19 June 2017
Interesting tidbits:
1586 – English colonists leave Roanoke Island, after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in North America. Tidbits has posted about the Roanoke settlement before. However, recent evidence has come to light supporting the view that the failure of the Roanoke colony, and the near failure of the Jamestown colony may have been helped along by covert actions on the part of the Spanish, who claimed the region. The Spanish were engaged in the extraction and protection of huge amounts of treasure from their colonies in the new world, even while they were engaged in a constant series of wars in Europe and fighting pirates and privateers in the Caribbean. Frontal attacks on the English colonies required more resources than the Spanish were willing to spare, but covert actions didn't.
1821 – Decisive defeat of the Philikí Etaireía by the Ottomans at Dragasani (in Wallachia).
1829 - Sir Robert Peel founded the London Metropolitan Police (Bobbies).
1846 – The first officially recorded, organized baseball game is played under Alexander Cartwright's rules on Hoboken, New Jersey's Elysian Fields with the New York Base Ball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23-1. Cartwright umpired.
1893 - Lizzie Bordon acquitted.
1910 – The first Father's Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington.
1910 - The first airship in service. DELAG, acronym for Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft (German for "German Airship Travel Corporation"), was the world's first airline to use an aircraft in revenue service. The first Zeppelin to be constructed for the company was LZ 7, which was named Deutschland. First flown on 19 June 1910.
1917 - King George V ordered members of British royal family to dispense with German titles & surnames, they take the name Windsor.
1978 – Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world's most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut.
2003 - Nozomi, Earth Flyby.
Today's birthday crew:
1893 – Madeleine Astor, RMS Titanic survivor.
1896 – Wallis Simpson, American wife of Edward VIII.
1897 – Moe Howard, American actor and comedian best known as the leader of The Three Stooges. Although his "bowl cut" hairstyle is now widely recognized, Moe's mother originally refused to cut his hair, letting it grow to shoulder length. Finally he could not take his classmates' years of teasing any longer, sneaked off to a shed in the back yard, and cut his hair. He was so afraid his mother would be upset (she enjoyed curling his hair) that he hid under the house for several hours, causing a panic. He finally came out and his mother was so glad to see him she didn't even mention the hair. In 1921 Moe joined an old friend, now firmly established in show business as Ted Healy, in a vaudeville routine. In 1923, he caught sight of his older brother Shemp in the audience and yelled at him from the stage. The two brothers heckled each other, to the audience's delight, and Healy immediately hired Shemp as a permanent part of the act. He then recruited vaudeville violinist Larry Fine to join the troupe, and billed them as "Ted Healy and His Racketeers" (later changed to Ted Healy and His Stooges). By 1930, Ted Healy and His Stooges were on the verge of hitting "the big time" and made their first movie, Soup to Nuts — featuring Healy, and his four Stooges Moe, Shemp, Larry and one-shot Stooge Fred Sanborn — for Fox Films. Shemp had never seen eye-to-eye with the hard-drinking and sometimes belligerent Healy, however, and left the group shortly after to pursue a solo movie career. After a short search for a replacement, Moe suggested his youngest brother, Jerome. Healy originally passed on Jerry (whom he disliked), but Jerry was so eager to join the act that he shaved off his luxuriant auburn mustache and hair and ran on stage during Healy's routine. That finally got Healy to hire Jerry, who took the stage name of "Curly." Healy and the Stooges were hired by MGM as "nut" comics, to liven up feature films and short subjects with their antics. The studio, however, began grooming Healy as a solo character comedian. With Healy pursuing his own career in 1934, his Stooges (now renamed The Three Stooges) signed with Columbia Pictures where they stayed until December 1957, making 190 comedy shorts.
1902 – Guy Lombardo, Canadian-American bandleader and violinist.
1914 – Lester Flatt, American singer-songwriter and musician (Flatt and Scruggs).
1915 – Pat Buttram, American country/western actor.
1947 – Salman Rushdie, Indian author.
1964 – Bill Barretta, American puppeteer (The Muppets).
1975 – Geoff Ramsey, American voice actor and producer (Dexter Grif).
1978 – Zoe Saldana, American actress known for her roles as Neytiri in James Cameron's Avatar, Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and Uhura in the 2009 film Star Trek and the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness.
1983 – Aidan Turner, Irish actor known for his role as Kíli in The Hobbit.
Happy birthday guys!