Sunday, June 26

This Day In History

• 1284   The Pied Piper exacted his revenge upon the German town of Hamelin this day. The townspeople had promised to pay the piper a large fee if he could rid their town the nasty rats running all over the place. He had played his trusty pipe and the rats had followed him out of town and into the River Weser. But once the rodents were eliminated, the local folks decided not to pay after all. The piper was not pleased and repaid the townspeople by playing his pipe for the children of Hamelin, just like he had done for the rats. And just like the rats, the children followed him out of town. The Pied Piper of Hamelin led the kiddies into a hole in a hillside. They were never seen again.
• 1819   The bicycle was patented by W.K. Clarkson, Jr. of New York City.
• 1870   The first section of the boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J., was opened to the public.
• 1894   The American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, called a general strike in sympathy with Pullman workers.
• 1917   The first troops of the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France during World War I.
• 1919   The New York Daily News was first published.
• 1925   Charlie Chaplin's comedy ''The Gold Rush'' premiered in Hollywood.
• 1945   The charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco.
• 1948   The Berlin Airlift began in earnest as the United States, Britain and France began ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes.
• 1959   CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed his 500th -- and final -- guest on "Person to Person": actress Lee Remick. Just hours before this final broadcast, Murrow had presented his last news broadcast on the CBS radio network. CBS-TV had reportedly made $20 million from Murrow’s "Person to Person" series.
• 1990   President George H.W. Bush, who had campaigned for office on a pledge of ''no new taxes,'' conceded that tax increases would have to be included in any deficit-reduction package.
• 1992   Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III resigned, accepting responsibility for a ''leadership failure'' that resulted in the Tailhook sex-abuse scandal.
• 1996   The Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.
• 1998   The Supreme Court issued a landmark sexual harassment ruling, putting employers on notice that they can be held responsible for supervisors' misconduct even if they knew nothing about it.
• 2000   Rival scientific teams completed the first rough map of the human genetic code.
• 2003   The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down state bans on gay sex.
• 2003   Strom Thurmond, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, died in Edgefield, S.C., at age 100.
• 2003   Sir Denis Thatcher, husband of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, died in London at age 88.

Happy Birthday To

• 1819   Abner Doubleday (baseball: founded the game in 1839; died Jan 26, 1893)
• 1904   Peter Lorre (László Löwenstein) (actor: The Maltese Falcon)
• 1909   Colonel Tom Parker (Andreas van Kuijk) (carnival barker, show business promoter: manager of Elvis Presley; died Jan 21, 1997)
• 1910   Roy Plunkett (scientist: discovered polytetrafluoroethylene, better known as Teflon [Apr 6, 1938]; died May 12, 1994)
• 1914   Babe (Mildred) Didrikson Zaharias (“The outstanding female athlete of the first half-century.” [AP 1950]; International Women’s Sports Hall of Famer, Olympic Hall of Famer, World Golf Hall of Famer, LPGA Hall of Famer, National Track and Field Hall of Famer; died Sep 27, 1956)