Photograph by Kilroy_60
"What's the future today will be the past tomorrow so make the most of now."
-Kilroy_60
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Let Us Not Forget
Friday, May 29, 2009
Glenn Beck, FOX News... Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat
Glenn Beck on the FOX News Channel is truly one of the giants of broadcast news. It's an honor to pay tribute to him...
Glenn Beck, ladies and gentleman. Play him off, Keyboard Cat.
Glenn Beck, ladies and gentleman. Play him off, Keyboard Cat.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
239 Notable Moments from The Second Half of the 20th Century
From The Writer's Nook, at Black Squirrel Run...
@ July 4, 1951 A reporter for the Madison (Wisconsin) Capital-Times is rebuffed by 99 out of 100 people he asks to sign a petition made up of quotations from the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Many call the petition subversive.
@ January 31, 1952 Angered over Senator Joseph McCarthy's repeated attacks on federal employees, as well as his charges that Communists have infiltrated the government, President Harry S. Truman denounces the Republican senator as pathological, untruthful and a character assassin who apparently requires no information for his accusations.
@ December 2, 1952 The first known nuclear power accident occurs. An employee at an experimental nuclear power reactor at Chalk River, Canada mistakenly lifts four of the system's twelve rods out of the fuel core, igniting a chain reaction that melts part of the uranium.
@ December 30, 1952 The Tuskegee Institute reports that 1952 was the first year in seventy-one years that there were no lynchings in the United States.
@ May 29, 1953 Edmund Hillary, thirty-four, a New Zealand beekeeper, and Tensing Norkay, forty-two, a tribesman of Nepal, are the first persons in history to reach the top of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, more than 29,000 feet above sea level.
@ June 27, 1953 Following the longest truce negotiations in the history of warfare (2 years, 17 days and some 575 meetings between the belligerents), the war in Korea is over. An armistice is signed at Panmunjom.
@ November 1, 1953 The first issue of Playboy is published in Chicago by Hugh Hefner, age twenty-seven, who turns it into what he later deems "an empire."
@ February 23, 1954 The first mass inoculation against polio is given to students in Pittsburgh
@ March 1, 1954 Five congressman are shot on the floor of the House of Representatives by Puerto Rican nationalists seeking the independence of their country.
@ March 18, 1954 RKO Pictures Corporation stockholders approve the sale of the company to Howard Hughes. After Hughes writes out a check for $23,489,478 he becomes the first individual ever to be sole owner of a major motion picture company.
@ June 21, 1954 In Geneva a conference ends on the resolution of the Indochina War. The central decision is the division of Vietnam into two zones separated along the seventeenth parallel. Laos and Cambodia are made independent.
@ July 6, 1954 Elvis Presley, a self-taught nineteen-year-old singer, makes his first record, a combination of country music on one side and rhythm and blues on the other that portends a revolution in popular music.
@ September 6, 1954 Groundbreaking is held in Shippingport, Pennsylvania for the world's first nuclear power plant.
@ September 29, 1954 During the eighth inning of the first game of the World Series, Willie Mays makes a catch on the dead run of a 450-foot blast off the bat of Dick Wertz that is so remarkable that thirty-five years later it will still be known as the catch.
@ November 12, 1954 Ellis Island closes as a processing center for immigrants. In its sixty-two years in operation it has processed 20 million immigrants.
@ January 19, 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower holds the first presidential TV news conference. It is also the first to which motion picture cameras are allowed. Aides to the president say that news reel and TV cameras will be allowed into future conferences on the same basis as other accredited reporters.
@ September 30, 1955 James Dean is killedas his Porsche 550 Spyder crashes in an accident near Paso Robles, Texas.
@ December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. A boycott is coordinated by a then-unknown minister named Martin Luther King, Jr.
@ August 6, 1956 Albert Woolson, the last Union soldier of the Civil War, dies at the age of 109.
@ January 16, 1957 A U.S. B-52 Superfortress makes the first nonstop round the globe flight in forty-five hours and nineteen minutes.
@ August 30, 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond sets a new filibuster record in the Congress speaking twenty-four hours, twenty-seven minutes, against civil rights legislation.
@ October 4, 1957 The space age begins with the launching of the Sputnik spacecraft by the Soviet Union.
@ December 18, 1957 At Shippingport, Pennsylvania the first large-scale American nuclear power plant goes into operation and begins supplying electricity to the Pittsburgh area.
@ July 28, 1958 President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Among other things it creates the spce agency or National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
@ April 9, 1959 The first seven astronauts are selected.
@ December 1, 1959 In Washington twelve nations sign an agreement to keep Antarctica free of political and military strife and reserve the area for scientific research.
@ January 31, 1960 Senator John F. Kennedy announces that he is running for the presidency.
@ May 10, 1960 The U.S. atomic submarine Triton surfaces after completing the first underwater circumnavigation of the globe: 30,708 miles in 84 days.
@ July 9, 1960 Roger Woodward, age seven, falls out of a capsized boat and becomes the first person to survive a plunge over Niagara Falls. He suffers only minor injuries.
@ April 12, 1961 The USSR puts the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin--- one orbit, 89.1 minutes.
@ May 5, 1961 The first American astronaut goes into space today. Navy commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr. leaves Cape Canaveral and makes a suborbital flight that reaches 114 miles in altitude and reaches a top speed of 5,181 MPH. He is aboard the Mercury capsule Freedom VII.
@ May 11, 1961 President Kennedy dispatches 400 Special Forces soldiers and an additional 100 military advisors to Vietnam. He gives his authorization for clandestine warfare against the North by personnel of the South with American help.
@ July 2, 1961 Author Ernest Hemingway, age sixty-one, shoots himself to death at his mountain-ringed home in Ketchum, Idaho. It is ruled accidental.
@ August 13, 1961 East Germany closes the Brandenburg Gate and seals off the border between eastern and western sectors of Berlin. As part of the closing, the government is about to begin building the Berlin Wall.
@ October 1, 1961 Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hits his sixty-first home run in the 162nd and last game of the season, breaking Babe Ruth's 154-game 1927 record.
@ December 11, 1961 Two U.S. Army helicopter companies, representing the first direct military support for South Vietnam, arrive in Saigon. These first two companies include 32 helicopters and 4,000 men. They are immediately assigned to Vietnamese combat units.
@ January 20, 1962 Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn orbits the earth three times in space capsule Friendship 7, becoming the first American in orbit. Television beams his flight to 135 million Americans.
@ March 2, 1962 Basketball player Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points---36 field goals and 28 foul shots---for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks.
@ August 5, 1962 Marilyn Monroe is found dead of a barbiturate overdose in her Los Angeles home. The death is officially ruled a suicide.
@ October 1, 1962 This evening Johnny Carson succeeds Jack Paar as the permanent host of the NBC Tonight Show.
@ The United States blockades---by air and sea---Cuba after announcing that it has photographs of Cuban-Russian missile bases capable of sending nuclear bombs 1,000 miles into the U.S. The U.S. threatens to invade Cuba if the bases are not dismantled. The Soviet Union threatens nuclear war.
@ January 14, 1963 George Wallace, sworn in as governor of Alabama, pledges "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever."
@ March 20, 1963 The first major pop art exhibition opens at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, featuring such artists as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
@ April 4, 1963 President Kennedy's Advisory Commission on Narcotic and Drug Abuse recommends a massive attack on importers of drugs.
@ April 17, 1963 Pete Rozelle suspends Green Bay's Paul Hornung and Detroit's Alex Karras for gambling with known hoodlums. Fines for five others on the Detroit Lions are $2,000 each.
@ May 3, 1963 Birmingham, Alabama police attack young civil rights marchers with dogs and fire hoses.
@ June 17, 1963 By a vote of eight to one the Supreme Court declares Bible reading the the reciting of the Lord's Prayer in public schools to be unconstitutional.
@ August 30, 1963 The first emergency hot line goes on line between the White House and the Kremlin. The purpose of the special line is to provide a means of emergency consultation that can prevent accidental war. It is approved by a pact signed on June 20 by delegates from the two nations.
@ October 11, 1963 The Commission on the Status of Women reports to President Kennedy, who concedes that there is discrimination against women in the United States.
@ November 25, 1963 John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
@ December 7, 1963 The instant replay is born during a telecast of the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia. The first play to be shown again is a short touchdown run by Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh. "This is not live!" announcer Lindsey Nelson screams, "Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again."
@ February 13, 1964 The Beatles arrive in the U.S. for the first time. On the 15th they appear on the Ed Sullivan television showo, and rock 'n' roll never is the same.
@ March 16, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson sends his War on Poverty program to Congress caling for an Office of Economic Opportunity to administer it.
@ April 17, 1964 The Ford Mustang makes its debut and immediately turns heads. It spawns a generation of copycat small, high-performance, V-8 powered cars that are known as "pony cars" in deference to the Mustang. Among its sires: the Plymouth Barracude, Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird.
@ July 2, 1964 On the same day it is passed by Congress, President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law. It is the most sweeping legislation of its kind since Reconstruction.
@ August 2, 1964 The president announces that the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy have been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. He orders immediate retaliation.
@ September 27, 1964 The 888-page Warren Commission report summarizing the findings of the inquiry into the death of President Kennedy concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. For years to come, critics insist that there is more to the story and Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy.
@ November 23, 1964 Today is the last day that Latin is used as the official language of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.
@ January 4,1965 President Lyndon Johnson's state-of-the-union address calls for the creation of the Great Society, the most ambitious program of social legislation since the New Deal.
@ February 21, 1965 Malcom X, leading spokesman among black nationalists, is shot and killed while speaking in New York City.
@ March 7, 1965 Black marchers leaving Selma, Alabama, for the state capital at Montgomery are attacked and beaten by 200 state police using tear gas, nightsticks and whips.
@ March 23, 1965 America's first two-person space flight begins as Gemini 3, nicknamed the Molly Brown, blasts off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Young on board.
@ April 9, 1965 The Astrodome, the world's largest air-conditioned room, opens in Houston.
@ June 9, 1965 For the first time, the United States confirms that Americans are undertaking combat missions in Vietnam.
@ July 23, 1965 The president signs a coinage bill that eliminates silver from quarters and dimes and restricts its use in half-dollars.
@ July 28, 1965 President Johnson announces that soon 125,000 American troops will be in South Vietnam, up from the present level of 75,000 and that draft calls will be doubled. This announcement marks the moment of escalation that eventually leads to massive unrest across the United States.
@ December 15, 1965 The Gemini VII and Gemini IV spacecraft rendezvous in space for the first such meeting in history.
@ June 2, 1966 Surveyor I makes a perfect soft landing on the moon - a key U.S. first
@ June 8, 1966 After a series of secret meetings between the NFL and rival AFL, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announces a merger of the two leagues (regular-season play to begin in 1970). The first Super Bowl is set for 1967.
@ June 13, 1966 The Supreme Court hands down a decision in Miranda v. Arizona ruling that criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before they can be interrogated.
@ June 30, 1966 Today is Mississippi's last day of prohibition---making the nation's last dry state wet at midnight.
@ July 7, 1966 Dispite his conviction for taking $250,000 in union funds and his status on bail pending appeal, Jimmy Hoffa is re-elected to a five-year term as Teamsters president by acclamation.
@ August 1, 1966 In Austin, Texas, Charles Whitman shoots and kills sixteen people. Most are shot from a campus tower at the University of Texas. Whitman is shot by police.
@ August 5, 1966 Beatle John Lennon says the Beatles are more popular than Jesus, leading many U.S. radio stations to take Beatles songs off the air.
@ August 29, 1966 The Beatles make their last concert appearance as a group. It takes place at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
@ September 8, 1966 Star Trek makes its television debut.
@ September 9, 1966 Sweeping automobile safety legislation is signed into law by President Johnson. This legislation establishes such things as anchored seat belts, emergency flashers, recessed dashboard knobs and postsale safety notices and recalls.
@ January 27, 1967 The United States, Soviet Union and sixty other nations sign a treaty agreeing to limit the military use of space.
@ February 10, 1967 The twenty-fifth amendement to the Constitution is formally ratified. It deals with the disability and succession of the president.
@ March 1, 1967 Adam Clayton Powell, a congressman from Harlem who is a key to getting LBJ's Great Society bills passed, is denied his seat in Congress by a vote of 307 to 116 for using government money for private purposes. A House subcommittee denounces his "female-accompanied private pleasure jaunts at taxpayer expense."
@ April 24, 1967 The first human known to die in space is killed in a Soyuz 1 mishap. Cosmonaut Vladimir M. Komarov dies as a parachute tangles during reentry.
@ October 2, 1967 Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first black Supreme Court justice.
@ January 22, 1968 Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In series makes its regular television debut.
@ January 30, 1968 A national Tet Offensive by Viet Cong in Saigon and other towns is followed by sieges at Hue and Khe Sanh. Even though the Communist forces later retreat with heavy losses it serves to intensify opposition to the war in the United States.
@ February 1, 1968 Richard Nixon declares his presidential candidacy.
@ March 16, 1968 U.S. soldiers line up between 300 and 500 old men, women and children in a ditch in the Vietnamese village of My Lai and shoot them. This massacre is covered up by the army until November 1969.
@ March 31, 1968 A judge rules that Karen Anne Quinlan can be disconnected from her life support system.
@ April 3, 1968 The North Vietnamese agree to begin peace talks in Paris.
@ April 4, 1968 Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot and killed in Memphis by James Earl Ray just before 7 P.M. Within two hours, 125 cities across the nation are in flames with 46 deaths, 21,270 arrests, and 55,000 federal troops and national guard used to control riots, the biggest of which occur in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore and Kansas City.
@ April 29, 1968 The rock musical Hair opens in New York
@ May 2, 1968 In Washington, D.C., civil rights demonstrators hold a Poor People's March on the capitol. Their base camp is Resurrection City, a shantytown of tents and shacks on the mall.
@ June 5, 1968 Robert Kennedy, age forty-two, is fatally shot in a Los Angeles hotel after winning the California primary. He dies early the next day.
@ August 26, 1968 Riots occur at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
@ December 21, 1968 Apollo 8 makes the first of ten manned lunar and allows the first human eyes to see the dark side of the moon. Before this, the highest altitude flown by a manned craft was 851 miles, but Apollo 8 rises 240,000 miles.
@ December 24, 1968 The crew of the U.S. spy ship Pueblo is released after eleven months of brutal captivity by North Korea.
@ December 29, 1968 A spectacular image of the earth rising above the lunar surface is broadcast from Apollo 8 to the world's televisions.
@ April 3, 1969 The Vietnam War death roll reaches 33,641 today---a dozen more than were killed in the Korean War. Vietnam is now the third costliest foreign war in American history.
@ May 14, 1969 In Canada abortion and homosexuality are made legal as part of a new Omnibus Crime code.
@ June 8, 1969 President Nixon orders the first troops out of Vietnam.
@ July 14, 1969 Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper star in an iconoclastic biker film called Easy Rider, which opens today.
@ July 19, 1969 John Fairfax of Britain arrives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida having become the first person to row across the Atlantic alone.
@ July 21, 1969 Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin climb back into the lunar module Eagle and lift off from teh surface of the moon.
@ August 8, 1969 Five people are murdered in the Hollywood Hills mansion that actress Sharon Tate, among the murdered, shared with film directory Roman Polanski. On December 1 arrest warrants are issued for Charles Manson and his accomplices.
@ August 15, 1969 About half a million people gather on a 600-acre farm near Woodstock, New York, to hear rock music. The Woodstock music festival features such performers as Santana, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Crosby, Stills and Nash and is seen as emblematic of the values, taste and morality of America's disaffected youth. The name Woodstock increasingly is seen as synonymous with the turbulent counter-cultureperiod that lasts from 1965 through 1975.
@ October 4, 1969 According to a Gallup poll released today, 58 percent of the American people believe the war in Vietnam is a mistake.
@ November 10, 1969 Sesame Street makes its debut on television. It is immediately seen for what it is---a radical new departure in children's programming.
@ November 15, 1969 In the largest antiwar demonstration in U.S. history, an estimated 250,000 people, an admittedly modest police estimate, march in Washington, D.C. to protest the war in Vietnam. The Washington Post calls it, "One of the immense crowds of American political history."
@ December 12, 1969 The Boeing 747---first flown on February 9--- makes its first public flight from Seattle to New York.
@ May 4, 1970 National Guardsmen kill four students at Kent State University in Ohio after a campus protest against the Cambodian invasion. President Nixon says, "This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy." The vice president calls it a predictable tragedy.
@ May 9, 1970 Before dawn, President Nixon visits antiwar demonstrators convening at the Lincoln Memorial and chats with them for an hour. Later 100,000 march against the war and the Cambodian invasion.
@ May 15, 1970 Two black students are killed by police gunfire at Jackson State College in Mississippi.
@ September 22, 1970 Richard Nixon signs legislation authorizing a nonvoting delegate from the District of Columbia to the U.S. House of Representatives. The District has not been represented in Congress since 1875.
@ January 18, 1971 Senator George McGovern (D., S.D.) announces his candidacy for the presidency, vowing to get the United States out of Southeast Asia.
@ September 3, 1971 The Plumbers burglarize the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
@ September 9, 1971 In the New York state prison at Attica a prisoners' rebellion breaks out, and 1,200 inmates control the institution for four days.
@ January 23, 1972 Gloria Steinem and thirteen other founders put out the first issue of Ms. Fearing that the feminist magazine will linger on the newsstands the editors put a spring date on that first issue. In fact, all 300,000 copies of that issue sell out in a mere nine days and the idea of a woman's magazine is never the same.
@ January 28, 1972 The first presidential drug war is declared as President Nixon orders a, "concentrated assault on the street-level heroin addict." He appoints Myles J. Ambrose to be the first federal drug czar.
@ February 5, 1972 After numerous hijacking incidents, United States airlines begin mandatory inspection of passengers and baggage.
@ May 15, 1972 Alabama Governor George Wallace is shot during a political rally in a Laurel, Maryland shopping center by Arthur Bremer, a twenty-one-year-old busboy and janitor from Milwaukee. Wallace is paralyzed from the waist down and drops out of the presidential race.
@ June 17, 1972 Police apprehend five men attempting to electronically bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington. The men turn out to be employees of the Commitee to Reelect the President, or CREEP. Despite this, in August Nixon announces that an investigation by White House counsel John Dean reveals that no administration officials are involved.
@ July 31, 1972 Senator Thomas Eagleton withdraws from the vice presidential race following disclosure that he once received electroshock therapy. Presidential nominee George McGovern replaces him on the ticket with Sargent Shriver.
@ August 11, 1972 The United States withdraws its last combat unit---the Third Batallion of the Twenty-first Infantry--- from Vietnam.
@ September 5, 1972 In Munich at the Olymic Games eight Arab commandos raid the dormitory housing the Israeli team and take eleven hostages. Later in the day th Arabs arrange to be transported with their hostages to the airport where a plane is waiting. In an airport gun battle with German police all of the hostages, all but three of the commandos, and one policeman are killed.
@ November 7, 1972 Voters go to the polls and reelect Richard M. Nixon in a landslide. George McGovern is only able to carry the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
@ December 7, 1972 Apollo 17 makes the sixth and last manned lunar landing during which its crew collects 243 pounds of lunar rock samples. When they leave, astronaut Eugene Cernan utters the last words spoken on the lunar surface for decades to come: "We leave as we came and, God willing, we shall return---with peace and hope for all mankind."
@ January 23, 1973 President Nixon announces that the war in Vietnam will end on January 28 and that America's last 23,700 tropps will be removed within sixty days.
@ March 28, 1973 In a bid to end interagency bickering, President Nixon announces the creation of a new super agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, to fight drugs. He reports that the administration has made, "very encouraging" progress against trafficers.
@ May 9, 1973 Hearings for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon are begun by the House Judiciary Committee.
@ October 10, 1973 Spiro T. Agnew resigns as vice president. In return for the Justice Department's dropping all charges against him, he pleads no contest to charges of income tax evasion while governor of Maryland. He is fined $10,000 and put on three years probation.
@ October 12, 1973 The U.S. Circuit of Appeals orders President Nixon to surrender his secret Watergate tapes.
@ October 23, 1973 Eight impeachment resolutions are introduced in the House.
@ November 17, 1973 Richard Nixon declares, "I'm not a crook." The line comes on the first day of a whirlwind tour of the South in which Nixon tries to regather public support. In context, he says, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."
@ December 23, 1973 Heralding a revolution in professional baseball, labor arbitrator Peter M. Seitz rules that a player cannot be bound indefinitely to one team without his consent. Seitz rules that Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, two pitchers who have been playing without contracts, are now "free agents" who can sell their services to any team.
@ April 8, 1974 Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's forty-seven-year-old record.
@ July 15, 1974 Sarasota, Florida TV commentator Chris Chubbuck finishes reading the news to her audience and then says, "And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first---an attempted suicide." She then shoots herself in the head and dies later in a hospital."
@ July 27, 1974 The House Judiciary Committee votes twenty-seven to eleven to recommend President Richard M. Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he has personally engaged in conduct designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.
@ August 8, 1974 President Nixon announces on TV that he is resigning.
@ October 3, 1974 Frank Robinson is names manager of the Cleveland Indians basebal team, making him baseball's first black manager.
@ June 26, 1975 The Supreme Court bars the confinement of mental patients against their will, providing that the patients are able to care for themselves and are not a danger to others. This decision is cited again and again as the number of homeess people living on the streets of american cities grows.
@ July 30, 1975 Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa is seen for the last time at Manchu's Red Fox restaurant in Detroit, Michigan.
@ August 27, 1975 A grand jury acquits the governor of Ohio and members of the National Guard in the Kent State killings.
@ September 22, 1975 For the second time in a month, a woman makes an assassination attempt against President Gerald Ford in California. This time it occurs in San Francisco and the president is actually shot at by one Sara Jane Moore.
@ October 11, 1975 Saturday Night makes its first appearance on NBC. It is an irreverant, determinedly controversial show that changes the face and limits of television comedy overnight. it later is renamed Saturday Night Live.
@ January 21, 1976 The Concorde Super Sonic Transport begins regular commercial operation after years of controversy over its economic and environmental significance. The commercial Concorde is a joint project of Air France and British Airways.
@ March 31, 1976 Following a legal struggle of the part of Karen Anne Quinlan's parents to free her from an irreversible condition, the New Jersey Supreme Court gives permission for her respirator to be shut off. (Quinlan, however, stays alive without the respirator.)
@ July 20, 1976 America's Viking I robot spacecraft makes the first successful landing on Mars.
@ January 21, 1977 President Jimmy Carter offers a pardon to most Vietnam era draft resisters. The controversial move appears to go a long way toward resolving some of the divisiveness of the war.
@ April 18, 1977 President Carter calls for a national effort for energy conservation that is the "moral equivalent of war."
@ August 16, 1977 Rock 'n' Roll idol Elvis Presley dies of heart failure at his home in Memphis, Tennessee, at age forty-two.
@ July 25, 1978 The world's first test-tube baby, named Louise Brown, is born in Oldham, England. The event is hailed as a medical breakthrough on the order of the first heart transplant. As the first human conceived outside the womb, she gives hope to millions of childless couples.
@ August 4, 1978 Evacuation of the Loval Canal neighborhood in Niagra Falls, New York begins. Used as a toxic waste dump from 1947 to 1952, it is now deemed to be unfit for human habitation.
@ November 18, 1978 Shortly after 5:00 P.M. cult leader James Jones gives the order for the "White Night." This is no rehearsal. The cult settlement, known as Jonestown, Guyana, is to destroy itself. Jonestown's toll: 914 suicides and murder victims swollen and stacked like lengths of wood; a metal vat on a platform with purple, cyanide-laced Kool-Aid at its bottom. Earlier in the day, Congressman Leo J. Ryan and his party are attacked by members of the settlement. The assailants, firing pistols and automatic weapons, kill Ryan and four others.
@ November 27, 1978 Former San Francisco supervisor Dan White kills Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall.
@ July 2, 1979 The new Susan B. Anthony dollar is introduced to the public. It is slightly larger than a quarter, 8.1 grams in weight, and features a portrait of the famous suffragist on one side an an image of an eagle landing on the moon on the other. Despite its gand debut, it does not attract broad public support.
@ October 2, 1979 Charles Smith, who claimed to be America's last living slave, dies at age 137.
@ November 4, 1979 Iranian militants seize the American embassy in Tehran and take ninety hostages, including sixty-three Americans. They demand the return of the shah of Iran who is in the U.S. being treated for cancer. The militants hold fifty-two hostages for more than a year.
@ May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens, a volcano in Washington, erupts violently and remains in the news for many weeks to come.
@ September 22, 1980 Under the leadership of Lech Walesa Polish workers form a union that they call Solidlarity.
@ December 8, 1980 Former Beatle John Lennon is shot and killed by a deranged fan outside his New York apartment building.
@ January 20, 1981 Ronald Reagan becomes president on the same day that the Iranian hostage crisis ends with the release of fifty-two hostages who had been seized at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Members of the Carter Administration who had been absorbed by the crisis are disappointed not to see it end on their watch.
@ March 30, 1981 President Reagan is shot by John W. Hinckley, Jr. outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. Reagan requires two hours of emergency surgery to remove a bullet from his lung. White House press secretary James Brady, a policeman and a Secret Service agent are also wounded by Hinckley, who apparently hopes that his act of violence will impress actress Jodie Foster.
@ April 12, 1981 The space shuttle Columbia makes its maiden voyage from Cape Canaveral. It will return to Earth on the 14th when it becomes the first manned spacecraft to land as an aircraft with its wheels down rather than to splash down.
@ May 13, 1981 Pope John Paul II is shot and wounded by a Turkish criminal as he rides through the crowds in Rome's St. Peter's Square.
@ June 12, 1981 For the first time in history, there is a midseason baseball strike. It is not resolved until a third of the season is used up. The issue is free agency and the fans are not amused.
@ July 7, 1981 President Ronald Reagan announces he will nominate Arizona judge Sandra Day O'Connor to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. O'Connor becomes the highest court's first female justice.
@ August 6, 1981 The air controllers strike is broken when President Reagan announces that he is firing those who did not come towork on the 5th---12,000 in all---and the Federal Aviation Administration announces it will hire replacements.
@ December 4, 1981 For the first time the president authorizes domestic intelligence gathering by the CIA and other agencies.
@ March 5, 1982 Popular comedian John Belushi is found dead in a rented Hollywood bungalow. Drugs are immediately suspected and later shown to be the cause of death.
@ March 26, 1982 Ground is broken for a memorial to honor the 58,022 Americans killed in the Vietnam War.
@ May 30, 1982 Cal Rikpen, Jr. begins his consecutive game streak of 2,632 games, ending on September 20, 1998.
@ June 24, 1982 President Reagan declares an all-out attack on drugs and creates a new agency, the White House Office of Drug Abuse Policy, to oversee the war on drugs.
@ September 15, 1982 USA Today makes its debut in the Washington-Baltimore area. It calls itself "The Nation's Newspaper" and relies on short, punchy articles and the heavy use of color.
@ February 28, 1983 The last episode of M*A*S*H is aired on CBS, attracting some 121,624,000 viewers.
@ April 20, 1983 The Supreme Court affirms the right of the states to ban nuclear power plants.
@ June 13, 1983 Today the Pioneer 10 spaceprobe---launched in 1972--- becomes the first object created by humans to leave this solar system.
@ June 18, 1983 Astronaut Sally K. Ride becomes America's first woman in space as she and four colleagues blast off aboard the space shuttle Challenger. The vehicle glides to a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California on the 24th.
@ August 30, 1983 Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford rides the shuttle Challenger and becomes the first black astronaut to enter space.
@ October 9, 1983 Interior Secretary James Watt resigns under pressure after describing the members of a commission as, "a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple."
@ February 17, 1984 The Supreme Court decides that individuals can legally videotape television shows for their own use.
@ July 12, 1984 Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale announces he has chosen Geraldine Ferraro of New York to be his running mate. Ferraro is the first woman to run for vice president of the United States on a major-party ticket.
@ July 23, 1984 The first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, relinquishes her crown two month early when nude photographs of her are published in Penthouse magazine. She is the first pageant winner to give up her title.
@ August 11, 1984 During an off-air radio voice check, President Reagan jokes, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
@ July 13, 1985 Live Aid, an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, raises money for Africa's starving people.
@ July 19, 1985 NASA selects schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe from among 11,000 applicants to join the space shuttle.
@ August 8, 1985 On this day President Ronald Reagan either does or does not give permission for arms to be secretly shipped to Iran. "It is possible to forget," the president says to reporters in February 1987: "Everybody who can remember what they were doing on August 8, 1985, raise your hand." What actually takes place on this date becomes an elusive key to the Irangate incident.
@ August 15, 1985 South African President P. W. Botha, rejecting Western pleas to abolish apartheid, decleares, "I am not prepared to lead white South Africa and other minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide."
@ September 1, 1985 A joint French-U.S. team locates the wreck of the Titantic, which sunk in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. The seventy-three-year-old wreck is discovered about 560 miles off the coat of Newfoundland.
@ April 16, 1986 An explosion and fire occur at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union that will eventually spread radiation over a large area. The accident is not acknowledged by the USSR until April 30.
@ June 9, 1986 A presidential commission determines that the single cause of the January 28 (Challenger) shuttle disaster was a defective seal in the right solid-fuel booster. The space agency is criticized for managerial and technical errors.
@ June 19, 1986 Len Bias, a University of Maryland basketball star and the top drft choice of the Boston Celtics, dies of an overdose of cocaine. More than any other incident, this death underscores widespread drug abuse by athletes.
@ December 23, 1986 The pilots of the Voyager, Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan, make history by flying around the world in the first nonstop flight without refueling. The flight begins on December 14.
@ March 22, 1987 A garbage barge carrying 3,200 tons of refuse leaves Islip, New York, on a six-month journey in search of a place to unload. It eventually is turned away by several states and three foreign countries until space is found back in Islip.
@ June 16, 1987 A New York jury acquits Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in connection with the subway shooting of four black youths he said were going to rob him. Goetz, however, is convicted of illegal weapons possession in the December 22, 1984, shootings.
@ September 4, 1987 A Soviet court convicts West German pilot Mathias Rust of landing his plane in Red Square. He is sentenced to four years in prison but is released on August 3, 1988.
@ October 23, 1987 Th Senate rejects Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court by a vote of fifty-eight to forty-two.
@ August 8, 1988 Today is 8/8/88, a phenomenon that will not recur until 8/8/[20]88.
@ January 20, 1989 George Bush and Dan Quayle take office as president and vice president. In his inaugural speech, Bush says of drugs, "This scourge will stop."
@ March 9, 1989 Former Senator John Tower's nomination by newly elected George W. Bush to the post of secretary of defense is defeated in the Senate by a vote of fifty-three to forty-seven. It is the first time in history that the Senate denies the president a nomination for his first Cabinet.
@ March 24, 1989 The tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Before the leaking is stopped, 11 million gallons of crude oil pollute many miles of shoreline and kill wildlife.
@ May 30, 1989 Chinese students begin erecting a Goddess of Democracy statue in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. It revitalizes antigovernment demonstrations and draws crowds to the square. This event comes at a time when the number of students in the Square has diminished because of fatigue and poor sanitary conditions.
@ June 7, 1989 There is a moment early in the morning (and later in the afternoon) when the time is: 1:23:45/6/7/89.
@ August 22, 1989 Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers becomes the first pitcher in major league baseball to strike out 5,000 batters. On July 11, 1985, Ryan became the first to fan 4,000 batters.
@ October 18, 1989 A violent earthquake strikes Northern California at 5:04 P.M. PDT. The most devastating effect is the collapse of the upper deck of a highway in Oakland, which traps and kills more than forty people in their cars. It occurs just as the third game of the World Series is about to get underway.
@ November 5, 1989 The Civil Rights Memorial is dedicated in Montgomery, Alabama. It honors those killed during the struggle.
@ December 21, 1989 In Kentucky, Larry Mahoney is convicted of killing 27 people in a highway accident in 1988. The conviction formally establishes it as the nation's worst alcohol-related crash.
@ August 9, 1990 Baseball great Pete Rose reports to the Marion (Ill.) Federal Prison Camp to serve a sentence for filing false income tax forms.
@ October 3, 1990 At the stroke of midnight the two Germanys merge back into one. A massive West German flag---now the only German flag---rises where the Berlin Wall stood only a few months earlier.
@ December 12, 1990 Lech Walesa, president of the once-outlawed union Solidarity, becomes president of Poland.
@ February 27, 1991 Kuwait City is liberated. President Bush announces a unilateral halt to military operations in the Gulf, effective at midnight.
@ November 7, 1991 Basketball star Magic Johnson announces that he has tested HIV-positive and retires from basketball. He returns for the 1992 All-Star Game, as a member of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, and for a time as a regular player in 1992 and 1996.
@ April 29, 1992 Four white police officers are acquitted in Los Angeles in the videotaped assault on Rodney King, an African-American. Three days of street violence ensue, with some 50 deaths and thousands of injuries.
@ February 26, 1993 A bomb in a van in a parking garage under New York City's World Trade Center kills six, injures more than 1,000 and cripples the twin 110-story towers. Four Muslims will be convicted as the terrorists responsible and will each be sentenced to 240 years in prison.
@ May 20, 1993 The last episode of the long-running NBC show Cheers airs.
@ August 4, 1993 A federal judge sentences Los Angeles police officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to two and one-half years in prison for violating Rodney King's civil rights.
@ January 6, 1994 Skater Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Cobo Arena in Detroit. Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan's rival, Tonya Harding, are later convicted.
@ June 20, 1994 O.J. Simpson flees from police in a televised low-speed chase.
@ July 21, 1994 O.J. Simpson's lawyers announce a toll-free number for those with information on the murders. A $500,000 reward is offered.
@ December 9, 1994 Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders is asked to resign after making remarks about children and masturbation.
@ August 9, 1995 Jerry Garcia, lead singer of the Grateful Dead, dies in San Francisco of a heart attack at 53.
@ October 3, 1995 Former professional football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. Simpson's televised trial sets off a national debate on racial issues, spousal abuse and the American legal system.
@ November 15, 1995 President Bill Clinton begins his clandestine sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
@ March 9, 1996 Comedia George Burns dies in Beverly Hills at the age of 100.
@ April 3, 1996 Theodore Kaczynski is arrested in Montana as a suspect in the 17-year Unabomber killing spree.
@ June 21, 1995 The Pentagon officially acknowledges that U.S. troops might have been exposed to chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf War.
@ July 21, 1996 A pipe bomb explodes at an Olympic Games site in Atlanta, Georgia, killing one. Authorities officially clear a security guard, Richard Jewell, as a "target" of their probe on October 26, 1996.
@ January 21, 1997 House reprimands Newt Gingrich and imposes $300,000 fine. he is the first Speaker to be formally punished. His offense: bringing discredit upon the House by using tax exempt donations for political purposes and submitting false information to the House Ethics Committee.
@ February 4, 1997 A civil jury finds O.J. Simpson liable in the 1994 slayings; awards $8.5 million in compensatory damages. On February 10, punitive damages of $25 million are set in the case.
@ February 23, 1997 Report in Britain's Observer says that scientists in Scotland have cloned an adult sheep, sparking a debate on human cloning. The animal is a Finn Dorset lamb named Dolly. This scientific development could presage the ability to clone humans.
@ March 26, 1997 Heaven's Gate cult members commit suicide in preparation for a spaceship that will take them away.
@ July 4, 1997 NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft lands on Mars, inaugurating a new era in the search for life on the red planet.
@ August 31, 1997 Diana, Princess of Wales, is killed in a car crash in France.
@ February 2, 1998 For the first time in nearly three decades, a U.S. president submits a balanced budget.
@ May 14, 1998 The finale of Seinfeld, the show "about nothing" airs on NBC.
@ June 14, 1998 Michael Jordan makes a 17-foot shot to win the NBA Championship for the Chicago Bulls. It is his last shot, as he will formally retire in 1999.
@ September 8, 1998 Mark McGwire hits his 62nd homer; touches all of the bases (after initially missing first base) and hugs his 10-year-old son, Matthew. With another hug, he lifts Sammy Sosa, who has 58 homers at the time. McGwire has broken Roger Maris's feat in 1961 of 61 home runs. McGwire will go on to hit 70.
@ September 9, 1998 The Starr Report is delivlered to the House Judiciary Committee in dozens of sealed boxes, which are locked in a House storage room.
@ October 29, 1998 John Glenn, the first astronaut to orbit the earth, returns to space on Discovery STS-95. He is 75 years old.
@ Decembr 19, 1998 President Clinton is impeached. For only the second time in American history, a president is charged with "high crimes and misdemeanors" for lying under oath and obstructing justice. The voting is partisan.
@ May 27, 1999 It is reported that the cloned lamb Dolly (c. February 23, 1997) has age-related traits of the six-year-old ewe from whom she was created.
239 Notable Moments from...
The Second Half of the 20th Century
The Second Half of the 20th Century
@ July 4, 1951 A reporter for the Madison (Wisconsin) Capital-Times is rebuffed by 99 out of 100 people he asks to sign a petition made up of quotations from the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Many call the petition subversive.
@ January 31, 1952 Angered over Senator Joseph McCarthy's repeated attacks on federal employees, as well as his charges that Communists have infiltrated the government, President Harry S. Truman denounces the Republican senator as pathological, untruthful and a character assassin who apparently requires no information for his accusations.
@ December 2, 1952 The first known nuclear power accident occurs. An employee at an experimental nuclear power reactor at Chalk River, Canada mistakenly lifts four of the system's twelve rods out of the fuel core, igniting a chain reaction that melts part of the uranium.
@ December 30, 1952 The Tuskegee Institute reports that 1952 was the first year in seventy-one years that there were no lynchings in the United States.
@ May 29, 1953 Edmund Hillary, thirty-four, a New Zealand beekeeper, and Tensing Norkay, forty-two, a tribesman of Nepal, are the first persons in history to reach the top of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, more than 29,000 feet above sea level.
@ June 27, 1953 Following the longest truce negotiations in the history of warfare (2 years, 17 days and some 575 meetings between the belligerents), the war in Korea is over. An armistice is signed at Panmunjom.
@ November 1, 1953 The first issue of Playboy is published in Chicago by Hugh Hefner, age twenty-seven, who turns it into what he later deems "an empire."
@ February 23, 1954 The first mass inoculation against polio is given to students in Pittsburgh
@ March 1, 1954 Five congressman are shot on the floor of the House of Representatives by Puerto Rican nationalists seeking the independence of their country.
@ March 18, 1954 RKO Pictures Corporation stockholders approve the sale of the company to Howard Hughes. After Hughes writes out a check for $23,489,478 he becomes the first individual ever to be sole owner of a major motion picture company.
@ June 21, 1954 In Geneva a conference ends on the resolution of the Indochina War. The central decision is the division of Vietnam into two zones separated along the seventeenth parallel. Laos and Cambodia are made independent.
@ July 6, 1954 Elvis Presley, a self-taught nineteen-year-old singer, makes his first record, a combination of country music on one side and rhythm and blues on the other that portends a revolution in popular music.
@ September 6, 1954 Groundbreaking is held in Shippingport, Pennsylvania for the world's first nuclear power plant.
@ September 29, 1954 During the eighth inning of the first game of the World Series, Willie Mays makes a catch on the dead run of a 450-foot blast off the bat of Dick Wertz that is so remarkable that thirty-five years later it will still be known as the catch.
@ November 12, 1954 Ellis Island closes as a processing center for immigrants. In its sixty-two years in operation it has processed 20 million immigrants.
@ January 19, 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower holds the first presidential TV news conference. It is also the first to which motion picture cameras are allowed. Aides to the president say that news reel and TV cameras will be allowed into future conferences on the same basis as other accredited reporters.
@ September 30, 1955 James Dean is killedas his Porsche 550 Spyder crashes in an accident near Paso Robles, Texas.
@ December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. A boycott is coordinated by a then-unknown minister named Martin Luther King, Jr.
@ August 6, 1956 Albert Woolson, the last Union soldier of the Civil War, dies at the age of 109.
@ January 16, 1957 A U.S. B-52 Superfortress makes the first nonstop round the globe flight in forty-five hours and nineteen minutes.
@ August 30, 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond sets a new filibuster record in the Congress speaking twenty-four hours, twenty-seven minutes, against civil rights legislation.
@ October 4, 1957 The space age begins with the launching of the Sputnik spacecraft by the Soviet Union.
@ December 18, 1957 At Shippingport, Pennsylvania the first large-scale American nuclear power plant goes into operation and begins supplying electricity to the Pittsburgh area.
@ July 28, 1958 President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Among other things it creates the spce agency or National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
@ April 9, 1959 The first seven astronauts are selected.
@ December 1, 1959 In Washington twelve nations sign an agreement to keep Antarctica free of political and military strife and reserve the area for scientific research.
@ January 31, 1960 Senator John F. Kennedy announces that he is running for the presidency.
@ May 10, 1960 The U.S. atomic submarine Triton surfaces after completing the first underwater circumnavigation of the globe: 30,708 miles in 84 days.
@ July 9, 1960 Roger Woodward, age seven, falls out of a capsized boat and becomes the first person to survive a plunge over Niagara Falls. He suffers only minor injuries.
@ April 12, 1961 The USSR puts the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin--- one orbit, 89.1 minutes.
@ May 5, 1961 The first American astronaut goes into space today. Navy commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr. leaves Cape Canaveral and makes a suborbital flight that reaches 114 miles in altitude and reaches a top speed of 5,181 MPH. He is aboard the Mercury capsule Freedom VII.
@ May 11, 1961 President Kennedy dispatches 400 Special Forces soldiers and an additional 100 military advisors to Vietnam. He gives his authorization for clandestine warfare against the North by personnel of the South with American help.
@ July 2, 1961 Author Ernest Hemingway, age sixty-one, shoots himself to death at his mountain-ringed home in Ketchum, Idaho. It is ruled accidental.
@ August 13, 1961 East Germany closes the Brandenburg Gate and seals off the border between eastern and western sectors of Berlin. As part of the closing, the government is about to begin building the Berlin Wall.
@ October 1, 1961 Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hits his sixty-first home run in the 162nd and last game of the season, breaking Babe Ruth's 154-game 1927 record.
@ December 11, 1961 Two U.S. Army helicopter companies, representing the first direct military support for South Vietnam, arrive in Saigon. These first two companies include 32 helicopters and 4,000 men. They are immediately assigned to Vietnamese combat units.
@ January 20, 1962 Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn orbits the earth three times in space capsule Friendship 7, becoming the first American in orbit. Television beams his flight to 135 million Americans.
@ March 2, 1962 Basketball player Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points---36 field goals and 28 foul shots---for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks.
@ August 5, 1962 Marilyn Monroe is found dead of a barbiturate overdose in her Los Angeles home. The death is officially ruled a suicide.
@ October 1, 1962 This evening Johnny Carson succeeds Jack Paar as the permanent host of the NBC Tonight Show.
@ The United States blockades---by air and sea---Cuba after announcing that it has photographs of Cuban-Russian missile bases capable of sending nuclear bombs 1,000 miles into the U.S. The U.S. threatens to invade Cuba if the bases are not dismantled. The Soviet Union threatens nuclear war.
@ January 14, 1963 George Wallace, sworn in as governor of Alabama, pledges "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever."
@ March 20, 1963 The first major pop art exhibition opens at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, featuring such artists as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
@ April 4, 1963 President Kennedy's Advisory Commission on Narcotic and Drug Abuse recommends a massive attack on importers of drugs.
@ April 17, 1963 Pete Rozelle suspends Green Bay's Paul Hornung and Detroit's Alex Karras for gambling with known hoodlums. Fines for five others on the Detroit Lions are $2,000 each.
@ May 3, 1963 Birmingham, Alabama police attack young civil rights marchers with dogs and fire hoses.
@ June 17, 1963 By a vote of eight to one the Supreme Court declares Bible reading the the reciting of the Lord's Prayer in public schools to be unconstitutional.
@ August 30, 1963 The first emergency hot line goes on line between the White House and the Kremlin. The purpose of the special line is to provide a means of emergency consultation that can prevent accidental war. It is approved by a pact signed on June 20 by delegates from the two nations.
@ October 11, 1963 The Commission on the Status of Women reports to President Kennedy, who concedes that there is discrimination against women in the United States.
@ November 25, 1963 John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
@ December 7, 1963 The instant replay is born during a telecast of the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia. The first play to be shown again is a short touchdown run by Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh. "This is not live!" announcer Lindsey Nelson screams, "Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again."
@ February 13, 1964 The Beatles arrive in the U.S. for the first time. On the 15th they appear on the Ed Sullivan television showo, and rock 'n' roll never is the same.
@ March 16, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson sends his War on Poverty program to Congress caling for an Office of Economic Opportunity to administer it.
@ April 17, 1964 The Ford Mustang makes its debut and immediately turns heads. It spawns a generation of copycat small, high-performance, V-8 powered cars that are known as "pony cars" in deference to the Mustang. Among its sires: the Plymouth Barracude, Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird.
@ July 2, 1964 On the same day it is passed by Congress, President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law. It is the most sweeping legislation of its kind since Reconstruction.
@ August 2, 1964 The president announces that the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy have been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. He orders immediate retaliation.
@ September 27, 1964 The 888-page Warren Commission report summarizing the findings of the inquiry into the death of President Kennedy concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. For years to come, critics insist that there is more to the story and Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy.
@ November 23, 1964 Today is the last day that Latin is used as the official language of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.
@ January 4,1965 President Lyndon Johnson's state-of-the-union address calls for the creation of the Great Society, the most ambitious program of social legislation since the New Deal.
@ February 21, 1965 Malcom X, leading spokesman among black nationalists, is shot and killed while speaking in New York City.
@ March 7, 1965 Black marchers leaving Selma, Alabama, for the state capital at Montgomery are attacked and beaten by 200 state police using tear gas, nightsticks and whips.
@ March 23, 1965 America's first two-person space flight begins as Gemini 3, nicknamed the Molly Brown, blasts off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Young on board.
@ April 9, 1965 The Astrodome, the world's largest air-conditioned room, opens in Houston.
@ June 9, 1965 For the first time, the United States confirms that Americans are undertaking combat missions in Vietnam.
@ July 23, 1965 The president signs a coinage bill that eliminates silver from quarters and dimes and restricts its use in half-dollars.
@ July 28, 1965 President Johnson announces that soon 125,000 American troops will be in South Vietnam, up from the present level of 75,000 and that draft calls will be doubled. This announcement marks the moment of escalation that eventually leads to massive unrest across the United States.
@ December 15, 1965 The Gemini VII and Gemini IV spacecraft rendezvous in space for the first such meeting in history.
@ June 2, 1966 Surveyor I makes a perfect soft landing on the moon - a key U.S. first
@ June 8, 1966 After a series of secret meetings between the NFL and rival AFL, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announces a merger of the two leagues (regular-season play to begin in 1970). The first Super Bowl is set for 1967.
@ June 13, 1966 The Supreme Court hands down a decision in Miranda v. Arizona ruling that criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before they can be interrogated.
@ June 30, 1966 Today is Mississippi's last day of prohibition---making the nation's last dry state wet at midnight.
@ July 7, 1966 Dispite his conviction for taking $250,000 in union funds and his status on bail pending appeal, Jimmy Hoffa is re-elected to a five-year term as Teamsters president by acclamation.
@ August 1, 1966 In Austin, Texas, Charles Whitman shoots and kills sixteen people. Most are shot from a campus tower at the University of Texas. Whitman is shot by police.
@ August 5, 1966 Beatle John Lennon says the Beatles are more popular than Jesus, leading many U.S. radio stations to take Beatles songs off the air.
@ August 29, 1966 The Beatles make their last concert appearance as a group. It takes place at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
@ September 8, 1966 Star Trek makes its television debut.
@ September 9, 1966 Sweeping automobile safety legislation is signed into law by President Johnson. This legislation establishes such things as anchored seat belts, emergency flashers, recessed dashboard knobs and postsale safety notices and recalls.
@ January 27, 1967 The United States, Soviet Union and sixty other nations sign a treaty agreeing to limit the military use of space.
@ February 10, 1967 The twenty-fifth amendement to the Constitution is formally ratified. It deals with the disability and succession of the president.
@ March 1, 1967 Adam Clayton Powell, a congressman from Harlem who is a key to getting LBJ's Great Society bills passed, is denied his seat in Congress by a vote of 307 to 116 for using government money for private purposes. A House subcommittee denounces his "female-accompanied private pleasure jaunts at taxpayer expense."
@ April 24, 1967 The first human known to die in space is killed in a Soyuz 1 mishap. Cosmonaut Vladimir M. Komarov dies as a parachute tangles during reentry.
@ October 2, 1967 Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first black Supreme Court justice.
@ January 22, 1968 Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In series makes its regular television debut.
@ January 30, 1968 A national Tet Offensive by Viet Cong in Saigon and other towns is followed by sieges at Hue and Khe Sanh. Even though the Communist forces later retreat with heavy losses it serves to intensify opposition to the war in the United States.
@ February 1, 1968 Richard Nixon declares his presidential candidacy.
@ March 16, 1968 U.S. soldiers line up between 300 and 500 old men, women and children in a ditch in the Vietnamese village of My Lai and shoot them. This massacre is covered up by the army until November 1969.
@ March 31, 1968 A judge rules that Karen Anne Quinlan can be disconnected from her life support system.
@ April 3, 1968 The North Vietnamese agree to begin peace talks in Paris.
@ April 4, 1968 Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot and killed in Memphis by James Earl Ray just before 7 P.M. Within two hours, 125 cities across the nation are in flames with 46 deaths, 21,270 arrests, and 55,000 federal troops and national guard used to control riots, the biggest of which occur in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore and Kansas City.
@ April 29, 1968 The rock musical Hair opens in New York
@ May 2, 1968 In Washington, D.C., civil rights demonstrators hold a Poor People's March on the capitol. Their base camp is Resurrection City, a shantytown of tents and shacks on the mall.
@ June 5, 1968 Robert Kennedy, age forty-two, is fatally shot in a Los Angeles hotel after winning the California primary. He dies early the next day.
@ August 26, 1968 Riots occur at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
@ December 21, 1968 Apollo 8 makes the first of ten manned lunar and allows the first human eyes to see the dark side of the moon. Before this, the highest altitude flown by a manned craft was 851 miles, but Apollo 8 rises 240,000 miles.
@ December 24, 1968 The crew of the U.S. spy ship Pueblo is released after eleven months of brutal captivity by North Korea.
@ December 29, 1968 A spectacular image of the earth rising above the lunar surface is broadcast from Apollo 8 to the world's televisions.
@ April 3, 1969 The Vietnam War death roll reaches 33,641 today---a dozen more than were killed in the Korean War. Vietnam is now the third costliest foreign war in American history.
@ May 14, 1969 In Canada abortion and homosexuality are made legal as part of a new Omnibus Crime code.
@ June 8, 1969 President Nixon orders the first troops out of Vietnam.
@ July 14, 1969 Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper star in an iconoclastic biker film called Easy Rider, which opens today.
@ July 19, 1969 John Fairfax of Britain arrives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida having become the first person to row across the Atlantic alone.
@ July 21, 1969 Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin climb back into the lunar module Eagle and lift off from teh surface of the moon.
@ August 8, 1969 Five people are murdered in the Hollywood Hills mansion that actress Sharon Tate, among the murdered, shared with film directory Roman Polanski. On December 1 arrest warrants are issued for Charles Manson and his accomplices.
@ August 15, 1969 About half a million people gather on a 600-acre farm near Woodstock, New York, to hear rock music. The Woodstock music festival features such performers as Santana, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Crosby, Stills and Nash and is seen as emblematic of the values, taste and morality of America's disaffected youth. The name Woodstock increasingly is seen as synonymous with the turbulent counter-cultureperiod that lasts from 1965 through 1975.
@ October 4, 1969 According to a Gallup poll released today, 58 percent of the American people believe the war in Vietnam is a mistake.
@ November 10, 1969 Sesame Street makes its debut on television. It is immediately seen for what it is---a radical new departure in children's programming.
@ November 15, 1969 In the largest antiwar demonstration in U.S. history, an estimated 250,000 people, an admittedly modest police estimate, march in Washington, D.C. to protest the war in Vietnam. The Washington Post calls it, "One of the immense crowds of American political history."
@ December 12, 1969 The Boeing 747---first flown on February 9--- makes its first public flight from Seattle to New York.
@ May 4, 1970 National Guardsmen kill four students at Kent State University in Ohio after a campus protest against the Cambodian invasion. President Nixon says, "This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy." The vice president calls it a predictable tragedy.
@ May 9, 1970 Before dawn, President Nixon visits antiwar demonstrators convening at the Lincoln Memorial and chats with them for an hour. Later 100,000 march against the war and the Cambodian invasion.
@ May 15, 1970 Two black students are killed by police gunfire at Jackson State College in Mississippi.
@ September 22, 1970 Richard Nixon signs legislation authorizing a nonvoting delegate from the District of Columbia to the U.S. House of Representatives. The District has not been represented in Congress since 1875.
@ January 18, 1971 Senator George McGovern (D., S.D.) announces his candidacy for the presidency, vowing to get the United States out of Southeast Asia.
@ September 3, 1971 The Plumbers burglarize the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
@ September 9, 1971 In the New York state prison at Attica a prisoners' rebellion breaks out, and 1,200 inmates control the institution for four days.
@ January 23, 1972 Gloria Steinem and thirteen other founders put out the first issue of Ms. Fearing that the feminist magazine will linger on the newsstands the editors put a spring date on that first issue. In fact, all 300,000 copies of that issue sell out in a mere nine days and the idea of a woman's magazine is never the same.
@ January 28, 1972 The first presidential drug war is declared as President Nixon orders a, "concentrated assault on the street-level heroin addict." He appoints Myles J. Ambrose to be the first federal drug czar.
@ February 5, 1972 After numerous hijacking incidents, United States airlines begin mandatory inspection of passengers and baggage.
@ May 15, 1972 Alabama Governor George Wallace is shot during a political rally in a Laurel, Maryland shopping center by Arthur Bremer, a twenty-one-year-old busboy and janitor from Milwaukee. Wallace is paralyzed from the waist down and drops out of the presidential race.
@ June 17, 1972 Police apprehend five men attempting to electronically bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington. The men turn out to be employees of the Commitee to Reelect the President, or CREEP. Despite this, in August Nixon announces that an investigation by White House counsel John Dean reveals that no administration officials are involved.
@ July 31, 1972 Senator Thomas Eagleton withdraws from the vice presidential race following disclosure that he once received electroshock therapy. Presidential nominee George McGovern replaces him on the ticket with Sargent Shriver.
@ August 11, 1972 The United States withdraws its last combat unit---the Third Batallion of the Twenty-first Infantry--- from Vietnam.
@ September 5, 1972 In Munich at the Olymic Games eight Arab commandos raid the dormitory housing the Israeli team and take eleven hostages. Later in the day th Arabs arrange to be transported with their hostages to the airport where a plane is waiting. In an airport gun battle with German police all of the hostages, all but three of the commandos, and one policeman are killed.
@ November 7, 1972 Voters go to the polls and reelect Richard M. Nixon in a landslide. George McGovern is only able to carry the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
@ December 7, 1972 Apollo 17 makes the sixth and last manned lunar landing during which its crew collects 243 pounds of lunar rock samples. When they leave, astronaut Eugene Cernan utters the last words spoken on the lunar surface for decades to come: "We leave as we came and, God willing, we shall return---with peace and hope for all mankind."
@ January 23, 1973 President Nixon announces that the war in Vietnam will end on January 28 and that America's last 23,700 tropps will be removed within sixty days.
@ March 28, 1973 In a bid to end interagency bickering, President Nixon announces the creation of a new super agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, to fight drugs. He reports that the administration has made, "very encouraging" progress against trafficers.
@ May 9, 1973 Hearings for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon are begun by the House Judiciary Committee.
@ October 10, 1973 Spiro T. Agnew resigns as vice president. In return for the Justice Department's dropping all charges against him, he pleads no contest to charges of income tax evasion while governor of Maryland. He is fined $10,000 and put on three years probation.
@ October 12, 1973 The U.S. Circuit of Appeals orders President Nixon to surrender his secret Watergate tapes.
@ October 23, 1973 Eight impeachment resolutions are introduced in the House.
@ November 17, 1973 Richard Nixon declares, "I'm not a crook." The line comes on the first day of a whirlwind tour of the South in which Nixon tries to regather public support. In context, he says, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."
@ December 23, 1973 Heralding a revolution in professional baseball, labor arbitrator Peter M. Seitz rules that a player cannot be bound indefinitely to one team without his consent. Seitz rules that Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, two pitchers who have been playing without contracts, are now "free agents" who can sell their services to any team.
@ April 8, 1974 Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's forty-seven-year-old record.
@ July 15, 1974 Sarasota, Florida TV commentator Chris Chubbuck finishes reading the news to her audience and then says, "And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first---an attempted suicide." She then shoots herself in the head and dies later in a hospital."
@ July 27, 1974 The House Judiciary Committee votes twenty-seven to eleven to recommend President Richard M. Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he has personally engaged in conduct designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.
@ August 8, 1974 President Nixon announces on TV that he is resigning.
@ October 3, 1974 Frank Robinson is names manager of the Cleveland Indians basebal team, making him baseball's first black manager.
@ June 26, 1975 The Supreme Court bars the confinement of mental patients against their will, providing that the patients are able to care for themselves and are not a danger to others. This decision is cited again and again as the number of homeess people living on the streets of american cities grows.
@ July 30, 1975 Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa is seen for the last time at Manchu's Red Fox restaurant in Detroit, Michigan.
@ August 27, 1975 A grand jury acquits the governor of Ohio and members of the National Guard in the Kent State killings.
@ September 22, 1975 For the second time in a month, a woman makes an assassination attempt against President Gerald Ford in California. This time it occurs in San Francisco and the president is actually shot at by one Sara Jane Moore.
@ October 11, 1975 Saturday Night makes its first appearance on NBC. It is an irreverant, determinedly controversial show that changes the face and limits of television comedy overnight. it later is renamed Saturday Night Live.
@ January 21, 1976 The Concorde Super Sonic Transport begins regular commercial operation after years of controversy over its economic and environmental significance. The commercial Concorde is a joint project of Air France and British Airways.
@ March 31, 1976 Following a legal struggle of the part of Karen Anne Quinlan's parents to free her from an irreversible condition, the New Jersey Supreme Court gives permission for her respirator to be shut off. (Quinlan, however, stays alive without the respirator.)
@ July 20, 1976 America's Viking I robot spacecraft makes the first successful landing on Mars.
@ January 21, 1977 President Jimmy Carter offers a pardon to most Vietnam era draft resisters. The controversial move appears to go a long way toward resolving some of the divisiveness of the war.
@ April 18, 1977 President Carter calls for a national effort for energy conservation that is the "moral equivalent of war."
@ August 16, 1977 Rock 'n' Roll idol Elvis Presley dies of heart failure at his home in Memphis, Tennessee, at age forty-two.
@ July 25, 1978 The world's first test-tube baby, named Louise Brown, is born in Oldham, England. The event is hailed as a medical breakthrough on the order of the first heart transplant. As the first human conceived outside the womb, she gives hope to millions of childless couples.
@ August 4, 1978 Evacuation of the Loval Canal neighborhood in Niagra Falls, New York begins. Used as a toxic waste dump from 1947 to 1952, it is now deemed to be unfit for human habitation.
@ November 18, 1978 Shortly after 5:00 P.M. cult leader James Jones gives the order for the "White Night." This is no rehearsal. The cult settlement, known as Jonestown, Guyana, is to destroy itself. Jonestown's toll: 914 suicides and murder victims swollen and stacked like lengths of wood; a metal vat on a platform with purple, cyanide-laced Kool-Aid at its bottom. Earlier in the day, Congressman Leo J. Ryan and his party are attacked by members of the settlement. The assailants, firing pistols and automatic weapons, kill Ryan and four others.
@ November 27, 1978 Former San Francisco supervisor Dan White kills Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall.
@ July 2, 1979 The new Susan B. Anthony dollar is introduced to the public. It is slightly larger than a quarter, 8.1 grams in weight, and features a portrait of the famous suffragist on one side an an image of an eagle landing on the moon on the other. Despite its gand debut, it does not attract broad public support.
@ October 2, 1979 Charles Smith, who claimed to be America's last living slave, dies at age 137.
@ November 4, 1979 Iranian militants seize the American embassy in Tehran and take ninety hostages, including sixty-three Americans. They demand the return of the shah of Iran who is in the U.S. being treated for cancer. The militants hold fifty-two hostages for more than a year.
@ May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens, a volcano in Washington, erupts violently and remains in the news for many weeks to come.
@ September 22, 1980 Under the leadership of Lech Walesa Polish workers form a union that they call Solidlarity.
@ December 8, 1980 Former Beatle John Lennon is shot and killed by a deranged fan outside his New York apartment building.
@ January 20, 1981 Ronald Reagan becomes president on the same day that the Iranian hostage crisis ends with the release of fifty-two hostages who had been seized at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Members of the Carter Administration who had been absorbed by the crisis are disappointed not to see it end on their watch.
@ March 30, 1981 President Reagan is shot by John W. Hinckley, Jr. outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. Reagan requires two hours of emergency surgery to remove a bullet from his lung. White House press secretary James Brady, a policeman and a Secret Service agent are also wounded by Hinckley, who apparently hopes that his act of violence will impress actress Jodie Foster.
@ April 12, 1981 The space shuttle Columbia makes its maiden voyage from Cape Canaveral. It will return to Earth on the 14th when it becomes the first manned spacecraft to land as an aircraft with its wheels down rather than to splash down.
@ May 13, 1981 Pope John Paul II is shot and wounded by a Turkish criminal as he rides through the crowds in Rome's St. Peter's Square.
@ June 12, 1981 For the first time in history, there is a midseason baseball strike. It is not resolved until a third of the season is used up. The issue is free agency and the fans are not amused.
@ July 7, 1981 President Ronald Reagan announces he will nominate Arizona judge Sandra Day O'Connor to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. O'Connor becomes the highest court's first female justice.
@ August 6, 1981 The air controllers strike is broken when President Reagan announces that he is firing those who did not come towork on the 5th---12,000 in all---and the Federal Aviation Administration announces it will hire replacements.
@ December 4, 1981 For the first time the president authorizes domestic intelligence gathering by the CIA and other agencies.
@ March 5, 1982 Popular comedian John Belushi is found dead in a rented Hollywood bungalow. Drugs are immediately suspected and later shown to be the cause of death.
@ March 26, 1982 Ground is broken for a memorial to honor the 58,022 Americans killed in the Vietnam War.
@ May 30, 1982 Cal Rikpen, Jr. begins his consecutive game streak of 2,632 games, ending on September 20, 1998.
@ June 24, 1982 President Reagan declares an all-out attack on drugs and creates a new agency, the White House Office of Drug Abuse Policy, to oversee the war on drugs.
@ September 15, 1982 USA Today makes its debut in the Washington-Baltimore area. It calls itself "The Nation's Newspaper" and relies on short, punchy articles and the heavy use of color.
@ February 28, 1983 The last episode of M*A*S*H is aired on CBS, attracting some 121,624,000 viewers.
@ April 20, 1983 The Supreme Court affirms the right of the states to ban nuclear power plants.
@ June 13, 1983 Today the Pioneer 10 spaceprobe---launched in 1972--- becomes the first object created by humans to leave this solar system.
@ June 18, 1983 Astronaut Sally K. Ride becomes America's first woman in space as she and four colleagues blast off aboard the space shuttle Challenger. The vehicle glides to a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California on the 24th.
@ August 30, 1983 Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford rides the shuttle Challenger and becomes the first black astronaut to enter space.
@ October 9, 1983 Interior Secretary James Watt resigns under pressure after describing the members of a commission as, "a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple."
@ February 17, 1984 The Supreme Court decides that individuals can legally videotape television shows for their own use.
@ July 12, 1984 Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale announces he has chosen Geraldine Ferraro of New York to be his running mate. Ferraro is the first woman to run for vice president of the United States on a major-party ticket.
@ July 23, 1984 The first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, relinquishes her crown two month early when nude photographs of her are published in Penthouse magazine. She is the first pageant winner to give up her title.
@ August 11, 1984 During an off-air radio voice check, President Reagan jokes, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
@ July 13, 1985 Live Aid, an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, raises money for Africa's starving people.
@ July 19, 1985 NASA selects schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe from among 11,000 applicants to join the space shuttle.
@ August 8, 1985 On this day President Ronald Reagan either does or does not give permission for arms to be secretly shipped to Iran. "It is possible to forget," the president says to reporters in February 1987: "Everybody who can remember what they were doing on August 8, 1985, raise your hand." What actually takes place on this date becomes an elusive key to the Irangate incident.
@ August 15, 1985 South African President P. W. Botha, rejecting Western pleas to abolish apartheid, decleares, "I am not prepared to lead white South Africa and other minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide."
@ September 1, 1985 A joint French-U.S. team locates the wreck of the Titantic, which sunk in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. The seventy-three-year-old wreck is discovered about 560 miles off the coat of Newfoundland.
@ April 16, 1986 An explosion and fire occur at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union that will eventually spread radiation over a large area. The accident is not acknowledged by the USSR until April 30.
@ June 9, 1986 A presidential commission determines that the single cause of the January 28 (Challenger) shuttle disaster was a defective seal in the right solid-fuel booster. The space agency is criticized for managerial and technical errors.
@ June 19, 1986 Len Bias, a University of Maryland basketball star and the top drft choice of the Boston Celtics, dies of an overdose of cocaine. More than any other incident, this death underscores widespread drug abuse by athletes.
@ December 23, 1986 The pilots of the Voyager, Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan, make history by flying around the world in the first nonstop flight without refueling. The flight begins on December 14.
@ March 22, 1987 A garbage barge carrying 3,200 tons of refuse leaves Islip, New York, on a six-month journey in search of a place to unload. It eventually is turned away by several states and three foreign countries until space is found back in Islip.
@ June 16, 1987 A New York jury acquits Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in connection with the subway shooting of four black youths he said were going to rob him. Goetz, however, is convicted of illegal weapons possession in the December 22, 1984, shootings.
@ September 4, 1987 A Soviet court convicts West German pilot Mathias Rust of landing his plane in Red Square. He is sentenced to four years in prison but is released on August 3, 1988.
@ October 23, 1987 Th Senate rejects Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court by a vote of fifty-eight to forty-two.
@ August 8, 1988 Today is 8/8/88, a phenomenon that will not recur until 8/8/[20]88.
@ January 20, 1989 George Bush and Dan Quayle take office as president and vice president. In his inaugural speech, Bush says of drugs, "This scourge will stop."
@ March 9, 1989 Former Senator John Tower's nomination by newly elected George W. Bush to the post of secretary of defense is defeated in the Senate by a vote of fifty-three to forty-seven. It is the first time in history that the Senate denies the president a nomination for his first Cabinet.
@ March 24, 1989 The tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Before the leaking is stopped, 11 million gallons of crude oil pollute many miles of shoreline and kill wildlife.
@ May 30, 1989 Chinese students begin erecting a Goddess of Democracy statue in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. It revitalizes antigovernment demonstrations and draws crowds to the square. This event comes at a time when the number of students in the Square has diminished because of fatigue and poor sanitary conditions.
@ June 7, 1989 There is a moment early in the morning (and later in the afternoon) when the time is: 1:23:45/6/7/89.
@ August 22, 1989 Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers becomes the first pitcher in major league baseball to strike out 5,000 batters. On July 11, 1985, Ryan became the first to fan 4,000 batters.
@ October 18, 1989 A violent earthquake strikes Northern California at 5:04 P.M. PDT. The most devastating effect is the collapse of the upper deck of a highway in Oakland, which traps and kills more than forty people in their cars. It occurs just as the third game of the World Series is about to get underway.
@ November 5, 1989 The Civil Rights Memorial is dedicated in Montgomery, Alabama. It honors those killed during the struggle.
@ December 21, 1989 In Kentucky, Larry Mahoney is convicted of killing 27 people in a highway accident in 1988. The conviction formally establishes it as the nation's worst alcohol-related crash.
@ August 9, 1990 Baseball great Pete Rose reports to the Marion (Ill.) Federal Prison Camp to serve a sentence for filing false income tax forms.
@ October 3, 1990 At the stroke of midnight the two Germanys merge back into one. A massive West German flag---now the only German flag---rises where the Berlin Wall stood only a few months earlier.
@ December 12, 1990 Lech Walesa, president of the once-outlawed union Solidarity, becomes president of Poland.
@ February 27, 1991 Kuwait City is liberated. President Bush announces a unilateral halt to military operations in the Gulf, effective at midnight.
@ November 7, 1991 Basketball star Magic Johnson announces that he has tested HIV-positive and retires from basketball. He returns for the 1992 All-Star Game, as a member of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, and for a time as a regular player in 1992 and 1996.
@ April 29, 1992 Four white police officers are acquitted in Los Angeles in the videotaped assault on Rodney King, an African-American. Three days of street violence ensue, with some 50 deaths and thousands of injuries.
@ February 26, 1993 A bomb in a van in a parking garage under New York City's World Trade Center kills six, injures more than 1,000 and cripples the twin 110-story towers. Four Muslims will be convicted as the terrorists responsible and will each be sentenced to 240 years in prison.
@ May 20, 1993 The last episode of the long-running NBC show Cheers airs.
@ August 4, 1993 A federal judge sentences Los Angeles police officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to two and one-half years in prison for violating Rodney King's civil rights.
@ January 6, 1994 Skater Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Cobo Arena in Detroit. Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan's rival, Tonya Harding, are later convicted.
@ June 20, 1994 O.J. Simpson flees from police in a televised low-speed chase.
@ July 21, 1994 O.J. Simpson's lawyers announce a toll-free number for those with information on the murders. A $500,000 reward is offered.
@ December 9, 1994 Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders is asked to resign after making remarks about children and masturbation.
@ August 9, 1995 Jerry Garcia, lead singer of the Grateful Dead, dies in San Francisco of a heart attack at 53.
@ October 3, 1995 Former professional football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. Simpson's televised trial sets off a national debate on racial issues, spousal abuse and the American legal system.
@ November 15, 1995 President Bill Clinton begins his clandestine sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
@ March 9, 1996 Comedia George Burns dies in Beverly Hills at the age of 100.
@ April 3, 1996 Theodore Kaczynski is arrested in Montana as a suspect in the 17-year Unabomber killing spree.
@ June 21, 1995 The Pentagon officially acknowledges that U.S. troops might have been exposed to chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf War.
@ July 21, 1996 A pipe bomb explodes at an Olympic Games site in Atlanta, Georgia, killing one. Authorities officially clear a security guard, Richard Jewell, as a "target" of their probe on October 26, 1996.
@ January 21, 1997 House reprimands Newt Gingrich and imposes $300,000 fine. he is the first Speaker to be formally punished. His offense: bringing discredit upon the House by using tax exempt donations for political purposes and submitting false information to the House Ethics Committee.
@ February 4, 1997 A civil jury finds O.J. Simpson liable in the 1994 slayings; awards $8.5 million in compensatory damages. On February 10, punitive damages of $25 million are set in the case.
@ February 23, 1997 Report in Britain's Observer says that scientists in Scotland have cloned an adult sheep, sparking a debate on human cloning. The animal is a Finn Dorset lamb named Dolly. This scientific development could presage the ability to clone humans.
@ March 26, 1997 Heaven's Gate cult members commit suicide in preparation for a spaceship that will take them away.
@ July 4, 1997 NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft lands on Mars, inaugurating a new era in the search for life on the red planet.
@ August 31, 1997 Diana, Princess of Wales, is killed in a car crash in France.
@ February 2, 1998 For the first time in nearly three decades, a U.S. president submits a balanced budget.
@ May 14, 1998 The finale of Seinfeld, the show "about nothing" airs on NBC.
@ June 14, 1998 Michael Jordan makes a 17-foot shot to win the NBA Championship for the Chicago Bulls. It is his last shot, as he will formally retire in 1999.
@ September 8, 1998 Mark McGwire hits his 62nd homer; touches all of the bases (after initially missing first base) and hugs his 10-year-old son, Matthew. With another hug, he lifts Sammy Sosa, who has 58 homers at the time. McGwire has broken Roger Maris's feat in 1961 of 61 home runs. McGwire will go on to hit 70.
@ September 9, 1998 The Starr Report is delivlered to the House Judiciary Committee in dozens of sealed boxes, which are locked in a House storage room.
@ October 29, 1998 John Glenn, the first astronaut to orbit the earth, returns to space on Discovery STS-95. He is 75 years old.
@ Decembr 19, 1998 President Clinton is impeached. For only the second time in American history, a president is charged with "high crimes and misdemeanors" for lying under oath and obstructing justice. The voting is partisan.
@ May 27, 1999 It is reported that the cloned lamb Dolly (c. February 23, 1997) has age-related traits of the six-year-old ewe from whom she was created.
Source: From Elvis to E-Mail By Paul Dixon
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Are You Following @Kilroy60 On Twitter?
Today's Twitter Updates...
Kilroy60
Landing at Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose. Will check you tweeple out Monday when I leave Cartago. 5 hours ago from twitterrific
King James! A shot for the ages!! MVP!!! 11:32 p.m. May 22nd from twitterrific
Picking up steaks for dinner at @MasterBaiter's house. 5:02 p.m. May 22nd from twitterrific
TheSpecialOne Ho Ho Ho 3:27 p.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Stumbling around StumbleUpon. http://kilroy60.stumbleupon.com 2:19 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Picking up 3 cases of Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale and a box of rolling papers for the Cavs-Magic game. 1:42 p.m. May 22nd from twitterrific
RT @Machione @infidelsarecool It's easy to understand why #Dick Cheney gets attention. He's in the same category as Ebola Virus and Toxic Waste Dumps. 1:27 p.m. May 22nd from the web
RT @TwilightEarth Big Announcement! Twilight Earth has acquired http://www.ecotechdaily.com! New content coming soon! Follow @ecotechdaily 1:24 p.m. May 22nd from the web
I'm about ready to blow this popsicle stand. 1:15 p.m. May 22nd from twitterrific
@MasterBaiter I'll be at The Midtown Tavern in about an hour, then going to Liberty Tower building. Will call when meeting's breaking up. 11:04 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Time to get ready for a client meeting, first a few lines of Peruvian flake. 10:37 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
TheSpecialOne Ho Ho 7:29 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Looking for a internet-based sales contact relation management system? Don't do business with Stan Bunting, he's a ripoff artist. http://tinyurl.com/19rd457e 7:17 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
@dannybrown Those 12for12k avatars are spreading around the twitterverse like a bad rash. Ho Ho http://12for12k.org 7:12 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Reading about @bcuban's effort to remove Holocaust-denial groups from Facebook. http://tinyurl.com/t87kw9 7:06 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Checking out @GlobalPatriot's Facebook Group. http://tinyurl.com7rwbm2 6:57 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Cracking open a new tank of nitrous oxide. 6:38 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
A #FollowFriday shout-out to @AmyVernon, @TechJaws, @GlobalPatriot, @DerekMarkham, @bcuban, @robinbal, @anja and @Machione. 6:33 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Breaking up a few buds and a chunk of Moroccan blonde hash while I respond to DMs. 6:19 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
What's happening in Twitterville this morning? 6:17 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Kilroy60
Landing at Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose. Will check you tweeple out Monday when I leave Cartago. 5 hours ago from twitterrific
King James! A shot for the ages!! MVP!!! 11:32 p.m. May 22nd from twitterrific
Picking up steaks for dinner at @MasterBaiter's house. 5:02 p.m. May 22nd from twitterrific
TheSpecialOne Ho Ho Ho 3:27 p.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Stumbling around StumbleUpon. http://kilroy60.stumbleupon.com 2:19 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Picking up 3 cases of Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale and a box of rolling papers for the Cavs-Magic game. 1:42 p.m. May 22nd from twitterrific
RT @Machione @infidelsarecool It's easy to understand why #Dick Cheney gets attention. He's in the same category as Ebola Virus and Toxic Waste Dumps. 1:27 p.m. May 22nd from the web
RT @TwilightEarth Big Announcement! Twilight Earth has acquired http://www.ecotechdaily.com! New content coming soon! Follow @ecotechdaily 1:24 p.m. May 22nd from the web
I'm about ready to blow this popsicle stand. 1:15 p.m. May 22nd from twitterrific
@MasterBaiter I'll be at The Midtown Tavern in about an hour, then going to Liberty Tower building. Will call when meeting's breaking up. 11:04 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Time to get ready for a client meeting, first a few lines of Peruvian flake. 10:37 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
TheSpecialOne Ho Ho 7:29 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Looking for a internet-based sales contact relation management system? Don't do business with Stan Bunting, he's a ripoff artist. http://tinyurl.com/19rd457e 7:17 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
@dannybrown Those 12for12k avatars are spreading around the twitterverse like a bad rash. Ho Ho http://12for12k.org 7:12 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Reading about @bcuban's effort to remove Holocaust-denial groups from Facebook. http://tinyurl.com/t87kw9 7:06 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Checking out @GlobalPatriot's Facebook Group. http://tinyurl.com7rwbm2 6:57 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Cracking open a new tank of nitrous oxide. 6:38 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
A #FollowFriday shout-out to @AmyVernon, @TechJaws, @GlobalPatriot, @DerekMarkham, @bcuban, @robinbal, @anja and @Machione. 6:33 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Breaking up a few buds and a chunk of Moroccan blonde hash while I respond to DMs. 6:19 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
What's happening in Twitterville this morning? 6:17 a.m. May 22nd from tweetdeck
Thursday, May 21, 2009
A Gallery Of Kilroy_60 Renderings And Lithographs
I've been doing a great deal of writing for clients.
Over the past two weeks, for example, I put together a business plan, generated copy for a new website, wrote a speech and started ghost writing a book.
TheSpecialOne suggested recently that I display some of my renderings and lithographs at Shangi-La. That got me to thinking that it's been a long time {October, 2007} since I posted any here.
While I'm on a short hiatus from writing here in the blogosphere, enjoy these renderings and lithographs by Kilroy_60....
Over the past two weeks, for example, I put together a business plan, generated copy for a new website, wrote a speech and started ghost writing a book.
TheSpecialOne suggested recently that I display some of my renderings and lithographs at Shangi-La. That got me to thinking that it's been a long time {October, 2007} since I posted any here.
While I'm on a short hiatus from writing here in the blogosphere, enjoy these renderings and lithographs by Kilroy_60....
Saturday, May 16, 2009
A Shout-Out To Villers-le-Bouillet...
I wanted to send a shout-out to Villers-le-Bouillet, in the Province of Liege, in Belgium, someone there recorded visit number 51,000, as tallied by Site Meter (since 6 March, 2007)....
I was pleased to see that it was The Mystique Of The Full Moon that brought the visitor from Villers-le-Bouillet.
Friday, May 15, 2009
The Mystique Of The Full Moon
"Never say (to younger people) 'that was before your time,' because the last full moon was before their time!"
- Bill Cosby
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
-Buddha
{Click on this picture to see Mars}
"You have to be able to appreciate these things. How many people can say it was a full moon last night and appreciate it?"
-Sandy Miller
"Promises are like the full moon, if they are not kept at once they diminish day by day"
- German Proverb
"Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night."
- Hal Borland
“I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it"
- Albert Einstein
"I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon."
-Willa Sibert Cather
"A full moon, a quiet night. That is so special."
- Paul Petersen
"May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night and a smooth road all the way to your door."
-An Irish Blessing
"Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy"
-Henri Frederic Amiel
Photographs by Kilroy_60
Friday, May 08, 2009
Thank You Friends, Old And New, For Your Interest And Support...
It's great to be back at Black Squirrel Run after splitting time between Shangri-La and La AlegrÃa over the past week.
The wonderful sunset we had tonight amounted to a perfect welcome home gift....
It's been a landmark week for The Gonzo Papers as I hosted Carnival of Cities goes Gonzo! Again!! and Site Meter rang up visit number 49,000 (since 6 March, 2007).
This morning when I was taking care of some blog related odds and ends I logged into Site Meter to see what sort of traffic flow there had been related to the carnival.
It was a shock to find the counter sitting at 49,494; I can't imagine being able to hit a numerical sequence like that if I was purposefully looking for one....
It was Wednesday that Site Meter recorded visit number 49,000.
I can't help but wonder if the person from Huntington Station, New York came to this site purposefully, whether it was a misdirected visit or if they fell down a virtual rabbit hole....
Typically I have my settings configured to block the IP Address of the computer I'm using from Site Meter.
The morning of the blog carnival, though, I thought there was a chance I could be the one to record visit number 49,000 so I adjusted the settings to record one visit.
As it worked out that wasn't to be, but it is nice to be able to post a Site Meter map for the first time with a dot representing a visit I made while at La AlegrÃa
I'd like to thank, again, everyone who contributed a post to Carnival of Cities goes Gonzo! Again!! and would like to send a shout-out to my friends at the StumbleUpon social media site. Without you the carnival wouldn't have been such a fantastic success.I'm always surprised and pleased to see that people find their way to The Gonzo Papers from around the globe. Irregardless of whether they came purposefully, through a social media referral or by happenstance.
One particular visit I wanted to note originated in Warwick, New York. That was visit number 45,678....
In light of Carnival of Cities Goes Gonzo! Again!!, of course, it's great to see people from around the globe making their way to The Gonzo Papers.
You can see 2,500 visits illustrated through the Site Meter maps in this post! Yes, the blogosphere has gone Gonzo....
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