Today in History Wednesday June 19

1464 – French King Louis XI forms postal service

1862 – Slavery outlawed in US territories

1864 – CSS Alabama sunk by USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg, France

1893 – Lizzie Bordon acquitted

1910 – First airship in service “Germany“

1917 – King George V ordered members of British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames, they take the name Windsor.

The name was changed from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the English Windsor (from “Windsor Castle”) in 1917 because of anti-German sentiment in the British Empire during World War I. There have been four British monarchs of the house of Windsor to date: three kings and the present queen, Elizabeth II. (wiki)

1931 – First photoelectric cell installed commercially West Haven, Connecticut

1936 – German boxer Max Schmeling World Champion KOs Joe Louis

1940 – Hermann Goering orders seizure of Dutch horses, car, buses & ships

1941 – Cheerios Cereal invents an O-shaped cereal.

1947 – First plane (F-80) to exceed 600 mph (1004 kph)-Albert Boyd, Muroc Ca

1952 – “I’ve Got A Secret” debuts on CBS-TV with Garry Moore as host

1961 – Kuwait declares independence from UK

1961 – Supreme Court struck down a provision in Maryland’s constitution requiring state office holders to believe in God

1967 – Paul McCartney admits on TV that he took LSD

1988 – World’s largest sausage completed at 13 1/8 miles long

2006 – Prime ministers of several northern European nations participate in a ceremonial “laying of the first stone” at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway.  The vault is a secure seedbank on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, about 810 miles from the North Pole. A feasibility study prior to construction determined that the vault could, for hundreds of years, preserve most major food crops’ seeds. Some, including those of important grains, could survive far longer-possibly thousands of years. Approximately 1.5 million distinct seed samples of agricultural crops are thought to exist. The variety and volume of seeds stored will depend on the number of countries participating – the facility has a capacity to conserve 4.5 million. The first seeds arrived in January 2008.

2012 – A man is beheaded for witchcraft and sorcery in Saudi Arabia

1301 – Prince Morikuni, Japanese shogun (d. 1333)

1566 – James I Stuart, king of Scotland (James VI)/England (1567/1603-25)

1623 – Blaise Pascal, mathematician/physicist/religious writer (Pascal)

1896 – Wallis Simpson [Duchess of Windsor], Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, American divorcee and wife of Edward VIII (abdicated)

Moe, Curly and Larry

1897 – Moe Howard, Moses Harry Horwitz (June 19, 1897 – May 4, 1975), known professionally as Moe Howard, was an American actor and comedian best known as the de facto leader of The Three Stooges, a group that originally started out as Ted Healy and his stooges, an act that toured the vaudeville circuit, the farce comedy team who starred in motion pictures and television for four decades. His distinctive hairstyle came about when he was a boy and cut off his curls with a pair of scissors, producing a ragged shape approximating a bowl cut.

1902 – Guy Lombardo, London Ontario Canada, orchestra leader (Auld Lang Syne)

1903 – Lou Gehrig Henry Louis Gehrig, 1st baseman for NY Yankees (d. 1941)

1867 – Maximilian I of the Mexican Empire is executed by firing squad in Querétaro, Querétaro at 34

1953 – Ethel Rosenberg, executed at Sing Sing, in 5 tries

1953 – Julius Rosenberg, NYC, 1st US civilian executed for espionage at 37

2013 – James Gandolfini, American actor, dies from a heart attack at 51