Friday, April 13, 2012

Friday! History, Military, Titanic, Quotes, More!

On This Date In 1360 On so-called “Black Monday”, a hail storm killed an estimated 1,000 English soldiers in Chartres, France. The storm and the devastation it caused also played a part in the Hundred Years' War between England and France. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hail-kills-english-troops
On This Date In 1742 It may surprise many to learn that George Friedrich Handel's Messiah was not originally intended as a piece of Christmas music. Messiah received its world premiere on this day in 1742, during the Christian season of Lent, and in the decidedly secular context of a concert hall in Dublin, Ireland.
On This Date In 1743 Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826), the third President of the United States (1801–1809), principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States, was born. Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806). http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/apr13.html
On This Date In 1777 The Battle of Bound Brook, one of the battles in the New York and New Jersey campaign during the American Revolutionary War, was fought, and resulted in a defeat for the Continental Army, who were routed by a four prong attack from about 4,000 troops under British command. Around 60 casualties occurred on the American side, while only a single British soldier was killed. On the same day, Nathanael Greene recaptured Bound Brook, but George Washington realized the difficulty of defending the place.
On This Date In 1818 Although it did not become official until July 4, on April 13, 1818, a new flag was flown over the U.S. Capitol for the first time. The flag's thirteen stripes represented the original colonies; its twenty stars symbolized the number of states in the Union at that time. Samuel C. Reid designed the flag, which was sewed by his wife and her friends, and sent it by mail to the Capitol. Congressman Peter H. Wendover arranged for the flag to fly over the Capitol on the same day that it was received in Washington, D.C. Since the arrangement of the stars was not yet standardized (and was not until 1912), the stars on Reid’s flag were arranged into one big star.
On This Date In 1861 The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–13, 1861) was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. After a 33-hour bombardment by Confederate cannons, Union forces under the command of Major Robert Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor to Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. The first engagement of the war ended in Rebel victory, and with no one from either side killed during the bombardment. During the 100-gun salute to the U.S. flag—Anderson's one condition for withdrawal—a pile of cartridges blew up from a spark, killing Private Daniel Hough instantly and seriously injuring the rest of the gun crew, one mortally (Private Edward Gallway); these were the first fatalities of the war. The salute was stopped at fifty shots.
On This Date In 1866 Robert LeRoy Parker (April 13, 1866 – November 3, 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, notorious American train robber, bank robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch Gang in the American Old West, was born.
On This Date In 1918 During the Finnish Civil War, and as part of Germany's support of Finland and its newly declared parliamentary government, German troops gained control of Helsingfors (Helsinki) from the Red Guard, an army of Finnish supporters of the Russian Bolsheviks.
On This Date In 1919 In Amritsar, India's holy city of the Sikh religion, British and Gurkha troops massacred at least 379 unarmed demonstrators meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh, a city park. Most of those killed were Indian nationalists meeting to protest the British government's forced conscription of Indian soldiers and the heavy war tax imposed against the Indian people.
On This Date In 1927 The 1927 Stanley Cup Final NHL championship series was contested by the Ottawa Senators and the Boston Bruins. It was the first solely contested by National Hockey League teams since the demise of the Western Hockey League. It was won by the Ottawa Senators, coached by Dave Gill, over the Boston Bruins, coached by Art Ross. This was the Senators' fourth win since 1920, and eleventh overall, but it marked the end of the dynasty. The original Senators did not win another.
On This Date In 1933 The 1933 Stanley Cup Finals was played between the New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs, in a rematch of the 1932 Final. The Rangers won the series 3–1 to win their second Stanley Cup. Bill Cook would become the first player to score a Cup-winning goal in overtime. Rookie goalie Andy Aitkenhead would post the fourth shutout by a rookie in the finals.
On This Date In 1940 The 1940 Stanley Cup Final was a best-of-seven series between the New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs. New York would win the series 4–2 to win their third Stanley Cup. The Rangers would not win another for more than 50 years.
On This Date In 1941 The Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed between Russia and Japan two years after the war between Russia and Japan at the Manchurian and Mongolian borders slowed inconclusively. The treaty called for the two nations to observe neutrality when any one of the two signing nations was invaded by a third nation. Both nations also pledged to respect the sovereignty of Japan's puppet state of Manchukuo and Russia's puppet state the Mongolian People's Republic. http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=199
On This Date In 1944 The 1944 Stanley Cup Final was a best-of-seven series between the Chicago Black Hawks and the Montreal Canadiens. The Canadiens would win the series 4–0 to win their first Stanley Cup since 1931.
On This Date In 1948 The Hadassah medical convoy massacre took place when a convoy, escorted by Haganah militia, bringing medical and fortification supplies and personnel to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus was ambushed by Arab forces. Claimed as retribution for the Deir Yassin massacre, Seventy-nine Jewish residents of Mandate Palestine, mostly doctors and nurses, were killed in the attack.
On This Date In 1964 The 36th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1963, were held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. They were hosted by Jack Lemmon. Best Picture winner Tom Jones became the only film in history to garner three Best Supporting Actress nominations. Sydney Poitier became the first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, for his role as a construction worker who helps build a chapel in Lilies of the Field.
On This Date In 1970 Disaster struck 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days before for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon, but were forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive, which they did on April 17.
On This Date In 1972 The Battle of An Lộc began, a major battle of the Vietnam War that lasted for 66 days and culminated in a decisive victory for South Vietnam. In many ways, the struggle for An Lộc in 1972 was an important battle of the war, as South Vietnamese forces halted the North Vietnamese advance towards Saigon.
On This Date In 1973 “Aladdin Sane,” an album by rock and pop star David Bowie, was released by RCA Records. The follow-up to his breakthrough The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it was the first album Bowie wrote and released as a bona fide pop star.
On This Date In 1978 “Almighty Fire,” an album by Aretha Franklin, was released by Atlantic Records. By the time of this album's release, Aretha Franklin was going through a recording drought, due in part to the extreme popularity of Disco. This album has long been regarded as one of Aretha's poorest recordings and sold only about 100,000 copies. It peaked at #12 on the Billboard R&B Albums Chart and #83 on the pop chart. The title single peaked at #12 on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and the follow-up single, “More Than A Joy,” peaked at #63. The album has been out of print since the early 1980s and has never been released on compact disc.
On This Date In 1990 The Soviet government officially accepted blame for the Katyn Massacre of World War II, when nearly 5,000 Polish military officers were murdered and buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest. The admission was part of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's promise to be more forthcoming and candid concerning Soviet history.
On This Date In 1992 The Chicago Flood occurred when the damaged wall of a utility tunnel beneath the Chicago River opened into a breach which flooded basements and underground facilities throughout the Chicago Loop with an estimated 250 million US gallons (950,000 m3) of water. An estimated $1.95 billion in damages occurred, and insurance battles over the cause of the flood lasted for years.
On This Date In 1997 Tiger Woods, whose father is African-American and mother is Thai, became the first person of color to win the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club, which admitted its first black member in 1990.
On This Date In 2004 “Is There Love in Space?,” the tenth studio album by guitarist Joe Satriani, was released through Epic Records. On December 4, 2008, a lawsuit was filed by Satriani accusing the band Coldplay of plagarizing “substantial original portions” of the album's sixth track, If I Could Fly, on their 2008 song, Viva la Vida. The case was dismissed by the California Central District Court on September 14, 2009, with both parties allegedly agreeing to an undisclosed settlement.
On This Date In 2009 Harry Norbert Kalas (March 26, 1936 – April 13, 2009), American sportscaster, best known for his Ford C. Frick Award-winning role as lead play-by-play announcer for Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies, died of heart disease after collapsing in the Nationals Park press box at approximately 12:30 pm, several hours before the Washington Nationals' home opener against the Phillies. Kalas was rushed to George Washington University Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Kalas was also closely identified with the National Football League, serving as a voice-over narrator for NFL Films productions (a regular feature on Inside the NFL) and calling football games nationally for Westwood One radio.
On This Date In 2009 Mark Steven “The Bird” Fidrych (August 14, 1954 – April 13, 2009), a Major League Baseball pitcher with the Detroit Tigers (1976–1980) his entire career, died at the age of 54 of suffocation at his home in Massachusetts in an accident while working on his 10-wheel dump truck, after his clothes became tangled with a spinning power takeoff shaft.
On This Date In 2009 A spokeswoman for the State Attorney's Office in Orlando, Florida announced prosecutors had filed papers seeking to have Casey Anthony executed if she was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=7328024#.T4hDfNWN3Go

Hat tip to any included contributing sources, along with:


Happy Birthday Stanley Donen (1924), Sergiu Nicolaescu (1930), Lyle Waggoner (1935), Paul Sorvino (1939), Max Mosley (1940), John Paul Dejoria (1944), Tony Dow (1945), Al Green (1946), Amy Robinson (1948), Ron Perlman (1950), Peabo Bryson (1951), Max Weinberg (1951), Amy Goodman (1957), Garry Kasparov (1963), Rick Schroder (1970), Andrew Pleavin (1968), Meghann Shaughnessy (1979), Kelli Giddish (1980), and Nellie McKay (1982).

RIP Guy Fawkes (1570 – 1606), Joseph Bramah (1748 – 1814), F. W. Woolworth (1852 – 19 19), Herbert O. Yardley (1889 – 1958), Eudora Welty (1909 – 2001), Howard Keel (1919 – 2004), Don Adams (1923 – 2005), Mari Blanchard (1927 – 1970), Christopher Hitchens (1949 – 2011), and Jonathan Brandis (1976 – 2003).


Quotes

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins. Bob Moawad

Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great. Mark Twain

Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning. Mahatma Gandhi

Leadership is based on inspiration, not domination; on cooperation, not intimidation. William Arthur Ward

We have not come into the world to be numbered; we have been created for a purpose; for great things: to love and be loved. Mother Teresa of Calcutta

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. Ralph Waldo Emerson


Courtesy YouTube et al

It's been 100 years since the Titanic sank, but yet we are still fascinated by everything that happened that night. There's no single reason why, but it's possible that the tragedy taps into universal themes that people can still relate to. (April 13)

--Government Workers--Obama Campaign--Mitt Romney--Connecticut Abolishes Death Penalty
--Hezbollah Sympathizers--Anti-Groping Program--Vulcan Salute--Russian Gun--The Hunger Games
Love NewsBusted and want to receive alerts about new episodes in your
email? Visit ‪http://newsbusters.org/newsbusted to sign up for free!
Starring: Jodi Miller; Production: Dialog New Media

U.S. Air Force Capt. Barry Crawford is presented the Air Force Cross by the Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz in the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon, Arlington, VA. Joint Hometown News Service; Air Force Cross Ceremony Part 2 of 2 http://youtu.be/tckUElNmpoo


I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge - myth is more potent than history - dreams are more powerful than facts - hope always triumphs over experience - laughter is the cure for grief - love is stronger than death. Robert Fulghum

Thomas Jefferson
Let me describe to you a man, not yet forty, tall, and with a mild and pleasing countenance…. An American, who without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman…. Sometimes natural philosophy, at others politics or the arts, were the topics of our conversation, for no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson; and it seemed as if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he has done his house, on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe.
Description of a visit to Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in 1782, - http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=lhbtn&fileName=06665/lhbtn06665.db&recNum=226
from Travels in North-America, in the Years 1780-81-82 by the Marquis de Chastellux. - http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/lhbtnbib:@field%28NUMBER+@od1%28lhbtn+06665%29%29



No comments:

Post a Comment