Monday, June 27

This Day In History

• 1787   Edward Gibbon completed "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".
• 1847   New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires.
• 1893   The New York stock market crashed.
• 1885   Chichester Bell and Charles S. Tainter applied for a patent for the gramophone. The patent was granted on May 4, 1886.
• 1942   The FBI announced the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from a submarine on New York's Long Island.
• 1944   American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans three weeks after D-Day.
• 1957   More than 500 people were killed when Hurricane Audrey slammed through coastal Louisiana and Texas.
• 1969   Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, clashed with police in an incident considered to be the birth of the gay rights movement.
• 1973   Former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an ''enemies list'' kept by the Nixon White House.
• 1975   Sonny and Cher (Bono) called it quits as husband and wife. They were divorced soon after their CBS-TV variety show was canceled. Sonny went on to become mayor of Palm Springs and then a U.S. Congressman from California. (He was killed Jan. 5, 1998 in a skiing accident.) Cher married rocker Gregg Alman just days after saying “bye-bye” to Sonny. She continued her recording career and became an Academy Award-winning actress.
• 1980   President Jimmy Carter signed legislation reviving draft registration.
• 1980   The the "National Anthem Act", making "O Canada" Canada's national anthem, was unanimously accepted by the House of Commons and the Senate. Royal assent was also given this day. "O Canada", written by Calixa Lavallee and Adolphe-Basile Routhier, was officially proclaimed Canada's national anthem on July 1, 1980.
• 1985   Route 66, which originally stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., passed into history as officials decertified the road.
• 1987   After spending a decade with NBC News, Linda Ellerbee gave her last, “And so it goes.” NBC had tried to encourage Ellerbee to take a 40 percent cut in pay. And so she went. She wrote a most interesting book on her broadcasting career titled "And So It Goes".
• 1988   Mike Tyson quickly retained his undisputed world heavyweight title by knocking out Michael Spinks in the first round. Fight fans at Atlantic City Convention Hall had paid big bucks (up to $1,500) to see this one. The match, touted in advance as “Once and for All” was all over in 91 seconds. No report on how many people blinked at the wrong time.
• 1998   During a joint news conference broadcast live in China, President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin offered an uncensored airing of differences on human rights, freedom, trade and Tibet.
• 2001   Actor Jack Lemmon died at age 76.
• 2002   The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that tuition vouchers are constitutional.
• 2002   John Entwistle, the bass player who co-founded The Who, was found dead in a Las Vegas hotel room at age 57.
• 2003   More than 735,000 phone numbers were registered on the first day of a national do-not-call list aimed at blocking unwelcome solicitations from telemarketers.

Happy Birthday To

• 1880   Helen Keller (author, educator; advocated new policies to help the blind live in normal surroundings; died June 1, 1968)
• 1927   Bob Keeshan (children's TV host: Captain Kangaroo; Clown Hall of Famer: Clarabell; died Jan 23, 2004)
• 1930   H. Ross Perot (billionaire industrialist, philanthropist, U.S. presidential hopeful [1992, 1996])