In 1191 Richard I arrives in Acre starting the 3rd Crusade. In 1783 Laki, an Icelandic volcano, begins an 8-month eruption, which kills over 9,000 and begins a 7-year famine. In 1906 President Teddy Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act, which launches the establishment of national monuments, of which Devils Tower in Wyoming becomes the first. And in 1918, scientists and an artist recruited by the US Navy in Baker City, Oregon observed a solar eclipse.
In 1948 an FBI report accuses numerous writers and actors/actresses of belonging to the Communist Party. Among them were Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Frederick March, and Edward G Robinson. Ironically a year later in 1949, George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. All in the time of the second Red Scare which ruined lives and did no damage to real Communists nor the Soviet Union. However during the Arab- Israeli Six-Day War Israeli jets attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 171 more.
American architect Frank Lloyd Wright began crawling to his first creation in 1867. Francis Crick who would later team up with Watson began his life on earth in 1916. Eventual US Supreme Court Justice Byron White was born in 1917 and took a detour to football before getting his law degree. Future First Lady Barbara Bush joined us in 1925 and two singers joined in Nancy Sinatra (these boots were made for walking, 1940) and Bonnie Tyler in 1951 – famous for Holding Out for a Hero (Footloose) and Total Eclipse of the Heart.
The world said farewell to the Prophet Muhammed in 632 AD. Americans remembered the deaths of pamphleteer Thomas Paine (1809) and 7th US President Andrew Jackson (1845) as well as Chirichawa Apache tribal leader Cochise in 1874. This date also saw the passing of British mountaineer George Mallory, who died in 1924 in an unsuccessful attempt on Everest. American psychologist and academic Abraham Maslow, with his hierarchy of needs, died in 1970. The great Negro League pitcher Satchel Page laid down his baseball for the last time in 1982. And American chef and travel documentarian Anthony Bourdain sadly prepped his last meal in 2018.
This is World Oceans Day, first celebrated in 1992, with the first Earth Summit held in Rio.
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