It was an explosive day in Auckland, New Zealand’s harbor on this date in 1985. The Green Peace ship the Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk by agents of DGSE – the French secret service, with a freelance photographer the only casualty – unless you include the international condemnation of the nation of France. The US became a bit larger in 1890 with the admission of Wyoming as the 44th state. In 2012 the Episcopal Church USA took a step forward by recognizing the validity of same-sex marriages. And in 2019 the last Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line in Puebla, Mexico.
This date was the birthday of French pastor, theologian, and reformer John Calvin (1509), British lawyer and commentariat William Gladstone (1723), Serbian American physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla (1856), and Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921) who co-founded the Special Olympics.
In 138 AD the Roman Emperor Hadrian passed on, leaving us Hadrian’s Wall splitting the British Isles. The inventor of the daguerreotype film – Louis Dagueer faded from view in 1851. In 1979 the veteran Boston Pops Orchestra conductor Arthur Fiedler laid down his baton. And the storied voice of Mel Blanc was stilled in 1989 – he famously brought us Barney Rubble of the Flintstones among others.
It is, appropriately, Nikola Tesla Day and Statehood Day in Wyoming.
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