Yeah, Right, Whatever

1356 English defeat French at Battle of Poitiers


1777 American soldiers won the first Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War.


1796 President George Washington's farewell address was published. In it, America's first chief executive advised, "Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all."


1849 1st commercial laundry established, in Oakland, California


1873 Black Friday: Jay Cooke & Co fails, causing a securities panic (You mean companies have failed before? Did the government bail them out, too?)



1906 Addressing the annual dinner of The Associated Press in New York, Mark Twain said there were "only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe ... the sun in the heavens and The Associated Press down here." (Oh, how the mighty have fallen!)



1928 Mickey Mouse's screen debut (Steamboat Willie at Colony Theater NYC)


1934 Bruno Hauptmann was arrested in New York and charged with the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby.


1945 Nazi propagandist William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw, was sentenced to death by a British court.


1955 President Juan Peron of Argentina was ousted after a revolt by the military.


1957 The United States conducted its first underground nuclear test, in the Nevada desert.


1959 Nikita Krushchev is denied access to Disneyland


1970 "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" debuted on CBS.


1982 Emoticons were born when Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman proposed punctuating humorous or sarcastic computer messages with a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis as a horizontal "smiley face." :-)


1985 The Mexico City area was struck by the first of two devastating earthquakes that claimed some 6,000 lives.


1994 U.S. troops entered Haiti to enforce the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.


1995 The New York Times and The Washington Post published the Unabomber's manifesto.


2001 The Pentagon ordered combat aircraft to the Persian Gulf in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.


2002 President George W. Bush asked Congress for authority to "use all means," including military force if necessary, to disarm and overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein if he did not quickly meet United Nations demands to abandon all weapons of mass destruction.


2004 Hu Jintao became the undisputed leader of China with the departure of former President Jiang Zemin from his top military post.


2005 Former Tyco CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski was sentenced in New York to up to 25 years in prison for looting the company of hundreds of millions of dollars; Tyco's former finance chief, Mark Swartz, received the same sentence.


2005 Al-Qaida deputy Ayman al-Zawahri said his terror network had carried out the July 7 London bombings that killed 52 people.

// posted by Beth @ 7:38 AM |