1542 – Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claims California for Spain
1743 – War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Dettingen: in Bavaria, King George II of Britain personally leads troops into battle. The last time a British monarch would command troops in the field.
1833 – Prudence Crandall, a white woman, arrested for conducting an academy for black females at Canterbury Connecticut
1847 – New York and Boston linked by telegraph wires
1893 – Great stock crash on NY Stock Exchange
1905 – Russian sailors mutiny aboard battleship “Potemkin”
1942 – FBI captures 8 Nazi saboteurs from a sub off Long Island
1950 – US sends 35 military advisers to South Vietnam
1954 – First atomic power station opens in Obninsk, near Moscow
1967 – The world’s first ATM is installed in Enfield, London
1969 – Police raid Stonewall Bar in Greenwich Village and patrons riot against police. The Inn was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000.
1973 – John W Dean tells Watergate Committee about Nixon’s “enemies list” According to Dean, Colson later compiled hundreds of names on a “master list” which changed constantly. Newsman Daniel Schorr and actor Paul Newman stated, separately, that inclusion on the list was their greatest accomplishment. When this list was released, Schorr read it live on television, not realizing that he was on the list until he came to his own name. the others on the original list included, scientists, writers, bankers, advertising and public relations professional who dared act or speak against the president or his policies.
1976 – Israeli raid on Entebbe, Uganda
1985 – First hotel strike in New York
2003 – The United States National Do Not Call Registry, formed to combat unwanted telemarketing calls and administered by the Federal Trade Commission, enrolls almost three-quarters of a million phone numbers on
its first day. And it doesn’t do a damn bit of good!
Birthdays
1462 – Louis XII, the Just, King of France (1498-1515)
1869 – Emma Goldman, anarchist/publisher (Mother Earth)
1880 – Helen Keller, Ala, blind-deaf author/lecturer
1899 – Juan Trippe, American airline entrepreneur (d. 1981)
Juan Terry Trippe was born in 1899, the son of a Wall Street banker. As a young boy, he witnessed Wilbur Wright’s awe-inspiring 1909 flight around the Statue of Liberty. (Wilbur took off from a dirt field on Governors Island) Early on he began an aviation company that started giving rides at Coney Island but soon would change its name to Pan American as the business grew.
Getting government contracts to fly mail between New York and
Boston and later across the Pacific, Juan Trippe studied the voyages of the 19th century clipper ships and built a network of strategic stop over points. He also pushed for the development of long range and bigger aircraft capable of flights over 3,000 miles. Pan Am workers built air bases on Wake and Midway Islands and in Guam, and refitted ones at Honolulu and Manila. The inaugural China Clipper, a Martin 130 flying boat loaded with 111,000 letters, took off from San Francisco in November 1935, cheered by a crowd of 150,000 people.
In 1956, Pan Am inaugurated the commercial jet age with a nonstop flight from New York to Paris. Trippe’s next project, the 747 Jumbo jet,would likewise be a success. Trippe retired in 1968, and died in 1981.
1930 – H Ross Perot, Texas, billionaire/presidental candidate (1992)
Deaths
1776 – Thomas Hickey, planned to hand George Washington to British, but was caught and executed.
1844 – Joseph Smith Jr, founder/leader (Mormon Church), shot by mob at 38. At the time he was the mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois and was in jail on charges relating to his ordering the destruction of facilities producing the Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper whose first and only edition claimed Smith was practicing polygamy and that he intended to set himself up as a theocratic king. While he was in jail an armed mob of men with painted faces stormed the jail and shot him and his brother Hyrum to death.
2001 – Jack Lemmon, American actor (b. 1925)