Saturday, August 6

This Day In History

• 1787   The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia began to debate the articles contained in a draft of the United States Constitution.
  
• 1806   The Holy Roman Empire went out of existence as Emperor Francis I abdicated.
  
• 1825   Bolivia declared its independence from Peru.
  
• 1890   Convicted murderer William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair as he was put to death at Auburn State Prison in New York.
  
• 1926   Warner Brothers premiered its ''Vitaphone'' sound-on-disc movie system in New York.
  
• 1926   Gertrude Ederle of New York became the first American woman to swim the English Channel.
  
• 1930   Joseph Crater, 41 years old and a New York Supreme Court Justice, mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. His wife, Estelle, declared Judge Crater to be legally dead in 1937.
  
• 1962   Jamaica became an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.
  
• 1965   President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.
  
• 1965   The album ''Help!'' by the Beatles was released.
  
• 1978   Pope Paul VI died at Castel Gandolfo at age 80.
  
• 1986   William J. Schroeder died after living 620 days with the ''Jarvik 7'' artificial heart.
  
• 1996   NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin announced the possibility that a primitive form of microscopic life may have existed on Mars more than three billion years ago. The evidence came from a fossil found on a meteorite in Antarctica believed to have come from Mars billions of years ago.
  
• 1997   British Prime Minister Tony Blair shook hands with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in the first meeting in 76 years between a British leader and the IRA's allies.
  
• 1997   Apple Computer and Microsoft agreed to share technology in a deal giving Microsoft a stake in Apple's survival.
  
• 1998   Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky spent 8 1/2 hours testifying before a grand jury about her relationship with President Bill Clinton.
  
• 1998   A House committee voted to cite Attorney General Janet Reno for contempt of Congress for her refusal to turn over reports recommending that she seek an independent counsel to investigate campaign fund-raising.
  
• 2002   One-year-old Guatemalan twins joined at the head were separated at the UCLA Medical Center.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1809   Alfred Tennyson (England’s Poet Laureate [1850]: The Charge of the Light Brigade, In Memoriam, The Lady of Shalott, The Lotuseaters, The Idylls of the King, Maud, Enoch Arden, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After; died Oct 6, 1892)
  
• 1881   Leo Carrillo (actor: The Cisco Kid; died Sep 10, 1961)
  
• 1881   Sir Alexander Fleming (Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist [1945]: discovered penicillin; died Mar 11, 1955)
  
• 1881   Louella Parsons (Oettinger) (gossip columnist: competed in print and on radio with nemesis Hedda Hopper; died Dec 9, 1972)
  
• 1892   Hoot (Edmund Richard) Gibson (actor)
  
• 1911   Lucille Ball (Emmy Award-winning comedienne, actress)
  
• 1917   Robert Mitchum (actor)
  
• 1928   Andy Warhol (Warhola) (filmmaker, pop artist)