Friday, July 8

This Day In History

• 1663   King Charles II of England granted a charter to Rhode Island.
• 1776   Col. John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence to a crowd gathered at Independence Square in Philadelphia.
• 1839   American oilman John D. Rockefeller was born in Richford, N.Y.
• 1853   An expedition led by Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Yedo Bay, Japan, on a mission to seek diplomatic and trade relations with the Japanese.
• 1881   The first ice cream sundae was served -- by accident. Druggist Edward Berner of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, couldn’t serve the desirable, but scandalous (not allowed on the Sabbath) flavored soda water that a customer wanted. Mr. Berner compromised and put ice cream in a dish and poured the syrup on top (chocolate syrup was only used for making flavored and ice-cream sodas, at the time). Voila! An ice cream Sunday! (The spelling was later changed to ‘sundae’).
• 1889   The Wall Street Journal was first published.
• 1891   Warren G. Harding married Florence K. DeWolfe in Marion, Ohio.
• 1907   Florenz Ziegfeld staged his first ''Follies'' on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City.
• 1919   President Woodrow Wilson received a tumultuous welcome in New York City after his return from the Versailles Peace Conference in France.
• 1986   Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated as president of Austria despite controversy over his alleged ties to Nazi war crimes.
• 1987   Kitty Dukakis, wife of Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, revealed she had been addicted to amphetamines but had sought help and was drug-free.
• 1994   Kim Il Sung, North Korea's communist leader since 1948, died at age 82.
• 1995   Chinese-American human rights activist Harry Wu was arrested in China and charged with obtaining state secrets.
• 1997   The Mayo Clinic and the government warned the diet-drug combination known as ''fen-phen'' could cause serious heart and lung damage.
• 2003   Twenty-nine-year-old Iranian twins joined at the head died following surgery in Singapore to separate them.

Happy Birthday To

• 1908   Nelson (Aldrich) Rockefeller (U.S. Vice President under Gerald Ford [1974-77], Governor of New York [1958-73]; died Jan 26, 1979)
• 1948   Kim Darby (Deborah Zerby) (actress: True Grit)
• 1949   Wolfgang Puck (chef: formerly of Spagos in Los Angeles)