Friday, January 13, 2012

Friday! History, Music, Space, Cinema, Sports, Quotes, More!

On This Date In 1128 Pope Honorius II granted a papal sanction to the military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God.
On This Date In 1794 President George Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the union.
On This Date In 1833 President Andrew Jackson wrote Vice President Martin Van Buren expressing his opposition to South Carolina's defiance of federal authority. He closed with the assertion, “nothing must be permitted to weaken our government at home or abroad.”
On This Date In 1842 British army doctor William Bryde reaches the British sentry post at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, the lone survivor of a 16,000-strong Anglo-Indian expeditionary force that was massacred in its retreat from Kabul. He told of a terrible massacre in the Khyber Pass, in which the Afghans gave the defeated Anglo-Indian force and their camp followers no quarter.
On This Date In 1847 The Treaty of Cahuenga. usually called the “Capitulation of Cahuenga,” was signed, and ended the fighting of the Mexican-American War in California in 1847.
On This Date In 1864 Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as the “father of American music,” was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century. In an era before transfusions and antibiotics, he succumbed to persistent fever three days after his admittance to Bellevue Hospital at the age of 37. Foster was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. One of his most beloved works, “Beautiful Dreamer,” was published shortly after his death.
On This Date In 1865 Through January 15, 1865. the Second Battle of Fort Fisher was fought. It was a joint assault by Union Army and naval forces against Fort Fisher, outside Wilmington, North Carolina, near the end of the American Civil War. Sometimes referred to as the “Gibraltar of the South” and the last major coastal stronghold of the Confederacy, Fort Fisher had tremendous strategic value during the war.
On This Date In 1898 French writer Emile Zola's inflammatory newspaper editorial, entitled “J'accuse,” was printed. The letter exposed a military cover-up regarding Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, a French army captain, had been accused of espionage in 1894 and sentenced in a secret military court-martial to imprisonment in a South American penal colony. Two years later, evidence of Dreyfus' innocence surfaced, but the army suppressed the information. Zola's letter excoriated the military for concealing its mistaken conviction.
On This Date In 1902 The Battle of Riyadh was fought, a minor battle of the Unification War between Rashidi and Ibn Saud rebels, in Masmak Castle in Riyadh, The capital of present day Saudi Arabia.
On This Date In 1908 The Rhoads Opera House, located in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, caught fire during a church-sponsored stage play. The fire started when a kerosene lamp was knocked over, lighting gasoline from a stereoscopic machine. The stage and auditorium were located on the 2nd floor and all auxiliary exits were either unmarked or locked. One fire escape was available but unable to be accessed through a locked window above a 3 foot sill. 171 people perished when the exit was crowded against to escape the fire. Entire families were wiped out.
On This Date In 1915 The 1915 Avezzano earthquake occurred in southern Italy, by L'Aquila. The epicenter was located in the town of Avezzano in southern Italy. 30,000 direct fatalities resulted from the earthquake, destroying the epicentral area.
On This Date In 1916 The Battle of Wadi was fought, an unsuccessful attempt by British forces fighting in present-day Iraq during the First World War to relieve beleaguered forces under Sir Charles Townshend, then under siege by the Turks at Kut-al-Amara.
On This Date In 1940 “Brother Rat and a Baby”, the sequel to the 1938 film Brother Rat, about cadets at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, was released. It stars Priscilla Lane, Wayne Morris, Jane Bryan, Eddie Albert, Jane Wyman, and Ronald Reagan. Mayo Methot and Alan Ladd appear in small roles. The movie was directed by Ray Enright and remains notable for featuring future US president Reagan and wife Wyman.
On This Date In 1941 James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (February 2, 1882 – January 13, 1941), Irish novelist and poet, and considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century, died from a perforated ulcer and gastrointestinal hemorrhaging. He is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery near Zurich Zoo.
On This Date In 1945 The East Prussian Offensive was a strategic offensive by the Red Army against the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front during World War II. It lasted from January 13, 1945 to April 25, 1945, though some German units did not surrender until May 9. The Battle of Königsberg was a major part of the offensive, which ended with a total victory for the Red Army.
On This Date In 1962 During the Vietnam War, Operation Farm Gate, initially designed to provide advisory support to assist the South Vietnamese Air Force in increasing its capability, flew its first combat missions with T-28 fighter-bombers in support of a South Vietnamese outpost under Viet Cong attack. By the end of the month, U.S. Air Force pilots had flown 229 Farm Gate sorties.
On This Date In 1962 Ernie Kovacs (January 23, 1919 – January 13, 1962), a Hungarian American comedian and actor who hosted his own television shows during the 1950s and is said to have influenced such TV hosts as Johnny Carson and David Letterman, died at the age of 42 after crashing his Chevrolet Corvair into a telephone pole in Los Angeles, California, while driving in a rainstorm.
On This Date In 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the first African-American cabinet member, making Robert C. Weaver head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the agency that develops and implements national housing policy and enforces fair housing laws.
On This Date In 1972 President Richard Nixon announced that 70,000 U.S. troops would leave South Vietnam over the next three months, reducing U.S. troop strength there by May 1 to 69,000 troops.
On This Date In 1974 Super Bowl VIII was played at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion following the 1973 regular season. The American Football Conference (AFC) champion Miami Dolphins (15-2) defeated the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Minnesota Vikings (14-3), 24–7. Scoring the first 24 points of the game and leading 24-0 entering the fourth quarter, the Dolphins easily won their second consecutive Super Bowl, and became the first team to appear in three consecutive Super Bowls.
On This Date In 1982 Air Florida Boeing 727 plunged into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., killing 78 people. The crash, caused by bad weather, took place only two miles from the White House.
On This Date In 1999 National Basketball Association (NBA) superstar Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls announced his retirement from professional basketball, for the second time, in front of a crowd at Chicago's United Center.
On This Date In 2010 Theodore DeReese "Teddy" Pendergrass (March 26, 1950 – January 13, 2010), American R&B/soul singer and songwriter, died of respiratory failure at age 59 with his wife Joan by his side, while hospitalized at Bryn Mawr Hospital in suburban Philadelphia. Pendergrass first rose to fame as lead singer of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in the 1970s before a successful solo career at the end of the decade.

Hat tip to any included contributing sources, along with:


Happy Birthday Frances Sternhagen (1930), Rip Taylor (1934), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (1961), Trace Adkins (1962), Penelope Ann Miller (1964), Patrick Dempsey (1966), Traci Bingham (1968), Nicole Eggert (1972), Bam Morris (1972), Orlando Bloom (1977), and Jill Wagner (1979).


RIP Wilhelm Wien (1864 – 1928), Kay Francis (1905 – 1968), Robert Stack (1919 – 2003), Gwen Verdon (1925 – 2000), and Ian Hendry (1931 – 1984).


Quotes

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. Henry Miller

Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality. Earl Nightingale

The way you activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about results you want to create. When you make a choice, you mobilize vast human energies and resources which otherwise go untapped. All too often people fail to focus their choices upon results and therefore their choices are ineffective. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. Robert Fritz

People who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others have idled, have perservered while others gave up in despair, and have practiced early in life the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose. As a result, they enjoy in later life the success often erroneously attributed to good luck. Grenville Kleiser

Cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be a revelation. Eileen Caddy

The person with a fixed goal, a clear picture of his desire, or an ideal always before him, causes it, through repetition, to be buried deeply in his subconscious mind and is thus enabled, thanks to its generative and sustaining power, to realize his goal in a minimum of time and with a minimum of physical effort. Just pursue the thought unceasingly. Step by step you will achieve realization, for all your faculties and powers become directed to that end. Claude Bristol

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal everything in sight. Michael Bridge


Courtesy YouTube et al

NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory mission's two spacecraft achieve lunar orbit at beginning of new year and begin their study of the moon, from crust to core. Also, FIRST season starts; Booster Day; Commander's Comet; Booms and Whispers; and Curiosity's RAD! Also, Aggies get shuttle sim; Butch & The Titans; and STS-81 anniversary.

Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk comments her game against Olivier Kurmann at the 2011 Swiss Chess Championship of Leukerbad.

the first montage and video of RAWPr0ductions, the theme is pictures taken at the right moment. Hope you Enjoy.


Just as our religious institutions are guaranteed freedom in this land, so also do we cherish the diversity of our faiths and the freedom afforded to each of us to pray according to the promptings of our individual conscience. - President Ronald Reagan, January 13, 1986


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