and ensure that all roads were constructed properly. In addition to enabling rural Americans to participate more efficiently in the national economy, the Federal Aid Road Act was a precursor to the Federal Highway Act of 1921, which provided federal aid to the states for the building of an interconnected interstate highway system. The interstate highway issue would not be fully addressed until much later, when the Federal Highway Act of 1956 allocated more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles of interstate highways. Jul 11, 1918: German command makes final plans for renewed offensive on the Western Front Even with a deadly influenza epidemic spreading among German troops, the German High Command decides to go ahead with plans for a renewed assault on the Allies on the Western Front in the summer of 1918, making their final plans on July 11. The so-called Spanish flu, an unusually powerful strain of influenza, spread throughout North America, Europe and eventually around the world during 1918, claiming millions of lives. The First World War, with its massive movements of men in close quarters, under harsh conditions, undoubtedly acted as a factor in the epidemic. The soldiers fighting for the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, were hit especially hard by the virus beginning in the early summer of 1918, just as the Allies prepared to counter the German spring offensive on the Western Front. With Austria-Hungary virtually eliminated as a military force by the third year of World War I, Vienna looked to Germany as the Dual Monarchy's last chance for survival. People have only one more hope, the German Front, the German ambassador to Austria-Hungary reported to Berlin on July 11. Even a hope in a separate peace does not exist any more. That same day, the German army's High Command, which had previously considered pushing back their plans for a renewed offensive due to the flu epidemic's effect on their troops, decided instead to push ahead. The German attack on July 15, near the Marne River in the Champagne region of France, met with resounding failure. It would be the final German offensive of World War I. Jul 11, 1922: Hollywood Bowl opens On this day in 1922, the Hollywood Bowl, one of the world’s largest natural amphitheaters, opens with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Since that time, a long, diverse list of performers, including The Beatles, Luciano Pavarotti and Judy Garland, have appeared on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. The venue has become a famous Los Angeles landmark and has been featured in numerous movies. As the official summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Hollywood Bowl has hosted such famous conductors as Arthur Rubinstein, Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Horowitz, along with opera singers Jessye Norman, Beverly Sills and Placido Domingo. Dancers from Fred Astaire to Mikhail Baryshnikov have graced the stage, as have entertainers including Abbott and Costello, Al Jolson, Billie Holiday, Garth Brooks and Elton John. When the Hollywood Bowl opened, its stage was a wooden platform with a canvas top and audiences sat on moveable benches set on the hillsides of the surrounding canyon. In 1926, a group of Los Angeles architects built the Hollywood Bowl’s first shell. Since that time, various architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, Lloyd Wright, and Frank Gehry, have made improvements to the venue’s structure and acoustics. Today, the Hollywood Bowl seats nearly 18,000. Its paid attendance record of 26,410 was set in August 1936 for a performance by French opera star Lily Pons. As a Los Angeles icon, the Hollywood Bowl has been featured in a number of films, including A Star is Born (1937) and Beaches (1988). In one particularly memorable appearance, in the film, Olly Olly Oxen Free (1978), according to the Bowl’s official Web site, Hollywoodbowl.com: “Katharine Hepburn, having refused a stunt double, lands a hot-air balloon herself in front of the Hollywood Bowl stage during a performance of the 1812 Overture.” Jul 11, 1944: Hitler is paid a visit by his would-be assassin On this day in 1944, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer, transports a bomb to Adolf Hitler's headquarters in Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria, with the intention of assassinating the Fuhrer. As the war started to turn against the Germans, and the atrocities being committed at Hitler's behest grew, a growing numbers of Germans—within the military and without—began conspiring to assassinate their leader. As the masses were unlikely to turn on the man in whose hands they had hitherto placed their lives and future, it was up to men close to Hitler, German officers, to dispatch him. Leadership of the plot fell to Claus von Stauffenberg, newly promoted to colonel and chief of staff to the commander of the army reserve, which gave him access to Hitler's headquarters at Berchtesgaden and Rastenburg. Stauffenberg had served in the German army since 1926. While serving as a staff officer in the campaign against the Soviet Union, he became disgusted at his fellow countrymen's vicious treatment of Jews and Soviet prisoners. He requested to be transferred to North Africa, where he lost his left eye, right hand, and two fingers of his left hand. After recovering from his injuries, and determined to see Hitler removed from power by any means necessary, Stauffenberg traveled to Berchtesgaden on July 3 and received at the hands of a fellow army officer, Major-General Helmuth Stieff, a bomb with a silent fuse that was small enough to be hidden in a briefcase. On July 11, Stauffenberg was summoned to Berchtesgaden to report to Hitler on the current military situation. The plan was to use the bomb on July 15, but at the last minute, Hitler was called away to his headquarters at Rastenburg, in East Prussia. Stauffenberg was asked to follow him there. On July 16, a meeting took place between Stauffenberg and Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, another conspirator, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Hofacker informed Stauffenberg that German defenses had collapsed at Normandy, and the tide had turned against them in the West. The assassination attempt was postponed until July 20, at Rastenburg. Jul 11, 1945: Soviets agree to hand over power in West Berlin Fulfilling agreements reached at various wartime conferences, the Soviet Union promises to hand power over to British and U.S. forces in West Berlin. Although the division of Berlin (and of Germany as a whole) into zones of occupation was seen as a temporary postwar expedient, the dividing lines quickly became permanent. The divided city of Berlin became a symbol for Cold War tensions. During a number of wartime conferences, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union agreed that following the defeat of Germany, that nation would be divided into three zones of occupation. Berlin, the capital city of Germany, would likewise be divided. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, however, Soviet troops were in complete control of eastern Germany and all of Berlin. Some U.S. officials, who had come to see the Soviet Union as an emerging threat to the postwar peace in Europe, believed that the Soviets would never relinquish control over any part of Berlin. However, on July 11, 1945, the Russian government announced that it would hand over all civilian and military control of West Berlin to British and American forces. This was accomplished, without incident, the following day. (The United States and Great Britain would later give up part of their zones of occupation in Germany and Berlin to make room for a French zone of occupation.) In the years to come, West Berlin became the site of some notable Cold War confrontations. During 1948 and 1949, the Soviets blocked all land travel into West Berlin, forcing the United States to establish the Berlin Airlift to feed and care for the population of the city. In 1961, the government of East Germany constructed the famous Berlin Wall, creating an actual physical barrier to separate East and West Berlin. The divided city came to symbolize the animosities and tensions of the Cold War. In 1989, with communist control of East Germany crumbling, the Berlin Wall was finally torn down. The following year, East and West Germany formally reunited. Jul 11, 1960: The Hollwood Argyles' "Alley Oop" leads a novelty-song outbreak Novelty songs have been around for centuries, slipping in and out of popular fashion. But never in modern musical history were novelty songs quite so popular as they were in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It began in 1958 with David Seville's "Witch Doctor," which inspired "Purple People Eater" and led directly to "The Chipmunk Song." It reached its peak two years later with an outbreak of silliness led by the Hollywood Argyles, a one-hit wonder whose "Alley Oop" topped the Billboard pop chart on this day in 1960. Alley Oop, for those too young to remember, was the name of a time-traveling caveman whose exploits were chronicled in a long-running comic strip of the same name created in 1932 by cartoonist V.T. Hamlin. At a time when Blondie and Beetle Bailey were often the best things going on a rainy Sunday afternoon, Alley Oop had a cultural currency that the children of today might have difficulty imagining. It was still strong enough in 1960 to make a #1 hit out of a novelty song that did little more than intersperse nostalgic references to dinosaur rides and bearcat stew with comments like "He sho is hip, aint he?" and set it to a doo-wop tune. The Hollywood Argyles actually consisted of a singer named Gary Paxton fronting a group of hired studio musicians paid $25 each for their efforts. Because Paxton was contractually forbidden by an existing recording contract from recording elsewhere under his real name, he released "Alley Oop" under the guise of a fictitious group that he named for the intersection of Los Angeles boulevards where the song was recorded. It was the one and only hit record for him or for the Hollywood Argyles. It was not the only novelty song, however, to top the charts in 1960. In a year when Frankie Avalon and Chubby Checker rocked almost as hard as the post-Army Elvis Presley, America's appetite for light entertainment also made a #1 hit out of Brian Hyland's timeless "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini." Jul 11, 1966: Public opinion approves bombing of North Vietnam A Harris survey taken shortly after the bombing raids on the Hanoi-Haiphong area shows that 62 percent of those interviewed favored the raids, 11 percent were opposed, and 27 percent were undecided. Of those polled, 86 percent felt the raids would hasten the end of the war. The raids under discussion were part of the expansion of Operation Rolling Thunder, which had begun in March 1965.
11 July Deaths 472 – Anthemius, Roman emperor (b. 420) 937 – Rudolph II of Burgundy (b. 880) 969 – Olga of Kiev (b. 890) 1174 – Amalric I of Jerusalem (b. 1136) 1183 – Otto I Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria (b. 1117) 1302 – Robert II, Count of Artois (b. 1250) 1535 – Joachim I Nestor, Elector of Brandenburg (b. 1484) 1581 – Peder Skram, Danish admiral and politician (b. 1503) 1593 – Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Italian painter (b. 1527) 1599 – Chōsokabe Motochika, Japanese daiymo (b.1539) 1688 – Narai Thai king (b. 1629) 1766 – Elisabeth Farnese, Italian-Spanish wife of Philip V of Spain (b. 1692) 1774 – Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet, Irish-English commander (b. 1715) 1775 – Simon Boerum, American politician (b. 1724) 1797 – Ienăchiţă Văcărescu, Romanian historian and philologist (b. 1740) 1806 – James Smith, Irish-American politician (b. 1719) 1825 – Thomas P. Grosvenor, American soldier and politician (b. 1744) 1844 – Yevgeny Baratynsky, Russian poet (b. 1800) 1905 – Muhammad Abduh, Egyptian jurist and scholar (b. 1849) 1908 – Friedrich Traun, German tennis player (b. 1876) 1909 – Simon Newcomb, Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician (b. 1835) 1920 – Eugénie de Montijo, Spanish wife of Napoleon III (b. 1826) 1929 – Billy Mosforth, English footballer (b. 1857) 1936 – James Murray, American actor (b. 1901) 1937 – George Gershwin, American pianist and composer (b. 1898) 1959 – Charlie Parker, English cricketer, coach, and umpire (b. 1882) 1966 – Delmore Schwartz, American poet and author (b. 1913) 1967 – Guy Favreau, Canadian lawyer, judge, and politician (b. 1917) 1971 – John W. Campbell, American journalist and author (b. 1910) 1971 – Pedro Rodríguez, Mexican race car driver (b. 1940) 1974 – Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish author, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1891) 1976 – León de Greiff, Colombian poet (b. 1895) 1979 – Claude Wagner, Canadian judge and politician (b. 1925) 1983 – Ross Macdonald, American-Canadian author (b. 1915) 1987 – Avi Ran, Israeli footballer (b. 1963) 1987 – Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman, American rabbi and scholar (b. 1901) 1989 – Laurence Olivier, English actor, director, and producer (b. 1907) 1994 – Savannah, American porn actress (b. 1970) 1994 – Gary Kildall, American computer scientist, founded Digital Research (b. 1942) 1995 – Don Starr, American actor (b. 1917) 1998 – Panagiotis Kondylis, Greek author (b. 1943) 1999 – Helen Forrest, American singer (b. 1917) 2000 – Pedro Mir, Dominican poet (b. 1913) 2000 – Robert Runcie, English archbishop (b. 1921) 2001 – Herman Brood, Dutch singer and actor (b. 1946) 2001 – Gaspare di Mercurio, Italian doctor and author (b. 1926) 2004 – Laurance Rockefeller, American financier and philanthropist (b. 1910) 2004 – Renée Saint-Cyr, French actress and producer (b. 1904) 2005 – Gretchen Franklin, English actress (b. 1911) 2005 – Shinya Hashimoto, Japanese wrestler (b. 1965) 2005 – Jesús Iglesias, Argentinian race car driver (b. 1922) 2005 – Frances Langford, American actress and singer (b. 1914) 2006 – Barnard Hughes, American actor (b. 1915) 2006 – John Spencer, English snooker player (b. 1935) 2007 – Glenda Adams, Australian author (b. 1939) 2007 – Lady Bird Johnson, American businesswoman, 43rd First Lady of the United States (b. 1912) 2007 – Alfonso López Michelsen, Colombian lawyer and politician, 32nd President of Colombia (b. 1913) 2007 – Ed Mirvish, American-Canadian businessman and philanthropist, founded Honest Ed's (b. 1914) 2008 – Michael E. DeBakey, American surgeon (b. 1908) 2009 – Reg Fleming, Canadian-American ice hockey player (b. 1936) 2009 – Arturo Gatti, Italian-Canadian boxer (b. 1972) 2009 – Go Mi-young, South Korean mountaineer (b. 1967) 2009 – Ji Xianlin, Chinese linguist and paleographer (b. 1911) 2010 – Walter Hawkins, American singer-songwriter, pianist, producer, and pastor (b. 1949) 2010 – Bob Sheppard, American sportscaster (b. 1910) 2011 – Rob Grill, American singer-songwriter and bass player (The Grass Roots) (b. 1943) 2012 – Dewayne Bunch, American educator and politician (b. 1962) 2012 – Art Ceccarelli, American baseball player (b. 1930) 2012 – Marion Cunningham, American author (b. 1922) 2012 – Joe McBride, Scottish footballer (b. 1938) 2012 – Richard Scudder, American journalist and publisher, co-founded MediaNews Group (b. 1913) 2012 – André Simon, French race car driver (b. 1920) 2012 – Donald J. Sobol, American author (b. 1924) 2012 – Marvin Traub, American businessman and author (b. 1925) 2013 – Zeb Alley, American politician (b. 1928) 2013 – Egbert Brieskorn, German mathematician (b. 1936) 2013 – Eugene P. Wilkinson, American admiral (b. 1918) H
Jul 11, 1967: Senators debate U.S. policy in Vietnam In Senate debates about U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) warns against further escalation of the war. Convinced that a military solution to the situation in South Vietnam was impossible, he urged an alternative to expansion of the U.S. effort in Vietnam. His alternative included putting the issue of the confrontation between North and South Vietnam before the United Nations and containing the conflict by building a defensive barrier south of the Demilitarized Zone to separate North Vietnam from South Vietnam. Senator George Aiken (R-Vermont) suggested that the Johnson administration pay more attention to people like Mansfield who were questioning the wisdom of further escalation of the war, rather than relying on "certain military leaders who have far more knowledge of weapons than they have of people." Nevertheless, Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen (Illinois), asked if he favored an increase in U.S. troops in Vietnam, replied "If General Westmoreland says we need them, yes, sir." Jul 11, 1969: Thieu challenges NLF to participate in free elections South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, in a televised speech, makes a "comprehensive offer" for a political settlement. He challenged the National Liberation Front to participate in free elections organized by a joint electoral commission and supervised by an international body. Following the speech, South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Chanh Thanh, seeking to clarify the Thieu proposal, said communists could never participate in elections in South Vietnam "as communists" nor have any role in organizing elections--only by the South Vietnamese government could organize the elections. Jul 11, 1978: Gas fire incinerates crowded campsite On this day in 1978, a truck carrying liquid gas crashes into a campsite, crowded with vacationers, in San Carlos de la Rapita, Spain. The resulting explosion killed more than 200 people; many others suffered severe burns. Shortly after 3 p.m. on a hot day on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, a 38-ton truck carrying propylene gas, used in the manufacture of alcohol, was traveling on a small, winding road 120 miles south of Barcelona. The truck, owned by Cisternas Reunidas, may have been on this coastal road instead of the nearby turnpike in order to avoid paying a toll. For unknown reasons, the truck crashed into a cement wall. (Some witnesses report seeing a fire on the truck before the crash.) Down a hill from the cement wall, 800 people, mostly families on vacation from Germany and France, were camped out near the beach in tents and makeshift bungalows. The truck, carrying 1,500 cubic feet of pressurized liquid gas, plunged down the hill and exploded in a massive fireball. Flames shot up 100 feet into the air, killing many people instantly. The resulting crater was 20 yards in diameter. The huge fire and explosion also caused the camper's portable gas units and cars to blow up. Few of the survivors were wearing any protective clothing other than a bathing suit and many of them suffered horrible burns. The timing of the disaster also contributed to the high casualty toll. Coming just after lunch, many people had not yet returned to the nearby beach. In all, 215 people lost their lives. So many German citizens were involved that German officials arranged for an airlift of doctors and equipment from Stuttgart to assist in the relief effort. Jul 11, 1979: Skylab crashes to Earth Parts of Skylab, America's first space station, come crashing down on Australia and into the Indian Ocean five years after the last manned Skylab mission ended. No one was injured. Launched in 1973, Skylab was the world's first successful space station. The first manned Skylab mission came two years after the Soviet Union launched Salynut 1, the world's first space station, into orbit around the earth. However, unlike the ill-fated Salynut, which was plagued with problems, the American space station was a great success, safely housing three separate three-man crews for extended periods of time. Originally the spent third stage of a Saturn 5 moon rocket, the cylindrical space station was 118 feet tall, weighed 77 tons, and carried the most varied assortment of experimental equipment ever assembled in a single spacecraft to that date. The crews of Skylab spent more than 700 hours observing the sun and brought home more than 175,000 solar pictures. They also provided important information about the biological effects of living in space for prolonged periods of time. Five years after the last Skylab mission, the space station's orbit began to deteriorate--earlier than was anticipated--because of unexpectedly high sunspot activity. On July 11, 1979, Skylab made a spectacular return to earth, breaking up in the atmosphere and showering burning debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia. Jul 11, 1995: U.S. establishes diplomatic relations with Vietnam Two decades after the fall of Saigon, President Bill Clinton establishes full diplomatic relations with Vietnam, citing Vietnamese cooperation in accounting for the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War. Normalization with America's old enemy began in early 1994, when President Clinton announced the lifting of the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam. Despite the lifting of the embargo, high tariffs remained on Vietnamese exports pending the country's qualification as a "most favored nation," a U.S. trade status designation that Vietnam might earn after broadening its program of free-market reforms. In July 1995, Clinton established diplomatic relations. In making the decision, Clinton was advised by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, an ex-navy pilot who had spent five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Brushing aside criticism of Clinton's decision by some Republicans, McCain asserted that it was time for America to normalize relations with Vietnam. In May 1996, Clinton terminated the combat zone designation for Vietnam and nominated Florida Representative Douglas "Pete" Peterson to become the first ambassador to Vietnam since Graham Martin was airlifted out of the country by helicopter in late April 1975. Peterson himself had served as a U.S. Air Force captain during the Vietnam War and was held as a prisoner of war for six and a half years after his bomber was shot down near Hanoi in 1966. Confirmed by Congress in 1997, Ambassador Peterson presented his credentials to communist authorities in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, in May 1997. In November 2000, Peterson greeted Clinton in Hanoi in the first presidential visit to Vietnam since Richard Nixon's 1969 trip to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Jul 11, 2010: Barefoot Bandit is captured in the Bahamas On this day in 2010, after a two-year manhunt, 19-year-old Colton Harris-Moore of Washington state is arrested following a high-speed boat chase in the Bahamas. Harris-Moore was suspected of stealing an airplane in Indiana and crash-landing it in the Bahamas the week before. Nicknamed the "Barefoot Bandit" for going shoeless during some of his alleged crimes, the teen was a suspect in scores of other burglaries in the United States and Canada, where he was accused of swiping everything from potato chips to credit cards, small planes, boats and cars. During his time as a fugitive, Harris-Moore gained a cult-like following online, with fans viewing him as a folk hero and praising his brazenness and his uncanny ability to elude law-enforcement officials. Growing up on Camano Island, Washington, Harris-Moore had a difficult, impoverished childhood. He reportedly stole food from neighbors, had a turbulent relationship with his mother (his father spent time in jail and is believed to have been largely absent from the family) and was often in trouble at school before dropping out in the 10th grade. His first criminal conviction was at age 12, for possession of stolen property. In April 2008, Harris-Moore escaped from a Renton, Washington, juvenile halfway house, where he was serving time for burglarizing homes. Over the next two years, he continued his crime spree, breaking into a long string of private residences and businesses, primarily in the Pacific Northwest, while camping in the woods and unoccupied homes. The teen, who learned to fly without any formal training, became a suspect in the theft of at least five small planes, all of which he managed to pilot and safely crash-land. In early July 2010, Harris-Moore commandeered an aircraft in Bloomington, Indiana, and flew it to the Bahamas, where he crash-landed on Great Abaco Island. He allegedly went on to commit a series of break-ins throughout the Bahamas, before being nabbed in a stolen boat by Bahamian police in the early hours of July 11. Harris-Moore eventually pleaded guilty to seven federal charges, including two airplane thefts and a bank robbery, as well as more than 30 state charges in Washington, including burglary and identity theft. In December 2011, he was sentenced in state court to seven years in prison. In January 2012, a federal judge in Seattle sentenced Harris-Moore to six-and-a-half years behind bars, to run concurrently with his state time.
12 July Events 927 – Æthelstan, King of England, secures a pledge from Constantine II of Scotland that the latter will not ally with Viking kings, beginning the process of unifying Great Britain. This is considered the closest thing that England has to a foundation date. 1191 – Third Crusade: Saladin's garrison surrenders to Philip Augustus, ending the two-year siege of Acre. 1470 – The Ottomans capture Euboea. 1493 – Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the best-documented early printed books, is published. 1543 – King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace. 1561 – Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is consecrated. 1562 – Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatán, burns the sacred books of the Maya. 1580 – The Ostrog Bible, one of the early printed Bibles in a Slavic language, is published. 1690 – Battle of the Boyne (Gregorian calendar) – The armies of William III defeat those of the former James II. 1691 – Battle of Aughrim (Julian calendar) – The decisive victory of William III of England's forces in Ireland. 1776 – Captain James Cook begins his third voyage. 1789 – French revolutionary and radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gave a speech in response to the dismissal of Jacques Necker France's finance minister the day before. The speech calls the citizens to arms and leads to the Storming of the Bastille two days later. 1790 – The Civil Constitution of the Clergy is passed in France by the National Constituent Assembly. 1799 – Ranjit Singh conquers Lahore and becomes Maharaja of the Punjab (Sikh Empire). 1801 – French Revolutionary Wars: British Royal Navy ships inflict heavy damage against Spanish and French ships in the Second Battle of Algeciras. 1804 – Former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton dies a day after being shot in a duel. 1806 – Sixteen German imperial states leave the Holy Roman Empire and form the Confederation of the Rhine. 1806 – Liechtenstein is given full sovereignty after its accession to the Confederation of the Rhine. 1812 – War of 1812: The United States invades Canada at Windsor, Ontario. 1862 – The Medal of Honor is authorized by the United States Congress. 1879 – The National Guards Unit of Bulgaria is founded. 1913 – Second Balkan War: Serbian forces begin their siege of the Bulgarian city of Vidin; the siege is later called off when the war ends. 1917 – The Bisbee Deportation occurs as vigilantes kidnap and deport nearly 1,300 striking miners and others from Bisbee, Arizona. 1918 – The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kawachi blows up at Shunan, western Honshu, Japan, killing at least 621. 1920 – The Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty is signed. Soviet Russia recognizes independent Lithuania. 1932 – Hedley Verity takes a cricket world record ten wickets for ten runs in a county match for Yorkshire. 1943 – World War II: Battle of Prokhorovka – German and Soviet forces engage in one of the largest tank engagements of all time. 1948 – Arab–Israeli War: Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders the expulsion of Palestinians from the towns of Lod and Ramla. 1960 – Orlyonok, the main Young Pioneer camp of the Russian SFSR, is founded. 1961 – Pune floods due to failure of the Khadakwasla and Panshet dams. Half of Pune is submerged, more than 100,000 families need to be relocated and the death toll exceeds 2,000. 1962 – The Rolling Stones perform their first concert, at the Marquee Club in London, England, United Kingdom. 1963 – Pauline Reade, who was 16-years-old, disappears on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club in Gorton, England, the first victim in the Moors murders. 1967 – The Newark riots begin in Newark, New Jersey. 1970 – A fire consumes the wooden home of Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt and irretrievably destroys about 90 percent of his output. 1971 – The Australian Aboriginal Flag is flown for the first time. 1973 – A fire destroys the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States. 1975 – São Tomé and Príncipe declare independence from Portugal. 1979 – The island nation of Kiribati becomes independent from United Kingdom. 2006 – Hezbollah initiates Operation True Promise. 2007 – U.S. Army Apache helicopters perform airstrikes in Baghdad, Iraq; footage from the cockpit is later leaked to the Internet. 2012 – The Turaymisah massacre kills 250 people during a Syrian military operation in a village within the Hama Governorate. B
