Monday, June 13

This Day In History

• 1789   Mrs. Alexander Hamilton served a new dessert treat for General George Washington. The highlight of the dinner party was ice cream!
• 1886   King Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned in Lake Starnberg.
• 1900   China's Boxer Rebellion against foreigners and Chinese Christians erupted.
• 1921   Babe Ruth connected for a 460-foot home run deep into the center-field bleachers at the Polo Grounds in New York City. It was the longest homer in the career of ‘The Sultan of Swat’.
• 1927   Aviator Charles Lindbergh was honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
• 1967   President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
• 1971   The New York Times began publishing the ''Pentagon Papers,'' a secret study of America's involvement in Vietnam.
• 1981   A teen-ager fired six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II during a parade in London.
• 1983   The U.S. space probe Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave the solar system as it crossed the orbit of Neptune.
• 1986   Benny Goodman, the clarinet-playing ''King of Swing,'' died at age 77.
• 1994   A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blamed recklessness by Exxon Corp. and Capt. Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the nation's worst oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.
• 1996   An 81-day standoff ended as 16 members of the anti-government Freemen group surrendered to the FBI and left their Montana ranch.
• 1997   A jury voted unanimously to give Timothy McVeigh the death penalty for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
• 2000   The presidents of South Korea and North Korea opened a summit in the northern capital of Pyongyang with pledges to seek reunification of the divided peninsula.
• 2000   Italy pardoned Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.

Happy Birthday To

• 1865   William Butler Yeats (Nobel Prize-winning poet & dramatist [1923])
• 1892   (Philip St. John) Basil Rathbone (actor: The Mark of Zorro, Captain Blood, The Last Hurrah, The Hound of the Baskervilles, House of Fear, David Copperfield, Last Days of Pompeii, Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes, A Christmas Carol, The Comedy of Terrors; passed away July 21, 1967)
• 1926   Paul Lynde (comedian, actor)
• 1951   Richard Thomas (Emmy Award-winning actor: The Waltons [1973])
• 1953   Tim Allen (Timothy Allen Dick) (comedian, actor: Home Improvement)