Friday, September 30

This Day In History

• 1641   Once upon a time, New York and New Jersey were known as the New Netherlands. It was on this day that an ordinance by the authorities of the New Netherlands declared that an annual fair be held at Fort Amsterdam (now, New York City). The ruling actually stated that there would be two fairs, a Cattle Fair on October 15 and a Hog Fair on November 1; and that all who had any thing to buy or sell could attend. Anyone remember seeing a cow or a pig running around NYC lately?
  
• 1791   Mozart's opera ''The Magic Flute'' premiered in Vienna, Austria.
  
• 1846   Ether was used as an anesthetic for the first time, at the office of Boston dentist William Morton.
  
• 1927   Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees hit his 60th home run of the season to break his own major-league record.
  
• 1946   An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.
  
• 1949   The Berlin Airlift, which delivered 2.3 million tons of food and fuel to West Berliners while circumventing a Soviet blockade, came to an end.
  
• 1954   The first atomic-powered vessel, the submarine Nautilus, was commissioned by the Navy.
  
• 1955   Actor James Dean was killed in a two-car collision near Cholame, Calif., at age 24.
  
• 1962   Black student James Meredith succeeded on his fourth try in registering for classes at the University of Mississippi.
  
• 1991   The military in Haiti overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first freely-elected president.
  
• 1992   George Brett of the Kansas City Royals reached 3,000 career hits during a game against the California Angels.
  
• 1993   A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck southern India, killing an estimated 10,000 people.
  
• 1997   France's Roman Catholic Church apologized for its silence during the systematic persecution and deportation of Jews by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.
  
• 1999   The San Francisco Giants played the Los Angeles Dodgers in the last baseball game at 3Com Park (formerly Candlestick Park); the Dodgers won 9-4.
  
• 2002   New Jersey Sen. Robert Torricelli abruptly ended his scandal-tainted re-election campaign just five weeks before the election, leaving Democrats scrambling for a candidate.
  
• 2003   The FBI began a criminal investigation into whether White House officials had illegally leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1861   William Wrigley Jr. (chewing gum tycoon; died Jan 26, 1932)
  
• 1905   Johnny (John Thomas) Allen (baseball: pitcher: NY Yankees [World Series: 1932], Cleveland Indians [all-star: 1938], Brooklyn Dodgers [World Series: 1941], SL Browns, NY Giants; died March 29, 1959)
  
• 1921   Deborah Kerr (Trimmer) (actress)
  
• 1924   Truman (Streckfus) Capote (Persons) (writer)
  
• 1931   Angie Dickinson (Brown) (actress: Police Woman)
  
• 1935   Johnny Mathis (singer)