On Feb. 26, 1940, the United States Air Defense Command was created.
On this date:
In 1531, an earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, killed an estimated 20,000 people.
In 1802, French literary giant Victor Hugo was born in Besancon. [How tall was he, Johnny? — Ed.]]
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte and 1,200 men left his exile on the Isle of Elba to start his 100-day campaign to regain France.
In 1846, frontiersman-turned-showman William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was born in Scott County, Iowa.
In 1848, the Second French Republic was proclaimed. [What are they on now, their Fifth? — Ed.]
In 1870, an experimental air-driven subway, the Beach Pneumatic Transit, opened in New York City for public demonstrations. (The tunnel was only a block long, and the line had only one car.)
In 1907, Congress created the Dillingham Commission to examine the impact of immigrants on America. (The panel later recommended curtailing immigration from southern and eastern Europe.)
In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure establishing Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.
In 1929, President Calvin Coolidge signed a measure establishing Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
Seventy-five years ago, in 1935, Germany began operation of its air force, the Luftwaffe, under Reichmarshal Hermann Goering.
In 1945, a midnight curfew on night clubs, bars and other places of entertainment was set to go into effect across the nation.
In 1952, Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed its own atomic bomb.
In 1979, a total solar eclipse cast a moving shadow 175 miles wide from Oregon to North Dakota before moving into Canada.
In 1984, the last U.S. Marines sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force left Beirut. Some 250 of the original 800 Marines lost their lives during the problem-plagued 18-month mission in the war-torn Lebanese capital.
In 1986, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Robert Penn Warren was named the first "poet laureate" of the U.S. by the Library of Congress.
In 1987, the Tower Commission, which probed the Iran-Contra affair, issued its report, which rebuked President Ronald Reagan for failing to control his national security staff.
In 1991, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad Radio that he had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait.
In 1992, a U.N. report accused Iraq of systematic human rights violations including "brutal torture" and "widespread arbitrary and summary executions" during its occupation of Kuwait.
In 1993, a bomb built by Islamic extremists exploded in the parking garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.
In 1995, Barings PLC, Britain's oldest investment banking firm, collapsed after a securities dealer lost more than $1.4 billion by gambling on Tokyo stock prices.
In 1997, the Israeli Cabinet approved development of a large Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, a traditionally Arab area.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton, outlining foreign policy goals for the final two years of his administration, urged continued American engagement in the quest for peace and freedom abroad during a news conference in San Francisco.
In 2000, Pope John Paul II, concluding a three-day trip to Egypt, visited Mount Sinai, where he prayed for religious tolerance in a garden under the peak revered as the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
In 2001, a U.N. tribunal convicted Bosnian Croat political leader Dario Kordic and military commander Mario Cerkez of war crimes for ordering the systematic murder and persecution of Muslim civilians during the Bosnian war.
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted its nationwide ban on protests that interfere with abortion clinic business. Also in 2003, a Colombian army Black Hawk helicopter searching for guerrillas crashed in the northern Colombia mountains, killing all 23 people aboard.
In 2004, two church-sanctioned studies documenting sex abuse by U.S. Roman Catholic clergy said that about four percent of clerics had been accused of molesting minors since 1950 and blamed bishops' "moral laxity" in disciplining offenders for letting the problem worsen. Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski was killed in a plane crash in southern Bosnia. The U.S. Senate approved a measure requiring child safety locks be supplied with most handguns sold in the United States.
In 2005, fifteen months after Japan's last liftoff ended in a spectacular fireball, an orange and white H-2A rocket blasted off from a remote southern island, carrying a weather and navigation satellite. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered his country's constitution changed to allow presidential challengers in an upcoming fall election. A fragment of granite bearing the name "John" — all that remained of a memorial to the six people killed in the 1993 terror attack on the World Trade Center — was installed as the central piece of a new post-9/11 memorial. Former Time magazine editor and U.S. ambassador to Austria, Henry A. Grunwald, died in New York at age 82. Bank of America acknowledged it lost computer tapes containing account information on 1.2 million federal employee credit cards, including those of some U.S. senators. Also in 2005, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he wanted his parliament to change the constitution to allow multiple candidates in presidential elections.
In 2006, the Winter Olympic Games ended in Turin, Italy. Germany won the most medals, 29, of which 11 were gold. The U.S. team won 25 medals, including nine golds. Canada, Austria and Russia came next.
In 2007, the death toll from a fire aboard an Indonesian ferry that later sank rose to 48 with scores of people missing off Jakarta.
In 2008, a power failure later blamed primarily on human error plunged large parts of Florida into darkness. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visiting Beijing, won a verbal assurance from Chinese officials to use their influence to jump-start the stalled process of dismantling North Korea's nuclear programs. The New York Philharmonic performed an historic concert in North Korea before the communist nation's elite. Former Israeli military chief Dan Shomron, the paratrooper who commanded the famed 1976 hostage rescue at Entebbe airport in Uganda, died in Tel Aviv at age 70. As U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., moved closer to clinching the Republican presidential nomination, a USA Today/Gallup Poll indicated it would be a tight race for the presidency no matter whether Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., or Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., won the almost dead-heat Democratic contest.
In 2009, President Barack Obama laid out his first budget plan, predicting a federal deficit of $1.75 trillion. General Motors Corp. posted a $9.6 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2008. The Pentagon, reversing an 18-year-old policy, said it would allow some media coverage of returning war dead, with family approval. Former Chicago Bulls player Norm Van Lier died at age 61. Also in 2009, the Bangladesh military was called in to put down a mutiny by border guards, who staged a violent, wide-spread rebellion, reportedly over money. Officials placed the death toll at 77.
Today's Birthdays: Singer Fats Domino is 82. Country-rock musician Paul Cotton (Poco) is 67. Actor-director Bill Duke is 67. Singer Mitch Ryder is 65. Rock musician Jonathan Cain (Journey) is 60. Singer Michael Bolton is 57. Actor Greg Germann is 52. Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine is 52. Bandleader John McDaniel is 49. Actress Jennifer Grant is 44. Rock musician Tim Commerford (Audioslave) is 42. Singer Erykah Badu is 39. Rhythm-and-blues singer Rico Wade (Society of Soul) is 38. Football player Marshall Faulk is 37. Olympic gold medal swimmer Jenny Thompson is 37. Baseball player Mark DeRosa is 35. Rhythm-and-blues singer Kyle Norman (Jagged Edge) is 35. Rock musician Chris Culos (O.A.R.) is 31. Rhythm-and-blues singer Corinne Bailey Rae is 31. Country singer Rodney Hayden is 30.
Those Born On This Date Include: British playwright Christopher Marlowe (1564); Levi Strauss, who created the world's first pair of jeans (1829); surgeon and cornflakes developer John Kellogg (1852); Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (1887); actors William Frawley (1887); Robert Alda (1914); Jackie Gleason (1916); Tony Randall (1920) and Betty Hutton (1921); singer Johnny Cash (1932); and political commentator Robert Novak (1934).
Today In Entertainment February 26
In 1932, country musician Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland, Ark.
In 1966, the Rolling Stones released the single "19th Nervous Breakdown."
In 1970, the Beatles album "Hey Jude" was released in the US and Canada. It was made up of singles that were previously unavailable in the US.
In 1977, bluesman Bukka White, also known as Booker T. Washington, died in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 70. His guitar-playing influenced B.B. King and many others.
In 1990, singer Cornell Gunter of The Coasters was found shot to death in Las Vegas. Authorities said he was found in his car, shot twice. Gunter had joined The Coasters in 1957.
In 1993, police in Augusta, Ga. fined singer Bobby Brown $580 for pretending to have sex with one of his backup singers during a concert. She also was fined $580.
In 1998, a jury rejected a lawsuit filed by Texas cattlemen against Oprah Winfrey. The suit accused her of disparaging them on her talk show by implying US beef was unsafe.
In 2004, Rosie O'Donnell and girlfriend Kelli Carpenter were married at City Hall in San Francisco.
Thought for Today: "There is one thing more powerful than the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." — Victor Hugo (1802-1885).
2 comments:
Yo, Marlowe, Happy birthday man.
Hard-Boiled Ed. Types:
More of a Philip Marlowe fan, but OK.
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