Saturday, July 30

This Day In History

• 1619   The first representative assembly in America convened in Jamestown, Va.
• 1729   The city of Baltimore was founded.
• 1792   The French national anthem ''La Marseillaise'' by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris.
• 1863   American automaker Henry Ford was born in Dearborn Township, Mich.
• 1889   Vladimir Zworykin, called the ''Father of Television'' for inventing the iconoscope, was born in Russia.
• 1898   "Scientific America" carried the first magazine automobile ad. The Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH invited readers to “Dispense with a Horse.”
• 1932   The Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles, CA. The Games would revisit Los Angeles -- and the same venues of the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Rose Bowl, etc. -- in 1984.
• 1942   President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women's auxiliary agency in the Navy known as Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, or WAVES.
• 1956   The phrase “In God We Trust” was adopted as the U.S. national motto.
• 1965   President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law.
• 1975   Former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit. Although presumed dead, his remains have never been found.
• 1996   A federal law enforcement source said security guard Richard Jewell had become a focus of the investigation into the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park. Jewell was later cleared.
• 1996   Actress Claudette Colbert died at age 92.
• 1998   ''Buffalo Bob'' Smith, the cowboy-suited host of ''The Howdy Doody Show,'' died at age 80.
• 2002   Expelled from Congress a week earlier, an unrepentant James A. Traficant Jr. was sentenced to eight years behind bars for corruption.
• 2002   WNBA player Lisa Leslie of the Los Angeles Sparks became the first woman to dunk in a professional game during her team's 82-73 loss to the Miami Sol.
• 2003   Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis Presley, died in Memphis, Tenn., at age 80.

Happy Birthday To

• 1818   Emily Bronte (author: Wuthering Heights; died Dec 19, 1848)
• 1863   Henry Ford (auto manufacturer: first assembly line production: the Tin Lizzie; died Apr 7, 1947)
• 1939   Peter Bogdanovich (director: What’s Up Doc?, Paper Moon, Nickelodeon; director/writer: The Last Picture Show, Texasville)
• 1939   Eleanor Smeal (feminist: president of NOW)
• 1941   Paul Anka (songwriter)
• 1947   Arnold Schwarzenegger (actor, Governor)
• 1956   Delta Burke (actress: Delta, Designing Women, Filthy Rich, Chisholm; Miss Florida)
• 1956   Anita Hill (law professor: Hill-Thomas hearings before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee concerning Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court)
• 1974   Hilary Swank (actress: Growing Pains, Evening Shade, The Next Karate Kid)