June 2

It’s National Bubba Day and I Love My Dentist Day and National Rocky Road Day

ON THIS DAY…
1686 The publication of Newton’s Principia was arranged in London at the Royal Society; the minutes of the meeting record that the astronomer Edmund Halley would “undertake the business of looking after it and printing it at his own charge”
1774 The Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to let British soldiers into their homes, is reenacted
1780 The Derby horse race is held for the first time
1793 Jean Paul Marat recites the names of 29 people to the French National Convention; almost all of these are guillotined, followed by 17,000 more over the course of the next year during the Reign of Terror
1800 First smallpox vaccination in North America, at Trinity, Newfoundland
1835 P.T. Barnum and his circus begins first tour of the US
1851 Maine became the first US state to enact a law prohibiting alcohol
1857 The first practical US chain-stitch sewing machine was patented by a farmer, James E. A. Gibbs of Mill Point, VA
1873 Ground was broken on San Francisco’s Clay Street for the world’s first cable-powered railroad
1886 President Grover Cleveland marries Frances Folsom in the White House, becoming the only president to wed in the executive mansion
1889 A hydroelectric power plant generated alternating current electricity which was for the first time made available to consumers at a significant distance from its origin
1896 Guglielmo Marconi receives a patent for his newest invention: the radio
1897 Mark Twain, responding to rumors that he was dead, is quoted by the New York Journal as saying, “The report of my death was an exaggeration”
1924 President Calvin Coolidge signs Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States
1928 Kraft’s Velveeta Cheese was invented
1935 Baseballer Babe Ruth announces he is going to retire from the sport
1941 The Andrews Sisters first recorded the popular World War II novelty song, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”
1946 Italians vote to replace the country’s monarchy with a republic, leading to the abdication of King Humbert II
1950 Rocketship X-M, which was supposedly groundbreaking in its day but gave me a migraine, opens in US movie theaters
1955 USSR and Yugoslavia sign the Belgrade declaration and thus normalize relations between both countries, discontinued since 1948
1957 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, interviewed on CBS’s Face the Nation, declares, “Your grandchildren in America will live under socialism”
1957 The Bowery Boys film Spook Chasers opens in US movie theaters
1963 Elizabeth II is crowned Queen of Great Britain in Westminster Abbey; the first to be televised
1965 The first contingent of Australian combat troops arrives in South Vietnam
1966 Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarumon the Moon, becoming the first US spacecraft to soft land on another world
1967 The landmark album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is released in the US
1979 Pope John Paul II visits his native Poland, becoming the first Pope to visit a Communist country
1987 Allan Greenspan succeeds Paul Volcker as head of the Federal Reserve Board
1988 James Brown’s wife Adrienne claims diplomatic immunity while fighting numerous traffic violations on the grounds that she is the wife of the Official Ambassador of Soul
1988 Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman, 52, marries 19-year-old model Mandy Smith, the daughter of a woman Wyman’s son was dating (they will divorce 2 years later)
1989 Dead Poets Society, starring Robin Williams, is released in the US
1998 Voters in California passed Proposition 227; the act abolished the state’s 30-year-old bilingual education program by requiring that all children be taught in English
1999 The Bhutan Broadcasting Service finally brings television transmissions to the Kingdom for the first time
1999 The African National Congress wins 66 percent of the vote in South African elections, leading to the selection two weeks later of the party’s leader, Thabo Mbeki, to succeed Nelson Mandela as president
2003 In the US, federal regulators voted to allow companies to buy more television stations and newspaper-broadcasting combinations in the same city; the previous ownership restrictions had not been altered since 1975
2004 The first episode of Ken Jennings’ incredible reign as Jeopardy! champion airs; he starts out with $37,201 and would go on to win more than two million dollars
2005 Sun Microsystems announces it will purchase Storage Technology Corporation for $4.1 billion.

BORN:
1731 Martha Dandridge, wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States; although the title was not coined until after her death, she is considered to be the first First Lady of the United States
1740 Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François de Sade), aristocrat, French revolutionary and writer of philosophy-laden and often violent pornography; he was incarcerated in various prisons and in an insane asylum for about 32 years of his life; eleven years in Paris (10 of which were spent in the Bastille) a month in Conciergerie, 2 years in a fortress, a year in Madelonnettes, 3 years in Bicêtre, a year in Sainte-Pélagie, and 13 years in the Charenton insane asylum with much of his writing was done during his imprisonment – the term “sadism” is derived from his name
1840 Thomas Hardy, OM, novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement, though he saw himself as a poet and wrote novels mainly for financial gain only (Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure)
1850 Jesse Boot, 1st Baron Trent, chemist who founded Boots Company, Ltd.
1857 Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO, Romantic composer of oratorios, chamber music, symphonies, instrumental concertos, and songs; his first major orchestral works included the “Enigma Variations” and the “Pomp and Circumstance Marches”
1881 Henry Joseph Round, electronics engineer whose numerous inventions contributed to the development of radio communications; amongst his inventions are the Straight Eight Gramophone Recording System, a large audience public address system which was used to relay King George’s speech at the Wembley Exhibitions and the talking picture system he invented was used to record sound on to film during the 1930’s cinema boom
1903 Robert Morris Page, physicist who invented the technology for pulse radar while employed at the US Naval Research Laboratory
1904 Johnny Weissmuller, undefeated winner of five Olympic gold medals, 67 world and 52 national titles, holder of every freestyle record from 100 yards to the half-mile and cinematic gold as Tarzan
1907 Edwin J. Shoemaker, inventor and engineer who created the recliner chair and started the La-Z-Boy furniture company to manufacture it
1922 Clair Cameron Patterson, geochemist who in 1953 made the first precise measurement of the Earth’s age, 4.55 billion years
1924 Eric Voice, nuclear scientist who volunteered to ingest a minute amount of plutonium as part of European research to track plutonium in the body’s metabolism
1926 Milo O’Shea, actor (Barbarella, Theater of Blood, The Verdict, The Butcher Boy, The Matchmaker)
1930 Charles Peter Conrad, astronaut who was the third man to walk on the moon during the Apollo 12 mission; he was also a crewmember on Gemini 5, Gemini 11, and the Skylab 2 mission
1935 Roger Brierley, actor (Not on Your Nellie, Pennies from Heaven, Young Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who – “The Trial of a Time Lord”, A Fish Called Wanda)
1935 Anthony Powell, 3-time Academy Award-winning costume designer (Tess, Death on the Nile, Travels with My Aunt, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Avengers, Miss Potter)
1936 Sally Kellerman, actress (MASH, Brewster McCloud, Foxes, Back to School, Boris and Natasha)
1938 Kevin Brownlow, filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, and author (Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius, Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces)
1941 Charlie Watts, drummer of The Rolling Stones, jazz bandleader and commercial artist
1941 Stacy Keach, actor (Brewster McCloud, Fat City, Up in Smoke, The Long Riders, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Escape from L.A.)
1943 Charles Haid, actor, director, producer (Nip/Tuck, Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, Altered States, Hill Street Blues, Nightbreed)
1944 Marvin Hamlisch, composer and songwriter who made movie history in 1974 when he became the first individual ever to win three Academy Awards in one night in all three music categories – one for the song, “The Way We Were” (with co-writers Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman), another for the score to the movie The Way We Were and one for the adaption of Scott Joplin’s ragtime music for The Sting, won the Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize for his music for A Chorus Line, won 4 Emmy Awards and 4 Grammy Awards
1946 Peter Sutcliffe, English serial killer known as “The Yorkshire Ripper”
1948 Jerry Mathers, actor (Leave it to Beaver, The Seven Little Foys, The Trouble with Harry, Back to the Beach)
1953 Keith Allen, actor, writer, director, father of Lily (Robin Hood, The Comic Strip Presents…, Shallow Grave, Blue Juice, The Others, 24 Hour Party People)
1954 Dennis Haysbert, actor (24, The Unit, Major League, Far from Heaven, The Thirteenth Floor)
1955 Dana Carvey, actor, comedian, writer, Emmy Award-winning performer (Saturday Night Live, Wayne’s World, Blue Thunder (TV), Halloween II)
1968 Jon Culshaw, comedian, actor, celebrity impersonator (Dead Ringers, Headcases, Churchill: The Hollywood Years)
1972 Wayne Brady, actor, comedian, singer, 2-time Emmy Award-winning talk show host, Emmy Award-winning performer (The Wayne Brady Show, Whose Line is It Anyway?, Don’t Forget the Lyrics, Geppetto)
1977 Zachary Quinto, actor (Heroes, Star Trek, 24, So noTORIous)
1978 Justin Long, actor and “Mac” in the Apple commercials (Galaxy Quest, Ed, Herbie Fully Loaded, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Live Free or Die Hard)
1982 Jewel Staite, actress (Firefly, Serenity, Stargate: Atlantis, Da Vinci’s Inquest)

DIED:
1882 Giuseppi Garibaldi, Italian military and political leader; he is considered an Italian national hero, dies at 74
1891 Sir John Hawkshaw, civil engineer noted for his work on the Charing Cross and Cannon Street railways, with their bridges over the River Thames, and the East London Railway, which utilized Sir Marc Isambard Brunel’s Thames Tunnel, dies at 80
1941 Lou Gehrig, baseball player in the 1920s and 1930s, chiefly remembered for his prowess as a slugger and the longevity of his consecutive games played record, which stood for more than a half-century, and the pathos of his tearful farewell from baseball when he was stricken with the fatal disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); he died at 37
1956 Jean Hersholt, actor who helped to form the Motion Picture Relief Fund which helped to support industry employees with medical care when they were down on their luck and was used to create the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA; this led to the creation in 1956 of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian an honorary Academy Award given to an “individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry” (Greed, One in a Million, Heidi, The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Country Doctor, Dinner at Eight), dies at 69
1961 George S. Kaufman, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, theatre director, theatre producer, humorist, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and drama critic (Merton of the Movies, Dinner at Eight, Stage Door, You Can’t Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Guys and Dolls, A Night at the Opera), dies at 71
1969 Leo Gorcey, actor best remembered as one of the Dead End Kids and The Bowery Boys, dies at 51
1979 Jim Hutton, actor (Where the Boys Are, You’re Only Young Once, Major Dundee, Hellfighters, The Green Berets, The Adventures of Ellery Queen), dies at 45 of liver cancer
1990 Jack Gilford, Emmy Award-winning actor (The Big Blue Marble, Save the Tiger, Cocoon, Caveman, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), dies at 81
1990 Sir Rex Harrison, Academy Award-winning actor (My Fair Lady, Doctor Dolittle, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Crossed Swords), dies at 82
1996 Ray Combs, stand up comedian, actor and game show host (Family Feud), commits suicide by hanging at 40
2001 Imogene Coca, Emmy Award-winning actress (Your Show of Shows, It’s About Time, Garfield and Friends), dies at 92