Today in History

Today in History

1823 – Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne of Spain when invited French forces entered Cadiz. The event is known as the Battle of Trocadero.

1852 – The first pre-stamped envelopes were created with legislation of the U.S. Congress.

1881 – The first tennis championships in the U.S. were played.

1887 – The kinetoscope was patented by Thomas Edison. The device was used to produce moving pictures.

1920 – The first news program to be broadcast on radio was aired. The station was 8MK in Detroit, MI.

1920 – John Lloyd Wright was issued a patent for 'Toy-Cabin Construction,' which are known as Lincoln Logs. (U.S. patent 1,351,086)

1935 – The act of exporting U.S. arms to belligerents was prohibited by an act signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1940 – Lawrence Olivier and Vivian Leigh were married.

1941 – The radio program 'The Great Gildersleeve' made its debut on NBC.

1946 – Superman returned to radio on the Mutual Broadcasting System after being dropped earlier in the year.

1950 – Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers hit four home runs in a single game off of four different pitchers.

1959 – Sandy Koufax set a National League record by striking out 18 batters.

1962 – The Caribbean nations Tobago and Trinidad became independent within the British Commonwealth.

1964 – California officially became the most populated state in America.

1965 – The Department of Housing and Urban Development was created by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

1980 – Poland's Solidarity labor movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a 17day strike.

1981 – The 30-year contract between Milton Berle and NBC-TV expired.

1989 – Great Britain's Princess Anne and Mark Phillips announced that they were separating. The marriage was

16 years old.

1990 – U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar met with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to try and negotiate a solution to the crisis in the Persian Gulf.

1990 – East and West Germany signed a treaty that meant the harmonizing of political and legal systems.

1991 – Uzbekistan and Kirghiziz declared their independence from the Soviet Union. They were the 9th and

10th republics to announce their plans to secede.

1991 – In a 'Solidarity Day' protest hundreds of thousands of union members marched in Washington, DC.

1993 – Russia withdrew its last soldiers from Lithuania.

1994 – A cease-fire was declared by the Irish Republican Army after 25 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

1994 – Russia officially ended its military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltics after a halfcentury.

allistic missile was fired over Japan by North Korea. The missile landed in stages in the waters around Japan. There was no known target.

Born

1811 Théophile Gautier, French poet, novelist and author of Art for Art’s Sake.

1870 Maria Montessori, educator and founder of the Montessori schools.

1885 Dubose Heyward, novelist, poet and dramatist best know for Porgy which was the basis for the opera Porgy and Bess.

1899 Lynn Riggs, writer, her book Green Grow the Lilacs was adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein to become Oklahoma.

1903 Arthur Godfrey, radio and television personality.

1905 Sanford Meisner, influential acting teacher.

1907 William Shawn, longtime editor of The New Yorker.

1908 William Saroyan, author and playwright (The Human Comedy).

1918 Alan Jay Lerner, playwright and lyricist (Brigadoon, Camelot).

1918 Daniel Schorr, journalist.

1935 Eldridge Cleaver, political activist and author of Soul on Fire.

1936 Marva Collins, innovative educator who started Chicago’s one-room school, Westside Preparatory.

1945 Van Morrison, Irish singer, songwriter.

1945 Itzhak Perlman, violinist.

1948 Lowell Ganz, screenwriter, (A League of Their Own) director, producer, actor.

History