Saturday, September 24

This Day In History

• 1755   John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was born in Germantown, Virginia.
  
• 1789   Congress passed the First Judiciary Act, which provided for an attorney general and a Supreme Court.
  
• 1869   Financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to corner the gold market, sending Wall Street into a panic and leaving thousands of investors in financial ruin.
  
• 1896   Author F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minn.
  
• 1934   Babe Ruth bid farewell to the New York Yankees. It was the Babe’s last game in Yankee Stadium and for the team. The Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 5-0.
  
• 1955   President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack while on vacation in Denver.
  
• 1957   The Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game at Ebbets Field, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0.
  
• 1960   The USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was launched at Newport News, Va.
  
• 1968   ''60 Minutes'' premiered on CBS.
  
• 1969   A trial began for the ''Chicago Eight,'' who were accused of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention.
  
• 1976   Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison for her part in a 1974 bank robbery.
  
• 1991   Children's author Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, died at age 87.
  
• 1991   The album ''Nevermind'' by Nirvana was released.
  
• 1995   Israel and the PLO agreed to sign a pact at the White House ending nearly three decades of Israeli occupation of West Bank cities.
  
• 1998   Redesigned $20 bills meant to be harder to counterfeit went into circulation.
  
• 1999   Kip Kinkel, 17, abandoned an insanity defense and pleaded guilty to killing his parents and two classmates at his school in Springfield, Ore.
  
• 2001   President George W. Bush froze the assests of 27 suspected terrorists and terrorist groups.
  
• 2002   British Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that Iraq had a growing arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and planned to use them, as he unveiled an intelligence dossier to a special session of Parliament.
  
• 2003   The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature adopted redistricting plans favoring the GOP after four turbulent months, three special legislative sessions and two Democratic walkouts.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1755   John Marshall (attorney: 4th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; died July 6, 1835)
  
• 1896   F. (Francis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald (writer: This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night; died Dec 21, 1940)
  
• 1924   Sheila MacRae (Stephens) (comedienne: The Honeymooners)
  
• 1936   Jim (James Maury) Henson (creator of the Muppets)