This Day in American History

 

 

    1630 - New Amsterdam's governor bought Gull Island in New York Harbor from Indians for cargo, renaming it Oyster Island.  It eventually became known as Ellis Island.
    1774 - The first Declaration of independence by citizens of an American colony was formally made in the First Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, PA, at a meeting of freeholders and freemen from the several townships. The Reverend John Montgomery presided. Other formal community declarations were to follow, many of them from meetings held inside their local churches.
    1787 - Northwest Ordinance, adopted by the Continental Congress, provides for admission of new states west of New York and north of the Ohio River. Requires a population of 60,000 people; new states are guaranteed freedom of religion, support for schools, and slavery to be declared illegal.
    1792 - The first bridge on a large scale was the West Boston Bridge, connecting Boston, MA, and Cambridge, MA, begun this day and open for traffic on November 23, 1793. The cost was $76,000. The toll right was granted to the proprietors for 70 years. It was replaced in 1907 by the towered and ornamented structured called the Cambridge Bridge.
http://www.kellscraft.com/bostonbyways/bostonbyways01.html
    1804 - Former Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, died a day after being shot in the duel with Aaron Burr.
    1817 - Henry David Thoreau (d. 1862) was born at Concord, MA. birthday. American author and philosopher. In “Walden,” he wrote, "I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines."
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jul12.html
    1839 - Due to an erroneous eyewitness account, Abner Doubleday is given credit for establishing the first baseball game is played in America. The Hall of Fame, which opens a century later in Cooperstown, celebrates the origin of our national pastime in this small upstate New York town although it is doubtful the then-West Point cadet was ever there or ever watched a baseball game. The earliest explicit reference to the game in America is from March 1786 in the diary of a student at Princeton, John Rhea Smith: "A fine day, play baste ball in the campus but am beaten for I miss both catching and striking the ball." There is a possible reference a generation older, from Harvard; describing the campus buttery in the 1760s, Sidney Willard wrote "Besides eatables, everything necessary for a student was there sold, and articles used in the playgrounds, such as bats, balls etc. ... Here it was that we wrestled and ran, played at quoits and cricket, and various games of bat and ball.
    1843 - Mormon church founder Joseph Smith announced that a divine revelation had been given him sanctioning polygamy among his newly-organized religious followers.
    1846 - First public Protestant worship was conducted by Capt. Montgomery.
    1852 - Leland Stanford of Wisconsin settled in San Francisco.
    1859 - William Goodale of Clinton, MA applied for a patent of a machine that manufactured paper bags. In 1872, Luther Childs Crowell of Boston, MA, applied for a patent on his invention, a machine to manufacture paper bags with square bottoms. The bags produced by the machine had two longitudinal inward folds and revolutionized the retail business with “easy carry out.”
    1862 – The Medal of Honor was authorized by Congress.  It is the United States’ highest and most prestigious personal military decoration that may be awarded to recognize U.S. military service members who distinguished themselves by acts of valor.  The medal is normally awarded by the President in the name of the Congress.  The Medal of Honor is the oldest continuously issued combat decoration of the United States armed forces.  The Medal of Honor was created as a Navy version in 1861, named the "Medal of Valor," and an Army version of the medal named the "Medal of Honor" was established in 1862 to give recognition to men who distinguished themselves "conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity" in combat with an enemy of the United States. The Air Force version was established in 1965 and personnel of the Marine Corps and Coast Guard receive the Navy version.
    1862 - Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about General Benjamin Butler's controversial "Woman Order" in Union-occupied New Orleans.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/
harp/0712.html#explanation
    1871 - The Orange Riot: Protestant Irishmen were shot by Catholic Irish snipers as they march down New York's Eighth Avenue. The incident provoked a bloody riot, involving Irishmen, police, and infantry. When the smoke clears, 54 are dead. ...a bloody riot on Orange Day proved to be the crack in the dike. The first real public outcry arose against Tammany Hall in the wake of this riot, and when, ten days later, the New York Times went public with the actual figures, copied from city ledgers, that proved Boss Tweed's fraud beyond a shadow of a doubt, the blow that had failed to land some months earlier finally struck its mark. By the end of the year, Tweed was a doomed man: he had been arrested and released on bail, resigned his post as the commissioner of public works, and been voted out of his post as chairman of Tammany's general committee (though he had, miraculously, won re-election to his seat in the state senate while all this was happening).
    1878 - Yellow fever epidemic begins in New Orleans, eventually leading to the deaths of 4,500 people.
    1884 – Louis B. Mayer was born Lazar Meir (d. 1957) in Minsk, Russia.  Co-founder of Metro-Goldman-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924, he was skilled at developing star actors, including child actors, then placing them in consistently slick productions, such as musicals or comedies, for which MGM became famous. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the most prestigious film studio, accumulating the largest concentration of leading writers, directors and stars in Hollywood.
    1893 - Turner Frontier address: Historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History," at a meeting of the American Historical Association at Chicago during the Columbian Exposition. Stating that the frontier was a spawning ground for many of the social and intellectual traits that made Americans different from Europeans, Turner saw the end of the frontier as a major break in the psychology of the nation. Turner's formalization of this idea came in part from his reading the Extra Census Bulletin No. 2: “Distribution of Population According to Density: 1890,” which said that, "Up to and including 1890, the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line."
    1895 - Buckminster Fuller (d. 1983), architect, inventor, engineer and philosopher, was born Richard Buckminster Fuller at Milton, MA. His geodesic dome is one of the most important structural innovations of the 20th century.
http://www.bfi.org/
    1895 - Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (d. 1960) was born in NYC.  A theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) theatre director of musicals for almost forty years, Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Many of his songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs. Hammerstein was the lyricist and playwright in his partnerships; his collaborators wrote the music.
    1900 - 114ø F (46ø C), Basin, Wyoming
    1901 – The winningest pitcher in Major League history, Cy Young, won his 300th game.
    1908 – Comedian Milton Berle was born Mendel Berlinger (d. 2002), Harlem, NYC.  His nickname was “Mr. Television,” but Milton Berle had long career as a vaudeville film, radio and theater comedian as well. He was popular before becoming the host of NBC's “Texaco Star Theater” in 1948, but that variety show made him a huge national star. Berle is generally recognized as television’s first mega-star.  Television set sales more than doubled after Texaco Star Theatre's debut, reaching two million in 1949. Dressed in drag, rattling off corny jokes and drawing the day's biggest stars, “Uncle Miltie” made the show a television event until its ending in 1954. At $1 million a year, NBC signed him to an exclusive, unprecedented 30-year television contract in 1951. He was one of the first seven inductees into the Academy of Television Arts and Science's TV Hall of Fame.
http://www.seasonedcitizen.com/columns/fj-004.html
http://www.classicthemes.com/50sTVThemes/
themePages/texacoStarTheater.html
    1909 - Birthday of Joe DeRita, born Joseph Wardell (d. 1993), better known as “Curly” of Three Stooges, at Philadelphia, PA. He joined the team in 1959 after Joe Besser left. He appeared in “Have Rocket, Will Travel” (1959), “Snow White and the Three Stooges” (1961) and “The Outland is Coming” (1965).
http://www.threestooges.com/bios/curlyjoe.htm
http://www.intac.com/~ralphv/3stooges/curlyjoe.htm
    1912 - Trombonist-band leader Will Bradley was born Wilbur Schwichtenberg (d. 1989), Newton, NJ
http://www.hepjazz.com/bradleybiog.htm
http://shopping.yahoo.com/shop?d=product&id=1927021534
http://video.artistdirect.com/music/artist/card/0,,407306,00.html
    1916 – Birthday of tenor sax player Sam “The Man” Taylor (d. 1990), Lexington, TN
    1917 - One of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century, Andrew Wyeth (d. 2009), was born in Chadds Ford, PA.  In his art, Wyeth's favorite subjects were the land and people around him, both in his hometown and at his summer home in Maine. Wyeth often noted: "I paint my life."
    1920 - Birthday of tenor sax player Paul Gonsalves (d. 1974), Brockton, MA
http://www.pitt.edu/~atteberr/jazz/artists/ellington/people/paulg.html
    1924 - Harold M. Osborne of the Illinois Athletic Club, Chicago, IL, became the first Decathlon champion from the United States.  He won 7,710,775 points at the Olympic games in Paris. The 10 events in the decathlon are the 100-meter dash, the 400 meter run, the 1,5000 meter run, the 100-meter hurdle, the broad jump , the high jump, the shot put, the discus throw, the pole vault, and the javelin throw.
    1927 – Trumpet player Conte Condoli, born Secondo Condoli  (d. 2001) birthday, Mishawaka, IN.  Long time staff musician on the NBC “Tonight Show,” one of the most popular studio trumpet musicians, considered a trumpet player's trumpet player, one of Billy May's favorites.
http://www.barryquick.com/large.asp?urn=46
http://www.srirecords.com/condoli.html
http://www.jazznetwork.com/jazznews6.html
http://www.musicweb.uk.net/jazz/2002/Apr02/West_Coast_DVD.htm
    1928 - Lou Gehrig collects fourteen total bases to lead the Yankees to a 15-7 win over the White Sox; the New York first baseman blasts two triples and two homers.
    1930 - Bobby Jones won the U.S. Open golf championship by two strokes over Macdonald Smith at the Interlachen Country Club in Hopkins, MN. Having already won the British Open, the British Amateur and the US Amateur, Jones became the only golfer to win the grand Slam.
    1933 - A minimum wage of 40 cents an hour was established in the U.S.
http://www.state.hi.us/dlir/rs/loihi/OMI/OTHER/MIN_WAGE.HTM
http://www.policyalmanac.org/economic/minimum_wage.shtml
    1934 - Birthday of pianist Van Cliburn, born Harvey Lavan, Jr. (d. 2013), Shreveport, LA.  He was signed to a recording contract by RCA Victor after winning the 1958 Tchaikovsky competition for young pianists in Moscow. Cliburn's recording of Tchaikovsky's "Piano Concerto Number One" was the first classical LP to sell a million copies. After a long retirement, he returned to performing in 1987.
http://www.cliburn.org/ 
    1938 - Birthday of comedian, actor, humanitarian, educator Bill Cosby, Philadelphia, PA.
http://www.billcosby.com/
    1943 - The largest tank battle in history took place outside the small village of Prohorovka, Russia. Nine hundred Russian tanks attacked an equal number of German Panther and Porsche tanks. These were better built, strong armor, better engines, longer range, more power and the elite that the Nazi Regime built under the command of their best officers. Though the German equipment had all these advantages and were larger tanks, that advantage was lost as the Russian engaged in extremely close range battle where the larger tanks lacked maneuverability. When Hitler himself ordered a cease-fire, 300 German tanks remained strewn over the field and the thrust into Russia was halted in the first deciding battle of the war.
http://pub97.ezboard.com/fusmilitary3744
2frm14.showMessage?topicID=11.topic
http://www.biztravel.com/TRAVEL/SIT/sit_pages/8763.html
    1944 - Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary was chartered in Mill Valley, CA, under sponsorship of the Southern Baptist Church.
    1945 - Top Hits
“Dream” - The Pied Pipers
“The More I See You” - Dick Haymes
“Bell Bottom Trousers” - Tony Pastor
“Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima” - Bob Wills
    1946 - "The Adventures of Sam Spade" was heard on ABC radio for the first time. Howard Duff starred as the San Francisco detective in the summer replacement series.  Sam Spade first appeared in the 1930 Dashiell Hammett novel "The Maltese Falcon" and in the 1931 original film version of "The Maltese Falcon," starring Ricardo Cortez. Humphrey Bogart played Sam in the 1941 movie.

http://www.geocities.com/bmnelson_98/USMilitaryEzboard.html.
    1946 - Stan Kenton cuts “Artistry in Percussion” with Shelly Manne, Hollywood, CA
http://www.mamajazz.org/pages/biokenton.html
http://www.cyberjaz.com/noday/bio.htm
http://www.cyberjaz.com/noday/booking.htm
    1949 - Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians became the first black players to appear in baseball's All-Star game. The American League won the game, played in Ebbetts Field, Brooklyn, NY, 11-7.
    1949 - Football quarterback Norm Van Brocklin, a student at the University of Oregon, decided against another year of college and signed a professional NFL contract to play with the Los Angeles Rams.
    1949 - Major League owners agree to install warning tracks made of cinder in front of outfield fences prior to the start of next season.
    1951 - The Kaw River flood occurred. The month of June that year was the wettest of record for the state of Kansas, and during the four days preceding the flood much of eastern Kansas and western Missouri received more than ten inches of rain. Flooding in the Midwest claimed 41 lives, left 200 thousand persons homeless, and caused a billion dollars property damage. Kansas City was hardest hit. The central industrial district sustained 870 million dollars property damage
    1951 – The Yankees’ Allie Reynolds pitched the first of his two no-hitters this year.  Gene Woodling’s 7th-inning homer off Indians loser Bob Feller was the difference in the 1-0 game. He was the first American League pitcher to throw two no-hitters in a season and only the second player to do so in baseball history, after Johnny Vander Meer did it back-to-back in 1938.
    1953 - Top Hits
“Song from Moulin Rouge” - The Percy Faith Orchestra
“Ruby” - Richard Hayman
“I'm Walking Behind You” - Eddie Fisher
“It's Been So Long” - Webb Pierce
    1954 - Elvis Presley signs his first recording contract (Sun Records) and quits his job as a truck driver.
    1954 - The Major League Baseball Players Association was organized in Cleveland, OH. Its purpose was to represent ball players in policy decisions with baseball club owners.
    1957 - Prince Karim left Harvard University in Cambridge, MA to become the leader of 20 million Ismaili Moslems. He became the Aga Khan for the religious sect. Prince Karim was 20 years old at the time of his calling.
    1958 - "Yakety Yak," by The Coasters, became the number one song in the U.S.A., according to "Billboard" magazine. It was the first stereo record to reach the top of the chart.
http://www.rockhall.com/hof/inductee.asp?id=81
http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/atlant.html
http://www.srv.net/~roxtar/coasters.html
    1960 - The first Etch-A-Sketch went on sale. Over 50 million units were sold during the next 25 years. Charlie Lester contains it was his first portable computer laptop.
http://www.babygrand.com/games/etc.htm
    1962 - The Rolling Stones played their first concert at the Marquee club in London. The lineup for that date was lead vocalist Mick Jagger, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, Dick Taylor on bass and Mick Avory, later of the Kinks, on drums. Avory and Taylor were replaced by Tony Chapman on drums and Bill Wyman on bass. Chapman didn't work out, and drummer Charlie Watts completed the Stones' lineup in January 1963. 1969- the rock super group Blind Faith, fronted by Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood, made its US debut at Madison Square Garden. The band made only this tour and one album before splitting up.
    1962 - Garbage dump in Pennsylvania erupts beneath the ground, burns into extensive coal mine tunnels. As late as 1984, the fire still raged, burning 25 squares miles and threatening to break to the surface. The television show “60 Minutes” did an up-date in 2006: the fire was still burning out of control, many towns abandoned. Evidently there are coal fires elsewhere in the United States, and the world, with the largest burning in China.    
    1961 - Top Hits
“Tossin' and Turnin'” - Bobby Lewis
“The Boll Weevil Song” - Brook Benton
“Every Beat of My Heart” - Pips
“Heartbreak U.S.A.” - Kitty Wells
    1966 - Racial riots erupt in Chicago and Cleveland. Chicago uprising lasts until 15th.
    1967 - Twenty-three die in Newark, NJ race rebellion
http://www.africana.com/Utilities/Content.html?&../cgi-bin/banner.pl?banner=
Education&../articles/tt_950.htm
    1969 - Top Hits
“In the Year 2525” - Zager & Evans
“Spinning Wheel” - Blood, Sweat & Tears
“Good Morning Starshine” - Oliver
“Statue of a Fool” - Jack Greene
    1970 - “Evenings at the Pops” premieres on TV. PBS's popular concert series premiered with conductor Arthur Fiedler heading the Boston Pops Orchestra. Conductor/composer John Williams took over the post upon Fiedler's death in 1979; Keith Lockhart is the current conductor.
    1971 - Kristi Tasuya Yamaguchi birthday, Olympic gold medal figure skater, born Hayward, CA.
    1970 - Janis Joplin debuted with her new group, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, before 4,000 people in Louisville, Kentucky. Less than three months later, she was dead of a heroin overdose
    1971 - 13,000 people packed the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh to see the first authorized staging of "Jesus Christ Superstar." The work was the brainchild of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice and made its debut as a record album, which became the top seller of 1971. Scores of unlicensed concert productions sprang up in the US in the wake of the album's success, so Webber and Rice came up with their own concert and theatrical versions, one of which opened on Broadway in October of '71.
   1971-Birthday of Olympic gold medal figure skater Kristi Tsuya Yamaguchi, born Hayward, Ca.
    1971 - Juan Corona, indicted for 25 murders, Sacramento, California
http://isbn.nu/0440223334/price/1
    1973 - A major fire at the National Personal Records Center in St. Louis destroyed approximately one-third of its 52 million official military personnel files. 
    1975 - K.C. & the Sunshine Band make their pop chart debut with "Get Down Tonight." It's the first of four singles by the band to make it to the number one spot
    1976 - “Family Feud” premiered on television, from the production team of Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. This game show set two families against each other to raise the greater number of points. The contestants had to predict the most common answers to a given survey. Richard Dawson, TV's famous kissing host, and the late Ray Combs served as hosts of the show. Another version of the show appeared in 1999 with Louie Anderson as host and is still running today, currently with host Steve Harvey.  “100 families surveyed, top three answers on the board…survey said...”
http://www.familyfeud.tv/
    1976 - Representative Barbara Jordan (D-Texas) is the keynote speaker of the 1976 Democratic Convention, the first woman and the first black to be accorded the honor. (And the first lesbian although her lifestyle was not publicized at the time.) It was a rousing speech that electrified the convention and TV watchers.
    1977 - Top Hits
“Undercover Angel” - Alan O'Day
“Da Doo Ron Ron” - Shaun Cassidy
“Looks like We Made It” - Barry Manilow
“I'll Be Leaving Alone” - Charley Pride
    1979 - The Chicago White Sox stated “Disco Demolition Night” as a promotion between games of a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers. Chicago disc jockey Steve Dahl burned disco records brought by fans, who received discount admission. Some of those fans decided to start their own fires, and a mini-riot ensued, with fans surging onto the field, high on beer and other substances that did not come in a bottle, forcing the Chicago White Sox to forfeit the second game of the doubleheader.
    1980 - Lightning struck a large broiler house in Branford, FL, and the ensuing fire broiled 11,000 nearly ready broilers. Firemen were able to save a few thousand chickens, however.
    1981 - Major League Baseball's first strike which begins after the start of a season cancels thirteen regular-season games.
    1982 - "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" broke all box-office records by surpassing the $100-million mark of ticket sales in the first 31 days of its opening.
    1982 - The last of the distinctive-looking Checker taxicabs rolled off the assembly line in Kalamazoo, MI. The company had produced those cabs since 1922.
http://www.checkercabs.org/html/checker_headquarters.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/taxidreams/history/
http://www.foraride.com/
    1983 - Hall of Famers Charlie Gehringer and Hank Greenberg have their uniform numbers retired by Detroit in a ballpark ceremony. The numbers 2 and 5, respectively, will join Al Kaline's #6 (1980) as the only numbers retired by the Tigers.
    1984 - Steve Carlton of the Philadelphia Phillies earned his 100th strikeout of the season and led the Phils to a 4-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds. Carlton tied a record set by Walter Johnson by getting 100 or more strikeouts in 18 straight seasons. Carlton became baseball's all-time strikeout leader with 3,813. He played for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Phillies, and briefly, for the Chicago White Sox, San Francisco Giants, Cleveland Indians and Minnesota Twins before retiring and becoming a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
    1984 - Walter F. Mondale at the Democratic National Convention chooses the first vice presidential candidate from a major party, Geraldine Ferraro, congressional representative from New York. Ronald Reagan was elected president and George Bush vice-president, carrying 49 states. The electoral vote was 525 to Mondale's 12. Popular vote was Reagan 54,455,075 to Mondale 37,577,184. In congressional elections, the Republicans gained two Senate seats for a 53-47 majority. In the House, the Democrats lost 14 seats but kept a majority of 253-182.
    1985 - Top Hits
“Sussudio” - Phil Collins
“A View to a Kill” - Duran Duran
“Raspberry Beret” - Prince & The Revolution
“She's a Miracle” – Exile
    1988 - Hail up 4.5 inches in diameter in the Monango-Fullerton area of North Dakota. Patio furniture appeared as if beaten with a sledge hammer.  Thunderstorms produced heavy rain in Arkansas and northeastern Texas, with 6.59 inches reported at Mesquite, TX, in just an hour and fifteen minutes. Garland, TX, reported water up to the tops of cars following a torrential downpour.
    1990 - “Northern Exposure” premiered on television. CBS's comedy-drama was essentially a fish-out-of-water (or rather a New Yorker out of Manhattan) series. Dr. Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow) was forced to practice medicine in remote Cicely, Alaska, to pay off his student loans. He gradually accepted his lot through the help of the town's quirky citizens who needed him because he was the only doctor in town. The show's principal cast featured Barry Corbin as Maurice Minnefield, a former NASA astronaut and Cicely's most prominent businessman, .Janine Turner as bush pilot Maggie O'Connell, Elaine Miles as Joel's assistant/receptionist Marilyn, Darren E. Burrows as Ed Chigliak, a half-Indian aspiring filmmaker, John Cullum as Cicely's mayor and tavern owner I-lolling Vincoeur, Cynthia Geary as Holling's girlfriend and waitress Shelley Tambo, Peg Phillips as store proprietor Ruth-Anne and John Corbett as deejay and philosopher Chris Stevens.
http://www.retroweb.com/nexp.html
    1994 - Record stores around the world threw midnight parties as the Rolling Stones' "Voodoo Lounge" album went on sale. It was their first release since "Steel Wheels" five years earlier.
http://www.rollingstones.com/
    1997 - After 126 years of play, the first interleague games in Major League history are played as the Giants defeat the Rangers, 4-3, at the Ballpark in Texas. Glenallen Hill becomes the National League's first regular season designated hitter.
    2015 - Novak Djokovic achieves his third Wimbledon title, winning over Roger Federer.  Had Federer won, he would have made history as the first to win eight Wimbledon titles.