Tuesday, June 14

This Day In History

• 1775   The United States Army was founded.
• 1777   The Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the Stars and Stripes as the national flag.
• 1841   The first Canadian parliament opened in Kingston.
• 1846   A group of U.S. settlers in Sonoma proclaimed the Republic of California.
• 1881   The player piano was patented by John McTammany, Jr. of Cambridge, MA. It was patent number 242,786.
• 1919   Lindbergh did it all by himself; but the true, first, nonstop transatlantic flight took place on this day. Actually, it took two days for Captain John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Brown to fly their Vickers Vimy bomber to Ireland from St. Johns, Newfoundland. The 1,900-mile flight ended in a crash landing in a peat bog in Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.
• 1922   Warren G. Harding became the first president heard on radio, as Baltimore station WEAR broadcast his speech dedicating the Francis Scott Key memorial at Fort McHenry.
• 1940   German troops entered Paris during World War II.
• 1940   The Nazis opened a concentration camp at Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland.
• 1943   The Supreme Court ruled schoolchildren could not be compelled to salute the flag of the United States if doing so would conflict with their religious beliefs.
• 1954   President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an order adding the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance.
• 1985   A 17-day hijack ordeal began when a pair of Lebanese Shiite Muslim extremists seized TWA Flight 847 shortly after takeoff from Athens, Greece.
• 1989   Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills police officer.
• 2002   American Roman Catholic bishops meeting in Dallas adopted a policy to bar sexually abusive clergy from face-to-face contact with parishioners but keep them in the priesthood.

Happy Birthday To

• 1811   Harriet Beecher Stowe (author: Uncle Tom’s Cabin; died July 1, 1896)
• 1864   Dr. Alois Alzheimer (psychiatrist, pathologist: first to describe the disease named after him: Alzheimer’s Disease; died [of a severe cold complicated by endocarditis] Dec 19, 1915)
• 1906   Margaret Bourke-White (photojournalist: LIFE magazine; 1st woman photojournalist attached to US Armed Forces in WWII: covered Italy, siege of Moscow, U.S. Forces crossing into Germany, concentration camps; division of India, Mahatma Gandhi; Korean War correspondent; book [w/husband Erskine Caldwell]: You Have Seen Their Faces; died Aug 27, 1971)
• 1921   Gene Barry (Eugene Klass) (actor: Bat Masterson)
• 1925   Pierre Salinger (White House press secretary to President John F. Kennedy, journalist, author: P.S. a Memoir, John F. Kennedy, Commander in Chief : A Profile in Leadership)
• 1946   Donald Trump (tycoon; real estate mogul)
• 1969   Steffi (Stephanie) Graf (tennis champ: Australian Open [1988, 1989, 1990, 1994], French Open [1987, 1988, 1993], Wimbledon [1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993], U.S. Open [1988, 1989, 1993])