June 18

It’s International Picnic Day and Go Fishing Day and National Splurge Day

ON THIS DAY…
0618 Coronation of the Chinese governor Li Yuan as Emperor Gaozu of Tang, the new Emperor of China, initiating three centuries of the Tang Dynasty’s rule over China
1155 Frederick I, after consolidating his power in Germany and Italy, is crowned Holy Roman emperor by Pope Adrian IV in Rome
1178 About an hour after sunset – as chronicled by the English monk, Gervase of Canterbury – a band of five eyewitnesses watched as the upper horn of the bright, new crescent Moon “suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out… fire, hot coals and sparks… The body of the moon, which was below writhed… throbbed like a wounded snake”; the sighting is now attributed to perhaps an exploding meteor that just happened to line up with their view of the Moon
1264 The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature
1429 The French, under the leadership of Joan of Arc, crush the English under Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay; this turns the tide of the Hundred Years’ War
1767 Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sighted Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island
1812 Aroused by the impressment of American sailors into the British navy and eager to expand the country’s western possessions, the US Congress declares war against Britain to begin the War of 1812
1815 Battle of Waterloo leads to Napoleon Bonaparte abdicating the throne of France for a second, final time
1858 Charles Darwin receives from Alfred Russel Wallace a paper that included nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin’s own; this prompts Darwin to publish his theory
1873 Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election
1900 Empress Dowager of China orders all foreigners killed, including foreign diplomats and their families
1912 A patent was issued for a mercury vapor lamp to Peter Hewitt
1923 Checker Cab puts its first taxi on the streets
1935 The Rolls Royce trademark was registered in the US
1940 British prime minister Winston Churchill, speaking to the House of Commons before the Battle of Britain, says British resistance in the battle will be remembered as “their finest hour”
1945 British traitor, William Joyce, AKA Lord Haw-Haw, was charged with treason
1953 The Republic of Egypt is declared and the monarchy is abolished
1953 Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott are married
1959 Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long is committed to a state mental hospital; he responds by having the hospital’s director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane
1965 The first large solid-fuel rocket – a Titan 3C – rocket was launched into orbit
1967 Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival
1969 Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch opened in US movie theaters
1971 The still-scary movie Willard starring Bruce Davison, Elsa Lanchester and Ernest Borgnine opens in US movie theaters
1981 The AIDS epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco, CA
1983 At 7:33 am EDT, Space Shuttle Challenger was launched on its own second flight; this was the seventh shuttle mission, and the first to carry a woman crew member. Sally K. Ride, mission specialist, became America’s first woman in space
1993 The first lab test was released in Arizona confirming a bee involved in a fatal on attack on a small dog at a Tucson home was an Africanized honey bee; because of their more intense defensive swarming behavior, such non-native bees earned the name “killer bee” in the media
1996 Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts

BORN:
1854 E.W. Scripps, newspaper publisher and founder of The E.W. Scripps Company, a diversified media conglomerate, and United Press news service
1891 Mae Busch, actress (The Unholy Three, Doctor X, Cheating Blondes, Nancy Drew – Detective, Ziegfeld Girl)
1895 Blanche Sweet, actress (Anna Christie, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Woman in White)
1904 Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaievna Romanova of Russia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna
1903 Jeanette MacDonald, singer and actress (The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, San Francisco)
1904 Keye Luke, prolific actor (Charlie Chan films, Kung Fu, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, Gremlins)
1910 E.G. Marshall, actor (Broken Lance, 12 Angry Men, Compulsion, Superman II, Stephen King’s Creepshow, Nixon)
1913 Sammy Cahn, 4-time Academy Award-winning lyricist, songwriter and musician
1915 Red Adair, renowned American oil field firefighter who became world famous as an innovator in the highly specialized and extremely hazardous profession of extinguishing and capping blazing, erupting oil wells, both land-based and offshore
1927 Paul Eddington, CBE, actor (Yes, Prime Minister, Yes, Minister, The Good Life, The Adventures of Robin Hood)
1938 Michael Sheard, actor (Doctor Who, Grange Hill, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back)
1942 Sir Paul McCartney, MBE …if you don’t know who he is just go away and never darken my website again
1942 Roger Ebert, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic and screenwriter
1952 Carol Kane, 2-time Emmy Award-winning actress (Taxi, The Princess Bride, Joe Versus the Volcano, When a Stranger Calls)
1961 Alison Moyet, pop singer-songwriter noted for her bluesy voice (Yaz)

DIED:
1536 Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset, son of King Henry VIII of England and his teenage mistress, Elizabeth Blount, the only illegitimate offspring that Henry acknowledged, dies at 17
1680 Samuel Butler, poet and satirist remembered now chiefly for a long satirical burlesque poem on Puritanism entitled Hudibras, dies at 67
1902 Samuel Butler, British writer strongly influenced by his New Zealand experiences who is best known for his utopian satire Erewhon and his posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh, dies at 66
1928 Roald Amundsen, the first person to reach both the North and South Poles, dies at 55
1944 Harry Fielding Reid, seismologist and glaciologist who introduced the term “elastic rebound” in a report (1910) on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, dies at 85
1959 Ethel Barrymore, Academy Award-winning actress (None But the Lonely Heart, The Spiral Staircase, The Paradine Case, Pinky), dies at 79
1966 Bobby Fuller, musician, songwriter (The Bobby Fuller Four, “I Fought the Law”, “A New Shade of Blue”) is murdered at 23
1973 Roger Delgado, actor (Doctor Who, Antony and Cleopatra, The Assassination Bureau, Masquerade, In Search of the Castaways, The Road to Hong Kong), dies in a car accident at 55
1980 Terence Fisher, director (The Devil Rides Out, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, The Mummy), dies at 76
1992 Peter Allen, entertainer and Academy Award-winning songwriter (“Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)”, “I Go To Rio”, “I Honestly Love You”), dies of AIDS-related throat cancer at 48
2000 Nancy Marchand, 4-time Emmy Award-winning actress (Lou Grant, The Sopranos, Jefferson in Paris, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!), dies at 71