There were two earthquakes that happened on this date in history. One, rated between 6.4 and 7.1 struck Lisbon, Portugal (1531) and caused about 30,000 deaths. The other (1700), rated between 8.7 and 9.2, struck out in the Pacific off Canada, per Japanese records, but no death toll was recorded.
In political/religious news in 1564, The Council of Trent established an official distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism but did little to reduce religious wars. In 1788 the British established Sidney as the first European settlement in Australia. In 1837 Michigan was admitted as the 26th state and in 1870 during reconstruction Virginia was readmitted to the Union.
In 1905 the largest diamond in the world, the Cullinan, weighing 3,106.75 carats was discovered at the Premier mine in Pretoria, South Africa. In 1926 the first demonstration of TV was done by John Logie Baird. And in 1934 The Apollo Theater opened in Harlem. And in 1856 there was the first Battle of Seattle, (not WTO) where natives clashed with European settlers after the territorial governor had declared a “war of extermination” upon the natives.
General Douglas MacArthur made his entrance to our world in 1880. Maria von Trapp began vocalizing the sounds of music in 1905. And Paul Newman began to “communicate” in 1925.
Critics born on this date were Gene Siskel (1946) films, Angela Davis(1944) social inequities, and Kevin McCarthy (1965) anything Democratic (current Speaker of the House – GOP). We also welcomed in the Great Wayne Gretsky (1961), Ellen DeGeneres(1958), and Eddie Van Halen (1955) who sang we “might as well jump”! We also welcomed the co-founder of IMDB – a movie database, Col Needham, in 1967.
We said farewell to some notable inventors and creators -Edward Jenner (1823) creator of the smallpox vaccine, and Nichola Otto (1891) whose invention we are laboring to get away from – the internal combustion engine. And Abner Doubleday, who was a Union general and the holder of a patent for the SF cable car, but has been discounted as the mythical inventor of baseball.
We also said goodbye to the 41st US VP – Nelson Rockefeller (under Ford) in 1979, William Wrigley (1932) who gave a place for the Cubbies to play, Bear Bryant, legendary Alabama Crimson Tide football coach (1983), and astrologist/psychic Jeane Dixon (1997) who I doubt saw it coming.
And beyond that, it is both India Republic Day in India (1950) and Australia Day (1788), and the date that the Rocky Mountain National Park was established by Congress.
Leave a Reply