Interesting tidbits:
1789 – French Revolution: citizens of Paris storm the Bastille. The medieval fortress and prison in Paris known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the center of Paris. While the prison only contained seven inmates at the time of its storming, its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution. In France, Le quatorze juillet (14 July) is a public holiday. It is usually called Bastille Day in English.
1789 – Alexander Mackenzie finally completes his journey to the mouth of the great river he hoped would take him to the Pacific, but which turns out to flow into the Arctic Ocean. He is also known for his overland crossing of what is now Canada to reach the Pacific Ocean in 1793. This was the first east to west crossing of North America north of Mexico and predated the Lewis and Clark expedition by 10 years.
1798 – The Sedition Act becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government.
1853 – Opening of the first major US world's fair, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City. The Exhibition was held in what is now Bryant Park in New York City, in the wake of the highly successful 1851 Great Exhibition in London. It aimed to showcase the new industrial achievements of the world and also to demonstrate the nationalistic pride of a relatively young nation. Opening on July 14, 1853 with newly-sworn President Franklin Pierce in attendance, the fair was seen by over 1.1 million visitors before it closed on Nov. 14, 1854. The fair featured its own glass and iron exhibition building – the New York Crystal Palace – directly inspired by London's. The Palace was destroyed by fire on October 5, 1858. Adjoining the Crystal Palace was the Latting Observatory, a wooden tower 315 feet / 96 m high, which allowed visitors to see into Queens, Staten Island and New Jersey. The tower, at 290 feet / 88 m, was the tallest structure in New York City from the time it was constructed in 1853 until it burnt down on August 30, 1856. Today, the expo is also remembered as the place where Elisha Otis demonstrated an elevator equipped with a device called a safety, which would kick in if the hoisting rope broke. This addressed a major public concern regarding the safety of elevators. Three years later, Otis installed the first passenger elevator in the United States in a New York City store. The world's first pedal quadracycle was was also unveiled at the Exhibition.
1865 – First ascent of the Matterhorn was made by Edward Whymper, Lord Francis Douglas, Charles Hudson, Douglas Hadow, Michel Croz, and the two Zermatt guides, Peter Taugwalder father and son on 14 July 1865. Douglas, Hudson, Hadow, and Croz were killed on the descent when Hadow slipped and pulled the other three with him down the north face. Whymper and the Taugwalder guides, who survived, were later accused of having cut the rope below to ensure that they were not dragged down with the others, but the subsequent inquiry found no proof of this and they were acquitted. The Matterhorn was the last great Alpine peak to be climbed.
1874 – The Chicago Fire of 1874 burns down 47 acres of the city, destroying 812 buildings, killing 20, and resulting in the fire insurance industry demanding municipal reforms from Chicago’s city council.
1877 – The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 begins in Martinsburg, West Virginia, US, when Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers have their wages cut for the second time in a year.
1881 – Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner. William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr.), better known as Billy the Kid and also known as Henry Antrim, was a 19th-century American gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier outlaw in the American Old West. According to legend, he killed 21 men, but it is generally believed that he killed between four and nine. At the time Garrett was considered a hero by many, but modern forensic analysis casts doubt on the official version of the events surrounding the Kid's death. The scenario that best fits the evidence is that Garrett shot the Kid while he was unarmed. Rumors persisted for decades that Billy the Kid was not killed that night, but that Garrett, a known friend of the Kid's, may have staged it all so the Kid could escape the law. DNA tests indicate that none of the men claiming to be Billy the Kid had DNA that matched the DNA of the Kid's known living relatives.
1911 – Harry Atwood, an exhibition pilot for the Wright Brothers lands his airplane at the South Lawn of the White House. He is later awarded a Gold medal from U.S. President William Howard Taft for this feat. Straight out of flight school in May of 1911, Atwood became the chief flight instructor for William Starling Burgess whose Burgess Company built a variety of airplanes, including licensed Wright aircraft between 1911 and 1913. On May 31, 1912, Atwood made the first airmail delivery in New England. He flew about five miles / 8 km from Atwood Park to the Lynn, Massachusetts Town Commons where he dropped a sack of mail from the plane. The sack was then retrieved by a Lynn postal employee and driven to the post office. Within three months of his first lesson he flew a record-breaking 576 miles / 927 km from Boston to Washington, DC, and on July 14, 1911, landed on the White House lawn.
1960 – Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild.
1965 – The Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet.
1969 – The United States $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills are officially withdrawn from circulation.
1992 – 386BSD is released by Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz beginning the Open Source Operating System Revolution. Linus Torvalds releases his Linux soon afterwards.
2000 – A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth.
Today's birthday crew:
1868 – Gertrude Bell, English archaeologist, writer, spy, and administrator who explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making due to her skill and contacts, built up through extensive travels in Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. Along with T. E. Lawrence, Bell helped establish the Hashemite dynasties in what is today Jordan as well as in Iraq. Bell played a major role in establishing and helping administer the modern state of Iraq, utilizing her unique perspective from her travels and relations with tribal leaders throughout the Middle East. During her lifetime she was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials and given an immense amount of power for a woman at the time. She has been described as "one of the few representatives of His Majesty's Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection". Bell's uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, was British minister at Tehran, Persia. In May 1892, after leaving Oxford, Bell travelled to Persia to visit him. She described this journey in her book, Persian Pictures, which was published in 1894. She spent much of the next decade travelling around the world, mountaineering in Switzerland, and developing a passion for archaeology and languages. She had become fluent in Arabic, Persian, French and German as well as also speaking Italian and Turkish. In 1899, Bell again went to the Middle East. She visited Palestine and Syria that year and in 1900, on a trip from Jerusalem to Damascus, she became acquainted with the Druze living in Jabal al-Druze. She traveled across Arabia six times over the next 12 years. She published her observations in the book Syria: The Desert and the Sown published in 1907. In this book she described, photographed and detailed her trip to Greater Syria's towns and cities like Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut, Antioch and Alexandretta. Bell's vivid descriptions opened up the Arabian deserts to the western world. In March 1907, Bell journeyed to the Ottoman Empire and began to work with the archaeologist and New Testament scholar Sir William M. Ramsey. Their excavations in Binbirkilise were chronicled in A Thousand and One Churches. In January 1909, she left for Mesopotamia. She visited the Hittite city of Carchemish, mapped and described the ruin of Ukhaidir and finally went to Babylon and Najaf. Back in Carchemish, she consulted with the two archaeologists on site. One of them was T.E. Lawrence. Her 1913 Arabian journey was generally difficult. She was the second foreign woman after Lady Anne Blunt to visit Ha'il. Bell also became honorary secretary of the British Women's Anti-Suffrage League. Her stated reason for her anti-suffrage stand was that as long as women felt that the kitchen and the bedroom were their only domains, they were truly unprepared to take part in deciding how a nation should be ruled. At the outbreak of World War I, Bell's request for a Middle East posting was initially denied. She instead volunteered with the Red Cross in France. Later, she was asked by British Intelligence to get soldiers through the deserts, and from the World War I period until her death she was the only woman holding political power and influence in shaping British imperial policy in the Middle East. She often acquired a team of locals which she directed and led on her expeditions. Throughout her travels Bell established close relations with tribe members across the Middle East. Additionally, being a woman gave her exclusive access to the chambers of wives of tribe leaders, giving her access to other perspectives and functions. In November 1915, however, she was summoned to Cairo to the nascent Arab Bureau, headed by General Gilbert Clayton. She also again met T. E. Lawrence. At first she did not receive an official position, but, in her first months there, helped Lt. Cmdr. David Hogarth set about organizing and processing her own, Lawrence's and Capt. W. H. I. Shakespear's data about the location and disposition of Arab tribes that could be encouraged to join the British against the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence and the British used the information in forming alliances with the Arabs. On 3 March 1916, after hardly a moment's notice, Gen. Clayton sent Bell to Basra, which British forces had captured in November 1914, to advise Chief Political Officer Percy Cox regarding an area she knew better than any other Westerner. She drew maps to help the British army reach Baghdad safely. She became the only female political officer in the British forces and received the title of "Liaison Officer, Correspondent to Cairo" (i.e. to the Arab Bureau where she had been assigned). She was Harry St. John Philby's field controller, and taught him the finer arts of behind-the-scenes political manoeuvering. When British troops took Baghdad (10 March 1917), Bell was summoned by Cox to Baghdad and given the title of "Oriental Secretary." She, Cox and Lawrence were among a select group of "Orientalists" convened by Winston Churchill to attend a 1921 Conference in Cairo to determine the boundaries of the British mandate and nascent states such as Iraq. Gertrude is supposed to have described Lawrence as being able "to ignite fires in cold rooms". Throughout the conference, she, Cox and Lawrence worked tirelessly to promote the establishment of the countries of Transjordan and Iraq to be presided over by the Kings Abdullah and Faisal, sons of the instigator of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire (ca. 1915-1916), Hussein bin Ali, Sharif and Emir of Mecca. Until her death in Baghdad, she served in the Iraq British High Commission advisory group there. The stress of authoring a prodigious output of books, correspondence, intelligence reports, reference works, and white papers; of recurring bronchitis attacks brought on by years of heavy smoking in the company of English and Arab cohorts; of bouts with malaria; and finally, of coping with Baghdad's summer heat all took a toll on her health. Somewhat frail to start with, she became nearly emaciated.
1894 – Dave Fleischer, American animator, director, and producer best known as a co-owner of Fleischer Studios with his two older brothers Max Fleischer and Lou Fleischer. Dave Fleischer was notable during the brothers' early days as the rotoscope model for their first character, Koko the Clown. He went on to become director and later producer of the studio's output. Among the cartoon series Fleischer supervised during this period were Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor. Popeye would go on to be the top rival of Mickey Mouse. He also supervised two animated features released through Paramount Pictures, Gulliver's Travels (1939) and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941). The debt Fleischer Studios owed to Paramount for the budgets of those features, worsened by the lack of success that came from the studio's non-Popeye cartoons, was called in by Paramount. This forced the brothers to give the studio to Paramount on May 24, 1941. However, both were still able to remain in charge of Fleischer Studios for a time. Fleischer was asked by Paramount to put the popular comic book hero Superman into a cartoon series. These were the first Superman animated shorts. The big-budget Superman series became the most successful cartoon of the late period of Fleischer Studios. However, relations between Dave and Max were deteriorating. The feud starting simmering after the married Dave began an adulterous affair with his Miami secretary in 1938, and was followed by more personal and professional disputes. Dave Fleischer left for California to supervise the recording of the score for Mr. Bug Goes to Town in September 1941 and did not return to the studio, mailing his resignation in November 1941. However, Fleischer's resignation was filed a month later than allowed by the terms of his contract, and he remained nominally employed by Paramount while his brother Max was forced out of the company at the end of December 1941. Dave Flesicher became President of Screen Gems at Columbia Pictures in April 1942 although Fleischer Studios' contract with Paramount did not expire until May 1942, allowing Paramount to terminate Fleischer and reorganize the company under their control. Under Paramount's control, Fleischer Studios became Famous Studios and later Paramount Cartoon Studios, remaining in operation until 1967. After Fleischer's stint with Columbia, he went over to Universal, where he became a special effects expert and general problem-solver, working on films such as Francis (1950), The Birds (1963), and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967).
1906 – Tom Carvel, Greek-American businessman, founded Carvel.
1910 – William Hanna, American animator, director, producer, and actor, co-founded Hanna-Barbera. Hanna-Barbera pioneered the production of inexpensive cartoons.
1927 – Mike Esposito, American comic book artist whose work for DC Comics, Marvel Comics and others spanned the 1950s to the 2000s. As a comic book inker teamed with his childhood friend Ross Andru, he drew for such major titles as The Amazing Spider-Man and Wonder Woman. An Andru-Esposito drawing of Wonder Woman appears on a 2006 U.S. stamp. Esposito was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2007.
1927 – Peggy Parish, American author (Amelia Bedilia).
1938 – Jerry Rubin, American "hippy" activist (The Chicago Seven).
1939 – Sid Haig, American actor (Captain Spaulding).
1943 – Christopher Priest, English novelist and science fiction writer. His works include Fugue for a Darkening Island, Inverted World, The Affirmation, The Glamour, The Prestige and The Separation. Priest has been strongly influenced by the science fiction of H.G. Wells and in 2006 was appointed to the position of Vice-President of the international H.G. Wells Society.
1961 – Jackie Earle Haley, American actor who played horror icon Freddy Krueger in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, released on April 30, 2010.
1981 – Trevor Fehrman, American actor (Clerks II).
Happy birthday guys!