1456 ~ The printing of the Gutenberg Bible was completed.

1880 ~ Birthday of Joshua Lionel Cowen, inventor of the toy electric train.

1929 ~ Birthday of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader.

1932 ~ Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop.

1939 ~ The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (also known as Nazi-Soviet Pact) was signed.

1960 ~ Birthday of Cal Ripken, Jr., baseball player.

1979 ~ Death of Hanna Reitsch, German test pilot.

1993 ~ Michael Jackson was accused of child abuse.

1992 ~ Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida.

2006 ~ "Planet" was redefined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) such that Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

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1835 ~ The New York Sun printed The Great Moon Hoax.

1875 ~ Matthew Webb became the first man to swim the English Channel.

1894 ~ Shibasaburo Kitasato discovered the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and published his findings in The Lancet.

1900 ~ Birthday of Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, Scientist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1953.

1900 ~ Death of Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher.

1918 ~ Birthday of Leonard Bernstein, Conductor & Composer.

1944 ~ Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.

1982 ~ Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Neptune.

1987 ~ Birthday of Whitney Stevens, Porn actress.

1991 ~ Linus Torvalds sent the email announcing his project to create the Linux operating system.

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55 B.C. ~ Julius Caesar invaded Britain.

1071 ~ The Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine Empire at Manzikert.

1498 ~ Michelangelo commissioned to carve the Pieta.

1839 ~ The ship Amistad was captured off Long Island.

1847 ~ Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic.

1910 ~ Birthday of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed.

1920 ~ The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was declared in effect.

1961 ~ The International Hockey Hall of Fame opened in Toronto.

1967 ~ Birthday of Kelly Madison, Porn actress.

1988 ~ Birthday of Tori Black, Porn actress.

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1776 ~ British forces under General William Howe defeated the Americans under General George Washington in the Battle of Long Island.

1813 ~ Napoleon defeated the Austrians, Russians and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden.

1828 ~ Krakatoa erupted; approximately 36,000 people on the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra drowned.

1896 ~ Anglo-Zanzibar War. With a duration of only 45 minutes, it holds the record of being the shortest war in recorded history.

1908 ~ Birthday of Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president.

1939 ~ First jet aircraft flight; a Heinkel He 178, piloted by Erich Warsitz.

1975 ~ Death of Haile Selassie I, Ethiopian emperor.

1947 ~ Birthday of Harry Reems, Porn Star.

1962 ~ The Mariner 2 space probe launched to Venus.

1967 ~ Death of Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles.

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1749 ~ Birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Playwright, Philosopher, Scientist.

1828 ~ Birthday of Leo Tolstoy, Author. His “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence” influenced Martin Luther King, Jr.

1845 ~ First issue of Scientific American magazine published.

1850 ~ Richard Wagner's opera “Lohengrin” premiered, from which comes the Bridal Chorus, traditionally played at Western weddings, and commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride".

1897 ~ Birthday of Charles Boyer, Actor.

1944 ~ Birthday of Kay Parker, English New Age author and former pornographic actress.

1963 ~ During a civil rights rally in at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech.

1988 ~ Ramstein airshow disaster: 75 people were killed and 346 seriously injured.

1990 ~ Iraq declared Kuwait to be a province of Iraq.

1996 ~ Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales were divorced.

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1632 ~ Birthday of John Locke, Philosopher.

1885 ~ Gottlieb Daimler patented the world's first motorcycle.

1896 ~ Chop suey was invented in New York City.

1949 ~ The Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1952 ~ Premiere of John Cage's 4'33" in Woodstock, New York.

1957 ~ Sen. Strom Thurmond, D-S.C., ended the longest filibuster in Senate history after talking for 24 hours, 18 minutes against a civil rights bill.

1966 ~ The Beatles performed their last concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

1981 ~ Birthday of Lanny Barbie, Canadian Porn actress.

1991 ~ The Downfall of the Soviet Union: The Supreme Soviet suspended all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.

2005 ~ Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Louisiana coast, overwhelming the levees protecting New Orleans and causing massive flooding.

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1797 ~ Birthday of Mary Shelley, Author (Frankenstein).

1862 ~ Union forces were defeated by the Confederates at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Va..

1871 ~ Birthday of Ernest Rutherford, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908.

1918 ~ Birthday of Baseball hall-of-famer Ted Williams.

1940 ~ Death of J.J. Thomson, English physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1906. Prof. Thomson identified the electron as a subatomic particle, the first one to be discovered. In one of the greater ironies of modern physics his son, G.P. Thomson later received the prize for proving that the electron was also, in fact, a wave.

1963 ~ Hotline between U.S. and Soviet leaders went into operation.

1963 ~ Death of Guy Burgess, English-born Soviet spy.

1987 ~ Thurgood Marshall confirmed as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1995 ~ NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.

1999 ~ East Timorese voted for independence in a referendum.

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1879 ~ Birthday of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel. This woman knew how to live!

1888 ~ Mary Ann Nichols murdered. She was perhaps the first of Jack the Ripper's victims.

1918 ~ Birthday of Alan Jay Lerner, American composer ( Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady).

1945 ~ Birthday of Itzhak Perlman, Violinist.

1945 ~ Birthday of Van Morrison, Irish musician (“Brown-Eyed Girl", "Moondance" and "Domino").

1962 ~ Trinidad and Tobago became independent.

1980 ~ Solidarity labor union formed in Poland.

1997 ~ Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris.

1998 ~ North Korea reportedly launched its first satellite.

2006 ~ Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream is recovered.

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1653 ~ Birthday of Johann Pachelbel, Composer. Remember the theme music of “Ordinary People”? That’s “Pachelbel's Canon” (which is not really a Canon).

1875 ~ Birthday of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Writer, creator of Tarzan.

1914 ~ The last Passenger Pigeon died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.

1939 ~ Germany attacked Poland, beginning World War II.

1967 ~ Death of Siegfried Sassoon, English poet.

1972 ~ Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.

1974 ~ The SR-71 Blackbird set (and still holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of 1,435 MPH.

1976 ~ Birthday of Jada Fire, Porn actress.

1983 ~ Korean Air Flight KAL-007 was shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft entered Soviet airspace.

1985 ~ A joint American-French expedition located the wreck of the RMS Titanic.

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31 B.C. ~ Battle of Actium: Off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeat troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra. This date is often used for the beginning of the Roman Empire.

1666 ~ The Great Fire of London started in Pudding Lane at the house of Thomas Farrinor near London Bridge. Samuel Pepys, a neighbor, was woken by the fire at around 1 AM. The fire burned for three days destroying 10,000 buildings including St. Paul's Cathedral, but only 16 people are known to have died.

1752 ~ The UK adopted the Gregorian Calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe.

1898 ~ The Battle of Omdurman: British and Egyptian troops led by Horatio Kitchener defeated Sudanese tribesmen led by Khalifa Abdullah al-Taashi, establishing British dominance in the Sudan.

1945 ~ The official surrender of Japan was accepted by General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz from a delegation led by Mamoru Shigemitsu, aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, bringing World War II to an end.

It is my understanding that the ability to decrypt the Japanese diplomatic and military messages, marked as ULTRA, helped the U.S. and its allies to evaluate Japan’s decision to surrender after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I’ll always wonder if the decrypts following the emperor’s speech played a role in the later American decision to retain the emperor and imperial institution as symbols of the Japanese state despite calls from other Allies for his indictment as a war criminal.

1948 ~ Birthday of Christa McAuliffe, schoolteacher & astronaut.

1964 ~ Death of Alvin York, Hero. He was the most decorated American soldier of World War I.

1969 ~ Death of Ho Chi Minh, Vietmamese Revolutionary, President & Prime Minister.

1973 ~ Death of J. R. R. Tolkien, British writer.

1991 ~ The U.S. recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

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jseal, have you watched the movie "Emperor" yet?

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

No Oldfart, I have not. I presume it addresses my musings?

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Indeed.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

And what is this Hollywood insight?

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301 ~ San Marino, the world's oldest republic still in existence, was founded by Saint Marinus.

1658 ~ Death of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England.

1893 ~ Death of James Harrison, Australian pioneer of mechanical refrigeration.

1939 ~ World War II: France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany.

1954 ~ The last new episode of The Lone Ranger was aired on radio after 2,956 episodes over a period of 21 years.

1958 ~ Birthday of Arcadia Lake, Porn Actress (Debbie Does Dallas).

1962 ~ Death of e. e. cummings, poet.

1976 ~ The Viking 2 spacecraft landed on Mars and took the first close-up, color photos of the planet's surface.

1995 ~ eBay founded. (with a little help from Oldfart )

2004 ~ More than 200 people die at the end of a three-day siege at a school in Beslan, Russia came to a bloody end.

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