FRIDAY
1810, Ludwig Van Beethoven gave the world a romantic piece for piano, with the dedication “For Therese, as a remembrance.” But today nobody remembers Therese. The publisher couldn’t read Beethoven’s handwriting and to this day the piece is known as “Fur Elise.”
1865, Just days after the end of the Civil War, the steamer ship Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killing over 1,500 freed Union prisoners of war who were returning home. Estimates of the dead in this, America’s worst maritime disaster, range as high as 2,000.
1880, Francis Clarke and M.G. Foster patented the electrical hearing aid.
1882, Ralph Waldo Emerson died in Concord, Massachusetts, one month before his 70th birthday, and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery beside Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
1897, Grant’s Tomb is dedicated.
1927, Civil rights and political activist Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was born. She died in January 2006.
1932, American poet Hart Crane, returning from Mexico where he had gone on a Guggenheim Fellowship, drowned after jumping from a steamer while en route to New York. He was 32.
1937, the nation’s first Social Security checks were distributed.
1938, Geraldine Apponyi was the first American woman to become a queen, when she married King Zogof Albania on this day.
1946, The first commercial carrier ship to be equipped with radar, the SS African Star, was placed in service.
1947, It was “Babe Ruth Day” as baseball fans across the country honored the ailing star.
1950, The Boston Celtics hired Arnold “Red” Auerbach to coach their losing team. In 16 seasons, he led them to nine NBA championships.
1956, Rocky Marciano retired from boxing, joining Gene Tunney as the only heavyweight champ to leave undefeated. Marciano finished his career at 49-0, with all but six of those wins by knockout.
1965, R. C. Duncan patented Pampers brand disposable diapers.
1968, Simon & Garfunkel released their hit song “Mrs. Robinson,” from the film The Graduate.
1994, an outdoor funeral service was held for former President Richard M. Nixon at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. The service was attended by all five of his presidential successors.
2000, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani disclosed that he had prostate cancer. Soon after that disclosure, and the revelation that he had a mistress, Giuliani bowed out of the U.S. Senate race againstHillary Rodham Clinton.
SATURDAY
1789, the crew of the British ship HMS Bounty mutinied, led by first mate Fletcher Christian. They set Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a small boat in the South Pacific. Bligh and his followers survived, as did the mutineers, who settled on uninhabited Pitcairn Island, after picking up some Tahitian men and women. Their descendants live on the island to this day.
1937, Saddam Hussein was born. He is executed in 2006.
1945, Ending the 23-year-long Fascist rule of Italy, Italian partisans shot Benito Mussolini near the lakeside village of Dongo. Leaders of the Fascist Party, several of his friends, and his mistress Clara Petacci were also executed.
1949, Actor Bruno Kirby (The Godfather: Part II, This Is Spinal Tap, Good Morning, Vietnam, When Harry Met Sally…, City Slickers) was born. He died in August 2006.
1965, Barbra Streisand‘s first TV special, My Name is Barbra airs on CBS.
1966, the Boston Celtics beat the L.A. Lakers in the seventh game of the NBA Finals, giving the Celtics and head coach Red Auerbach their eighth consecutive championship.
1967, during the Vietnam War, heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army. Ali’s WBA and WBC crowns were taken away from him as a result of his action, which he said was based on religious grounds.
1967, Cass Elliot gives bith to baby girl, Owen Vanessa.
1980, President Jimmy Carter accepted the resignation of Secretary Of State Cyrus Vance, who’d opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing the hostages in Iran.
1985, The largest sand castle in the world was completed near St. Petersburg, Florida. The castle was an amazing four stories tall and contained hidden treasure for kids who came in and demolished the work of art — with permission — a week later.
1985, The little town of Parker, Texas, not far from Dallas, reported a 2-to-1 edge in the ratio of tourists to residents. Some of the good citizens of the town of just over 1,000 residents were not pleased, either. Some 2,100 tourists each day converged on the town to visit Southfork Ranch, the home of the Ewing family on the TV hit Dallas.
1987, For the first time, a compact disc of an album was released before its vinyl counterpart when The Art of Excellence by Tony Bennett, his first recorded work in a decade, went on sale.
1988, a flight attendant was killed and 61 people injured when part of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 peeled off during a flight from Hilo to Honolulu. The pilot managed to land the plane safely.
1990, Don Everly’s daughter marries Gun N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose. The marriage dissolves after nine months.
1994, former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had betrayed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union, and then Russia, pled guilty to espionage and tax evasion charges, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
2004, The Recording Industry sues 477 people for copyright infringement, accusing them of illegally exchanging MP3 files.
SUNDAY
1429, Joan Of Arc entered the besieged French city of Orleans to lead a victory over the English.
1899, Duke Ellington, one of the most influential jazz musicians in history, was born. Responsible for more than 1,000 musical pieces, he died in 1974 in New York City.
1945, American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany.
1945, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun in his Berlin bunker, one day before they both killed themselves.
1946, Twenty-eight former Japanese World War II leaders were indicted as war criminals.
1952, One of NASCAR’s most popular personalities, stock car racer Dale Earnhardt, was born. He was killed while racing in the Daytona 500 on February 18th, 2001.
1974, President Richard Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of some of the secret White House audiotapes related to the Watergate scandal.
1985, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner fired manager Yogi Berra only 16 games into the season.
1986, Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox set a major league baseball record by striking out 20 Seattle Mariner batters. He now shares the record with Kerry Wood, who struck out 20 in May 1998, and with himself, repeating his feat 10 years later in September 1996.
1992, rioting broke out in Los Angeles after a Simi Valley, California, jury acquitted four white police officers of nearly all charges in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King.
1996, Former CIA Director William Colby was missing after an apparent boating accident, and was presumed by authorities in Maryland to have drowned. His body was later recovered.
1997, Staff Sergeant Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and dishonorably discharged.
1997, A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons went into effect.
1997, Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.
1998, The United States, Canada, and Mexico agreed to eliminate tariffs on items accounting for $1 billion in trade at a meeting in Paris of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1999, Yugoslavia filed World Court cases against 10 countries, including the United States, claiming their bombing campaign breached international law.
1999, The Reverend Jesse Jackson arrived in Belgrade on a mission to win freedom for three American prisoners of war held by Yugoslavia.
2000, Tens of thousands of angry Cuban-Americans marched peacefully through Miami’s Little Havana, protesting the raid in which armed federal agents removed six-year-old Elian Gonzalez from the home of relatives.
2000, Lennox Lewis knocked out Michael Grant in the second round at Madison Square Garden in New York City to retain his WBC and IBF heavyweight titles.
