1473 ~ Birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus, Astronomer.

1743 ~ Birthday of Luigi Boccherini, Italian Composer.

1861 ~ Serfdom was abolished in Russia.

1915 ~ The Battle of Gallipoli began.

1942 ~ Some 250 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. The attack killed at least 243 people.

1945 ~ About 30,000 U.S. Marines land on Iwo Jima.

1964 ~ Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence”, the song which would take him and Art Garfunkel to stardom.

1980 ~ Bon Scott, the lead singer of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, died after a night of heavy drinking.

1986 ~ The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station.

1997 ~ Death of Deng Xiaoping, the last of China's major Communist revolutionaries.

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Eudaimonia

They had a 65th Anniversary ceremony this morning, which I missed because of an inservice course.
The bunch who hit Pearl Harbour ducked over to near Singapore, sank the "Prince of Wales" and the Repulse" blunting the bite of the Brits in the region, than hit us to stop us becoming an American support base (for a while) in the response which was sure to come.

We take it seriously here, as we suffered several hundred incursions before the Empire was driven back.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

1626 ~ Death of John Dowland, Composer.

1792 ~ President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.

1835 ~ Concepción, Chile was destroyed by an earthquake.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1904 ~ Birthday of Alexei Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union.

1927 ~ Birthday of Sidney Poitier, Actor.

1952 ~ The film The African Queen opened in New York City.

1962 ~ John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth aboard Friendship 7.

1966 ~ Death of Chester Nimitz, American admiral.

2001 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for Russia for 15 years.

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Eudaimonia

1875 ~ Birthday of Jeanne Calment. She lived for 122 years 164 days, the longest confirmed lifespan for any human being in history.

1893 ~ Birthday of Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist.

1903 ~ Birthday of Anaïs Nin, Writer.

1907 ~ Birthday of W. H. Auden, Poet.

1916 ~ The Battle of Verdun began. French casualties during the battle were estimated at 550,000 with German losses set at 434,000, half of the total being fatalities.

1947 ~ Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1965 ~ Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.

1975 ~ Watergate scandal: Former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to prison.

1988 ~ TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Reports linked Swaggart to a prostitute.

1995 ~ When he landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Steve Fossett became the first man to make a solo baloon flight across the Pacific Ocean.

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Eudaimonia

1732 ~ Birthday of George Washington, 1st U.S. President.

1819 ~ Spain ceded Florida to the U.S.

1857 ~ Birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World.

1879 ~ Frank Woolworth opened a five-cent store in Utica, N.Y.

1935 ~ Airplanes were no longer permitted to fly over the White House.

1946 ~ George Kennan, the American charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram - the "Long Telegram" - to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan's analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment.

1967 ~ General Suharto assumes control of Indonesia

1980 ~ In the Olympic competition, the U.S. Ice Hockey team defeated the Soviets 4–3 at Lake Placid, NY.

1994 ~ Double agent Aldrich Ames was arrested.

1997 ~ Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute announced that a sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

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Eudaimonia

1633 ~ Birthday of Samuel Pepys, Diarist.

1685 ~ Birthday of Georg Friederich Händel, Composer.

1836 ~ The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

1855 ~ Death of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Mathematician & Physicist.

1893 ~ Rudolf Diesel received a patent for the diesel engine.

1915 ~ Birthday of Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay.

1927 ~ President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

1945 ~ The Stars and Stripes raised over Iwo Jima. The 28th Regiment of the 5th Marine Division took Mount Suribachi.

1954 ~ Lasting prevention of polio reported in vaccine tests.

1965 ~ Death of Stan Laurel, Actor & Comedian.

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Eudaimonia

303 ~ The Roman Emperor Galerius published his edict that began the persecution of Christians in his portion of the Empire.

1786 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Grimm, Philologist & Folklorist.

1803 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review.

1856 ~ Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician.

1868 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson.

1903 ~ The U.S. signed an agreement acquiring a naval station at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

1942 ~ Birthday of Joseph Lieberman, U.S. Senator.

1949 ~ At White Sands NM, "Project Bumper” a WAC CORPORAL attached to a German built V-2 rocket, reached a height of 250 miles above sea level, the first rocket to reach outer space. The entire trip took 6-1/2 minutes from firing.

1955 ~ Birthday of Steve Jobs, Computer Pioneer.

1981 ~ Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

2001 ~ Death of Claude E. Shannon, "father of information theory".

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Eudaimonia

1723 ~ Death of Sir Christopher Wren, Architect.

1841 ~ Birthday of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Painter & Sculptor.

1870 ~ Hiram R. Revels, R-Miss., became the first black member of the U.S. Senate.

1901 ~ Incorporation of the United States Steel Corporation.

1913 ~ The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, authorizing a graduated income tax, was ratified.

1943 ~ Birthday of George Harrison, Beatle.

1983 ~ Death of Tennessee Williams, playwright.

1986 ~ Corazon Aquino assumed the Philippine presidency after Ferdinand E. Marcos fled.

1994 ~ Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein opened fire inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death by worshippers

2004 ~ Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was released in the U.S., and became the highest-grossing R-rated film ever made.

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Eudaimonia

1797 ~ The Bank of England issued the first one pound note.

1802 ~ Birthday of Victor Hugo, Poet.

1848 ~ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto” in London.

1852 ~ Birthday of John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of dry cereal.

1918 ~ Birthday of Theodore Sturgeon, Science Fiction writer.

1935 ~ Robert Watson-Watt gave the first demonstration of RADAR.

1944 ~ Filming of the Nazi propaganda film, "The Fuhrer Gives a Village to the Jews" began in Theresienstadt.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee introduces WorldWideWeb, the first web browser.

1991 ~ On Baghdad Radio, Saddam Hussein announced that he had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait.

1993 ~ A van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City exploded, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.

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Eudaimonia

1807 ~ Birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet (The Song of Hiawatha, The Village Blacksmith, Paul Revere's Ride).

1827 ~ The first Mardi Gras was celebrated in New Orleans.

1873 ~ Birthday of Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor.

1887 ~ Death of Alexander Borodin, composer.

1900 ~ The British Labour Party was formed.

1902 ~ Birthday of John Steinbeck, Writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1962.

1912 ~ Birthday of Lawrence Durrell, Writer.

1933 ~ Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, caught fire. The Nazis, blaming the Communists, used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties.

1951 ~ In a victory for freedom lovers, the Twenty-second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified.

1991 ~ President Bush declared "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated", and announced a Gulf War ceasefire.

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Eudaimonia

1827 ~ The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was incorporated, becoming the first railroad offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1833 ~ Birthday of Alfred von Schlieffen, German field marshal.

1854 ~ The U.S. Republican Party was organized in Ripon, Wisconsin as a party opposed to the expansion of slavery.

1901 ~ Birthday of Linus Pauling, double Nobel Prize winner: Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962.

1935 ~ Wallace Carothers discovered Nylon.

1953 ~ James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA. The formal announcement followed in the April 25 publication of Nature. For those who would like to learn more about this interesting development. In Crick’s own words.

1979 ~ Death of "Mr. Ed", the talking horse.

1983 ~ The final episode of M*A*S*H was broadcast in the U.S.

1986 ~ Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot to death in central Stockholm.

1993 ~ Four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) agents and six Branch Davidians were killed when the agents tried to serve warrants on the Davidians.

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Eudaimonia

1810 ~ Birthday of Frédéric Chopin, Composer & Pianist.

1872 ~ U.S. Congress authorized creation of Yellowstone National Park.

1896 ~ Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity.

1904 ~ Birthday of Glenn Miller, Bandleader.

1912 ~ Georg Ritter von Trapp, head of the singing family memorialized in the musical "The Sound of Music", married Agathe.

1927 ~ Birthday of Harry Belafonte, Musician & Actor.

1932 ~ The infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was kidnapped.

1950 ~ Klaus Fuchs was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.

1954 ~ The Castle Bravo 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It produced the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the U.S.

1992 ~ Sen. Brock Adams, D-Wash., abandoned his re-election campaign after eight women accused him in a Seattle Times report of sexual abuse and harassment.

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Eudaimonia

1824 ~ Birthday of Bedrich Smetana, Composer.

1836 ~ The Republic of Texas declared its independence from Mexico.

1877 ~ Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Samuel J. Tilden, even though Tilden had won the popular vote.

1904 ~ Birthday of Dr. Seuss, Author.

1930 ~ Death of D. H. Lawrence, Writer.

1931 ~ Birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

1939 ~ Death of Howard Carter, British archaeologist.

1963 ~ Release of Please Please Me in the U.K., the first LP from The Beatles.

1969 ~ The maiden flight of the Concorde.

2004 ~ Al Qaeda carried out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.

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Eudaimonia

1706 ~ Death of Johann Pachelbel, Composer.

1831 ~ Birthday of George Pullman, Inventor & Industrialist.

1845 ~ Florida became the 27th state.

1847 ~ Birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor.

1923 ~ Birthday of James Doohan, Actor.

1931 ~ ”The Star-Spangled Banner” officially became the national anthem of the U.S.

1939 ~ In Bombay, Mahatma Gandhi begins a fast to protest the British rule in India.

1983 ~ Death of Hergé, Belgian comics creator.

1985 ~ England’s coal miners accept defeat and vote to return to work after a year long strike.

1991 ~ An amateur video captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

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Eudaimonia

1678 ~ Birthday of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Composer.

1681 ~ Charles II of England granted a land charter to William Penn for what will later become Pennsylvania.

1804 ~ The Battle of Vinegar Hill, New South Wales.

1861 ~ The "Stars and Bars" was adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.

1877 ~ Pyotr Tchaikovsky's ballet “Swan Lake” first performed.

1936 ~ First flight of airship Hindenburg (LZ-129), in Germany.

1975 ~ Charlie Chaplin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

1994 ~ Four terrorists were convicted for their roles in the World Trade Center bombing which killed six and injured more than a thousand.

1997 ~ U.S. President Clinton prohibited federal funding for any research on human cloning.

1998 ~ The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.

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Eudaimonia