June 14, 1775: Happy 250th Birthday, United States Army!
The US Army was founded on 14 June 1775, when the Continental Congress authorized enlistment of expert riflemen to serve the United Colonies for one year.
The US armed services by DOD order of precedence, and their birthdays:
● 1775-06-14 — US Army
● 1775-11-10 — US Marine Corps
● 1775-10-13 — US Navy
● 1947-09-18 — US Air Force
● 1790-08-04 — US Coast Guard
● 2019-12-20 — US Space Force
June 18, 1815: Battle of Waterloo
Allied armies defeat Napoleon, who abdicates for the second time, four days later.
June 19, 1837 – Death of King William IV
William IV was slowly dying but told his doctors to keep him going past June 18 so that he could see one more Waterloo Day.
He achieved his wish and died on June 19, 1837.
The Victorian Era began.
June 20, 1942: Brian Wilson born
Brian Wilson, recently deceased co-founder of The Beach Boys, was born.
June 20th, 1975, Jaws is released.
June 30, 1934: Night of the Long Knives in Nazi Germany.
Hitler orders the murders of large numbers of potential political rivals, including Ernst Röhm, leader of the para-military SA, Gregor Strasser (a potential Nazi opponent), and former Chancellor General Kurt von Schliecher.
Official number is that approximaterly 85 people were killed; unofficial estimate is closer to 1,000.
The murders were organised by Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Hermann Göring, and carried out by the SS and the Gestapo.
The purge cemented Hitler’s position in power, winning support from President von Hindenberg and the leaders of the Reichwehr, who had considered Röhm and the SA to be a threat.
July 1, 1867: By royal proclamation, Queen Victoria brings the British North America Act, 1867 into effect, unifying the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into the new Dominion of Canada.
The Governor General, Viscount Monck, appoints Sir John A. Macdonald as the first Prime Minister of Canada.
July 2, 1937: Amelia Earhart (b. 24 Jul 1897) and Fred Noonan (b. 04 Apr 1893) are last heard from over the south Pacific Ocean while on their circumnavigation flight. 1½ years later, on January 5, 1939 they were officially declared dead.
• 20 May 1937: Earhart and Noonan departed Oakland, California to fly west to east and circumnavigate the globe. They first flew east to Miami and then south to Brazil, to cross the Atlantic Ocean between Natal, Brazil and Saint-Louis, Senegal.
Kelly Johnson of the Lockheed Skunkworks advised them on engine and altitude settings for their heavily modified Lockheed Electra 10E which was financed by Purdue University.
• 07 Jun 1937: Earhart and Noonan crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a 1,727 nautical mile leg between Brazil and Senegal.
• 02 Jul 1937: at 10AM local time in New Guinea, Earhart and Noonan departed Lae, New Guinea for Howland Island, 2,222 nautical miles away in the Northern Phoenix Islands of what is today the United States Minor Outlying Islands, near Tarawa.
2,222 nautical miles was their longest leg to date since departing Oakland. They were scheduled to arrive the next morning, 02 July (after crossing the International Date Line). They never arrived. Howland Island is a tiny patch of land in the Central Pacific Ocean, about 640 acres in size, with dimensions of 1.40 x 0.55 miles and a maximum height of 10’.
A navigation error is the suspected cause for their disappearance. A bit of irony is that Fred Noonan was a late crew addition. The original navigator, Harry Manning, was an expert radio operator and if he had been on the fateful flight the outcome may well have been different.
At 8:43 AM Itasca time (USCGC Itasca), Earhart reported, “KHAQQ TO ITASCA. WE ARE ON THE LINE 157 337, WE WILL REPEAT MESSAGE. WE WILL REPEAT THIS ON 6210 KILOCYCLES. WAIT. WE ARE RUNNING ON LINE NORTH AND SOUTH.”
Radio signal triangulation located Earhart’s possible transmissions for several days after 02 July, coming from Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro.
Days earlier Amelia Earhart had said,
“Not much more than a month ago, I was on the other shore of the Pacific, looking westward. This evening, I looked eastward over the Pacific. In those fast-moving days, which have intervened, the whole width of the world has passed behind us, except this broad ocean. I shall be glad when we have the hazards of its navigation behind us.”
— Amelia Earhart, several days before she left for Howland Island and disappeared
(Added — today is the 3rd; oh well)
July 7, 2005: A series of four explosions caused by suicide bombers rip through London’s subway system, killing 56 people in what I understand Londoners consider their equivalent of 9/11.
Today is the 20th anniversary.
Tolkien fans rejoice!
July 29, 1954 : The Fellowship of the Ring is published!
Middle-Earth has never been the same!
02 August 1979: Yankees catcher Thurman Munson died while piloting his plane in a crash in Green, Ohio about 10 miles south southeast of Akron. Thurman Munson was 32 years old and had played in 11 seasons for the Yankees when he died.
On 01 August, the day before the crash, the Yankees had just finished a 3 game series in Chicago against the White Sox. In that final game, Munson drew a walk and scored a run in the Yankees’ 9-1 victory at Comiskey Park. 02 August was a travel day (non-playing day) for the Yankees as they were traveling back to New York City to play the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium. On 03 August, in the game immediately after Munson’s death, Jerry Narron and Brad Gulden played catcher for the Yankees.
Thurman Munson learned to fly and purchased the airplane so that he could fly home to his family in Canton on off-days. On the day of the crash Munson was practicing touch-and-go landings with two passengers on board. One of the passengers was Dave Hall, a flight instructor and the other was personal friend Jerry Anderson. Both Hall and Anderson survived the crash and tried to extract Munson from the wreckage. It was thought that Munson, who was alert at the time, was pinned by some wreckage but later it was determined that Munson had severed his spinal column in the crash and was paralyzed. Before smoke and flames engulfed him and the wreckage, Munson’s last known words were, “Help me, Dave.”
The plane crashed when it stalled while attempting to land. It crashed 870 feet short of the runway. Contributors to the crash were several pilot errors. On the attempted landing according to the NTSB report, Munson did not use a checklist for the landing, he failed to extend the flaps, he did not recognize the need for sufficient airspeed, and his nonstandard pattern procedures resulted in an abnormal approach profile. The plane crashed at coordinates 40° 55’ N, 81° 27’ W.
In the report narrative, Dave Hall, the flight instructor, had to remind Munson to lower his landing gear for the landing.
Munson was beloved by Yankee fans. The Yankees immediately retired his number 15.
NTSB-AAR-80-2, the National Transportation Safety Board’s Aircraft Accident Report, can be found here ➜ https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR8002.pdf ■ .
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
in fourteen hundred and ninety two
He left today!
03 August 1492 — Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain with three ships and made landfall in the Americas on 12 October, ending the period of human habitation in the Americas now referred to as the pre-Columbian era. His landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by its native inhabitants as Guanahani. He then visited the islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola, establishing a colony in what is now Haiti. Columbus returned to Castile in early 1493 with captured natives. Word of his voyage soon spread throughout Europe.
A large-scale replica of the Santa María, his main ship and biggest of the three, can be found at West Edmonton Mall. Its main deck can be booked for private functions.
August 8, 1988: Major League Baseball: The first night game at Wrigley Field, between the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies. It’s rained out after four innings.
Night baseball had been a thing in MLB since 1935, and the Cubs were the last holdouts. They still play the fewest night home games a season, according to Wikipedia: about 35.
August 9, 1945:
On this day 80 years ago, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, three days after bombing Hiroshima. Japan would soon surrender in World War II.
August 9, 1999: Hulk Hogan returns to the red and yellow and comes out to “American Made” as he teams with Sting and Goldberg to defeat Kevin Nash, Sid Vicious, and Rick Steiner on WCW Monday Nitro.
August 9, 1974 — Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States, the only president to do so. He resigned by a letter to the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. The resignation took effect at 12 noon eastern time. Gerry Ford became president.
@Northern_Piper , on that day I was a young 13yo boy delivering the Hartford Courant morning paper. I delivered the Courant for 4 years until I turned 16 in 1977 and I could get a better P/T job.
In all those years delivering the morning Courant, I never saw a bigger headline than this one for Nixon’s resignation.
August 18, 1745 — Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard at Glenfinnan on the west coast of Scotland, triggering the 1745 Jacobite rising.
One key figure in the uprising was Donald Cameron of Lochiel, Chief of Clan Cameron, known as the “Gentle Lochliel”. He is reputed to have tried to persuade the young Prince to “go back where he came from” (ie France) but ultimately threw in his lot with the Prince. His support was instrumental in the early stages of the Rebellion. When it failed, Lochiel fled to France with Charlie, eventually dying there.
Today (?) in history? Okay, last night in history.
Mon 02 Sep 2013: In San Francisco and Oakland CA the brand-new eastern span of the Bay Bridge opens; finally, after the Loma Prieta earthquake of October 1989, seismic retrofitting and a new design of the Bay Bridge are completed.
My wife and I were among the very first to drive across it. We had to wait in line before they let everyone go, and we drove eastward to Oakland and then turned around and drove back to San Francisco that night, crossing it twice. Then we went home. A brief drive for history.
The self-anchored suspension bridge is an elegant design. It was then the most expensive public works project in California history. Still might be.
This is a web pic. Not mine. We were in our 2001 Honda CR-V that night.
➜ https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-iii-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/1016952/31?u=bullitt ■
On September 3, 1189 Richard I of England (a.k.a. Richard “the Lionheart”) was crowned at Westminster. And, oddly, on September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died.